Well, I must admit, Making Sense of Church by Spencer Burke is a real eye catcher and is interesting to read. The insights from Burke are very pointed and speak very candidly about many of the troubles of modern-day church & personal spiritual growth techniques. He provides some thoughtful questions at the end of each chapter and I, on the whole, found his insights very eye-opening.
One particular downside with the book is that it is a collection of much whining.. and whining.. from various posters to The Ooze.com who are sick and tired of being sick and tired with modern-day evangelicalism. Normally I can inhale a book of this size in an afternoon; not so with this one. There were times it was so negative that I could only read a couple pages at a time before the negative energy in it forced me to stop.
I can imagine those who agree with all the criticisms of the church to say something like, "Well, it's the truth!" And, it might very well be.. but it would have been helpful to include more stories about churches and people who are making a difference in the war with modernism and unspiritual church growth strategies.
Another aspect of the book that irked me to no end was the constant use of the word "we" when referring to the troubles of church life. For instance, I would read, "The problem with the church is that we have lost focus." Okay, so maybe you have lost focus but you don't know me, you haven't met me, including 'me' in the 'we' is offensive. Maybe it's just symantics but I would have enjoyed reading more "I"s than "we"s.
Okay, so I am whining now myself. I did enjoy the book and can see myself referring back to it often for insights and whatnot. And, I am a HUGE fan of The Ooze.com. However, even on The Ooze, I have to take it in doses lest the negativity depress me. Fortunately, I've met some great people on the message boards and have enjoyed making a whole slew of new friends in and around ministry.
Maybe Burke's next book might be titled, "Getting Over It: The Way to Transform your Congregation's Attitudes without Depressing Those Who Want to Join You on the Journey."
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Making Sense of Church
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4 comments:
Well, you must have liked it even more than I did. Actually, I'm only half-way through and every time I think of picking it up to finish there's always another book I've got going that I'd rather read.
In reading the book it seems that the church has never had problems before in her history and that we've just now been dumped on in a dramatic way. I also think that much of the commenting is rather faddish. It has a major tendency to minimize the genuinely good contributions we can find in church history - or at least recent church history.
Don't get me wrong...I'm not suggesting that all is well. Certainly there are some changes (even foundational ones?) that need to take place within the evangelical church today, but I often get the sense in this book that there is no hope for the church I pastor and that the only viable option is to go start a "pomo" church somewhere.
It's nice to know that even this liberal evangelical (me) wasn't the only one put off by the book. :)
I agree that You are so right when Burke seems to miss the lack of respect due to our older and faithful church folk. I too am conerned about the whole pomo pursuit: it seems to only focus on newer Christians and neglects the baby boomers and seniors who give and gave so much of their time and talents to the congregation. It almost sounds like Burke is saying all ministry should only be about the younger generation- as if no other age group is as important.
Changing evangelical mindsets is difficult because it incorporates so many peoples- and I am not entirely confident (yet) in the post-modern pursuit of outreach; as I understanding things, we're gonna have to be a lot more concerned with all our church before we begin only targeting one group of people. Your brother Todd has a great link to this discussion in his thread.
Oopps, I didn't mean to elevate you to Divinity status when I capitalized the Y in you. If I am not careful, someone might think you are a Mormon. (As man is God once was... etc etc) heh heh
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