**Author:** [[3. Resources/Authors/Brian D. McLaren|Brian D. McLaren]] # Book Overview ![[Finding Our Way Again Visual.excalidraw]] ## About the Author Brian D. McLaren is a pastor, author, and speaker who spent over twenty years leading Cedar Ridge Community Church near Washington, D.C. He grew up in the Plymouth Brethren tradition and has since become one of the more prominent voices in the emerging church conversation. McLaren's previous works include *A New Kind of Christian*, *A Generous Orthodoxy*, and *The Secret Message of Jesus*. He writes as a practitioner whose own spiritual formation has drawn from Brethren, charismatic, Calvinist, and contemplative Catholic traditions -- a personal history that informs his argument for open-source sharing of spiritual practices across denominational lines. This book is the inaugural volume in The Ancient Practices Series, edited by Phyllis Tickle, with subsequent volumes by Robert Benson, Dan B. Allender, Scot McKnight, Nora Gallagher, Diana Butler Bass, Joan Chittister, and Douglas LeBlanc. ## Central Thesis Christianity has been presented primarily as a system of belief when it should be rediscovered as a way of life. McLaren traces this diagnosis to an exchange with Peter Senge, who observed that Buddhism attracts seekers because it presents itself as a way of life, while Christianity presents itself as a system of belief. The book argues that seven ancient spiritual practices -- fixed-hour prayer, fasting, Sabbath, the sacred meal, pilgrimage, observance of sacred seasons, and giving -- shared across the Abrahamic faiths offer the path back. These practices aren't ends in themselves but the means through which character is formed, aliveness is sustained, and God is experienced. McLaren frames three types of practice (contemplative, communal, missional) as an integrated triangle, and maps the ancient threefold spiritual path (Katharsis, Fotosis, Theosis) as a framework for the journey they support. The destination isn't escape from this world but participation in its healing. ## Why This Book Matters Published in 2008 at a moment when both religious fundamentalism and secular materialism were generating widespread disillusionment, the book names a problem that has only intensified: religious communities producing people who hold correct beliefs but don't live differently as a result. McLaren's contribution isn't the practices themselves -- they're ancient -- but the framework for understanding why they matter and how they connect. The argument that practices should be shared across traditions as "open-source spirituality" was provocative when published and remains so. For anyone who has experienced the gap between what their faith community professes and how it actually forms people, the book offers both a diagnosis and a concrete direction forward. It's particularly relevant for Christians who sense that institutional participation plus knowledge acquisition hasn't produced the transformation they expected. --- # Chapter Summaries ## Chapter 1: Searching for an Everyday Sacredness McLaren opens with the Peter Senge story: at a pastors' conference, Senge asked why books on Buddhism were outselling books on Christianity. His answer -- Buddhism presents itself as a way of life, Christianity as a system of belief -- becomes the book's launching point. McLaren maps four failed alternatives: reductionist secularism, reactive fundamentalism, mushy new-age spirituality, and the conventional religion that produced all three reactions. The book proposes a fourth way: rediscovering faith as a way of life through ancient practices shared across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The chapter introduces the seven practices that the rest of the series will explore: fixed-hour prayer, fasting, Sabbath, the sacred meal, pilgrimage, sacred seasons, and giving. ## Chapter 2: Why Spiritual Practices Matter Four reasons spiritual practices matter. First, character formation: practices help close the gap between who we are and who we want to become. Second, aliveness: practices train us to see, hear, and experience life rather than sleepwalking through it. McLaren tells of watching a Carolina wren sing on a February morning -- a moment of burning-bush awareness that disappeared by the time he was stuck in economy class over the Pacific, then returned watching a mother and baby on the next flight. Third, experiencing God: practices open us to the divine presence. Fourth (deferred to chapter 8): the future of the world depends on it. The chapter resists ranking these reasons, arguing they may be inseparable. ## Chapter 3: The Genesis of Practice McLaren traces the seven practices back to Abraham, making the case that they are shared Abrahamic heritage, not the exclusive property of any one tradition. Pilgrimage emerges from Abraham's original call to journey into the unknown. Fasting interrupts normalcy as a dietary pilgrimage. The sacred meal appears in Abraham's encounter with Melchizedek, who brought bread and wine -- a meal of peace between two different religious traditions. Fixed-hour prayer grows from Melchizedek's formalized blessing. Tithing appears in Abraham's response of giving a tenth. Sabbath comes through Moses and the liberation from Egyptian slavery, establishing a rhythm of work and rest. The liturgical calendar arises from the seasonal holidays that tell the community's stories to the next generation. ## Chapter 4: Practicing the Way of Jesus McLaren positions Jesus not as the founder of a new religion but as the proclaimer of a new kingdom -- a new way of life that was good news for Gentiles as well as Jews. Jesus described this way using metaphors of kingdom, yoke, and road. He didn't merely describe the path but embodied it. The chapter emphasizes that the term "disciple" appears over 250 times in the New Testament while "Christian" appears only 3 times. Jesus' pattern was to call people to learn (discipleship) and then send them out to teach and serve (apostleship). McLaren makes the uncomfortable argument that a person can be a follower of the way of Jesus without affiliating with the Christian religion, and that the reverse -- card-carrying membership without following the way -- is worse. ## Chapter 5: Paul and the Way of Love McLaren reframes Paul as a continuator of Jesus' way rather than the founder of a new theological system. He argues for reading Paul in the light of Jesus, not Jesus in the light of Paul. Paul's central project was forging the Jesus movement into a multicultural community that included Gentiles -- an unprecedented innovation requiring him to defend inclusion, build bridges between communities, and fight against those who would divide. Paul's pervasive use of "walking" imagery (more than two dozen uses) and his athletic metaphors of training and exercise reinforce faith as a practiced way of life. The chapter highlights Paul's intertwining of human effort and divine grace, particularly through pregnancy imagery: we receive the Spirit, Christ is formed within us, and we give birth to him in the world. ## Chapter 6: Sharing Treasures Among Friends The history of Christian faith as a cycle of finding the way, losing it, and recovering it. McLaren traces waves of renewal -- desert monastics, Celtic Christians, Francis, Luther, the Anabaptists, Pietists, Wesleys, Pentecostals -- each arising when the movement hardens into an institution. He critiques three insufficient formulas for spiritual growth: institutional participation alone, knowledge acquisition alone, and experience seeking alone. The chapter uses a cooking metaphor: denominations are like different schools of cooking (French, Mexican, Chinese), each with distinctive flavors and practices developed in particular times and places. McLaren's own spiritual autobiography moves through Plymouth Brethren, charismatic, and Calvinist traditions, each held with the same proprietary zeal until he "converted to a different way of holding traditions in general." ## Chapter 7: Open-Source Spirituality The chapter develops the idea that spiritual practices are best learned through apprenticeship -- watching mentors embody practices and then trying them yourself. McLaren recounts a long list of mentors who taught him specific practices: Dave who taught daily quiet time, Tom who introduced journaling and Brother Lawrence's Practicing the Presence of God, Rennie who opened the Book of Common Prayer, Phyllis Tickle who modeled fixed-hour prayer. The term "open source" comes from software development, where proprietary code is released for public use and collaborative improvement. McLaren applies this to the spiritual life: each of us can become an open source of embodied practices for others, seizing the unfulfilled promise of the Reformation's "priesthood of all believers." ## Chapter 8: Shallow Trouble, Deep Trouble The fourth reason practices matter: our destination determines our way, and we may have the wrong destination. McLaren argues that orienting faith primarily toward heaven-after-death (escaping earth) produces a fundamentally different kind of person than orienting it toward God's will being done on earth (healing earth). The firefighter analogy: if you want people who will enter burning buildings to rescue others, you have to form a different kind of person than if you want people who simply avoid fire. If the destination is a healed earth, the way promotes involvement, engagement, and risk. If the destination is escape, the way promotes withdrawal and self-protection. The chapter maps the contemplative-activist polarity through three phases: duality (either/or tension), mutuality (seeking balance), and harmony (integration where the two become dimensions of one thing). ## Chapter 9: Practice Makes Possible Built around McLaren's daughter Rachel running a marathon, this chapter develops the book's key distinction: the difference between deciding/trying and training. You can't run a marathon by deciding to run one; you have to train. Training means employing appropriate actions within our power by which we become capable of things currently beyond our power. Those actions are practices. The community that teaches them is a community of practice. McLaren's doughnut-fasting story illustrates how practices work even when we fail at them: the practice of fasting succeeded even though he failed at fasting, because it revealed his weakness, exercised impulse control, and asserted the importance of something beyond gratification. The chapter's key phrase: practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes possible things that would otherwise be impossible. ## Chapter 10: Contemplative Practices Using a weight-loss program as an extended analogy, McLaren introduces the contemplative tradition as practices exercised primarily in solitude. He draws the tradition's roots from Hebrew wisdom literature, Greek philosophy (Aristotle's contemplative life), and the New Testament's incarnational theology. The chapter makes a critical distinction between practices as gifts versus techniques: contemplative experiences of God are "favors" or "visitations" that can't be conjured by formula, but they tend to happen to those who are practiced in ways they don't happen to those who aren't. The master violinist metaphor: seven transcendent concerts in two hundred weren't produced by technique alone, but they couldn't have happened without the preparation that technique provides. The chapter lists contemplative practices including solitude, spiritual reading, practicing God's presence, fixed-hour prayer, contemplative prayer, fasting, simplicity, and gratitude. ## Chapter 11: Communal Practices The communal way is about the journey into "we" rather than "me." McLaren redefines liturgy from "the work of the people" to "the workout of the people" -- a thoughtfully designed set of communal spiritual practices, like a gym workout led by a trainer. He walks through the elements of a typical church gathering as spiritual practices: arrival practices (inconvenience, self-preparation, hospitality), engagement practices (stillness, invocation, singing), listening practices (attentiveness, interpretation, confession), response practices, and reentry practices. The chapter emphasizes that Paul's instruction to "greet one another with a holy kiss" was radical because it transgressed Roman class boundaries. A powerful story of communal confession -- a man who had committed crimes and experienced life collapse weeping through the words "our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo" -- illustrates how communal practices can do things private practice cannot. ## Chapter 12: Missional Practices The activist dimension of the spiritual life. Without expression in mission, contemplative and communal practices are incomplete. McLaren uses the spinning triangle image: contemplation, community, and mission are three angles of a dynamic, expanding shape, never static or contracting. He introduces the concept of "otherliness" (coined by Jim Henderson and Dave Richards) as a synonym for love, and connects it to Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 13. The chapter distinguishes between two approaches: God healing individuals so they can heal the world (part-to-whole) versus God healing the world and recruiting coworkers who need personal healing to participate (whole-to-part). Jim Wallis's river metaphor captures the relationship between contemplation, kindness, and justice: walking humbly with God puts you by the river; showing kindness gets you wading in to rescue drowning people; doing justice sends people upstream to stop whoever is pushing people in. ## Chapter 13: The Cycle We Find Ourselves In The depressing but necessary chapter about why faith communities keep losing their way. McLaren tells the story of a missionary who spent thirty years achieving every church-planting goal but watched every indicator of social health plummet -- concluding that "we climbed the ladder to the top, but the ladder was leaning against the wrong building." Michael Polanyi's post-Holocaust investigation into "personal knowledge" versus "rules of action" frames the problem: Germany's educational system produced brilliant engineers who designed concentration camp ovens because it developed objective knowledge without the "elbow knowledge" that would recognize barbarism. McLaren maps the cycle of renewal movements: they arise, get rejected or absorbed, gain distance, innovate, succeed -- then their zeal hardens into pride, and they become exactly what they reacted against. The chapter introduces the three "orthos": orthodoxy (right views), orthopraxy (right practices), and orthopathy (right being/feeling), arguing that all three must be integrated. ## Chapter 14: Moving On A transitional chapter that acknowledges the question everyone asks: should we reform existing faith communities or start new ones? McLaren's answer: both. Some reformers are welcomed (Benedict, Francis), others rejected (Galileo, Luther). Sometimes apparent acceptance becomes domestication -- the denomination absorbs the renewal movement's superficial elements (guitars in worship) while marginalizing its deeper challenges. The chapter argues that we need communities willing to experiment with renewal while maintaining connection to existing traditions. ## Chapters 15-18: The Ancient Threefold Way These four chapters introduce the ancient spiritual path as a framework for the practices. Chapter 15 sets up the threefold structure. Chapter 16 covers Katharsis (Via Purgativa) -- the path of purification, where we confront our illusions, addictions, and false selves. Chapter 17 covers Fotosis (Via Illuminativa) -- the path of illumination, where we begin to see God, ourselves, and the world with increasing clarity. Chapter 18 covers Theosis (Via Unitiva) -- the path of union, the ultimate destination where the boundary between self and God becomes permeable. McLaren presents these not as sequential stages you complete and leave behind but as a spiral you return to with increasing depth. ## Chapter 19: Faithing Our Practices McLaren argues that practices without faith become dead rituals, but faith without practices becomes abstract belief disconnected from life. The chapter introduces "faithing" as a verb -- the active process of bringing trust, intention, and openness to God into the practices we engage in. Going through the motions matters (because the motions shape us), but going through them with faith transforms their effect. The chapter addresses the concern that emphasis on practices leads to works-righteousness, arguing that the practices are not ways of earning God's favor but ways of opening ourselves to grace. ## Chapter 20: Learning by (Broken) Heart The final chapter returns to the book's opening concern: how do we pass on faith as a way of life rather than a system of belief? McLaren argues for learning "by heart" -- not rote memorization but the kind of knowing that comes through embodied practice in community. The "broken" in the title signals that this learning happens through failure as much as success. The chapter loops back to the marathon metaphor: you train, you run, you sometimes fail, you get up, you train some more. The way continues. --- # Key Themes and Highlights ## Faith as Way of Life versus System of Belief The book's foundational distinction. Peter Senge's observation that Buddhism attracts seekers because it presents itself as a way of life while Christianity presents itself as a system of belief becomes the diagnostic lens through which everything else is examined. McLaren doesn't argue that beliefs don't matter but that beliefs disconnected from a practiced way of life produce neither transformation nor attraction. The term "disciple" (250+ uses in the New Testament) versus "Christian" (3 uses) is deployed as evidence that the early movement understood itself as a way to be walked, not a creed to be affirmed. ## Practice Makes Possible (Not Perfect) The distinction between deciding/trying and training is the book's most practical insight. You can't run a marathon by deciding to; you have to train. Training means engaging in actions within your power that make you capable of things currently beyond your power. The doughnut-fasting story illustrates that practices can succeed even when you fail at them -- what matters is the formation happening underneath the surface. This reframes spiritual practices from performance (did I do it right?) to formation (what is this doing to me?). ## Open-Source Spirituality McLaren's most provocative concept. The idea that spiritual practices should be shared across denominational and even interfaith boundaries -- Baptists learning from Catholics, Pentecostals from Eastern Orthodox -- draws on the software development model of open-source code. The cooking metaphor supports this: denominations are schools of cooking with distinctive flavors, and fusion cooking (combining traditions) can produce something new and nourishing. The concept directly challenges proprietary approaches to spiritual formation. ## The Integrated Triangle: Contemplative, Communal, Missional Spiritual formation isn't one-dimensional. The three types of practice -- contemplative (upward/solitary), communal (inward/together), missional (outward/serving) -- form a dynamic triangle that must be held in integration. Any one alone becomes distorted: contemplation without mission becomes spiritual narcissism; mission without contemplation leads to burnout; community without either becomes institutionalism. The triangle should be imagined as spinning, expanding, never static. ## Destination Determines Formation The chapter 8 argument that our ultimate destination shapes the kind of person we become. If the destination is escape from earth to heaven, we form people who avoid fire. If the destination is a healed earth, we form firefighters who enter burning buildings. This reframes the entire discussion of spiritual practices: what are we practicing for? McLaren's answer is that Jesus was more like a doctor or firefighter -- drawn toward suffering in order to heal it, not away from it in order to escape it. --- # Analytical Reading ## Main Arguments 1. Christianity has lost its identity as a way of life and defaulted to presenting itself as a system of belief. 2. Seven ancient spiritual practices -- fixed-hour prayer, fasting, Sabbath, sacred meal, pilgrimage, sacred seasons, giving -- are shared Abrahamic heritage that can restore faith as a way of life. 3. Practice doesn't make perfect but makes possible what is otherwise impossible; the distinction between deciding/trying and training is fundamental. 4. Three types of practice -- contemplative, communal, missional -- must be held in dynamic integration, not pursued in isolation. 5. The destination to which practices lead (healed earth vs. escape from earth) determines the kind of person they form. 6. Spiritual practices should be shared across traditions as open-source resources rather than hoarded as proprietary property. 7. The ancient threefold way (Katharsis, Fotosis, Theosis) provides a framework for understanding the journey practices support. 8. Personal effort and divine grace are intertwined; practices don't earn God's favor but open us to receive it. 9. Faith communities predictably cycle through renewal and stagnation; breaking the cycle requires recovering the integration of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy. ## Methodology The book is pastoral literature with an ecumenical reach. McLaren builds his argument through personal narrative (the Senge encounter, the doughnut-fasting story, the marathon, his own denominational journey), biblical exposition (Abraham, Jesus, Paul), historical survey (desert monastics through Pentecostals), and philosophical engagement (primarily Michael Polanyi's concept of personal knowledge). There's no systematic data or academic rigor in the conventional sense. The persuasive method is storytelling combined with reframing: taking familiar religious concepts and resituating them in a way-of-life framework that makes them feel fresh. The book serves as a general introduction to the seven-volume Ancient Practices Series, so it's deliberately broad rather than deep on any single practice. ## Strengths McLaren is a gifted storyteller, and the book's best moments -- the Senge satellite interview, the Carolina wren, the doughnut in the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, the marathon -- make abstract concepts visceral. The "practice makes possible" distinction is genuinely useful and avoids both the works-righteousness trap and the cheap-grace trap. The open-source spirituality concept, while provocative, names something that is actually happening across traditions and gives it a constructive frame. The integrated triangle of contemplative, communal, and missional practices is a practical diagnostic tool. The Polanyi material on personal knowledge versus rules of action adds intellectual substance. McLaren's willingness to criticize his own tradition and his own limitations (the fasting failures, the weight struggles) keeps the tone honest. ## Limitations The book is intentionally introductory, which means it raises more questions than it answers about how any single practice actually works. The Abrahamic-unity framing is generous but glosses over real theological differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam regarding these practices. The argument that Christianity lost its way as a "way of life" is presented without much engagement with traditions (Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholic monasticism) that would argue they never lost it. McLaren's personal narrative carries the argument more than evidence does -- the reader is asked to trust his experience rather than examine data. The treatment of the ancient threefold way (Katharsis, Fotosis, Theosis) in the later chapters feels compressed compared to the spacious development of the earlier material. The book's tone occasionally drifts into the kind of both/and resolution that satisfies no one -- particularly around whether the church should be reformed or replaced. --- # Personal Reflection ## Key Takeaways The distinction between deciding/trying and training is the idea I'll carry longest from this book. It reframes the entire frustration of "I know what I should do but can't do it" as a training problem rather than a willpower problem. The doughnut story is memorable precisely because it's so unglamorous -- spiritual formation happening through the humiliation of realizing you drove into a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot during a fast. There's something deeply human about that. The open-source spirituality concept names a real phenomenon. The best spiritual formation I've experienced has come from borrowing across traditions -- lectio divina from the contemplatives, fixed-hour prayer from the liturgical traditions, embodied worship from the charismatics. McLaren gives language and permission for what many people are already doing. ## Questions Raised - How do you practice open-source spirituality without it becoming superficial sampling -- spiritual tourism rather than genuine formation? - The Abrahamic framing is appealing but raises the question: how deeply can you share practices across faiths when the theological frameworks they're embedded in differ substantially? - McLaren argues the destination shapes the formation, but doesn't most actual formation happen regardless of stated destination? People who practice contemplative prayer become more contemplative whether they believe in heaven-escape or earth-healing. - The cycle of renewal and stagnation seems genuinely inescapable in the book's own telling. Does McLaren have a real answer for breaking it, or just a hope? - How do contemplative, communal, and missional practices actually integrate in a single life? The triangle is a clean diagram, but lived experience is messier. ## Connections to Other Works - [[The Cloister Walk]] by Kathleen Norris -- Norris's immersion in Benedictine community life is a lived example of the contemplative-communal integration McLaren describes. - [[Celebration of Discipline]] by Richard Foster -- Foster's treatment of the spiritual disciplines is the most direct precursor to McLaren's framework, though Foster works within a more defined Protestant tradition. - [[A Secular Age]] by Charles Taylor -- Taylor's analysis of how Western culture moved from a shared religious framework to a "secular age" provides the intellectual backdrop for McLaren's diagnosis. - [[The Rule of St. Benedict]] -- The monastic tradition McLaren draws from is most fully articulated here, particularly the integration of prayer, work, and community. - [[Mere Christianity]] by C.S. Lewis -- Lewis's famous argument for a core Christianity shared across traditions is a more conservative version of McLaren's open-source argument. - [[The Wisdom of Stability]] by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove -- Wilson-Hartgrove's new monastic perspective extends McLaren's argument about communities of practice into concrete communal experiments. --- # Reading Notes - The Senge story is one of the best openings to a spiritual formation book I've encountered. It works because Senge isn't a theologian -- he's a systems thinker observing from outside, which gives the diagnosis more force. - McLaren's fasting-doughnut story does more to explain how spiritual practices work than most theological treatments of the subject. The humor is essential -- it keeps the discussion from becoming pious. - "Practice makes possible" is a better tagline than "practice makes perfect." It's honest, humble, and actually motivating. - The cooking metaphor for denominational traditions is effective: Szechuan and Hunan within Chinese, Tandoori and Hyderabadi within Indian. It reframes "we're right and they're wrong" as "we've developed a particular palate." - The Polanyi material on personal knowledge versus rules of action is the most intellectually interesting section of the book. The image of German engineers who could design concentration camp ovens because their education developed objective knowledge without elbow knowledge is haunting. - "The movement becomes an institution, those whose hearts call them to pilgrimage get restless" -- this sentence captures the cycle McLaren describes more concisely than the full chapter. - The firefighter analogy for formation is sharp. Do our spiritual practices produce people who run toward fire or away from it? The question is uncomfortable and clarifying. - McLaren's list of mentors in chapter 7 is the most personal section of the book, and the most persuasive. Every practice he learned came through a person who modeled it first. This is the open-source argument in action. - The liturgy-as-workout reframe is practical. Thinking of a church service as a communal gym session rather than a performance to attend changes everything about how you evaluate what's happening. - The three-ortho framework (orthodoxy, orthopraxy, orthopathy) is useful shorthand. Most church conflicts can be mapped as fights about which ortho gets priority. - The book's weakest section is the compressed treatment of the ancient threefold way in chapters 15-18. These chapters feel rushed compared to the spacious development of the earlier material, as if McLaren ran out of room.