You might say that The New Parish is the best possible book that typical young evangelicals could write about church life and spiritual formation.
You might also say that The New Parish is an occasionally good book that takes some unfortunate turns and has enough flaws to weaken the entire work.
Both of these descriptions amount to the same thing.
The Many Strengths of The New Parish
To begin with the good, The New Parish has the potential to help younger evangelicals move past the splintered spiritual practices and church life that many of us knew as children and toward a form of Christian practice that is more rooted in a specific place, defined by that place’s life and shaped by its people and needs. The authors, Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens, and Dwight Friesen, have done great work diagnosing the problems with the attractional model of church life that defined much of late 20th century evangelicalism.
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Jake Meador
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, Comment, Books & Culture, and Christianity Today. He is a contributing editor with Plough and a contributing writer at the Dispatch. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.
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