ReJesus - Frost & Hirsch

Here are a few quotes from Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s book, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church.

Jesus is the center of all, the object of all, whoever does not know him, knows nothing aright, either of the world or of himself.

Blaise Pascal in Frost & Hirsch, p. 1

The means to know God is Christ, whom no one may know unless they follow after him with their life.

Hans Denck (1)

Surely the challenge for the church today is to be taken captive by the agenda of Jesus, rather than seeking to mold him to fit our agendas, no matter how noble they might be. We acknowledge that we can never truly claim to know him completely. We all bring our biases to the task. But we believe it is inherent in the faith to keep trying and to never give up on this holy quest. The challenge before us is to let Jesus be Jesus and to allow ourselves to be caught up in his extraordinary mission for the world. (10)

In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose. It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in Him.
C. S. Lewis (17)

We readily acknowledge that none of us have within us the fortitude, the grace, the courage, and the imagination to actually be like Jesus. It is a lost cause. But it’s a lost cause made worth it by the forgiveness and grace shown us in Jesus’ death on our behalf. By dying for us to set us free from the penalty for our sinfulness, he doesn’t nullify the call to good works and godly living. Rather, he elevates from an endless and hopeless attempt to impress God to a joyful adventure of enjoying Christ’s presence by imitating him. The quest to emulate Jesus isn’t folly. When it’s embraced by those who know they are forgiven for all the ways they will fall short, it is a daring exploit! (17-18)

Through Jesus’ eyes, the church is the sent people of God. A church is not a building or an organization. It is an organic collective of believers, centered on Jesus and sent out into the world to serve others in his name. When we are taken captive by the Nazarene carpenter, we can no longer see ourselves as participants in a similar system to the one he came to subvert. Not only does Jesus undermine temple theology by becoming the temple himself, but also he undermines the sacrificial system by dispensing with sin without reference to ceremonial washings, rituals, or liturgies (“Go in peace, your sins are forgiven”). . . he also plays fast and loose with the legalism of Sabbath keeping. In fact, he subverts the whole religious system. So why would he do that simply to replace it with a Christian religious system? He doesn’t! He 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. (28-29)

We believe that Christology is the key to the renewal of the church in every age and in every possible situation it might find itself. The church must always return to Jesus in order to renew itself. . . Christology must determine missiology (our purpose and function in the world), which in turn must determine ecclesiology (the cultural forms and expressions of the church). (42-43)

When we engage mission only because we feel guilty that we haven’t pleased Jesus and his order in the so-called Great Commission, we satisfy neither Jesus nor our own sense of calling. Rather, says (David) Bosch, mission emerges from a deep, rich relationship with Jesus. The woman whose husband never brings her flowers doesn’t want flowers. She wants him and his devotion. What Jesus is saying to his disciples in Matthew 28 is that little Jesuses will be naturally and normally about the business of making disciples, not to satisfy Jesus’ demands but out of complete devotion for him. (50)

Dallas Willard rightly bemoans the fact that for quite a while now the churches in the Western world have not made discipleship a condition of being a Christian.

One is not required to be, or to intend to be, a disciple in order to become a Christian, and one may remain a Christian without any signs of progress toward or in discipleship. Contemporary Western churches do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership – either of entering or continuing in fellowship of a denominational or local church . . . So far as the visible institutions of our day are concerned, discipleship is clearly optional . . . . Churches are therefore filled with “undiscipled disciples.” “Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ.”
(51)

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (51)

Christianity – (minus) Christ = Religion (68)

. . . 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. It is like the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. They tried to shore up the manna from heaven for another day. Religion can give into the same temptation to try to store up and rely on the souvenirs of a past spiritual experience.

The more one replaces a fresh daily encounter with Jesus with religious forms, over time he is removed from his central place in the life of the church. The result of this removal (by whatever means) is the onset of dead religion in the place of living faith. (70)