Reflection on ReJesus

Friends,
Thank you for going on the ReJesus journey with us. Over 100 people read and reflected on the call to ReJesus the church and our own lives.

What I took from this time included:
1. Exploring Jesus again (and again) is the call of the Christian disciple
2. The journey to find Jesus throughout our life is a challenge that brings wonderful rewards.
3. I need to keep pushing beyond what is comfortable and easy and continually ask, where is Jesus calling me now?

I enjoyed these weeks - reading the book and the posts helped me think through my journey with Jesus and I was refreshed as a disciple.  I was also challenged to think of next steps.

Here are next steps to build on our focus on Jesus by growing in our biblical foundations:

+ Read through the New Testament. Here are a couple great reading plans
5 Minutes a Day, 5 Days A Week
90 Days to Read the New Testament

+Read the Gospel of Mark with a good study guide. I recommend:
Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark
Mark for Everyone

I will share a couple additional resources over the next several weeks.

I hope your time in our book study challenged you to renew your commitment to living as a disciple of Jesus.

Grace & Peace
Rev. Nicole Reilley
New Ministries, Cal-Pac UMC

ReJesus – Conclusion: Read This Bit Last by Craig Brown

While I am not tasked with writing a blog that draws Frost’s and Hirsch’s work to a close, it is fitting for me to at least reflect on the application they offer in the “Conclusion: Read This Bit Last”.  The fictional conversation between Peter and Paul and the drawn conclusions serve up a few new questions.

I became a Christian at the age of thirteen and began attending a small rural United Methodist Church.  I remember with vivid detail praying and inviting Christ into my life on January 17, 1982.  The prayer, while sincere was profoundly formulaic.  I attended college at a Christian University and majored in Biblical Studies and Theology with a clearly fundamentalist bent.  I remember memorizing the “Four Spiritual Laws” created by Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.  I likewise remember being trained in the nine domains of systematic theology, street evangelism, apologetics and a variety of other skills requisite to function as a leader in the fundamentalist world.  The only problem was that I was not a fundamentalist.  What it afforded me was insight into how that part of the Christian world functions.  Frost and Hirsch are part of a group of “de-toxing” fundamentalists searching for a new vision of what the church is.  The essence of this church is relational and missional.

On the other hand, I also have a strange third person relationship with United Methodism which, for some strange reason, has an aversion to talking too much about Jesus.  There were many times I would sit at Annual Conference both in plenaries and in worship before being ordained and questioned why I seldom heard the “J” word.  In the late 80’s we seemed enamored with new names and images for God but Jesus was mentioned little.  In the 90s we struggled to redefine our mission on the cusp of the 21^st century with little acknowledgement of Jesus at all (anyone remember Vision 2000?).  Now we are beginning to engage in a process of “jones-ing” up to Jesus.  It is a welcome return to becoming a church that is relational and missional.

While Hirsch and Frost actually ask an old question, “What would happen if we went back to being the church of the first century?” there is nothing at all wrong with asking it!  In my opinion, we live in a fascinating age in which two seemingly segmented arms of Christianity are beginning to ask the most fundamental question, “What does Jesus have to do with who we have become?”  Having had feet in two theological worlds, I am finding joy in observing these two polarities of the church asking the same question!  Every movement, as it ages, must ask this question of what to do with Jesus?  Both fundamentalist Christianity and mainline liberal Christianity are approaching an intersection around this question.  It only seems appropriate as they are both beginning to show their relative age!

If we are serious about this question of what to do with Jesus, then these new questions being raised in the conclusion bear asking as well:

Will we engage in assessing all we do in light of Jesus’ life and ministry?

Will we be honest about the authentic call to faithful discipleship and eschew the milquetoast commitment many of us express toward Jesus?

Will we become leaders that model and create authentic Christian community instead of telling others what it should be like?

Will we allow the Holy Spirit to be our guide and leader rather than our own machinations of strategy and vision?  (More importantly, do we have the spiritual skill set to allow that to happen?)

Will we be simply parochial or will become pastoral in temperament and mission?

Will we stand for maintenance or mission?

-Rev. Criag Brown is the pastor at San Diego First UMC

ReJesus-- Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch - Chapter 7 by Rev Brian Parcel

Jesus' Community:

        will follow the example of Jesus

        will equip all followers

        will move outward to serve others

        understands that worship is a whole-of-life exaltation of Jesus

        practices the presence of Jesus

        insists that we need to be continually re-evangelized

        learns and lives the values of Jesus

        devotes itself to scripture and the exercise of spiritual gifts

Sound refreshing?  Compelling?  Good News?  Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch assert that this description of Jesus' Community in fact is THE Good News, gleaned right from their reading of the Gospels.  They claim this kind of community would develop naturally from people who followed the example and teaching of Jesus and left behind dry, obsolete and hardened rituals and ways of the church. 

I must admit, some of the language of Re-Jesus smells of the the all too familiar "right" reading of the Biblical text and "right" theological view that is espoused all too frequently in the Christian church.  I do find it quite ironic that almost all the 'little Jesus'' that are highlighted within Re-Jesus are people who were formed by the very church of ritual and domestication that the authors are proclaiming needs reformation.  Despite these reservations I cannot help but to be drawn to the list above.

That is the life I want, I want it for my kids, I want it for my church, I want it for the community I am called to serve as a pastor.  I find the reminder that Hirsch and Frost are giving to us refreshing and necessary.  It is good to rethink Jesus considering where we have added our baggage to the seminal character of all history.  It is a must from time to time for all of us, individuals and the Church to step back and inspect where we have read our lives into the story of Jesus and covered the values of God evident in the life of Jesus with our own.

Whenever I do this, including now as I read this book, I am reminded of the same scathing critique of the Church -- the Church never seems to get it right.  The Church has always insisted, throughout history, for orthodoxy that does not necessarily conform to Christ but always conforms to the Church.  I think though, in my own life and ministry, I have become bored with this realization, argument and critique.  Of course the Church never gets it right because the Church by nature is an organization and the primary purpose of every organization must be to preserve the organization at all costs.  The argument then always turns to a movement versus an organization, but this does not work all that well either because every movement that has legs and lasting power must also organize itself for the good work it is about and thus another organization is born.  So, an organization is bound to fall short and a movement (at least one worth joining) is bound to turn into an organization......so what's left?

In the moments of life (brief as they may be) that I align my life....my ministry......my discipleship with Jesus I am reminded of the same simple truth -- Jesus always cared for the next individual in his path, and then the next, and then the next.  I have come to believe that the only part of Christianity that can truly be Christ like on a regular basis is the individual disciple of Jesus Christ.  Yes they are moments when we get it right as a team or a church or The Church, but those are moments, fleeting at best.  But an individual, that is a different story.  As a local church pastor I am always looking for signs of the real Jesus and seeking the continuation of the redemption story we find in the meta narrative of scripture.  Most often i don't find it in the work of the organized Church, rather I find it in the lives of the individual disciples who make up the church. 

I see individuals develop relationships with others who are inexplicably different in every way and yet a bond is grown that mirrors the sacrificial living for others of which Jesus was so good.        

I see individuals who give of their time, talent, finances and so much more in a way that it is clear they don't just understand but are living the Jesus lesson about heart and treasure.

I see individuals exhibit a grace to others, that I can only hope to attain someday, and yet I know this grace ought to be the striving of my life because this is the grace of which Jesus taught and with which he lived.

I was just reflecting the other day amidst an All Saints Service how fortunate and blessed I was to have known the stories of the people who's names were being read amidst this annual ritual of the church.  To some in the room they were the beloved and to others they were just a name in print but as the pastor I had a special view into their lives.  In the same way I count it a great blessing that I get to hear and experience the behind the scenes stories of how individuals in my congregation became little Jesus' for a moment in their lives.  The Church rarely seems to accomplish this incarnational nature, but the people of the church so often surprise me in the ways they become God incarnate for the other.  So while I share the angst of Frost and Hirsch over the state of the Church I am also humbled to see the many individuals who make up the Church living in real, relevant and powerful ways that bring the reality of Jesus to fruition in the lives of so many.  In the end I cannot help but to find hope.

-- Rev. Dr. Brian T. Parcel is a husband, father and Elder in the United Methodist Church and a graduate of the Claremont School of Theology (M.Div, D.Min, 2002).  Over the past 14 years he has served as Lead Pastor of three congregations in the California Pacific Conference, all three having experienced multiple factors of growth under his leadership.    He has also provided leadership for clergy training opportunities through the Board of Congregational Development and the Board of Ordained Ministry.   

Chapter 6 ReJesus Book Study by Rev. Lynn Munson

Sign holders at stadiums and on street corners, tracts handed out door to door, conversations and conflicts in our churches; all cause me a bit of dis-ease. Each reducing Christianity to a set of rules, a code of ethics, and a three-point prayer that will swing wide the gates of heaven; only for the few.  And somehow it makes me uncomfortable. In fact, it feels to me as if there is an anger and a coercion behind the proclamation. If you don’t do this…you won’t get that….and in fact you’ll get something worse. Eternal damnation…if you don’t believe exactly what I say. Did God really leave it in our hands to believe exactly the right thing; when He knows how we humans have been getting it wrong from the beginning?

I think of my daughter when she was about two. She always wanted to be near me when I was cooking. I’d open the stove, and there she was. I’d be stirring something over a burner and she wanted me to hold her. Every time...wanting to reach out and touch the hot surface or the flame. Until, one day, she saw me burn my finger, “ouch!” She witnessed me cry out and shake my hand, and pull away. After that, when we were near the oven or the stove top, she would gesture toward it and say, “owie” and pull away. The way she saw me react to the burn, she re-enacted. She followed.

For me, this is a helpful epiphany found in our chapter’s discussion on the dichotomy of Hellenistic and Hebraic worldviews. I’ve not thought about it before, that Hellenism would direct us toward a Christian Ideology; a system of ideas or ideals. And yet, authors, Frost and Hirsh invite us to consider that no person, much less, no Messiah can be reduced to an idea…or an ideal. And rather than someone to believe…as we would an idea. Jesus is someone to follow.

Additionally, the point of faith changes when not trying to labor over right-thinking; where the goal seems to be, that if we could just get the right read on scripture we’d find the fast track to holiness. Rather, if the point is, as Kierkegaard encourages, to “let the text read us,” then it is only in following Jesus’ way with us that holiness can be found.

This too, is uncomfortable. Because, I cannot control what Jesus might read in me. And I cannot control where He might lead me…or how He might lead me to change…or to do something I don’t want to do. He might even call me to love and have grace with those sign holders at stadiums and on the corner. He might bid me to welcome the tract distributors. And He might even push me into the center of those church chats to be present as He is present.

What does the Word find when it reads you (and me)?

How do we uncover our own preconceived ideas of who God is and how He responds in the world?

Rev Lynn Munson is the Senior Pastor at Yorba Linda UMC. 

Chapter 4 ReJesus Blog by Rev. Gary Bernard Williams

I thought I was finally well equipped to be the father I had always wanted to be with my youngest child Nicole. I had already walked through many life challenges of my own and thought to myself this time things will be different with this child. My other two children were raised without any input from me as their father and they had entered their young adult years with thanks to their wonderful mothers who raised them without me. Now I had a chance to have input in my third child’s life how hard could it be to raise one child with a wonderful wife that I loved with all my heart. The one thing I didn’t anticipate was the level of anxiety in “getting it right this time.” It created in me a fear that caused me to want total control over this child driving me to a place of near desperation that this little girl would become the person I envisioned her to be. I wanted to mold her into the image in my mind and my heart. There was nothing wrong with the image I had created for my daughter; it just wasn’t an image that I had allowed her to mold through a personal relationship with Christ. I was not very open to her individuality; an expression of God’s working in her life. I wanted her to be polite, caring, compassionate, but it was my perception of those qualities that I wanted her to conform to rather than allowing her to discover her own character and allow God to shape that through the ups and downs of her life. Most importantly, I wanted to “domesticate” her so my life would be comfortable.

Unfortunately, the more I struggled to mold her to my image of the ideal daughter, the more challenges I faced in truly building a loving, caring relationship where we both could reach out and draw closer to one another. In order for her to become her own person, she felt the need to break away because she felt threatened by the walls I built. Those walls discouraged her from becoming too connected to me as her father because of my need to control, mold, and shape her life. I finally came to the realization that I did not have ownership over my child that God had so graciously brought into my life. She was a gift, and my responsibility was to care for that gift in a way that allowed her to grow and find Christ in her own life, allowing God to mold her into his image. I needed to see her as someone formed by God. I haven’t by any stretch of the imagination reached that place of perfection in my relationship with my now young adult daughter. I have, however, begun the process, and our conversations have taken on a new direction that has brought us into a much better relationship where we have much more open communication and respect. I am allowing myself to see my daughter for who she is and to appreciate the woman she is becoming.

 Do we have the tendency of creating an image of Jesus in the same way? Is it our desire to shape Jesus into our own image? Do we try to domesticate Jesus to avoid seeing the real God-Man the real “Wild Messiah”? I believe we do, and in the attempt to domesticate him, we are tempted to understand him in light of what we already believe about the world through the lens of culture, race, and ethnicity. We try to place him in familiar categories; we want to have some natural, comfortable understanding of who he is. The tendency is to make him into something we might expect, what he would be like if he were our creation. In that process of re-imaging Jesus so he makes sense to us, we reduce him to the commonplace. Once we have finished our re-imaging, we can be comfortable with our lives because he will pose no threat to our complacency. “The benign images of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, have comforted and encouraged many believers” (p. 87).

In order to domesticate Jesus we also take his sayings and reconstruct them to fit our image of who he is. When Jesus says “Anyone who does not give up all that he has cannot be my disciple,” or when he says “When you give a feast, do not invite your friends and relatives, lest they repay you. Instead invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the maimed,” or “do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth,” we find it difficult to believe that we are asked to accept these sayings literally. So our tendency is to reconstruct his sayings in a way that feels more comfortable. What we have left is not true revelation. We remove ourselves from the necessity of allowing the Holy Spirit to speak into our lives in providing for us an understanding of the hard sayings of Jesus. We are easily persuaded that the life Jesus calls us to does not require our total surrender.

Our focus has been on Jesus calling us to a change in behavior, when in reality Jesus is calling us to character transformation and a changing of our hearts. We have attempted to domesticate Jesus in a way that allows us to simply express love in good deeds, but often that love doesn’t automatically come from a heart that’s focused on Christ. We have changed our behavior, but not our heart condition. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to provide self-improvement tips for better living he died on the cross to provide a way for us to be reconciled to God, and in that reconciliation, to be transformed to God’s image. We don’t always fully understand what Jesus meant when he spoke of peace, love, and doing good. It isn’t about feelings, or being nice, or tolerating others, although those are good and honorable things. It is about conforming our will to God’s will that is the only way the Church will become the “Living Body of Christ” we are called to transform the world and to present the real Jesus the “Wild Messiah” Jesus!

As I read this book I realized that I have re-imagined Jesus to be friendly and caring the kind of person I feel comfortable in befriending. Just as the Roman soldiers stripped Jesus of his clothing and placed on him one of their own military cloaks, I too have had the tendency to put on Jesus my own kind of clothes. “One of the best ways to expose our co-option of Jesus to our own personal, religious, and cultural agendas is to interpret the many images of him that we entertain” (p. 92). Can you see how our understanding of Jesus can be so easily shaped by who we are? We shape Jesus into our image through our personal reality our own needs, wants and desires. “One of the best ways to expose our co-option of Jesus to our own personal, religious, and cultural agendas is to interpret the many images of him that we entertain.”  (p. 92).

“Our point is that to reJesus the church, we need to go back to the daring, radical, strange, wonderful, inexplicable, unstoppable, marvelous, unsettling, disturbing, caring, powerful God-Man. The communities around us are crying out for him” (p. 111). Without a true understanding of Christ’s character can we find a way to really be the Church? When we distort Jesus in order to re-imagine him to fit our needs and desires, we effectively deny ourselves the opportunity to be bold proclaimers of the Gospel we claim to love so much. Our re-imagining of Jesus may provide us some comfort in the world, but we have robbed ourselves of the transforming power that can only be found in a “Wild Messiah”. It is when we see Jesus truly as he is that we receive the power to be all God calls us to be. “The church needs to find itself in league with this Jesus, staring at him in amazement and saying, as Peter did, with trembling voice, ‘What kind of man is this?’ Even the wind and waves obey him. Even wild demons obey him. Even the Pharisees quake at the thought of what he might unleash if left to his own devices’ (p.111). We need to go back to the authentic Jesus of the New Testament, whether or not that fits our re-structured image of his character and mission. For we are told in 1 Corinthians 8:6 that there is only “one Lord, Jesus Christ.” When we take Jesus out of his original context we begin to manipulate and domesticate him in such a way that what we present to the world is a caricature of him rather than a true portrait.

Questions for reflection:  What is it about your Jesus that you are trying to imitate? In what ways have we framed Jesus according to the parts of Him that appeal to us? What would our witness as the church be like if we stopped trying to shape Jesus into to our image?  

                                          Rev. Gary Bernard Williams is the pastor at Faith UMC and Hamilton UMC

Chapter Five ReJesus by Katie Kevorkian

For as long as I can remember my family has had the same nativity scene that went on display day after Thanksgiving and went back into the box on New Year’s Day. When I came home from college, I was surprised and thrilled to see that it looked quite different.

With an empty nest and no one to stop her, my mother had painted the Holy Family. The once pale white, blue eyed and blonde haired family now looked a little more like ancient Jews.

I was the child of the closest thing to a mixed race family that I knew for most of my life. My Armenian father, with his olive skin and dark features, is part of the less than three percent of people who are identified as not Caucasian in our small New England Community (really, that is what the pie chart says). My mother, a native Vermonter, identifies with the other 97%. I was somewhere in the middle, even though I looked like a white kid and enjoyed the same lifestyle and privileges as most of the population. When there is very little diversity, it is easy to pick out who is different.

I knew there was something that wasn't quite right about the nativity set for a long time, at least since I had some idea about the connections amongst geography, race and ethnicity. My father's family was decidedly not white and blonde, and Armenia looked like it was pretty close to the Holy Land on a map. Thus, I decided that Jesus must have looked Armenian. I like to think that I wasn’t that far off, but looking Armenian and being Armenian became very intertwined in my mind.

"If our conception of God is radically false, then the more devout we are the worse it will be for us" (Kindle loc 2170).  I thought first of the Westboro Baptist Church when I read this, and then Islamic Extremists. But I wondered how we can avoid being radically false. So much of our conception of God comes from our own experience- and where else would it come from? We can only imagine our God from what we know. The dinner table conversation from Talledega Nights was funny, because it is an over-the-top version of what many people do: The beautiful blonde Holy Family, Jesus as a loving father, or even viewing "Self as God" (loc 2314) (or Armenian as God, in my case).

The Shema prayer is a practical way for Christ-followers to ground ourselves in the one-ness of God amidst a society and culture that demands worship as consumerism, and value based on possessions. Lavishly decorated churches equal respect for our faith and our God, and success is measured in wealth, possessions and appearance. When we value things, God is not at the top of the pyramid, as in Hirsch’s drawings, or all the lines are squiggly and confused. We lose direction.

Valarie Kaur, an interfaith leader and civil rights lawyer, told the story of her faith journey at a youth program I helped coordinate. As a child and teenager, Valarie felt out of place with her Sikh family and Indian heritage. While singing Christian hymns with her vocal coach, she said, the realization of the one-ness of God washed over her, and she understood how to live her faith, to fit into the Sikh faith in a place where she was a minority. The one-ness of God that she was proclaiming through a hymn granted her the understanding of faith that would allow her to produce a documentary film, obtain a law degree, and now travel the world to speak about peace building and religious tolerance.

I recognize that Valarie's story is not a Christian one, but it was one of the most powerful testimonies that I had ever heard in the subject of faith and works. The recognition of the one-ness of God can be life changing; though we are told that God is One, though we profess that belief in the best of times, Christmas rolls around a few months later and we begin to worship the things we don't have, the things others have, the things we want. Of course, Christmas isn't the only time of year that we consume, but we see consumerism with much more intensity in November and December.

Questions: How do you experience the One-ness of God?  If God is One how does that change what it means to be created in God’s image and likeness?  

-Katie Kevorkian is a young adult leader and the Field Coordinator for Imagine No Malaria in the Cal-Pac Conference. Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/imaginenomalariacalpac

ReJesus Chapter 3 Reflection by Cedrick Bridgeforth

“His words and his example are the constants as we leave our old traditions and look to bring the church and the gospel into new contexts of traditional radicalism” (Pg 102) begs the question of whether an institution can truly bear the name and expresses the power of a leader and affect as powerful and engaging as Jesus.  With all that we profess to know of Jesus, entangled with all that we have engaged in and created under the banner of “The Church,” as an organization, Hirsch leads us to the brink where we, the Church, must wonder if we have created something so perfect that the imperfections of any human construct cannot even begin to hold or exhibit the character and purpose of the one after whom it was modeled. He writes:  “The authority to bring transformation to the church does not rest in the person of the leader or group but in God’s calling. If this is so, then the key to the revitalization of religious organizations is to reappropriate, or recover, their founding charism” (Pg 101).

As I read stories of the First Century martyrs and those who were gifted enough to have their stories be told beyond a generation, there seems to be a commitment and purpose to their living within the larger community that gave their individual perspective meaning. They were a part of a movement, not an organized, well or even haphazardly run organization, and their very lives and livelihood depended on the grace of the community to survive. “…the pragmatic and the traditionalist. The institution of the church (traditional and contemporary) is not without God, beauty, or blessing. And we recognize that deeply spiritual people have tirelessly worked for their advancement” (Pg 81). I am hard-pressed to determine if this what Jesus intended for those who decided to follow Him, which was always about following his teachings and living up to the ideals and consequences such a life would bring. There was power found in being one of “the Way” or one who follows Christ, but as time marches on the ethos of the movement changes, and the central figure in the movement shifts from Jesus to what Jesus said and eventually back toward a trite but true pondering – “what would Jesus do?”

To have an organization there are rules and policies in place to maintain order and to signal direction and inclusion. Hirsch points to some of the trappings the Church; such as, “running programs and services and/or guiding the laity through liturgical complexities in order to help people get to the God they are all meant to access directly through Jesus anyhow” as one way we have divided the community into classes and categories to serve a function that may not have been intended. Of course the early church set aside individual for service and for serving in varities of ways according to their gifts, but there is not a sense that some were superior to others based on professional credential or financial status. In fact, status is a blurred line in the early writings and seems to be frowned upon in Jesus rhetoric and expressions of inclusion and engagement throughout his ministry. He paused for the young and the old; the known and the unknown – all for the sake of showing love and extending grace where needed. “At the beginning of this new century, we have never needed so desperately to rediscover the original genius of the Christian experience and to allow it to strip away all the unnecessary and cumbersome paraphernalia of Christendom” (Pg 83). This is a challenge to strip away all of the extras that create barriers between Jesus and the movement that directs others toward him and his witness, which is what ultimately allows all to experience him.  But, people encounter Jesus and interpret their experience in ways the project a necessity of like-experience upon others without acknowledging cultural or social location as a platform for experience. Hirsch address this in the following: “What happens in the beginning of a movement is that they people encounter the divine in a profound and revelatory way, but with successive generations this encounter tends to fade like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy” (Pg 86). Successive experiences dampen or weaken and thus ritual and writings are created to shape experiences, but those rituals and experiences are removed from the original source and may not reflect the original intent or expression of the Jesus who made it all possible. “But for the disciple, the simple truth must remain; one cannot bolt down, control, or even mediate the essential God encounter in rituals, priesthoods, and theological formulas. We all need to constantly engage the God who unnerves, destabilizes, and yet enthralls us. The same is true for our defining relationship with Jesus” (Pg 87).

It is obvious the Church, as an organization has sought to do good in the world and in the lives of those who venture in and dare to bear the name and character of Christ. However, what seems to be missing and lacking in our present age is not new to the organization. In fact, what we experience today was noted in the 17^th Century by Blaise Pascal who  “uttered these incisive words about the spiritual condition of the Christianity of his day: “Christendom is a union of people who, by means of the sacraments, excuse themselves from their duty to love God” (Pg 88). If we, on some level, did not believe we, as an organization or church, has strayed away from the path set by the Jesus we want to know, love, immolate and share, we would not be reading a book with this title. There is a longing to right the organization and move in alignment with what God intended and with what Jesus said and did, but, as Hirsch writes, “To reJesus the church, we must first look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether the strange and wonderful God-Man has invaded our life with purpose and freshness. If Christianity minus Christ equals religion, then Christianity plus Christ is the antidote to religion”(Pg 93). We must strip away the pieces and parts of ourselves that make us comfortable being a member, leader and participant within an organization that stands over-against the principles of the Man and the Movement that started what has diverted from original intent and effect.

Are there obvious organizational trappings do you experience that make it impossible for the Church as you know it to be a true reflection of the Jesus you want to know or once knew?

How can the Church, as you know it, be place where relationship and experience of Jesus is so profoundly different from every other experience in one’s life that individuals are able to revision and reconnect in ways that allow for and encourages the kind of faith which unites with Christ and inspires beyond a set moment in time? 

Cedrick Bridgeforth is an elder in the Cal-Pac Conference and is the District Superintendent of the North District.

Chapter 2 Blog Post – ReJesus by Bonnie Piazza

A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church.  What?  What?  A wild Messiah?  I am thinking more like passive but stern, displaying tough love when necessary.  The only wildness I would point to is His rant in the temple over the selling of goods in His Father’s House.  I have to admit the word wild scared me a bit, but I decided to read on anyway.

Chapter 2 Titled ReJesus and Personal ReNewal sounds like something I could handle reading and writing reflections about.  It may be helpful for you to know I am one of the laity writing this blog post so my perspective is from a theological perspective. I have spent my life in the church, which is another story as it relates to this book and comments I make here and I have not “studied” the scriptures. So I am asking for a wee bit of grace as you read my excerpt.

After a lifetime in Christian churches you would think I would have a pretty good sense of what The Great Commission is all about right? Well….I am a bit embarrassed to admit I don’t.  It has only been in the last 15 years that I have even heard the term (thanks to my UMC family), but still am not motivated to act.  Hmmm, why?  This is not a poke at you pastor folks, but more of an observation I think many Sunday Christians experience.  Well yes, I could have sought out the meaning as I do when I have other questions about Christianity, such as forgiveness, grace, death etc.  As I read it was helpful to understand that the things of this world, capture my imagination (p.45).  You name it, kids, work, what’s for dinner, driving, etc, etc. These things, worldly things, just as those living in the time of Christ dealt with their own day in and day out list of to do’s, tend to constantly pull my attention away from focusing on Jesus and seeking to become more like him.  So what is one to do?

The authors use the concept of rebooting to Jesus.  It means just what you think.  When our computers get messed up and we get frustrated with all the reasons why and all the crap we did to it over its lifetime, sometimes you just have to start over from scratch.  So we reboot back to the way it was originally and hope it fixes the problem.  Now we all know the only real fix in life is Jesus.  So who couldn’t use a reboot to Jesus every now and then? So this is a concept I like and can relate to.  But yet I am challenged to find out more about what that actually looks like.

I am not much for movies so I haven’t seen the movie they referred to in this chapter. The authors talk about the movie “V for Vendetta” (p.49) to describe how the leader got his followers to replicate him in order to overtake the government.  He talks and talks to them and before you know it they are marching towards the government, dressed just like the leader with a passion to overtake. They translate this scene to Jesus and discipleship saying that the more we as individuals become like Him, we grow together into a group (church) and then into a movement (discipleship together as church).  They go on to say that having a pastor simple state “go and make disciples” isn’t enough.  In order for Matthew 28 to be effective it must become an act of love and grace not an order.  When you are a devoted follower, you just live out the Great Commission without realizing it.  I love page 54, the authors’ reference:

 “Jesus does not disciple people by generating information, developing programs, or implementing plans. Rather, Jesus’ discipleship always involved a deeply personal process of being drawn into becoming more like the image, or form, of Jesus.”

To that I say AMEN.  Fully understanding that through these plans and programs we can disciple to those who participate.  So just what is being said above?  I wonder what should I focus on if I am to strive to Re-Jesus”?  And in good form we get the tables on pages 56-58.  Hallelujah!  This I can do.  This helps me start somewhere on living out my faith and spreading the gospel.  This table is a list of core truths about Jesus that he laid out for us as a guide map.

I encourage you to study this section row by row.  Maybe one per day or week to see how it feels to work the examples into your life. 

At the end of the day, I believe this chapter is trying to help one reset back to the basics of what Jesus asked us all to do.  Once that is understood, and we follow suite, the end of the chapter begins to focus on what the Missional Jesus did in order to prepare us for what Re-Jesus looks like for us a church.  (Whew! Was that a run on sentence?) The last paragraph on pg 61 makes reference to just that:

“Renewal will begin with each of us…it will have consequences for the renewal of the church as a whole.”

-Bonnie Piazza is the owner of Piazza Childcare Solutions and Piazza Consulting. Bonnie lives in Tustin with her husband and two kids.  

Chapter 1 - ReJesus

It is interesting for me to recognize that, among all the Jesus books on my bookshelf, that the book that has most shaped my desire to know and follow Jesus more faithfully is a work of historical fiction: Silence by the Japanese novelist, Shusako Endo. Silence is set in the historical context of a Jesuit missionary effort to Japan in the early 1600’s. About 40 years after the first Christian priest arrived in Japan in 1549, Japanese rulers grew hostile to Christianity and expelled all Christian missionaries; missionaries who defied the expulsion order, along with their Japanese converts, were subjected to extreme torture.

From the beginning of the Jesuit mission, until the year 1632, and in spite of crucifixions, burnings, water-torture, and the like, no missionary had ever apostatized. However, in 1632, after six hours of torture, Fr. Chistovao Ferreira became the first missionary to give the signal of apostasy. To make matters worse, it became known that Fr. Ferreira was collaborating with his former persecutors.

This is where the historical imagination of Shusako Endo takes over. The protagonist of Silence is Fr. Sebastian Rodrigues, a Portuguese priest who believes he will redeem the failure of Fr. Ferreira by entering Japan secretly, to minister to Japanese converts in a small rural fishing village. Warned that Japanese authorities are aware of his presence, Fr. Rodrigues is encouraged to escape and hide. But from his hiding place, Rodrigues is able to see converts being arrested, tortured, and killed. As he watches his flock suffer, Rodrigues becomes frustrated at God’s silence; that God will not answer the priest’s heartfelt prayers on behalf of those who are suffering for their faith in Christ.

Rodrigues is eventually captured and prepares himself for noble martyrdom by concentrating on the image of Christ that he carries in his mind’s eye. Standing before his captors, Rodrigues refuses their invitation to renounce his faith by stepping upon a bronze image (‘fumie’) of Christ. But Rodrigues is surprised to learn that his captors have no plans to torture or make a martyr of him. Instead, he’s detained in a cell where he hears the tormented cries of converts who are being tortured for their faith. Rodrigues learns that it is their suffering -- the suffering of the Japanese peasants – that will come to an end, if only he will step on the image of Christ as a sign of his apostasy.

As Rodrigues weighs his decision, he is confronted by the apostate priest, Fr. Chistovao Ferreira. Ferreira says to Rodrigues, “You make yourself more important than [those being tortured]. You are preoccupied with your own salvation. If you say that you will apostatize, those people will be taken out of the pit. They will be saved from suffering. Certainly, Christ would have apostatized for them.”

Brought once again before the bronze image of Christ, Rodrigues hears Jesus’ voice breaking through God’s long silence:  “Trample! Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I came into this world. It was to share man’s pain that I carried my cross.” 

At that moment Rodrigues discovers Jesus is very different from the Christ he had imagined. Rodrigues reflects, “I know that my Lord is different from the God that is preached in the churches.”

…

In the first chapter of ReJesus, Frost and Hirsch seem to be making the same point as Endo; that when we really encounter Jesus, he is much different from what is preached about in the churches. The purpose of ReJesus is to reintroduce this wild Jesus so that we will become captivated by his agenda. The authors’ assert, “this book is dedicated to the recovery of the absolute centrality of the person of Jesus in defining who we are as well as what we do.” (p. 8) Frost and Hirsch then state, “Today, we need to accept Jesus as our guide, as well as our Savior. And only a savior as human as the one portrayed in the Gospels could ever be our guide.” (p. 22) (Here, Frost and Hirsch to seem push back against a ‘one-or-the-other’ argument between competing atonement theories by saying that Jesus both ransomed us from sin and death, AND emphasizing that his redemptive life was lived to transform our mode of living.)

What happens when we are captivated by Jesus’ agenda? Well, he changes everything! Frost and Hirsch focus on how, when we align ourselves with Jesus’ agenda, we begin to see God differently, the Church differently, and the world differently. Here are a few of the observations that I highlighted as I read about how Jesus changes our way of seeing in each of these three areas:

1.) You Will See God Differently. Frost and Hirsch note that when our imaginations are taken captive by Jesus, we begin to see God as “one who sends himself to us rather than waiting for us to come to him” (p. 24) and “…we see a God so devoted to his broken planet that he issues himself forth to redeem it.” (p. 27) (The Parable of the Prodigal Son comes to mind.) Additionally they claim, “Through Jesus’ death God has entered into our world for good. God will now no longer dwell in temples, but in the hearts of those who serve God.” (p. 28)

2.) You Will See the Church Differently. Echoing a common criticism of what the institutional church has become, the authors assert that Jesus “is antireligious, offering his followers direct access to the Father, forgiveness in his name, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, to be ‘reJesused’ is to come to the recognition that the church as the New Testament defines, it is not a religious institution but rather a dynamic community of believers who participate in the way of Jesus and his work in this world.” (p. 29) Quoting Robert McAfee Brown, Frost and Hirsch affirm that the task of this dynamic community is “to create foretastes of the Kingdom of God on this planet—living glimpses of what life is meant to be, which include art and music and poetry and shared laughter and picnics and politics and moral outrage and special privileges for children only and wonder and humor and endless love.” (p. 29)

3.) You Will See the World Differently. In speaking to this theme, the authors are not focused on the planet in general, but on how we see other inhabitants of the world who are not believers. They state, “The vision Jesus brings is one where the believers learns to identify and tease out [the image of God] in others.” Further, “If we reJesus the church, we will lead it toward a greater respect for the unbelievers, a greater grace for those who, though they don’t attend church services, are nonetheless marked by God’s image.” (p. 34)

This initial chapter of ReJesus concludes in the same way I began this reflection: by citing a work of fiction by Flannery O’Connor called, Parker’s Back. And in referencing this short story, Frost and Hirsch do much the same thing that Shusako Endo does in Silence; they highlight how difficult it is for one who considers themself a devout and committed Christian to actually understand or appreciate what God was doing in the incarnation.

As most of us in this ReJesus book study are ministers, or at least very committed Christians, we need to challenge ourselves with the question, “Where and how are we failing to understand and appreciate the incarnation?” Are we inclined to read or listen to those particular sources that prop up the beliefs we already have about Jesus? Or, are we willing to keep our eyes and hearts open, even to those whose images of Jesus are very different than our own?

-Robb Fuesler

Rev Robert Fuesler is the pastor at Aldersgate UMC in Tustin, California.  Robb has served at La Jolla UMC, Borrego Springs UMC and Atascadero UMC.  Besides spending time with his wife and children, Pastor Robb enjoys reading, golf, body surfing, cinema, and a good cup of coffee.

Introduction to “ReJesus” by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost

Westminster Abbey- 20th Century Martyrs

Welcome to our ReJesus Book Study! This is a book study sponsored by the New Ministries Essential Ministry Team, and I am Rev. Nicole Reilley, the Director of New Ministries (Interim) and host for this 10-week study.

Each Monday you will read a new post written by clergy and laity in the California-Pacific Conference who will engage with the book and open a dialogue so you may participate.  You may engage the weekly chapters by responding to the post, talking about the post with others, or reflecting on the post for yourself.  It is up to you!  All we invite you to do is to enter into the topic and give it space for the Holy Spirit to work within you, your heart and your mind.  We hope that you will share the posts with others via social media so we might enter into Conference-wide discussion together.

The book, ReJesus, was selected after I attended a leadership event this summer at which Alan Hirsch spoke.  He challenged those in attendance (various lay persons and clergy from the Western Jurisdiction of the UMC) to start the United Methodist denomination’s renewal with coming anew to the person of Jesus Christ.  He reminded us that when we start with Jesus--and develop our way of being church and engaging with the world out of that relationship--it changes everything.  Hirsch challenged us not to start with renewal in the church, or with a focus on getting into the mission field, but to instead to order everything we do from the context to our relationship with Jesus. He is to be our Touchstone, our Guiding Star.  Hirsch believes that, if we get our Christology (our understanding of the nature of Jesus the Christ) right, things will bloom.

With this in mind, I began ReJesus.  But honestly, I was troubled by where it begins. In the introduction to this book, Hirsch and Frost share story after story of folks who love Jesus but lived in ways that look anything but “Christlike”. And here is the challenge: we can love Jesus and worship him, claiming to his followers, BUT lead lives that look nothing like his.  And this isn’t just a problem for a couple of people who “got it wrong,” but for scores of us whose lives are nothing like the one we call Lord and Savior.  How can this be and what can we do about it?

I thought about this over the last couple of weeks as I watched my own shortcomings, one after another: A homeless person asked for help but I was rushing to lunch and didn’t stop.  A friend was in need but I ignored it, hoping someone else would help because her situation overwhelmed me.  I felt the need for extended time of prayer but found myself surfing the Web instead.  I couldn’t help but see how I fell short over and over again, and it caused me to wonder - Is Jesus my Guiding Star?  Do I have my Christology right?  

Now I might normally have these thoughts but it’s my habit to rush by them.  I am good at excuses and reasons why I don’t live as I know I can.  But, as I continued to read, I felt the hot burning wisdom of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Civil Rights leader who spoke these words into my uneasiness.  She said, “If you are not putting that claim (that you are a Christian) to the test, where the rubber meets the road, then it’s high time to stop talking about being a Christian.” (Kindle edition of ReJesus, page 407). Her words challenge me past my excuses and explanations. Her witness called me to consider how much of a “little Jesus” I am and how I could grow more into who God has called me to be.

I hope you will join in the weekly study, reading the book along with us and listening for the Spirit’s voice.  May these next ten weeks be a time of searching for our Guiding Star and living into whom he is calling us, both as individuals and as a church, to be.          

-Nicole Reilley, NReilley@cal-pac.org

Questions for reflection:

What response do you have as to how one’s faith in Jesus can be totally disconnected from how one lives?

What would it be like to live as “little Jesus”? What feelings and thoughts does this bring up for you?

What words of Jesus most stand in contrast to how you live?