ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church {a book review}

Ok, so I guess word has gotten 'round that I like to read.  One of the fruits of being a consistent blogger is the opportunity to receive books from authors and publishing houses to review. I do my best to be fair and honest. Just 'cuz it's free doesn't mean I need to be a commercial.  I'm willing to respectfully criticize when giving my point of view.  

Unfortunately, this is one of those book reviews where I will be doing just that.

ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, is a second book collaboration by these boys from the land down under.  Their first title together was, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church.  As you can guess, these writers are thought leaders and mentors in what is coined as the missional movement. (google that if you are puzzled about what that means, or read a previous post of mine where I attempt to explain what missional means in non-academic language)

The title and cover of this book totally hooked me. I had a lot of anticipation about what fresh insights would inspire me within the pages of the book.  I loved how the cover of this book suggested a relatable, creative read that would engage my imagination. I am a collage artist in my spare time and so the blurring of images and graphics with the gritty fonts used on the book's cover completetly hooked me. I am quite likely going to print up a copy of the cover and use it in a collage project. Great graphics.

Great, great title. The authors call their work ReJesus, as a means of explaining how the collective body of Christ followers (in the West) known as The Church, need to get back to basics with our Founder. We need to be refound, not reformed or renewed or redeveloped. We need to be rebooted like a computer and return to our original operatng system, which for the Christ follower is Christ himself. Thus, according to Hisrsh and Frost, we need to ReJesus. I love this coined term and I am 100 percent on the same page as the authors in regards to this clarion call. 

My primary criticism of this book is that it's cover did not match it's contents in that the book reads more like an academic text for seminarians. Rich with theological terms, like orthopraxy, pericope, routinization of charisma, missio Dei, etc... it is a text book with a  really cool title and really, really cool cover.  

In all fairness, perhaps this is the readership the authors were targeting. Ok, fine. But I kinda would have liked fair warning about that. In all truthfulness, I would not have read this book had I known it would mostly appeal to my intellect rather than my heart. 99% of the book content was lecture in style. One percent, in my estimation, storytelling. And for me, the most effective means of imparting information and knowledge is through the power of a great narrative. This book is sparse on story.

Having said that, one of the features of the book that I thoroughly enjoyed was the biographical sketches of various men and women who have demonstrated a commitment to following Christ, people who appeared to not need a dose of ReJesus'ing.  This was not so much story telling as it was a kind of shout-out to some of the heroes and "sheroes" (as Shane Claiborne is apt to say!) of the faith.  Ok, cool.

Another fun feature of the book is the graphics within. Not the diagrams or tables, God no, those were boring. Reminded me too much of all those mathematic classes I floundered in during my youth...I still flounder at math....but the authors saw to it that popular and iconic images of Jesus found in art were included. They wrote their observations and reviews of how art has reflected a distorted view of how we in the West have envisioned Christ. A soft, domesticated Savior who is nice to everybody and has good manners. Nope, not the Real Jesus, asserts Hirsch and Frost. And I would agree. Again, I did not have a disagreement with the content of this book. My criticism is that it was overwhelmingly academic in vocabulary, writing style and even the charts and diagrams and tables. It is the style that didn't work for me.

Here's an example of what I mean by overly academic:

Our commitment to exegesis are now so one-dimensional that we longer know how to connect with the Bible in a much more personally engaged manner. We suggest that along side the task of exegesis (which we must do), we need to learn the spiritual art of reading ourselves into the text, participating in it, normally forbidden to the academic approach. We think that we have much to unlearn in regard to our approach to Scripture, and therefore the God of the Scriptures, and much to relearn as we seek to reJesus our lives and churches.  (p. 147)

Don't misunderstand me. I may only be a cleaning woman by trade and a high school graduate by education, but I am intelligent and understand what this means. I understand the premise of the book. I just didn't care for the overly academic approach in giving the message and wonder how much more accessible this book would be to everyday people had everyday language been used instead.  As it stands, I'll be passing this volume along to a woman I know who is a theologian. She may likely appreciate it more than I have.

There were many gleaming moments in the book for me, mostly when the adademic posture was relaxed and the tie was loosened.  My favorite passage in the entire book is found in the last chapter where the authors issue a kind of statement of the difference between loving The Church versus not liking how church is done:

...to be sure, we do not like gatherings of strangers who never meet or know each other outside of Sundays, who sit passively while virtual strangers preach and lead singing, who put up with second-rate psuedo-community under the guise of connection with each other, who live different lives from Monday to Saturday than they do on Sunday, whose sole expression of worship is pop-style praise and worship, who rarely laugh together, fight injustice together, eat together, pray together, raise each others' children together, serve the poor together, or share Jesus with those who have not yet been set free. We do not like the church if it's a fractured organization with hundreds of competing creeds, names, and doctrines, teaching a multitude of contradictory beliefs and insisting on compliance with a raft of recently invented traditions. But if it's a family of Jesus followers striving, no matter how inadequately, to be Christlike, holistic, peace-loving, worshipful, devoted, graced, holy and healthy, then we will love it with every ounce of physical and emotional strength we have.   (p. 172-73) 

I give the content of the book three stars, but the cover and especially that effin' amazing title Five Stars, which averages my review to Four Stars.

And there you have it.

(click HERE for a peek at the table of contents and a sample chapter)