ReJesus
One of my all time favourite books is “The Shaping Of Things To Come” by Alan Hirsch and Mike Frost. It was my introduction to the emerging-missional church conversation/movement (like a bunch of Aussies, and quite a few non-Aussies), and it is a really good read. It’s quite heavy, but at the same time quite inspiring. The revolution had begun, no longer was it OK for a church to be attractional, the Christendom model was to be rejected out of hand and we were all going to have churches that genuinely engaged with their communities.
The beauty of “Shaping” was also it’s biggest problem. This was a revolutionary text, a veritable Communist Manifesto, and like most revolutionary texts, there appeared little concern for anyone left behind. Out with the old wineskins, in with the new, the old wine can go jump, just worry about those new wineskins. That sort of deal. It was written with the best of intentions, and with a genuine love for old-church. But because it was so passionate, so revolutionary, so angry that love was overshadowed. So a number of people were hurt, and even more were able to write off “Shaping” as being a pipe dream, and an angry reaction to bad experiences of Christendom model church, rather than the freeing invitation to shape your ecclesiology by the missional context you find yourself within. It took no effort to ignore as being a case of hurt Christians lashing out at the church.
Fast forward at least 5 years (I don’t have my copy of Shaping of Things To Come with me) and the terrible twosome have come out with another book together. And in my (very humble) opinion, this is the book that Shaping might have been. It’s not as heavy, and it’s not as angry, but in my opinion it’s equally as challenging and revolutionary. Whereas it could be argued that parts of Shaping came across as an attack ad on the Christendom model church, Re-Jesus comes across as instead being a positively re-inforced call back to centre our entire lives (including our church and church structure) around the person of Jesus. And that has as many harsh implications for how the emerging-missional crowd “be the church” as it does for the mainstream attractional crew.
I really believe that this is a book with an incredible potential to be a powerful prophetic voice in calling the church back to a truly Jesus-centred Christianity. I could describe it more, but I’m instead just going to encourage you all to read it.