A Postmodern Orthodoxy

A recent missions trip in which my dad participated has resulted in (among other things) some discussions between us about how missions – specifically, how short-term mission trips – can be made more effective. Those of you that read this on a regular basis probably know me well enough to suspect that I can’t have any sort of lengthy conversation about anything without trying to drag a book into the discussion, so, because it’s me, I’ll bring up a few books. Some things never change, I suppose.

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A few years back, I read Mike Mason’s Practicing the Presence of People – it’s a great book, and I have a history of recommending it to just about anyone that will let me tell them what I think they should be reading. In any case, a few folks that I know are reading through it. and we’ve been discussing it on a regular basis, so it was time to blow the dust off the cover and flip through it again – a bit of a refresher was in order, as I wanted to be able to participate in the discussion with some degree of intelligence, and I don’t retain this sort of stuff quite as well as I would like to.

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I’ve been plowing through Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus but Not the Church over the last few days as a result of someone handing me a copy of it that they thought they were returning to me. It’s not actually mine, but I’ve been meaning to read it for some time now, so I’ve been hoping that I’ll finish reading it before I figure out who the book actually belongs to and have to return it. As it turned out, that didn’t happen, but Charles was nice enough to let me finish it before giving it back.

In any case, what follows here are a few reflections on the book, and a few reflections on reactions that I’ve heard to the book. If everything goes according to plan, you will not have to have read the book to know what I’m talking about.

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This last Monday night, we had a Christmas Eve service at our church. This isn’t particularly surprising, but what is surprising is that they wanted me to talk for about 2 minutes about the incarnation. I generally have no problem staying within the time limits, unfortunately, the way I do this is to cover everything that I want to by just roaring through ideas, resulting in blank stares and some folks scratching their heads.

This is a more organized, slightly better explained version of what I talked about Monday:

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