A New Kind of Christianity - Part 1

During Lent, St. Paul's is discussing Brian McLaren's book A New Kind Of Christianity. Each week I will post synopsis of the chapter we are looking at and I invite comments and discussion.

This week we are looking at Chapter 1.

This chapter is about setting the context for the conversation - there are several things that jump out.

The first is a set of statistics - In America today 40% of the population attends church regularly (once a month or more). However of those listed as "converts" or new members by churches 90% of them are already churched. So those who are joining churches are moving from one church to another - they aren't coming from the 60% who don't attend church regularly.

We are moving into a world where the paradigms are: Pluralism, Relativism, Globalism, Uncertainty and we need a new way of believing to respond to it.

Some other thinkers have identified similar thing

Phyllis Tickle in her book The Great Emergence suggests that every 500 years or so the Christian church holds a "rummage sale" and gets rid of some old stuff and reinvents itself for a new age.
At 500 it was the collapse of the Roman Empire and the move of the church into the role of administrator of Europe
At 1000 it was the Great Schism and the split between the Eastern and Western Churches
At 1500 it was the Reformation that led to the birth of Protestantism
And now it is happening again

Harvey Cox in his book, Future of Faith suggests that there are two previous ages in church:
The Age of Faith until about 300 which was characterized by diversity, energy, vitality, suffering, persecution, courage and rapid growth
The Age of Belief was from about 300 to about now - which was marked by the Christianization of the empire and the imperialization of Christianity. During this time Christianity became the dominant belife in the western world - in many ways to its own detriment
The Age of the Spirit - which we are entering into now - is trying to preseve the previous age and embrace new challenges.

What do you think?