casual thoughts and reflections upon life and the Creator whose idea it was in the first place

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Worth a read?

I recently received this promotional blurb from 614network.com:

'Every city has a group of troll-like rejected misfits. They are the
homeless, the prostitutes, the greedy, and the addicts. These are the
people on the fringe to whom churches close their doors, the ones you
move away from on the pew. They are the marginalized, rejected, and
forgotten cultural lepers who lurk outside your church. They are the
most unlikely prophets of all.

Trolls & Truth is the story of a local church of homeless people;
college students; middle-class Christians; some poor and some rich;
black, white, and brown; drunks; materialists; mentally ill; and
former inmates who meet beneath the noise of 18-wheelers and rushing
traffic under an interstate bridge in Waco, Texas. As they live out
biblical mandates across cultural barriers and institutional baggage,
they remind us that the gospel cannot be shaped by socially accepted
values and remain "good news." Through their testimonies they reveal
the mystery that such a diverse group without buildings and
traditional expectations are finding the power of the gospel in ways
that brings cultural validity to the skeptics and unbelieving world.
They have a wake-up call for the American church.

Transformation in the church must come. In new wineskins and perhaps
through the life of an old wino, our ecclesiology must be upended by
the "least of these," the hungry, imprisoned, sick, and stranger.
Intentional efforts in local congregations must be made to reconnect
the rich and the poor; the black, white, and brown; those educated in
the university; and those educated on the streets. Only then can we
wrestle with the values of the kingdom and learn the lessons that this
God of the little people wants us to know.'


I know only too well that you should rarely judge a book by its cover (or e-blurb?!) but 'Trolls and Truth: 14 Realities About the Church We
Don't Want to See' by Jimmy Dorrell might be worth a read.

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