From a friend:

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HOW DO YOU POST AN EVANGELICAL?

We never cease to categorise ages, stages, people and movements. So we call a once normal family event a “Quiet Party” and decide we are living in the post modern age and that some ex evangelicals are in fact post evangelicals. Dave Tomlinson’s book [The Post Evangelical, Pub 1995, Triangle] would have saved me a few headaches if I’d found it 7 years ago, but being a bit philosophical these days, I needed the last 7 years in the oven to finish cooking. A big roast takes longer than a micro – waved frozen pie.

I felt a great new sense of freedom and liberation in reading this book. I decided to read it after a regular attender at Project Hope reviewed it last meeting.

[Regarding the “quiet party” in New York : I think that if the church doesn’t stop its never ending addiction to words, it will have to apologise to Hitler! How much we defend preaching! It is time to do a bit of sitting, connecting, dreaming, staring! Any evangelical church I know feels something is wrong if there are silences and pauses longer than five minutes…longer than 30 seconds! Flow is sacrosanct! Dr Arch Hart once told me that the Wesleys and their like had hours of silence to recover and listen and reflect as they rode on horseback or walked. We have a never ending flow of meets and words and noise and fail to really connect with the inner worlds of ourselves or the Spirit.I am Peter and I am a recovering wordaholic!]

Tomlinson has a long tradition in the evangelical, renewal and cell church movements [UK] as a participant and leader. No sacred cow is spared and hope dawns, at least it did for me.

He talks about the impregnation of the gospel with middle class values, the stifling of all creativity [“the evangeclial church is one of the most stifling environments for creativity that I’ve ever known”], that evangelicals have “made a god out of doctrinal and religious purity” and that it is dominated by white middle class males. He leaves no stone unturned as he questions what we mean when we say the Bible is the Word of God, when we pronounce the absolutenenss of conversion dates and that evangelicals have failed to really engage with the culture. He is decidedly Wesleyan in much of what he says as it relates to prevenient grace and its constant appearance in culture.

A quote to finish: [Tony Campolo p43 ,44] “Both US and UK evangelicalism have defiend a Christian as someone more poious that the rest of the world [My NOTE: Stan Grenz in “Renewing The Centre” defines evangelicalism as “convertive piety”.] Personally, piety turns me off! What did people say about Jesus? They didn’t call him pious! He had a lousy testimony. Did anybody ever call him spiritual? They called him a winebibber, glutton, someone who hangs out with the whores and publicans. Jesus was too busy expressing compassion to measure up to the expectations of piety. And I think we need to be more Christ-like”