By recommendation of my pastor & my dad, we've just started reading Jim and Casper Go to Church. OK, so, my dad lent it to us, and Josh is 2/3 the way through it and I haven't touched it yet. But, this morning, Josh & I had a good talk over breakfast about the things the book talks about, and it sounds fascinating and convicting. I admit, I attend a mega-church, or, as 'mega' as they get in the area. The premise of the book is, the author and an atheist attend prominent churches- Mosaic, Imago Dei, Saddleback, Willow Creek, etc,- and respond to what they observed.
It's funny, because a lot of what we talked about this morning was their observations of 'church marketing' - presenting ideas, music, and programs in the same way that marketers make us want to buy a product or attend an event. Is that what we need to do to get people to follow Jesus? What did Jesus do in his day? An invitation to the first disciples was "Hey, drop your nets & follow me. I want to show you something." An invitation to Mary was simple. "Stay, sit at my feet. You're choosing the better thing." The first communion invitations were "Hey, we're having Passover dinner upstairs in a couple hours. Why don't you join us?"
We don't need anything flashy, loud, colorful or trendy to be invited into God's presence- it can be as simple as a conversation.
* I'll have more thorough thoughts on the book and these ideas once I read the book. Stay tuned.
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4 comments:
Joanna, it's so odd that we read lots of the same things. I kept up with the Ebay atheist blog for months while Hemant Mehta was visiting churches. I even bought one of the books from the off-the-map website. Great resources.
One more, check out a post I wrote about Mary and Martha. It's on our community group's blogsite. You mentioning Mary made me think of it. You might enjoy the John Ortberg book as well!
http://koffee-klatch.blogspot.com/2007/09/dtr-dust-of-rabbi.html
Joanna
Thanks for blogging about our book.
Let us know what you think after you get a chance to read it
Jim and Casper
info@offthemap.com
You signed up for my giveaway, and I wanted to come over and check out your blog.
I, too, go to a megachurch (New Hope out here in Hawaii; it's everywhere!), and that sounds like an interesting book. I have to admit that one of the things that draws me to it is more the contemporary feel of everything; I guess that falls under the "marketing" aspect.
I will have to check it out!
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