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Brian McLaren’s two most important books—A New Kind of Christian and the recent A Generous Orthodoxy—both open by raising the specter of an evangelical pastor leaving the ministry or the church altogether. The fictional lead character in New Kind is poised to abandon his ministry until a wise new friend initiates him into the ways of postmodern Christianity, rehabilitating his ministry and life. Orthodoxy reaches out to the disaffected in first-person plural: “So many of us have come close to withdrawing from the Christian community.

Last spring the Nashville Convention Center played host to both the National Pastors Convention and the Emergent Convention. While the former was largely geared toward evangelical baby boomers, the latter catered to Gen X and Millennial evangelicals (and “postevangelicals”) who are trying to come to grips with postmodernity. Though the two conventions intentionally overlapped, that proximity suggests a closer kinship than may actually exist.

Books

A New Kind of Christian, by Brian McLaren (Jossey-Bass)
McLaren is pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C., and one of the leading thinkers in the emerging-church conversation. This book is a reflection in the form of a story, focusing on a dialogue between a struggling pastor and his daughter’s high school science teacher. It is the first installment of a trilogy, continued in The Story We Find Ourselves In and a volume slated for 2005.