Meet the Author
Brian McLaren served in pastoral ministry for twenty years as the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church. In 2006, he stepped down from that role to devote his time to writing and speaking. McLaren has written numerous books, including Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words (2011), Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices (2010), A New Kind of Christianity (2010), and Everything Must Change: When the World’s Biggest Problems and Jesus’ Good News Collide (2009). McLaren has appeared on Larry King Live, Nightline, and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly. He has taught or lectured at many seminaries and has served on a number of boards, including Emergent Village, Sojourners, Mars Hill Graduate School, International Teams, and Off The Map, and he is a founding member of Red Letter Christians. He was named one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals by Time magazine. For more information, visit his website.
Book Basics
Naked Spirituality offers a creative and fresh approach to Christian spirituality. McLaren orients the text around four seasons, which one can pass through any number of times and should be envisioned as “an ascending spiral that grows wider” each time one passes through (p.27). For each season, he suggests three words that offer unconventional names for specific spiritual practices.
| Season | Description | Reach to God in | Relation to Others | Words |
| Spring | Simplicity: The Season of Spiritual Awakening | Happiness | Dependence | Here, Thanks, O |
| Summer | Complexity: The Season of Spiritual Strengthening | Struggle | Independence | Sorry, Help, Please |
| Autumn | Perplexity: The Season of Spiritual Surviving | Honesty | Counterdependence | When, No, Why |
| Winter | Harmony: The Season of Spiritual Deepening | Humility | Interdependence | Behold, Yes, [ . . . ] |
For those followers of Jesus for whom the traditional language and practices of spirituality are second nature, as well as those for whom those words and what they represent are difficult to approach, McLaren, McLaren provides new vocabulary and an invitation to continue on the journey of faith moving toward spiritual nakedness or authenticity. I find McLaren’s work, in general, to be theologically thoughtful and pragmatically helpful in moving the church of the early twenty-first century more fully into the present. While Naked Spirituality is no exception, it did not reach as far nor did it resonate as fully as have other recent texts. Furthermore, the stage theory itself is a bit forced, but this problem is overcome to some degree by the advice to live each stage well and to see all twelve as leading to the final word: love.
So What?
When you think of spiritual formation, discipleship, the journey of faith or any other term you may prefer to speak of one’s lifelong growth toward Christian maturity, what models have influenced your understanding (i.e. James Fowler’s Stages of Faith)? What books about spirituality or spiritual disciplines have helped to form you spiritually (i.e. Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline)? What classes or group experiences have helped you find your way toward maturity (i.e. a small group Bible study)?
Brian D. McLaren. Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words. HarperOne, 2011. ISBN: 9780061854019.