Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren

For me, this is McLaren’s most significant contribution to date. It’s his most important one. Brian has synthesized something that few are talking about, nobody has put into words, yet, the world is experiencing, pondering in the anxious silence of our respective souls: "Why in Heaven's Name are we doing this? What do we do now?"

From the context of ‘framing stories’ (a distinct extension of the terms worldview or paradigm) McLaren illuminates the forces that are currently shaping the ways in which we believe, belong and behave. Then, enter Jesus – smack dab in the midst of our current day reality. Not the pasteurized or commercialized Jesus that many have become comfortable with but the Jesus of Nazareth who lived a life that exemplifies the opportunity before us today --- The One who brought us the reality of living as those empowered to champion the Kingdom of God, on Earth, as it is in heaven.

Frankly, the book frames the current day opportunity to repent. In reading this book you will be challenged, yet receive an invitation, a sense of authentic ‘permission’ to consider changing the way you approach daily living, as a professed disciple of Jesus Christ. By the end of the book, you will NOT be wondering, as Tony Campolo once wrote, “Which Jesus?” McLaren does a superb job identifying the ‘opportunity’ to become the Disciples of Christ the world desperately requires at this juncture in history.

Believing is one thing. Believing ‘what’ is another. Believing ‘whom’ is critical. Belonging to ‘what and to whom’ is complicated. For most of us who claim the name of Christ, it’s confusing to sort that all out. Yet, as McLaren lays it out, it’s the ‘behaving’ part that is critical. McLaren’s Everything Must Change is a not “just another book” or some form of intellectual entertainment. This book is a treatise on the reality of the story we find ourselves in. It demands a new kind of Christian. It is a characterization of the opportunity in front of us to ‘become’ what Christ has called us to be. It is the voice of hope…a hope that you and I will begin to live the revolutionary lives that Jesus has called us to live. Listen to McLaren:

“A revolution of hope is not just a matter of reading a book or hearing an inspiring sermon. True, a book or sermon or personal encounter may be a vehicle through which hope wins our hearts. But a revolution of hope makes radical demands of us. It requires us to learn new skills and habits and capacities: the skills of a new way of thinking, the capacities of a new way of living….it is a new way of life that changes everything.”

Buy the book. Live this life.

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