This book is a diagnosis of a world that has become self-destructive, and the church’s call to counteract this fate. Peeling away layers of the world’s greatest crises, Brian deals with our over consumption of the world’s resources, the growing gap between the rich and poor, our war-prone proclivities, and the failure of the Church (and even other religions) to provide a different “framing story” from which to act upon. Solving this last one is the key to solving the other three.The crux of this is that if these are the world’s major dysfunctions, what does Jesus and therefore the church have to say about it? Brian does a good job reminding the Church of our responsibility to the world as the true change agents.
Brian also navigates the tensions between traditional church mindset and the “emergent” mindset (Emergent is a new movement within the church that Brian is a leading voice in). Personally, what initially impresses me about the Emergent movement is its strong values toward social justice issues which Brian deals with a lot in this book.
Overall, although the author challenges our mindset in dealing with these global issues, he offers very little concrete solutions. I suppose that if we do indeed change our mindset, we’ll come up with the solutions ourselves.
3 out of 5
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