Marginal Christianity

          The final three signposts F & H identify are where “the rubber hits the road.”   They are also in my opinion the most exciting and ground-breaking sections of the book, worth the price of the book (or especially the Kindle version).   This is where the theology sketched in the first seven signposts takes on flesh (incarnation).   In other words, it is in these sections where it truly becomes theology!           These three signposts take us right into the middle of some of the most vexing and divisive matters the church and society face today.   I’m not going to play spoiler for these signposts.   I want to leave them for you to read and savor yourself.   They are richly narrative coming out of the life of Life on the Vine church.   They are creative postmodern theological reflections on ministry at these knotty places in the church’s life...

David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw locate their new book, Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier , in the context of a North American Christianity whose most vital streams at present seem to be the Emerging Church movement, on the one hand, and the Neo-Reformed movement, on the other. Fitch and Holsclaw (F & H hereafter) see these two movements, divergent as they are, function on the same “operating system.” “ Although each has promised us a “third way” beyond the conservative-liberal theological wars, they nonetheless keep us trapped within a bygone cultural consensus of Christian dominance that no longer exists. One side assumes people will listen to us as we speak about justice in “the way of Jesus.” The other side assumes people will listen to us because we speak of orthodoxy and the Bible. The truth is that these ways make sense only to those who are already convinced. In contrast, we sense the need to escape these kinds of cultural Christianity...