The July issue of Next-Wave webzine on Church and Culture is now out. In addition to publishing a shorter version of my recent “How Missional is Your Church?: Keeping the Global in Missional,” (I would appreciate your rating the article at the site) there are a number of other articles. Be sure to check on the cartoon on the Emergent/ing Church debate!

Princeton Law Professor and author of Culture of Disbelief, Integrity, has now published a second gothic novel New England White. Sam Tannenhaus of the NY Times gives it an excellent review.

The novel deals with murder, politics, race and undoubtedly, faith.

“New Testament spirituality is still based on the fear of the Lord. Most of us have difficulty nurturing that living reverence, or respectful love, which is the fear of God. We have been raised by parents who have either spoiled or rejected us, or perhaps have done both. We project their inconsistency and ambivalence on our picture of God. But God is not an arbitrary and authoritarian parent. Love and Justice, mercy and anger are not struggling in his nature or flowing and erupting unpredictably. His justice is always controlled and directed by his love. He causes “all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Rom 8:28). Even sorrow and tragedy are not “accidents” or meaningless evils. They are strokes of discipline his love has designed to conform us more fully to the image of his Son (Phil 3:10; Heb 12:5-11).”

Richard Lovelace, Renewal As A Way of Life, Wipf & Stock Publishers (January 2002). Renewal is an applied version of Dynamics of Spiritual Life, a theology of personal and social spiritual renewal.

You may already be aware of Allelon (Greek for “other”), a “multi-generational network of missional church leaders, schools and parachurch organizations which envisions, inspires, engages, resources, trains and educates leaders for the church and its mission in our culture. Said simply, together we are a movement of missional leaders.”

They recently posted some new articles on Franke’s perspective on missional, which varies from my view, but has insights nonetheless.