Death by Church: Rescuing Jesus from His Followers Recapturing God's Hope for His People (ConversantLife.com Series) » (Original)

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.

Publishers Weekly

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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Introduction: When Jesus Comes to Church 11

Part 1 Symptoms-Washing Feet in Dirty Water

Chapter 1 Descent into Irrelevance 19

Chapter 2 Garage-Sale Jesus 31

Part 2 Soil-Back to Where We Came From

Chapter 3 The King and His Kingdom 45

Chapter 4 The Kingdom of the Church or the Church of the Kingdom? 63

Chapter 5 Interlude: Why This Matters 75

Chapter 6 More than a Ticket: Why the Four Spiritual Laws Need to Add a Few 81

Chapter 7 Hammer and Tongs 97

Part 3 Roots-Followers of the Way

Chapter 8 The Big Story of God's People 109

Chapter 9 One Is the Loneliest Number 119

Chapter 10 The Church at the End of the World 123

Chapter 11 Missional Church 101 135

Part 4 Branches-Growing into Who We Already Are

Chapter 12 The Confessional Church and the Subversive Jesus 143

Chapter 13 Worship in the Upside-Down Church 155

Chapter 14 Flesh and Blood: The Incarnational Nature of the Church 159

Chapter 15 Postures of Incarnation 171

Chapter 16 Baptism as Civil Disobedience 177

Chapter 17 Bread and Wine: The Meal of the Kingdom 187

Chapter 18 The Presence of the Future 197

Chapter 19 Beyond Left Behind 207

Part 5 Fruit-For God So Loved the World

Chapter 20 Election, Exodus, and Diaspora: The Fine Art of Cultural Engagement 217

Chapter 21 Jesus Wept: Apologies and Apologetics 231

Postscript for Pastors and Church Leaders: The Kingdom-Focused Church 239

Bibliography 249

Notes 255