Joel Zehring on Posterous

Jesus Manifesto [Book Review]

Back in the middle of 2009, Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet published a brief essay online that packed a big punch. The essay was titled "A Jesus Manifesto," and it made some waves among Evangelicals. The waves were significant enough that Sweet and Viola expanded the essay into a book titled Jesus Manifesto, released the next year.

The essay was a breath of fresh air. Concise, piercing, and overflowing with passion for Jesus the Lord. There was an edge to it, as each paragraph slashed through distraction after distraction that we have hoisted in Western Evangelicalism, revealing the simple yet crushing reality that Jesus is alive and he wants to be the head of his church, not just a mascot. Also helpful: the essay was full of tweetable sentences and phrases, making it easy to share and link.

Sweet and Viola expounded on these advances in the book version, adding anecdote, allegory, and even lyric to the position statement posted online the previous year. I recognized in the book many of the key phrases and images that were so impacting in the online essay. American Christians suffer from "Jesus Deficit Disorder", and the cure is not more teaching, conferencing, or leadership development. In fact, Sweet and Viola suggest that these and other staples of Churchianity have actually supplanted Jesus as the focus of our faith and obedience. A ravishing vision of Jesus Christ is the antidote to what ails us, and Sweet and Viola spill a fair amount of ink casting such a vision.

If you follow Sweet and Viola in their online postings and productions, many of the points will be familiar. The drum beat in the book follows the same rhythm that the two authors beat out daily in their blog posts and tweets. Often, the book feels like a culled and curated collection of their best postings and podcasts. This isn't a bad thing; within Jesus Manifesto is a vital message packaged for a specific audience. There are some that will not recognize Viola's "Epic Jesus" talk when they read the book. I recognized it, and it made me want to listen again, as Viola's spoken delivery is far more passionate than the written form.

One point of editorial criticism: the book borrows a little too much from the world of social networking at a couple of points: when the authors stop to rebut comments posted online by unnamed Facebook friends or bloggers. These responses are meant to be illlustrative, but in practice, the inclusion of these comments seems a little nit-picky. It's the ultimate one-up in an online disagreement, but it doesn't make for especially engaging reading.

The overall result of Sweet's and Viola's hard copy endeavor is a book that is perfect for sharing the ideas of the orignial "A Jesus Manifesto" with the less digitally-inclined among us.

Plant, Grow, Grow, Jesus Returns

Somehow, Geoff Surratt manages to be disarming while completely up-ending the common wisdom about church longevity:

"If we can figure out how to make every stage in the life cycle of the church something to embrace, and if we can turn the death of a church into something that breathes new life into the Kingdom, we might actually see the tide turn in the decline of the American church."

http://geoffsurratt.com/blog/2012/03/09/your-will-die-pt-2/

Stable Growth, Stable Decline

"The direction of membership (growth or decline) remains very stable," writes the Yearbook's editor, the Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner, in the newest edition released this week. "That is, churches which have been increasing in membership in recent years continue to grow and likewise, those churches which have been declining in recent years continue to decline."

Speaking of Church Planting

Ed Stetzer:

"This idea of going viral needs to expand beyond the realm of home videos on YouTube. I want to see a church multiplication movement that "goes viral." I want to see churches that are passionate, proactive, and committed to doing whatever it takes in order to plant churches that plant churches."

Here's the thing about YouTube: for the first time amateurs have easy access to the means of production, an affordable broadcast platform, and, most importantly, a means of promotion with unprecedented effectiveness. Amateurs drive viral trends through relationships. Contrast this with most churches: professional Christians have been directing and promoting these organizations for generations. A typical Western church is loaded with financial overhead like staff salaries and benefits, land ownership, mortgage payments, to name a few. If Stetzer is proposing that these institutions replicate themselves with virus-like speed and tenacity, I don't think the result will be anything resembling the Kingdom of God.

It would be awesome if he and Warren Bird took a page from Felicity Dale. Simple multiplies. We'll see how the other 8 posts in the series play out.

http://www.edstetzer.com/2012/02/viral-churches-thinking-about.html