Brian McLaren – why we must rethink evangelism

In a chapel address at Anderson University, Brian McLaren shares incredibly helpful insights about how people today want God in their lives and how the people of God can help them.

On his website, Brian McLaren states that more background on the chapel message can be found in his book More Ready Than You Realize (Zondervan, 2002).

Rockbridge Seminary students who have completed the online course “Contemporary Evangelism” may also want to check out William Lobdell’s sad and disturbing journey described in his book Losing My Religion: How I Lost my Faith Reporting on Religion in America – and Found Unexpected Peace (Collins 2009).

Barry Minkow, senior pastor of Community Bible Church in San Diego, writes about this book on the back cover:

I wholeheartedly believe that every Christian who wants to equip themselves to do the Great Commission, and not just talk about the Great Commission, better think through the passionate and detailed account of William Lobdell’s de-conversion. The book did not harm my faith in the Lord Jesus, it just demonstrated that the emperor has no clothes — and I am one of the emperors.

Brian McLaren on Calvinists

Rockbridge Seminary students who completed the online course “Christian Worldview and Theology,” will recall James Sawyer’s presentation of reformed theology in The Survivor’s Guide to Theology, one of the course’s textbooks.

You may be interested in Brian McLaren’s perspective on today’s “Calvinists.” Here are excerpts from a recent post he made to his blog:

The terms Calvinist and Reformed can have wildly different meanings, depending on who uses them.

When people tell me they’re Calvinist or Reformed, I generally ask them what they mean. One line of response goes to TULIP (an acronym for five points of a type of deterministic Calvinism) and the Westminster Confession and a list of things they’re against. Folks in this camp seem eager to repeat and redo faithfully in the 21st century exactly what Calvin said and did in the 16th.

The other line of response refers to the Lordship of Christ over all of life, the priesthood of all believers, the absolute importance of God’s grace, and the integration of faith with every dimension of human enterprise … seeming more eager to imitate Calvin’s general example, seeking to translate into our times what Calvin generally sought to do in his times, even when that means disagreeing with specific things Calvin – and many Calvinists – have said and done.

The TULIP/WC group tends to include my most passionate, persistent, and grandiloquent critics. I, of course, am not alone in finding myself in the polemical cross-hairs of these energetic folks who have rightly earned the nick-name “Machen’s warrior children.”

The other kind of Reformed Christians are much more irenic and include many of the wisest and most thoughtful Christians I’ve ever met. A great example of this tribe’s Reformed thinking can be found here. I hope and pray many in the former camp will migrate to the latter camp in the years ahead.

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