Finding the Gospel is a book about changing one's mind. Or, more accurately, it is a book about how I have changed my mind about some portions of the Christian faith-especially its central message. Apparently, I am not the only one caught up in this rethinking endeavor. Some people suggest Christianity itself is undergoing one of its every 500-year "rummage sales" when all manner of doctrines and practices are dragged out to the driveway for disposal.1 I don't know if that's true-and I will be long dead before the historians settle the question-but what I do know is that as I enter the fourth quarter of my life, my own faith doesn't look like it did in the first quarter, or, for that matter, in any previous quarter. It is still a work in progress. Perhaps it is so for you, too. If so, I'd like for this book to be my way of sharing notes with you.

There's one thing I learned very soon in my process: Change is hard work. Intellectually and emotionally, it is hard work. If we were talking about something less emotionally charged-such as changing from cable to satellite TV-it would be so much simpler. But when the change has to do with what you think about God and everything south thereof, the stakes are much higher.