Book Review: Reforming or Conforming? by Johnson and Gleason

Reforming or Conforming: Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church, ed. Gary L.W. Johnson and Ronald N. Gleason. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008. 300 pp. $20.00.

Reforming or Conforming (RoC) takes a hard look at the emergent church movement that is running rampant within Christianity today. Edited by Johnson and Gleason, two senior pastors, RoC is a scholarly book written in order that Christendom may come to know the emergent church at its roots. With contributions from many scholars across the (conservative) theological spectrum, RoC presents a multi-faceted approach to understanding and dealing with the emergent church movement.

The reader will become well informed as to what lies at the core of the emergent church. You are presented with their doctrines at face value and then shown whether or not they stand or fall in light of the revelation of God as found in the Bible. This is a hard hitting expose of the emergent church that needs to be read by everyone. If you are interested in the emergent church, this book may shed light on some of the practices found therein. If you are involved in a local church, then you need to read this book because, undoubtedly, someone will bring this topic up for discussion and want to know if there are any problems with the emergent church.

What is more, many who think the emergent church 1) poses no real threat to Christianity and 2) is doing much more to reach the lost will want to check out this book. This is not a book to be read lightly. It demands to be chewed slowly and meditated upon. It is not a book about a movement as much as it is about the biblical gospel. If the contributors and editors of this book are correct, hundreds of thousands of souls are at stake. Read this book with much prayer and meditation and be sure to have your Bible nearby—you will need it.

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Written by
Terry Delaney
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Written by Terry Delaney
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