A great book on bringing Jesus back into the church. And not just any...but a more biblical one. One section I like talked about the several different Jesus's out there
- The bearded -lady Jesus
-The spooky Jesus
- The ordinary Galilean Jesus

Each one missing the mark. This book is a call to discipleship to the biblical Jesus..a wild Messiah. The intersection of Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy and Orthopathy.

At first glance Re-Jesus appears to be in the same realm as the other edgy postmodern books sold at hip emergent conferences. But the reality is, you can’t judge a book by its cover. The book should have been called “A return to Christology: a study of the central doctrine of Jesus.” The cover should have had some boring painting of Jesus and I should have been required to read it in seminary.

It’s THAT kind of book.

Not that the book is boring like a text book – it just reads like a text book. The authors made the reading very linear and very weighted, so it’s not an easy read; certainly not devotional material. I would assume that the “famous Christians” inserts, the cover and perhaps even the chapter titles were all “add ons” later by the publishing house in an attempt to make the book appeal to a younger audience. I don’t know if “A wild messiah for a missional church” is the best sub-title either, certainly the book touches on those things, but it’s not the crux of the book.

Oh, you want to know if I liked the book? Yea, I did, but it’s a hard book to recommend. I would almost say the Jesus Manifesto by Sweet and Viola is an easier read or Christianish by Mark Steele. Not that you need an easier read… I’m just saying there are options.

Re-Jesus is certainly not like any book I have ever read on the subject, there is a lot in there to devour and it would certainly preach well with the right amount of delivery. There is a great chapter in there on Jesus in art, and the last chapter on the church is probably the best in the entire book.

I think what I will do for the next seven or so entries is give you a break down of each chapter, pulling out select quotes and thoughts to give you what I think was the “main idea.”

Hopefully these next posts will bring light to the “…discontinuity between Jesus and the religion that bears his name..” (page 5) Until then, consider these questions…

1. what ongoing role does Jesus play in shaping the ethos of the movement that began from him?

2. How is Christianity still shaped by the gospel texts?

3. how do we “domesticate” Jesus in order to sustain our religion?

4. how can a discovery of Jesus and his message lead to a renewal of our discipleship journey? ( )

ReJesus helped put words to the feeling I get when I walk into many mainstream contemporary Christian churches: “I wonder what Jesus would think of this?” (I wrote a while back about feeling the same way about the 700 Club). Here is what I mean.

A few months ago, the BF and I went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at a local church. I knew about this church (it’s enormous), but I’d never actually been. The BF has attended the church before, and said it felt like being at a church informercial. I quickly learned what he meant. We ended up having to kill a couple hours before our tickets to see the DSS, so we went to the Starbucks on the church campus, grabbed some coffee, and sat by a perfectly landscaped water feature, the babbling brook making nice background noise to our conversation. We glanced inside the church and there was some sort of mock Price is Right gameshow going on. We think/hope it was a youth event.

I was so uncomfortable. I kept telling myself that this church served a particular segment of the Christian community, and that I shouldn’t knock it. But maybe it’s OK to knock it a little bit. Was anyone really getting to know Jesus this way? I can’t be sure. Granted, I also attend a large non-denom church (in addition to the house church); however, I feel like my church really strives to get away from it’s “churchiness” and serve the community and its members, all the while getting back to the real Jesus. Does it succeed? Often. Is there room for growth? Of course. I hope I am part of that growth. Could this other large church be doing the same thing? Of course. But I’m just not willing to claw through the Starbucks and Price is Right to find out.

ReJesus encourages the reader to get back to Christianity’s roots. In a nutshell, if it doesn’t look like Jesus, throw it out. I thought this particular passage summed it up well (from page 42):

“And yet, the ethos of discipleship and the presence of the wild Messiah are not readily associated with the church and Christianity of our day. Far from it, our rexpressions of church range generally from what we might call high church, where Jesus tends to be relegated to some place in the outer eschalons of the cosmos, to the more prevalent contemporary seeker-sensitive model where the radical mesage of Jesus is easily trivialized into some for of spiritual accessory in a consumerisst paradise. From the fundamentalist co-option of Jesus as a religious fanatic to the liberal reduction of him into a schmaltzy moralist, it is probably fair to say that we have largely lost touch with our loving, wildly passionate, dangerous, radically merciful, and always surprising Reedemer-Lord.”

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2010/11/09/71-rejesus-by-michael-frost-and-alan-hirsch... ( )