All of McLaren’s books (“A Generous Orthodoxy”, “Adventures in Missing the Point” and “The Church on the other Side”) have had a curious effect on me. While about every three or four pages I feel like throwing the book against the wall, I find that I am drawn back to McLaren’s writings by his provocative, in your face observation of Christian reality prevalent especially in the West.

At the risk of over-generalizing, the “New Kind of Christian” trilogy are three fictional books following a typical American over-40 pastor who is burned out on Christian politics, trite answers to deep questions and the recognition that he is a product of “modern” Christianity ministering in a “post-modern” world. McLaren is an excellent writer who through his fiction draws you in and makes you think. The maddening part of his writing, however, is that you can never tell what the guy really believes! I suppose this is because many post-modern authors like McLaren focus in on questions rather than answers. For example, in the second book it seems that he is “pushing” evolution and in the last book he is certainly questioning the concept of an eternal hell.

In general, the new “Kind of Christian” is more Christ-like and kind, focused-in on the demonstration of Christianity by good works rather than by correct doctrine. While he doesn’t dismiss objective truth and classic evangelical doctrine as unimportant, he certainly says that the new kind of Christian will be less nasty, less mean-spirited and gentler than the (and perhaps this is a caricature) fundamentalist, homophobic, we’re-right/you’re-wrong kind of attitude that comes from the “old kind of Christian.”

McLaren is a guy that I certainly have to say, from the get go, that I don’t agree with everything he says, but I love to read him because he’s got me thinking, and I am slowly becoming a “new kind of Christian” while hopefully hanging onto my old moorings, being anchored of God’s objective eternal truth.