NuChristian! My idea, too! | nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation

NuChristian | nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation | Russell E. D. Rathbun

books:


	• nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation Russell E. D. Rathbun Judson Pr, 2009 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

A read worth considering for a new generation

Life changes, but Christianity seems slow to change with it. "NuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation" is a guide for those who want to hold onto their faith but find it hard as the staunch traditionalism of the church seems to be at ends with them and making their life appear to be very difficult. With fresh philosophy and new ideas to stay true to Christ and one's beliefs, "NuChristian" is a read worth considering for a new generation.

NuChristian! My idea, too!

I admit I do not own that book, but I want to tell you about "NuChristian" word. I am teaching Sunday School based on UnChristian book by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. I wanted to change from being UnChristian to NuChristian. Let me explain this way:

N = Number of years you had been UnChristian multiply by 365 days.

U = Unlearning how many days of UnChristian I had been learned that I want to bury and forget and start all over.

Example: I have been UnChristian since I accept Jesus Christ as personal savior, acting like Pharisee for 21 years. Then I multiply that by 365 equals 7,665 days! That imply: Wow, I owe God for 7665 days worth of being Pharisee so we are THANKFUL for GOD's GRACE to unlearn and learn new things to be NuChristian!

I will order that book! Good job, author!

for more information click here

NuChristian

I found NuChristian inteligent, honest, inspiring reading. The book offered a clear analysis of current issues facing the church and offered solutions. I appreciated the voice of the author. He spoke with strength and humility. I felt the author, Russell Rathbun, most importantly, made me think.nuChristian: Finding Faith in a New Generation

for more information click here

For traditional Christians trying to understand post-Modern Christians

Now, Russel Rathbun has written a book as a response to David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons' book, unChristian. I haven't read the first book, but Russell has written this small chapbook to be part of the conversation that unChristian has started.

The basic premise of unChristian is to look at detailed survey data and determine how non-Christians in their late teens to early 30s perceive Christianity. What Kinnaman and Lyons figure out is that Christianity has a huge image problem amongst young adults. This is not a surprise to many of us. As a Christian from this demographic, I constantly encounter people who are clearly surprised and intrigued by the inclusive religion I practice that fully acknowledges that human beings are imperfect and that God doesn't really seem inclined to change that, even after someone has made a profession of faith. Christians who practice in a religion that preaches rules and that conversion will fix everything that is wrong in your life tend to be pretty loud, dominating mass media with TV shows, guest appearances on conservative talk shows, books and advertisements for megachurches. Folks like the people at my church are quieter and have smaller in population size. Kinnaman and Lyons document this imbalance of awareness by documented public opinion. They find that non-Christians in their late teens to early 30s think that "Christians are only interested in 'saving souls;' they are hypocritical, anti-homosexual, sheltered, too political and judgmental." In nuChristian, Rathbun seeks to explain these complaints to more traditional Christians and suggest some ways to counter them.

What is most valuable about this book is the perspective that Rathbun is taking. He is not writing this book for people who do not like the church. He is not trying to convince anyone they are wrong for thinking such things. He is also not writing for an audience full of emergent Christians: preaching to the choir, as it were. He seems to be trying to explain to people like his own father what is going on with this new generation of young people and to insert his own experiences as a pastor to these folks as illustration for how these young people can best be assisted in living lives that are more spiritually fulfilled. Personally, this book is most useful to me as a resource to hand to someone I love who is a Christian but who just doesn't understand why I am so excited about Emergent Christianity.

I think it is most useful as that kind of resource because Russell speaks the language of more traditional Christians. I think he must be in his 40s (about a decade older than the folks he is writing about) and he traveled the traditional path to pastorhood, even though he started a ground-breaking church once he graduated from seminary. I don't know how to say this but the rationale behind a lot of the things he says is very Jesus-y. Also, his vocabulary sets up a dichotomy of spiritual identity. He talks about Christians and non-Christians. I am much more comfortable with talking about spiritual identity as a continuum since I believe that we're all moving forward and backward on our paths in relationship to God. To create an arbitrary milestone that everyone has to have crossed and can never go back to in the form of saying the words, "Now I follow Christ" seems unnecessarily exclusionist to me. But I am not the target audience of this book. Folks who have never tried to wrap their heads around that idea (and many other emergent ideas like how culture affects church life or Christianity as something other than a rules-based religion) are the audience of this book. And I think Russell reaches out to those folks well because I can't connect with some of mechanics he uses to get his message across. I am too deeply entrenched in the post-Modern mindset that he is describing to be an effective translator. It's like listening to your own voice mail. The things Russell says are accurate just like it is actually my voice talking but because it coming from a different context, I get agitated at its unfamiliarity. However, my agitation is the price I pay for recommending this book as a resource to Modern-thinking folks about why Emergents are the way they are.

My father read "Chapter 6: Sheltered from God's Children" and brought up what I think is the only weakness in the book's focus. He said, "I can't tell if Russell wants me to be more like a nuChristian or not." nuChristian is Rathbun's word for folks who identify as Christian but who are part of the post-modern generation and, therefore, different than Christians that have come before. My dad's confusion is totally understandable. To Rathbun's credit, he publishes a conversation he had with his father and it turns out the generational misunderstanding is common.

DAD: It seems that there are a lot of differences. In some ways you are saying to be able to reach out and minister to these new generations, I have to change my theology.
ME: I don't think I'm saying that.
DAD: It sounds like it. I have to change what I think about homosexuality , abortion, politics, the Bible, salvation . . . [laughs]. . . about the belief in absolute truth.
ME: That does seem like a lot of things. But I am not saying that you have to change what you think about these things. I am just suggesting what I think most postmoderns think about these subjects. And I am not trying to suggest that they all think the same way on any particular subject, I am trying to talk more about how they approach things.

There is no final quote where Rathbun clears this all up since the way we approach things is often entangled in what we believe. So, folks with Modern perspectives like our dads are always going to feel that if their approach has to change, so will their beliefs and it is always scary to consider one's beliefs changing since then we will probably have to change the way we live our lives, which is always uncomfortable. And isn't changing the way we live our lives equivalent to changing our approach to things?

It's a difficult task to resolve that circularity of intent and I do not blame him for being unable to do so. There were several brilliant moments in the book where he put concepts into words with a clarity I envied. Because of that, I do recommend the book as a great resource for folks outside of the Emergent Christianity movement or the generation or for folks inside the movement or from the post-Modern generation who need some help in translating their experiences.

for more information click here

A nice introduction to postmodern theology

This is a book that does exactly what it sets out to do: offers observations from the author's life as a pastor to folks from Gen X and Gen Y at House of Mercy in Saint Paul, Minnesota as a way of stimulating conversation. If anyone misses the point that this book is meant to stimulate discussion, Rathbun sprinkles questions in a non-intrusively plain font at the tops and bottoms of a few select pages, but he definitely doesn't overdo it. I felt that he did a very accurate, thoughtful job of representing a certain section of folks born in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He isn't claiming that this is a thorough sociological or socio-theological study, and the book shouldn't be read that way.

There were several instances in the book where I felt I particularly resonated with what he was saying. One example is where he talks at length about hypocrisy, using the example of the life of Peter and discussing at length what hypocrisy really is and isn't. He uses the specific example of how to ask a congregation to give money to the church, and how his own church struggled with whether, and how, to present this idea to "postmoderns," with their cynicism towards marketing. He resolves it this way:

"The truth is that a lot of what we do as a church and as individuals is motivated by an unresolved mixture of both self-interest and the desire to live out our faith. Does this make us hypocrites? The hypocrisy comes when we do not tell the truth about the tensions, to ourselves first and to others." (p. 35)

and again on page 36:

"Can we avoid being hypocrites?... If we preach the Good News of Jesus Christ-- the unconditional love and sacrifice of a Creator for his creation that leads to reconciliation for the world, and that God calls us to live out that unconditional love-- then it is impossible to practice what we preach. By no means should we preach something different; instead, we should understand perfection to be beyond us. Any success at loving God and neighbor only occurs when Christ is acting in us. Postmodern generations understand the inability to completely become the person one desires to be."

These are things I've thought and talked about... things that made me feel I was at odds with how I'd been raised to look at my faith, and here they are on the page. Russell may not really be describing an entire generation, but he is describing me.

He goes on to chapters addressing attitudes towards evangelism, judgement of the sin of others, involvement with the larger American culture, and attitudes towards politics. In every one of those chapters, I have large sections of text underlined and starred, places where he absolutely nails my own attitudes towards these topics, attitudes that I have felt put something of a wall between myself and my parents, but also between myself and my younger, more conservative brother, not to mention many young, conservative evangelical or Roman Catholic friends

I think the true value of this book is that it provides a quick and easy introduction to some basic theological differences between more "orthodox" theology and that held by many of my generation. It does so without criticizing any particular theological stance or breaking things down too greatly, but it does provide sufficient substance to provide a good foundation for further thought and conversation. I would enthusiastically recommend this to any pastor that is seeking to understand the "innovative" theology of younger folks that she/he ministers (or wishes to minister) to, and who doesn't already have a strong background in the topic.

for more information click here

It has been said that Christianity has an image problem among those who were born in the late twentieth century. Statistics expose the church today as hypocritical, judgmental, sheltered, and overly political, to name just a few of the negative perceptions. Tempted to write off such perceptions as the cynicism of secular youth? Young people inside the church feel the same way? How has the body of Christ on earth become so unChristian? Experienced young adult pastor Russell Rathbun responds to the question and the perceptions with a challenging invitation to be transformed from unChristian to nuChristian by taking seriously the critique of a new generation.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2

hot