Jones' Top Five

Back at the beginning of June, ex-pat Kiwi, Andrew Jones, who hosts the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog, wrote a list of five books that he regards as the top five for reporters, writers and researchers investigating ,or interested in, the Emerging Church movement. For his comments on these, check out the relevant post.

1. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs.
2. The New Conspirators, Creating the Future One Mustard Seed at a Time, by Tom Sine.
3. The Emerging Church, by Dan Kimball.
4. The Church on the Other Side, by Brian McLaren,
and several contenders for 5th place:
The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, by Tony Jones
Revolution, by George Barna
The Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claibourne
The Great Emergence, by Phyllis Tickle
The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community: by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay.

An interesting bunch. They won't all appeal, and you'll have varying views on some of the approaches, but at least one or two of the top four are worth a look if you haven't already come across them.

Jesus for President

On the Out of Ur site, there's a review of the latest book by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. (Clairborne's first book, The Irresistible Revolution - living as an ordinary radical, has been amongst the top twenty 'Christian living' titles on Amazon for a couple of years).

The new book is called Jesus for President, an intentionally ironical title, since the authors' stance is basically a criticism of the way Christians have 'got into bed' with the State, in the USA.

David Swanson has written two of an intended three-part review on the book, and the comments that follow the first part provide an interesting insight into the way thinking on this very topic is very mixed in the US.

Claiborne and Haw are amongst the founding members of The Simple Way, a New Monasticism community in the US.