I am reading and appreciating a new book this summer: "Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional." (IVP Books) The author is Jim Belcher (M.A., Fuller; Ph.D., Georgetown, founding church planter and lead pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California. Here's a blurb from a related web-site that introduces it very well. You might want to order it through our ReadOn Bookstore.

Feel caught between the traditional church and the emerging church? Discover a third way: deep church. C. S. Lewis used the phrase "deep church" to describe the body of believers committed to mere Christianity. Unfortunately church in our postmodern era has been marked by a certain shallowness. Emerging authors, fed up with contemporary pragmatism, have offered alternative visions for twenty-first-century Christianity. Traditionalist churches have reacted negatively, at times defensively. In Deep Church, Belcher brings the best insights of all sides to forge a third way between emerging and traditional. He offers measured appreciation and affirmation as well as balanced critique. Moving beyond reaction, Belcher provides constructive models from his own church planting experience and paints a picture of what this alternate, deep church looks like--a missional church committed to both tradition and culture, valuing innovation in worship, arts and community but also creeds and confessions.