Review: "The Next Christians"

I am skeptical about books that present what a generation or group believes. It is with that skepticism that I approached Gabe Lyons’ The Next Christians: How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith.

Lyons argues that Christian America is over. Americans are spiritual, but they are somewhere between suspicious and deeply put off by the title of Christian. This is not entirely unexpected, he argues, because every five hundred years there is a seismic move in Christianity – the last one being the Reformation of the 1500's. Modern Christians have either become separatists, like the Pharisees, or Cultural Christians, like the Sadducees. Neither of these are appealing to postmodernity. In fact, they are repulsive.

The “next Christians,” as he dubs them, are what he calls “restorers” (49). These Christians do not flaunt the name Christian, though the do believe savingly in Jesus and have Him at the center of their life. What is different about them is that they do not merely present the Gospel as beginning with the Fall and ending with Jesus’ Return in Judgment. Instead, they present “the whole story,” beginning with God’s good creation and ending with God’s righteous restoration of all things.

Being “restorers” leads these “next Christians” to be of a different mind and lifestyle form the generations before them.

In chapter five, he explains that rather then being offending by the sinfulness of humanity, they are provoked to do something about it.

In chapter six, he argues that rather than just condemning the world, the seek to be creators of what is good and beautiful.

In chapter seven, he argues (as did the Reformers) that one is not merely employed, but one has a calling, and it is in that calling that one shows Christ through doing whatever it is one does to the glory of God. (And here he divides all callings into “seven channels of cultural influence, cf. 116.)

In chapter eight, he compares them to Daniel in Babylon, working within the Babylonian system, but not being distracted by it, instead, developing and practicing spiritual disciplines that keep them grounded in the Word of God.

In chapter nine, he shows that they are throwing off the individualism so well exemplified in the United States and coming to a understanding of the nee and value of being a community – living with the people with whom they work, having them be a part of the community together with them, even those who are of different religious beliefs.

In chapter ten, he argues that they do not try to be “relevant” by assimilating into the culture, but the stand for God’s Word and confront the culture where it errs by example.

Lyons ends his book by saying that we are experiencing something akin to the Protestant Reformation in these “next Christians.” He states that first and foremost, we all must be involved in a clear preaching of the actual and complete Gospel of Jesus Christ and salvation. And then, rather than take the approach of attacking all the is wrong, we ought to take the positive approach of being living examples that will cause others to change, one-by-one.

Although I am skeptical of this being a portrait of the whole generation, much of what Lyons says it a good corrective to failings of the Church. Much of what he says should be embraced by Christians. The whole idea of the goodness of Creation and the restoration of it at the end of the age is something that I have come to embrace with clarity since I became sick and my father died. These are real bookends of the story, though Jesus is the apex and the center of the Gospel. This is very much like Kuyper’s understanding of all that is being Jesus’.

However, I am concerned about some things:

Many of the names he mentions come from the Emergent and Emerging movements, and not all of them are Christians. It is hard to see how someone who denies Jesus is following Him faithfully.

He talks about the popularity of the paraphrases The Message and The Voice as being the Bibles the “next Christians” use (136). No matter how well these may be written, no matter how creative or beautiful they may be, if one does not use an actual translation, one will be misled. There may be uses for paraphrases, but Bible study and preaching are not among them.

My final concern, despite his talking about the centrality of Jesus and his Gospel, in talking about one of the leaders of the “next Christians,” he hails him and then says that his theology is questionable (180). Does theology matter? Can we truly live the life of a Christian by follow a god other than Jesus? That is not to say that anyone has his theology perfect; everyone’s theology is flawed. However, if one is wrong in any essential doctrine – salvific doctrine, we are no longer talking about things we can “agree to disagree on,” but on what the Gospel actually is.

I applaud the book and Lyons and his “next Christians” for emphasizing the good of Creation and the coming restoration of the Creation. That teaching has sorely been lacking in modern Christianity. But I would be careful in buying into everything the people he holds up as examples. “As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:9, ESV).

[This review appears on Amazon.com and my blog. I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.]