I have now read Brian McLaren's 'New Kind of Christian' trilogy.  I have enjoyed what I have read, and found his take on some of the arguments very refreshing - I even find a kind of process theology that I can almost buy into.  More importantly, perhaps have been echoes throughout of things I've always felt/known/wondered.

In the last book we meet a character who arrives sporting a teeshirt that has the slogan 'I'm not that kind of Baptist.'  That made me laugh, in a kind of 'I know what you mean' way - and then pause, because actually the joke was based on the kind of judgement the plot line seems to eschew.  But I guess we can all say, "whatever kind of Baptist I am, it isn't 'that' kind," whatever 'that kind' is.

The Neo character who tries to get the Dan character to problematise almost every word he uses reminds me (in that respect) of someone else; that too, made me smile and maybe Casey reminds me a someone too, though without the beaded hair.  Other characters, well I guess we've met most of them somewhere along the way, and the last book especially picks upon some of the tensions that ministers face as they try to support people with differing perspectives and to allow their own thinking to be challenged, stretched and refined.

If I have a criticism of the final book, it is the invention of a few artificial reference works (that you only discover are such by careful reading) cited alongside some real ones.  This feels a little ingenuous, despite the generous hearing given to the likes of John Stott and N T Wright on the doctrine of hell.

I'd really love some of my folk to read these books - but they'd probably be scared silly by them and assert that they definitely are 'not that kind of Baptist'! 

It will now be quieter for a few days as I complete a few thousand tasks covering for other church folk and then vanish to Brighton to meet a couple of thousand other Baptists - but not that kind!!!