Church on the Other Side, The

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 224 pages
• Published by: Zondervan; Exp&ed edition January 1, 2003
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0310252199
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0310252191
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 4.8 ounces

Product Description
Tested strategies for pastors and churches that want to be somewhere else in the postmodern world and need reliable and practical help to get there. Now revised and expanded. Formerly titled Reinventing Your Church.

Back Cover Copy
Making the leap from yesterday to today

If you’re a church leader or committed member and you’re tired of easy steps and facile formulas for church health, growth, and renewal, then this book points the way to thoughtful action and profound, liberating change. Discover the importance of redefining your mission, finding fresh ways to communicate the gospel, and engaging today’s culture with understanding. Brian McLaren shows you thirteen practices for navigating towards a vibrant church that can reach out and serve the conviction and confidence in today’s changing new world.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Church on the Other Side (Hardcover) The Church on the Other Side is an intelligent but compromising work which offers both keen insights and devastating suggestions. On one hand, McLaren encourages us to view church structures and philosophies as fluid; he urges us to accept change as normal and not get obsessed with forms. He urges us to understand and adapt to the Post-modern world and emerge strongly on "The Other Side." The author is clearly quite intelligent. He also emphasizes a call that needs to be heard, namely that Christians are not living Christian lifestyles: adultery/divorce and other behavior that shames the name of Christ is running rampant. We need to get our houses in order. On the other hand, the type of church McLaren advocates is a church not worth surviving, in my view. He tells us we should not evangelize in Catholic areas and de-emphasizes the importance of solid doctrine (excepting the Trinity); he stands against Scientific Creationism, but advocates theistic evolution; he advocates faith, but not only Bible-oriented evangelical faith but the faith of Christendom at large; in short, he betrays the Reformation and seems to deny (by practice) the evangelical conviction that theology and methodology are best derived from "non-agenda" Bible exegesis. McLaren's approach may help maintain the health of Christendom, but it will weaken the evangelical church and expedite further movement away from Biblical literacy. Christianity for the sake of Christianity (or for the betterment of society) can never replace a Christianity composed of obedient Christians attempting to discern the will of God from His Word.