The Church on the Other Side: Doing Ministry in the Postmodern Matrix

There is little doubt left that the word in which we live is undergoing vast changes. The question is how we are to understand and respond to these changes. In The Church on the Other Side, Brian McLaren suggests that a new world requires a new church. McLaren provides thirteen strategies to guide church leaders through the transition from a modern to a postmodern world. Especially helpful are chapters 12a, 12b, and 12c where McLaren equips readers to enter the postmodern world through understanding and engaging the postmodern world while leaving behind the problems of modernity. This book is vital for any leader struggling to lead their church through changes in these times. Whether you agree or disagree with McLaren, his voice is one we must listen to.

The Church on the Other Side Brian McLaren There are only a few writers that really seem to understand how the church should respond to the postmodern culture. Brian McLaren is one who speaks with passion and understanding. In The Church on the Other Side, McLaren introduces the reader to "doing ministry in the Postmodern Matrix." McLaren says that for a new world we need a new church. His book gives us thirteen strategies for creating the new church. Among his strategies are certain suggestions like, trade up your traditions for tradition, redefine your mission, and enter the Postmodern World. His explanations for what he means by these suggestions are the real strength of this book. They will challenge today's church leader to think in fresh new ways about reach this generation. McLaren's final chapter suggests that we add to the list. His strategies are not a complete list, they are given to help the reader get started. In the last chapter McLaren gives some of his best advice to the Church On the Other Side. What is needed for the future is a church with flexibility and strength. This will allow the church to continue learning and applying new strategies. This work is a must read for every church leader today. There is much that McLaren says tha I don't like and some things I don't agree with. However, he gives us new and challenging ways to see the church as she is becoming, like it or not.

What a book. McLaren writes passionately and poignantly about the task we face today. "If you have a new world, you need a new church. You have a new world." McLaren moves quickly into a discussion of what is happening in the landscape of the church today: the earth moving under our feet . . . tectonic shifts . . . earthquakes . . . . "We can live for years quite unaware of how pressures are building, but then, seemingly out of nowhere, tremors start to occur with increasing frequency. Sometimes we encounter a "big one," and almost overnight our world changes so dramatically that old maps no longer fit the new reality." He continues: "Make no mistake -- a new world is bursting forth beneath our bands of concrete and asphalt, erupting under our miles of wire drooping between creosoted telephone poles, heaving its strength like tectonic plates to crack presumably solid foundations. If you are a Christian of any sort -- liberal, conservative, evangelical, mainline, Catholic, Protestant, hand-clapper, nonclapper, devotee of pipe organ or keyboard, of piano or guitar -- or even if you are not a Christian, you recognize that these gringing, shifting, transitional times have shaken the church. It is unsettled, imbalanced, nervous, reeling, sometimes oblivious but more often these days wide-eyed and openmouthed with speechless anxiety, wondering when the shaking will be over. Is the church a dinosaur at the end of the Jurassic? Will it survive the changes?" A few pages later he continues again: "Many old churches are being shaken half to death, barely surviving, too rarely thriving. And where they are thriving, it's for one of two reasons: Either they are creating time warps where the past will be preserved so reactionary folk can flock there for a safe -- temporary -- old familiar haven; or they are among the learners at the top who are surfing change into the new world and transitioning old churches of yesterday into the new churches of the other side. The point is, if you have a new world, you need a new church. You have a new world." This book, he says, "is for people who don't think we can go back to the old world -- and don't want to. It is for people who want to help define and shape the church of the future, under the guidance of God." "This is a book," he says, "about the hard work of fresh thinking -- innovative, bold, creative thinking." In the book, McLaren offers thirteen strategies for transitioning churches to a whole new way of being. "As incomplete and imperfect though these proposed strategies may be, God willing, they will get many of us thinking together and working together in what my be the most important, most revolutionary task of our generation -- planting and developing the church on the other side." There -- that's a whirlwind summary of the introduction to the book. Now go get yourself a copy and start reading the thirteen strategies! I found his strategy number nine -- "Save the Leaders" -- to be truly inspirational, and de

If I had to pick just one book to recommend to a Christian leader who is finding that the "way we have always done it" just isn't working or even making sense anymore it would be this book. Absolutely revolutionary. Yes, there are things that Brian picks up that I may choose not to, but that's part of the point! We need to get back to majoring on the majors and allowing good, healthy dialogue and debate on other things. Wouldn't that be a great witness to a world that is wondering about Christianity to see us dialogue, disagree and still sit in the same pew (or row, or couch) with one another???? We have buried Jesus under a heap of trivialities, and the Church on the other side will begin to dig Him out. As regards betraying the Reformation (as one other reviewer accused McLaren)... In the words of Doug Pagitt, an Emergent leader from the Mid-west, "If you want to honor the Reformers, don't say what they said- do what they did!" McLaren starts us down that hard, but very exciting road.

Brian gives us a book that actually tackles the postmodern subject without losing the reader with philosophical jargon. I found that his approach is so practical because he is living it out. He writes out of experience and gives us a framework to enter this bold new world with a sense of optimism rather than fear, excitement rather than dread. His writings on leadership and missions are a must read for every church practitioner.