well, it is Monday 5th November and once again life intervenes: only one of the fluid group was able to make it tonight and so we cancelled, rather than become a duologue! As I have had a streaming cold for over a week, this is not so unwelcome although I'd rather meet than not.
Once again, it causes me to reflect on how frenetic women's lives can be juggling home, work, parenting, community and leisure interests. Is it any wonder that the spiritual life can lay dormant for years - and when a yearning is awakened there's no time left in the week to pause and explore it! Interestingly, three of the women who originally expressed a real desire to pause and do just that have found they are too busy to come!
today I've been reading McLaren's More Ready Than You Realize, Evangelism in the Postmodern Matrix ( Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).
Set in bite-size pieces, it traces the spiritual conversations McLaren held with a casually met person, 'Alice', via email.
Principally, the book challenges Christians to take up opportunities to journey with spiritual seekers: at their pace; listening to their story, sharing one's own and then sharing God's story; being a servant; and demonstrating authentic lifestyle as part of a community of likeminded believers.
He draws a distinction between the modern church's fascination with results based upon firm propositions (apologetics leads to 'conversions') and the need to respond to the postmodern thinker's desire to explore beyond logic and incorporate beauty and mystery...
There follows a brief section on the history of Enlightenment thought and the church's fascination with foundationalism - perhaps superfluous in the context of this book, but overall his thoughts are usefully summarised in the final two chapters and the whole enhanced by an insightful seven-part Bible study on disciple making in the appendices.
Opinion: A thought provoking, easy to read and digest addition to a 21st century evangelist's library.
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