BitterSweetLife

If only cause and effect was always this direct.

I'm reading Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches with a couple friends, Rob and Scott, and discussing it chapter by chapter. Today we convened in a Starbucks to tackle the opening salvo, penned with blunt accuracy by Mark Driscoll. So we walk in, order our drinks, and find the clerk and head barrista urging us to drink some free coffee from the "Asian Pacific region." Starbucks was about to throw a coffee tasting or "cupping" party right when we arrived.

We sat down and the barrista brought over plates of cookies and pastry to "enhance the taste palette" of the coffees, followed by three different varieties of coffee, made French press style. Through all of this, we were being thanked profusely for drinking free coffee and eating free baked goods, listening to free coffee commentary (which was fascinating for me; can't speak for the other guys).

I don't think anything like that has happened to me before. So the moral of the story is: buy this book, get a couple friends to discuss it with you, and head to the coffee shop. Who knows what might happen?

As far as the book itself. Based on Driscoll's chapter, in which he footnotes about 200 verses and outlines a tough biblical stance on the scriptures, the cross, and the trinity, I'd say it's eminently worth reading.

I'll hazard a guess and say that the strength of the book is keeping five "emerging" theologians focused on the three central points of Bible, the cross (atonement), and God's person and then having them cross-examine each other. I'm looking for a kind of winnowing effect, theologically.

How can we embrace strong, biblically-faithful theology that will help us to form the church in a way that's both culturally savvy and counter cultural? Both sympathetic and challenging? That's a question I think this book will speak to.