Emergence

I'm blogging through Frost and Hirsch's book "ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church". I'll share my thoughts on each Chapter. As some of you have already realized, I welcome your thoughts in comments below or in my inbox: .

It's been a while since I have engaged in my walkthrough of ReJesus. In addition to reading through the Bible with my intensive discipleship group. I have been scalp deep in a few other books in preparation for things to come. I have not forsaken ReJesus, though, and I'll prove it now.

Chapter Three of the book turns toward the Church, and how it needs some refounding. What I like about these guys is that, though they are not heavy on ecclesiology, they do not throw it out the door like some people calling for radical reform. While some in that category have all but forsaken the church of today--calling for only house churches and such--Frost and Hirsch have seen the importance of the church as we know it. And, because the church is important, they call out that same church to get back to its founder--the radical Christ.

speaking of radical--webster defines the word radical this way: "of or going to the root or origin; fundamental". and while the label "fundamental" has become somewhat of a negative label in the church, there is something very right about being that kind of radical.

If we are to be what Christ intended, the authors argue, we must head back to our origin and reflect more of the founder. In fact, all people of faiths or religions strive to reflect a founder:

• Buddhists aspire to be more like Buddha
• Scientologists are a bit off--just like L. Ron
• Muslims look a bit schizo, like Mohammed... some are militant like his angry writings, others are peaceful, like his pacifist passages
• Jewish people reflect the faith of Abraham, and are motivated by God's promises to him

If we are to be Christians, we must reflect our founder more. We must look more like Jesus. If you remove Jesus from the equation, you have a dangerous result. As the authors powerfully formulated: Christianity minus Jesus equals religion. Therefore, Christianity plus Jesus equals the antidote to religion.

In many ways, the contemporary church looks just as religious as its predecessors: the rituals may have changed, but they still bring to the participant a false sense of holiness through accomplishment. This happens over time because, as people, we are always drawn to move from Christ's mission to our own mission of self-preservation. We don't want to lose that which makes us comfortable. What we fail to realize is that Jesus, who brings both peace and chaos, comfort and discomfort is not concerned with our self-preservation. He is concerned about life transformation. 

When we allow the surprising, disturbing, refreshing, powerful Jesus to strip away all of our Christian paraphenalia, we take a giant step toward a faith that is radical: a faith committed to its origin.