John Drane is the former Head of Practical Theology in the Department of Divinity at the University of Aberdeen. He currently holds teaching positions at Fuller Seminary’s School of Theology in Pasadena, California, and at the University of Manchester on the MA in the Emerging Church. He also is the co-chair of the Mission Theological Advisory Group, a partnership between the Archbishop’s Council of the Church of England and the Global Mission Network of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. John also serves as a chaplain to the British royal family. John and his wife Olive live in Scotland. Both speak regularly at church conferences and seminars in Britain.
The thesis of this book is that a pre-packaged externally imposed picture of what theology is supposed to be is not the starting point for serious theological reflection and therefore is leading to a decline in the church. By arguing his thesis, Drane seeks to help churches deliver a message that can be heard by today’s emerging culture, which seem to want to bridge the gap between the secular and spiritual world.
He begins building a case for his thesis by presenting a change in worldview taking place from the modern to the post-modern. He also shares his own personal perspectives about the church and the role that it fills in our lives. Drane then looks at the rationalism that characterizes modernity showing how that has shaped human values and essentially devalued human diversity. This is what Drane labels as “McDonaldization, ” a term he borrows from George Ritzer and he looks in depth at the four key characteristics of such “McDonaldization”.
Drane then reinforces his thesis by looking at those who are not in the church but are whom the church should be trying to reach. He concludes by showing how worship, prophetic communication and telling our stories can lead to a church that empowers meaningful spiritual expression rooted in Christ.
Drane focuses with pinpoint clarity in on a root cause of the decline of the Western Church. This cause is a shift in worldview. The church finds itself dominated by a culture of either/or thinking in an increasingly both/and world. The temptation to wrap theology up in a neat wrapper and serve it with fries and a coke for easy consumption is not a good idea. What could be easily accepted and digested by a modern mindset meets a barrage of questioning by the post-modern mindset interested in spirituality and quickly loses its ability to be filling. By adapting this consumer oriented strategy the church has in effect embraced modern rational culture and created a barrier to post-moderns. “Quite simply, we seem to have ended up with a secular Church is a spiritual society” (:61).
This clash of worldview is seen best in the entry point for becoming a member of a church. The church of the modern world presented a package of baseline beliefs that one must adhere to if they wanted to be able to enter the church. Once one could believe in these baseline beliefs, then one began to belong and participate in the behavior of the church.
This is very much in contrast to the post-modern thinker. A post-modern thinker first finds entry by being invited to connect and belong in community regardless of their belief. Thus when Drane states that the church needs to offer the ability for people to think about participating in the Christian story not through packaged certainty, but by beginning through the context of human experience, he is actually asking the church to step in faith (:209). The question is, “Does the church believe that God is big enough to work outside of a wrapper?”
