As I’ve posted previously, I’ve found myself really resonating with several books I’ve read by Doug Pagitt. Doug is the pastor of Solomon’s Porch, a “holistic, missional, Christian community” located in Minneapolis, MN. He’s part of the “emergent church” conversation, having helped to found the Emergent Village web community.
I’ve read two of his previous books, Preaching Re-Imagined and Church Re-Imagined, so I was excited to hear that he was getting ready to release a new one, titled A Christianity Worth Believing (or ACWB for short.) Here’s a quick “trailer” for the book, from Doug’s blog:
I’m excited about ACWB because it touches on some of the issues that are challenging Christianity and the church as we move into the 21st century and towards postmodernity. There are so many theologies, understandings, and rituals in the church that were created for particular communities in particular times that are no longer necessarily relevant to our time and place. Giving people permission to recognize and name this and the tools to then begin to do something about it is incredibly important to me. I’m hoping that Doug addresses this in this new book.
This fall Doug is going to be trying to host a six-week online book club on ACWB. I’m not sure when it will start, but I’m going to give it a whirl. I guess that means I might have to wait until then to read the book. Either that or I’ll just read it now and then again later. I might also be interested in orchestrating a group reading & conversation series around ACWB as well. This could be either web-based or in person. If you’re interested in doing something like this, speak up and we’ll see what we can put together!
….and you’ve been keeping this info to yourself? Ok, Ok, I suppose blogging about it means broad distribution. This is exciting. I just went to his site and didn’t find the poll he wrote about for deciding when the book talk will take place each week.
@amysgr - If you head to DougPagitt.com and look in the right column, below Doug’s Flickr updates you should see a section titled “Current Poll.” It looks like Monday is the front-runner, though with only 51 votes submitted I suppose that could change.
Hey Matt,
Great post! Would you like to put this on EmergentBrethren.org? If so, please shoot me an email and I’ll set you up to post.
I like the video of Doug’s sharing why he doesn’t like Christianity. Could the same line of thinking be applied to, “I don’t like being Brethren. . .”?
It was great to meet you at Annual Conference!
Jeff