The Gospel According To Jesus

-
The Gospel According To Jesus: A Faith that Restores All Things by Chris Seay (Thomas Nelson, 2010).  

Chris Seay's newest book  The Gospel According To Jesus is the kind of book that I will be pondering long after I have finished reading it.  Seay, a church planter, author and pastor, is a man after my own heart.  He's the author of The Gospel According to Tony Soprano and the Gospel According to Lost--which reveals that he's the kind of guy who's not afraid to make the connections between the sacred and the "profane."  The fact that The Sopranos happens to be one of my favorite TV shows ever doesn't hurt either.  However, The Gospel According to Jesus is something completely different--it's a call to repentance for the Church and for those of us who call ourselves Christians.  In Seay's mind, the Church has ceased to place Christ at the center of it's theology, ecclesiology, soteriology and a host of other "ologies."  It's not enough, Seay, asserts that you focus on building the "kingdom" of God when you have no concept of the "king" that the kingdom is being built to exalt.  But on the other hand, Seay posits, if all you do is focus on Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, you miss out on what Jesus stood for, came to earth for, died for and was resurrected to accomplish:  the "restoration" of all Creation.  "If you take Jesus out of Christianity," Seay writes, "you will have nothing but a set of rules, laws, and empty restrictions."  I love how Chris's words here don't assume anything about whether you are a conservative or a progressive---when you hear them, they should fall on you, hard.  The Gospel According to Jesus is also constructed to act as a study by groups or individuals.  Following each chapter, Seay includes a short prayer that the reader can pray as part of the study.  Each chapter is also punctuated by short interviews that Christ conducts with some of his "friends:"  Shane Claiborne, Alan Hirsch, Dan Kimball, Rick McKinley & Gabe Lyons (all authors, speakers and emerging Christian thinkers/theologians).  I highly recommend this book for anyone who is growing weary of the divide between "missional" and "evangelical" in the Church.  It would be good for church leaders, individuals, pastors and church staff. 
Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse
Read more

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the cheers and pal
Read more