The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier
by Tony Jones
Jossey-Bass, 2007, 257pp., $22.95, www.josseybass.com

Over the past decade many of us have asked: What is the Emergent movement all about? Some people feel emergent believers are pointing us to the future of the church. Others fear they are destroying the very foundations of the faith.
In The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, Emergent leader Tony Jones provides a clear exposition of this movement.
Jones uses an accessible and engaging writing style that utilizes anecdotes (stories about church planters and conversations with the “unchurched”), allusions to popular culture (Jesse “The Body” Ventura and American Idol) and citations from some of the strongest names in philosophy and theology (Derrida and Moltmann) to tell his story.
The New Christians serves as a road map to the ideology of the Emergent movement through 20 “dispatches” that describe the movement’s key beliefs.
For example, Dispatch 6 reads: “Emergents see God’s activity in all aspects of culture and reject the sacred-secular divide.”
Some dispatches seem commonsensical, such as Dispatch 3: “The gospel is like lava: no matter how much crust has formed over it, it will always find a weak point and burst through.”
Others may provide fuel to critics who think the movement has stumbled into relativism, such as Dispatch 13: “Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings.”
The book also defines key terms and provides more detailed expositions of movement principles than earlier available. This should help clarify things. It should also help restrain some of the movement’s more virulent critics, some of whom have misstated the movement’s goals, generating more heat than light.
Ultimately, Jones portrays emergents not as crusaders or vigilantes but as reformers in a long line of reformers seeking to renew the church in their own time and place. This effort at reform is propelled by hope and motivated by the goal that Christians will become “ambassadors of reconciliation in the world.”
Jones calls pastors, youth ministry workers, and others involved in the work of the Kingdom of God to be constant agents of peace and love. A book such as this can assist those who are interested in ministry that reaches beyond the traditional boundaries of the church.

MOVIES THAT MATTER
by Craig Detweiler
See Through Cinema
YouTube envisions a future in which we all create and star in our personal network show. What a scary and invigorating notion! How will we sort through that avalanche of information? What will authentic Christian discipleship look like in a world full of actors casting themselves in their own life dramas?
As the lines between the reel and the real blur, we need training in the art of interpretive leadership. Perhaps pop culture’s commentary upon itself can offer some valuable perspective.
Rarely do films reveal the apparatus behind movie magic. Audiences often prefer the fantasy to reality. Yet, early in the silent movie era, Buster Keaton broke the fourth wall in Sherlock Jr. (1924). As a projectionist who falls asleep on the job, Keaton wanders into the film he’s projecting. The results are pure comedic genius. Woody Allen pushed Keaton’s premise further in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). It explores our fandom, how we wander into movies looking for connections to characters. But what if they wandered into our lives? Would the stars still seem so wonderful?
Get Shorty (1995) explores the connections between gangsters and producers. As Chili Palmer, John Travolta proves that in Hollywood, anybody with enough muscle and chutzpah can become a movie mogul. Get Shorty suggests that whatever job we pursue, a little grace and style goes a long way. These smart films remind me that people’s perceptional skills have always been sharp.
The emergence of news as entertainment provides a more cautionary tale. The scathing satire, Network (1976), anticipated the overwrought talking heads that pass for network newscasters. It shows how overstatement has become the norm, embodied in the tragic dictum, “Whatever bleeds leads.” We desperately need discernment to recover a God’s-eye view of the stories that matter.
Before Reality TV overtook the airwaves, The Truman Show (1998), considered the downside of a life lived before the cameras. Truman slowly grasps how a TV producer has served as his false god in a manufactured world. He must escape from the set and studio that bind him. For students obsessed with becoming the next American Idol, The Truman Show offers smart counter-programming.
Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000) unmasks how television skews our perceptions of others. When we chose electronic life over our neighbors, we may end up reinforcing stereotypes and accepting the status quo. Bamboozled offers a clarion call to press past the racial misconceptions that divide us.
The best movies about pop culture mock how much power we ascribe to the media. They challenge us to see through cinema, to get behind the screen. Can we create pop culture that speaks for us, rather than merely to us? In a mediated era, we must discover the essential roles we all play within God’s ongoing dramatic story. We’ve been cast in the greatest ensemble drama. For students, the rehearsal is almost over. Time to play our parts with an authenticity worthy of our divine director.
Filmmaker Craig Detweiler directs the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Seminary. He plays himself in the new documentary, Purple State of Mind. He blogs as “Dr. Film” at www.conversantlife.com

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A Roundup of New Books and Ideas
The End of the Book? People have been predicting the end of printed books for some time, but now Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt is getting in on the debate. On his “From Where I Sit” blog he recently explained: “Why Traditional Books Will Eventually Die.” Among his main arguments: The book manufacturing process is inefficient; the book distribution process is inefficient; and the book buying experience is inefficient.
Hyatt cautions: “Don’t get me wrong, I love books,” and he says the transition to digital publishing won’t happen overnight. “But the drive for more efficiency will radically alter the industry over the next few years … The digital path is more clearly marked than ever. As a result, publishers, printers, and booksellers need to come up with a game plan for how they will respond. Most of us have a plan, but we need to move faster. I d