(Ir)religiosity

I’ve never met Tony Jones. I’ve never even spoken to him (well, not verbally anyway, he did comment on my blog once, it was like having a celebrity dropping by my house). And yet, I wouldn’t hesitate to call him a friend. I think that captures the essence of Emergent. Friendship. Generative friendship that transcends physical proximity and traditional definition. Emergents have friends all over the place some of which they’ve never met. They find them on blogs, at conferences, in books, and at coffee shops. They join the larger conversation through email, instant messaging, and other forms of new media. It’s a brave new world out there and emergents are eager to explore. Tony embodies that.

His latest book, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, for the first time, authoritatively describes what it means to be emergent. And of all people, Tony is perfectly positioned to make such a judgment. His candid story of the beginnings of what is now Emergent Village is absolutely fascinating and his writing style is wonderful as he weaves in and out of encouraging, hopeful stories and tangible examples of persons living missionally in their contexts.

I know that I echo others when I say that TNC picks up where Brian McLaren’s early writings left off. Brian put into words that feeling, that deep, visceral intuition that we all had about the church and our culture. And now, finally, Tony has come along to add the meat and potatoes, so to speak, the substance, the theology, and the rationale behind what we’ve all wanted to be a part of for several years now. He has written the book we’ve all been waiting for. Some of us knew what it meant to be emergent, but we couldn’t tangibly describe it, we couldn’t quite place our finger on it, and in that respect Tony has done us all a great favor. He has set out to show what an emergent Christian looks like and he has done a wonderful job. TNC is the emergent book to date and I have a hunch it will remain the emergent book for quite some time. And now, instead of stammering and sounding cryptic and elusive when someone asks me what this “emerging church business is about,” I finally have a single book to give them!

I’ve always said that emergent is the last hope for the church in our post-Christian age. And quite frankly it has saved Christianity for me. That being said, I’m very, very glad that Tony wrote this book. It desperately needed to be written and I am confident that 20-30 years from now we will all point back to TNC as a defining moment in the history of emergent. If you consider yourself an emergent or you’re curious, this is most definitely a must read.

If you haven’t, do yourself a favor and go pick up a copy.