It’s been about three months since I last whacked some thoughts up on the blogosphere. So, what’s brought me back from the cold? I wanted to take a look at some thoughts on Brian McLaren’s soon-to-be-released book Everything Must Change.

Every few weeks I get some circular emails from a couple of Christian bookshops and it seems stuff by McLaren, Rob Bell and others that are often put under the ’emerging church’ label, is ever-present. If these are the books and DVDs that an increasing number of people in the UK church are buying (and that makes sense if that’s what the likes of Wesley Owen are heavily plugging), then we need to be pretty clear as to what’s at the heart of them.

So, Tim Challies gives us an insight here as to how McLaren sees his gospel, his good news. And if we want to be gospel-guarders, as Paul desperately desperately urges us to be, then it would be good to give it a read.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

2 Tim. 4.1-5

Rob Bell‘s book Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith has seemed to have the marmite effect as it’s spread through the US, and now folk are starting to talk about it here in the UK too. You may have seen his short thought-provoking NOOMA dvds which are available in most Christian bookshops. He’s very much a major player in the Emerging Church movement stateside. Here’s a review worth reading that highlights some of the concerns Velvet Elvis has caused.