Paul writes – Five Years On: Continuing faith journey’s of those who have left the church, published in New Zealand by The Portland Research Trust, is now available from:
Portland Research
21 Ariki Road
Hataitai
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND 6003
Please send a cheque for NZ$25 plus $3 post and packaging. Sorry, no credit card option at this stage.
Five Years on continues the work begun in A Churchless Faith by returning to the same group of church leavers five years after first interviewing them. The findings show how their personal faith and connection with ‘church’ has changed over a five-year period. To these accounts are added insights from six years of running Spirited Exchanges groups for church leavers and those struggling with ‘church’ focused expressions of the Christian faith. The findings may shock.
Dr Chris Marshall (St. John’s Senior Lecturer in Christian Theology, Victoria University, Wellington) says of this book –
“This follow-up to A Churchless Faith is both fascinating and disquieting – fascinating because it shows that people rarely stand still in their journey of faith, whether or not they attend church. And disquieting because it underscores once again just how irrelevant or unhelpful the institutional church has become for so many reflective and intelligent believers today. This book provides further valuable insights into the growing phenomenon of church leavers, whose protest the church ignores at its own peril”
In the foreword Alan writes: “If Barna [see his book, Revolution] and other Christian commentators…are even remotely right then it is crucial we come to understand church leavers and their continued journeys of faith in order to prepare for the new realities of a fundamentally different spiritual landscape.”
Now, Alan can correct me if he wants to, but it seems to me that from a church perspective (and here I’m thinking of what Alan refers to as the “established church” [he defines it in the book]) there is something potentially (but certainly not always) ‘prophetic’ in and amongst the stories of church leavers who have continued their Christian faith journeys in spite of, and apart from established ways of being church.
So, in what sense am I using the term ‘prophetic’ when talking about church leavers and a book like Five Years On?
Prophetic, firstly in the sense of leavers, their stories and their experiences calling the church back to something that it has lost or forgotten; something about its relationship with God and its radical identity as the people of that God which seems to leavers to be missing.
Secondly, I’m using it in terms of a “summons,” a calling to the church to become more than it currently is in a significantly changed cultural milieu, more than it has allowed itself to settle for.
For me, this is a clear sense that I get when I hear Alan talk of “church leavers” as being crucial in terms of “the new realities of a fundamentally different spiritual landscape.” There is a clear sense of a need for conversation, for pastoral listening, and for discerning what it is that the Spirit might be saying to the church.
If you haven’t discovered it already you will find my initial thoughts on reading the book here.
hey fellas - do you have a paypal acct?
i'd like a copy, but am unlikely to make the effort to get an NZ cheque :)
Posted by: hamo | Thursday, 01 June 2006 at 12:30 AM