Bolsinger's Series Worth Reading

Tod Bolsinger, one of my favorite bloggers, is doing a series critiquing poller and marketer George Barna's new book. Says Tod in introducing the series:

I am a church guy.

Twenty years of pastoral ministry, two books and a Ph. D. on the subject and I still have trouble recognizing myself as such, but it is true. I remember being a young youthworker running Campus Life clubs for Youth for Christ and talking passionately about the difference between “religion” and “relationship”, about the need to be a disciple of Jesus and that there is “no church to join, no institution to support, nothing to do but believe and follow Jesus.” If you had told me 25 years ago that I was going to be the pastor of a church I would have laughed. I figured it was far more likely that I would end up a flamenco dancer. Youth evangelist? Sure. Missionary? Ok. Urban social worker, leader of a parachurch organization or movement or radical group? Possibly.

As a young Christian, I was weaned on ideas like living on the “cutting edge” of the faith, the “frontlines” of mission, about being a “pioneer” and not a “settler”. I really considered myself as part of the “radical” maybe even “revolutionary” fringe of followers who lived out our faith and didn’t just “go to church.”

To me, back then, church was boring, status quo and conservative. So what happened to me? How did I become “The Reverend Doctor”, rightly ordained and installed as a pastor in a mainline denomination? Is it just that I settled or was there something more, something of God’s own spirit that led me see that now that the church, the local church, the often dysfunctional, frequently disappointing, and regularly dull gathering of people in every town and community is in fact the “cutting edge,” the “front lines” and indeed, in the words of Bill Hybels, “the hope of the world.”

Read all three installments here, here, and here.