I’ve started Spencer Burke’s community-produced new book Making Sense of Church, which is about half excerpts from forum posts on The Ooze and half Burke’s commentary. While this strikes me as a kind of copout way to write a book, it truly reflects the spirit of The Ooze and the emergent church in general - wisdom comes from the community, not just one important person.

You’ve probably seen this posted elsewhere, but the book is arranged along seven metaphors in transition between the modern church and the emergent church:

• Tour Guide to Traveler - a Conversation about Leadership
• Teacher to Facilitator - a Conversation about Learning
• Hero to Human - a Conversation about Spiritual Growth
• Consumer to Steward - a Conversation about Ministry
• Retailer to Wholesaler - A Conversation about Missions
• Adversary to Ally - a Conversation about Faith
• Warrior to Gardener - a Conversation about Evangelism

Metaphor is an appropriate way to address subjects that crack under too much analytical pressure such as the nature of the church in the postmodern matrix. Andrew Jones is doing a pretty good job of “defining” the emergent church (at the request of a magazine), but it’s still a term that eludes real definition, and is better described by metaphor.