Death by Church - Softcover

Erre, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0736924965 ISBN 13: 9780736924962

Publisher: Harvest House Publishers, 2009

Synopsis

The church is Jesus hands and feet today. But critics see it as hypocritical, irrelevant, and unloving. Materialism and consumerism abound. Mike Erre, teaching pastor and author of Jesus of Suburbia and Why Guys Need God, reveals how this has happened and how Christians can more effectively demonstrate Christ s presence by again becoming... incarnational allowing Jesus to live in and through His people eucharistic reenacting the ministry and sacrifice of Jesus to the world baptismal dying to old ways of thinking and presenting the resurrection of Jesus as the beginning of the renewal of all things communal correcting an overly individualistic spirituality by living as the community of God eschatological presenting a more helpful and hopeful interpretation of the end of our story Readers will discover how the church can cooperate with Jesus in the world in which they live.

About this title

Reviews

Entertainment-oriented. Hypocritical. Idolatrous. Consumerist. A mess. These are only some of the terms Erre uses to describe the plight of the church in contemporary American culture. A teaching pastor at Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa, Calif., and author of The Jesus of Suburbia, Erre delves into the Bible and church history to make the case that the church needs to recover its communal, subversive, confrontational, countercultural truth-telling mission of incarnating the upside-down way of the kingdom of God. Drawing on the writings of scholars in and outside of the evangelical tradition, the writer takes a fresh and compelling look at how a kingdom-focused community would approach such Christian fundamentals as mission, worship, evangelism, the Eucharist and apologetics. A culturally marginalized church, he argues, can still be a place of hope, engaging the world and pointing to God's rule. While ceding no ground on traditional Christian doctrine, this thought-provoking book is a powerful bill of indictment and an inspirational template for church reformation that may resonate with believers and nonbelievers alike. A too brief postscript offers suggestions for clergy who want to create the kingdom-focused church in their own congregations. (Jan.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0736924965
• ISBN 13: 9780736924962
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272