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Although I hadn't heard or read anything of Andrew Strom when my wife and I decided to step out of the conventional church, his online book The Out of Church Christians (2003) characterizes, if somewhat imperfectly, the experience countless followers of Jesus Christ seem to have in common. My own experience and relationships support his suggestion that this is a major trend.

In his 2004 book Secrets of the Early Church he goes on to identify nine of the lies held by too many of the visible Christians today and proposes steps toward the recovery of original patterns of Christian association. In his own words, his book is "designed to deliberately shock and provoke you into looking at why we do things the way we do. It is designed to make you study and study your Bible to find the answers. It is designed to make you hungry for a different kind of Christianity - the kind that was actually invented by Jesus and the apostles in the beginning."

Brian McLaren makes a good point when he suggests that followers of Jesus Christ should prefer not to argue with each other but rather embrace first and address concerns later. It seems Brian is doing a pretty good job of finding the middle ground between the right- and left-wing contentions that seem to characterize too many church leaders. I've been way too guilty of preferring to argue in the past. His message was for me, though I'm glad I could hear it.

Over several years, I've watched Skeptic Magazine pursue and defend its contention that science is the ultimate measure of reality. Editor in Chief Michael Shermer distinguishes himself both with his objective analysis and with his inability to concieve of believing anything without total proof. In this review of Alister McGrath's Dawkins' God, Shermer almost leaves the impression that he wants someone to explain to him how to believe in God, or at least provide a plausible explanation for why the author believes.

More of Ross Rohde's writings on the organic/simple/house/emergent church can be found Right Here on another of his blogs.

I learned a great concept from Harold Korver, the pastor of a church we were a part of for ten years. He described how we must practice what he called "rowboat vision" in which we keep our eyes on the landmarks of where we've come from to chart a straight course into new waters. Brian McLaren uses the metaphor of the playground swing to describe the wonderful effect of leaning back and kicking forward at the same time. In both cases, I resonate with the point: the passage into the future will involve change; our task is to

Our society has been saying for a long time that Christians ought to practice what they preach. Now the research is in and it turns out the society was right. In an interview with Christianity Today, Ron Sider talks about his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker Books, 2005) and his assessment of the current situation. Being confident that one knows something real and true is no substitute for loving humility. One word of caution in the interview falls on those of us outside the conventional church

The following is a letter from Ross Rohde to a guy named Joe attempting to explain the difference between a housechurch and the other types of churches we hear and know about. A friend named Ric Joline shared it with me.

Oh, I also found it here on Ross' blog.

Dear Joe,

It is exciting to hear your story and see what God is choosing to do through you. I rejoice with you brother.
What an interesting question "What is a housechurch"? I think I want to tackle that one by getting all the confusing terms out on the table so we can discuss them. Do you have a minute? This may take some time.

As I have journeyed to the conclusion that Christians should un-learn much of what we have been doing in recent centuries, few authors have characterized the situation as clearly as Frank Viola does here how crucial it is that we jettison all the bathwater, not just some of it, and pay close attention to the baby, not just to parenting techniques.

Okay, so my personal web site has gone through quite a few phases over the years.

Here we go again! This time with Drupal...

Oh, here are some links from my past sites that might still be interesting or useful:

Parenting Stuff

Reunion Web Site Code

About Carey