I read the entire NKOC trilogy in the last week...

Brian,
I read the entire New Kind of Christian trilogy in the last week or so (no small feat: it’s the last week of class for the semester and I have an obscene work load to finish)

and noticed on your website that you were “a little nervous” about The Last Word’s recent release, so I wanted take some time to let you know what I thought of the book and the whole trilogy.

A few years ago I started a dialogue with my then girlfriend, Becca, and my soul-brother, Scott. Becca had enrolled in Pluralism in America, and was struggling with some important questions. Scott, who I had only recently met, had just entered the faith and brought his own very good, real questions. We met every week at the local brewery and sat in a corner over steins of beer and a few cigarettes and talked, questioned, yelled, laughed, cried, and started something beautiful.

Many people say we started down the wrong path, but these are the same types of people who say that you can’t find God or church in a bar.
Your trilogy continued the dialogue that we started two years ago (why did I not read A New Kind then?—this would have been easier).

Your books were, for me, a validation of the years I’ve spent pursuing a God who I became convinced couldn’t be found in the Christianity I was brought up in, the years walking away from everything comfortable in pursuit of the truth, alone, or at the very best, with two or three walking with me (which can still get lonely).

I feel like (1) you’ve joined in the dialogue I started with my friends—continued but not completed it— and (2) I know I’m not alone anymore. I’ve been frustrated at my inability to express my beliefs to my friends, Christian and non-, mostly because I didn’t know what I believed at all, only what I didn’t believe any more. Now, I hand people a copy of A New Kind of Christian and say, “Read this book. McLaren has taken my soul and put it down on paper (and then had the audacity to sell it back to me). If you read this, you will understand my soul, my spirituality, my questions, and, to some extent, my life. So I guess I just want to say thank you.

P.S. I just realized I forgot to mention The Last Word. It’s definitely the hardest book to grapple with, but also, I think, raises the most important questions. And the hope it offers at the end! I’m considering starting my own “order” of some type, a church in the form of friendship defined more by practice than by doctrine, because that’s the kind of church I do best. Maybe we’ll meet at that bar every week.