A New and Right Spirit

Friends and colleagues, my apologies for not keeping new and edifying material in front of you this last month and a half. It's been busy here in northeastern Nebraska both in terms of family and call. Below is a book review I recently wrote for the "Trinity Seminary Review" and will be published in the summer/fall addition later this year. So stay tuned. You get to see it here first! If you haven't read RIck's book yet, you owe it to yourself to purchase a copy (from Alban, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble) and to read it with relish and supreme attentioin. It's a relatively short book, but is incredibly high octane! Blessings to you all as you seek to follow and serve Jesus in your day to day lives! Nathan

A New and Right Spirit: Creating an Authentic Church in a Consumer Culture. By Rick Barger with Foreward by Mark Allan Powell. Herndon, VA: Alban (www.alban.org), 2005. 154 pp. ISBN #1-56699-306-7 $18.00 (Paperback).

“As we have crossed the threshold of a new millennium, the main calling of the church is not a matter of more programs, more strategies for membership recruitment, and more ways to meet people’s needs. It is a matter of authenticity” (3). This is Rick Barger’s assertion as he imagines and articulates a church that is transformed at its core for vibrant missional life rather than seeking these things in the latest church growth fad to make its appearance.

A New and Right Spirit is a powerful, postmodern take on what it means for the church to become an adaptive movement of transformation for individuals and communities in the 21^st century. Rather than being a book on leadership theory, its wisdom and authenticity have been hard won on the frontlines of the incredibly faith-resistant context of super-sized and ultra-consumerized suburban America and a community traumatized by the Columbine High School shootings.

I had the privilege of serving under Barger while he was writing this book for Alban nearly three years ago, and so have a window into the workings of a large suburban church, especially as it seeks to model a life shaped by the gospel and not the culture. As a pastor in a small community now, and in a much smaller church environment, the best test of Barger’s witness and this book’s prowess is that it is just as applicable to my context in rural Nebraska as it is to that of suburban Littleton, Colorado.

A New and Right Spirit’s power lies in its simple assertion that the rebirth of the church as God’s transformative agent for people and communities comes through its single-minded witness to the finished work of Jesus through his cross and resurrection. Barger writes:

“…the rebirthing of an authentic church with transformational traction with the culture is not about programs or strategies. It is about bringing to life out of the rich soil of the church the ancient and authentic story of Jesus and the construction of a faith community whose life together, passions, and character—that is, its community ethos—are constructed from the authenticity and integrity of the story” (71).

Barger takes pains to build the case for how and why the church struggles to articulate an authentic identity and calling, and how these things can be rediscovered in the doorway of Jesus’ empty tomb. This is what makes this book so incredibly helpful; Barger builds a vision for what congruency with the church’s story of the crucified and risen Jesus looks like played out in the work and witness of congregational life. He and the community he has served for a decade and a half are living proof that a church that serves God and deconstructs the consumer can not only survive in the white-water culture of the 21^st century, but abundantly thrive.

A New and Right Spirit was written for the servant-leader in Christ’s church, whether that person is a pastor, bishop, seminary student, or a part of the priesthood of all believers. As such it is an edifying, empowering, and hopeful offering that, though theological and ecclesiological in nature, is incredibly accessible to a wide audience. Whether you are a pastor, a seminarian, or a lay person with a passion for Christ’s church, A New and Right Spirit will give you a powerful and fresh articulation and vision for what it means to be and do church for God in a 21^st century post-everything world.

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church Rev. Nathan Swenson-Reinhold
Bloomfield, Nebraska