Saturday Afternoon Book Review: John Frye (reviews me)

John Frye sent me this review and without looking at it I decided to post it… and then I read it…

One.Pastor on One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow Dr. John W Frye, Fellowship Evangelical Covenant Church

Pastors live in strong gospel crosswinds. One wind is created by those who are stridently trying to keep alive the reduced gospel spawned by market-driven evangelicalism. The growing crosswind is offered by those who yearn for and discern the robust gospel of Jesus Christ anchored in Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God.

One gospel says “accept Christ” and the other one says “follow Jesus.” One aims at getting people to heaven when they die. The other aims at getting heaven actively involved in history now. “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth.” One gospel wants to create a new people of God. The robust gospel sees the people of God partnering with God in proclaiming and living Jesus’ resurrection newness as it is breaking out in the whole universe.

As a pastor, I am thankful to have a scholar-friend-author like Dr. Scot McKnight. In his  newest book One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow (Zondervan), Scot expresses his gratitude for the reduced-gospel tradition from which he came, but he dares to push against the confining smallness of America’s popular gospel. Here’s our problem today. Not only do we not like ultimatums, but we have too many Christians who have accepted Jesus into their hearts and who have been baptized and who have confessed their sins and who have joined the Church and who are in Bible studies and who are absolutely 100 percent convinced they are going to heaven, but are not followers of Jesus…The mark of a follower of Jesus is following (115-116).

The reduced gospel has produced a wobbly community of Christians. What does wobbly mean? Scot lists several symptoms and here is one: American Christians can worry themselves into a lather about the gay marriage debate and do nothing for the 26,500 children who die daily from preventable diseases (58-59). The reduced gospel cannot stand against the person and teachings of Jesus about whom “nothing was wobbly.” Many people who attend our churches were assured that heaven was theirs based on “accepting Jesus into their hearts.” With the big issue of eternity settled, why not hunker down into the wrecked consumerist, material culture, be nice, make a living, avoid sin, create Christian bubbles to live in, learn it, buy in and wait until Jesus comes back (or we die)?

Pastors deal with the Bible a lot. Christ-centered pastors are in the Gospels a lot. Scot McKnight admits that his calling as a university professor has allowed him to saturate his heart, soul, and mind in the Gospels and rest of the New Testament. He is stunned that the reduced gospel promoted as the “real thing” is not ever found on the lips of Jesus.

Scot and other scholars and pastors discern a robust, kingdom-of-God-gospel thundering through the New Testament. We may be able to accept the tidy steps of the reduced gospel. The robust gospel can’t be accepted. It is too immense, too intense, too explosive, too adventurous. The robust gospel is a hurricane into which we step and find the loving, large, active heart and hands of God at work in the world now. Could anemic churches be the product of the reduced gospel? Jesus’ robust gospel created a courageous, robust church. I am grateful for One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow. The church will be better for it.