My Review of Viral Jesus by Ross Rohde

When I got the email inviting bloggers to review Viral Jesus: Rediscovering the Contagious Power of the Gospel by Ross Rohde, I thought a few things. Looks like they misspelled his last name and it’s endorsed by Neil Cole, the author of Organic Church. Sign me up.

Here’s the description from the Publisher:
“By returning to what we once had… We can recover what we once enjoyed. In the early centuries Christianity was an explosive, viral movement that spread by word of mouth. Persecution could not stop it. In fact, it often helped to spread it.
But today, the gospel is no longer spreading like wildfire throughout the Western world. Slowly, Christianity has morphed into something much different…a stable institutionalized religion that no longer grips us with the excitement and spirituality of the early years.  Ross Rohde believes that this excitement and passion can be recaptured. In Viral Jesus he uses examples from the Bible and today to explore how we can return to our roots and once again enjoy the excitement, simple spirituality, and explosive growth of early Christianity.”

If this is your first entry point into the organic/missional church, this may be a helpful read for you. Especially if you have charismatic leanings as Ross does. There’s quite a bit that I appreciated about Ross’ big picture thoughts and he seems like a type of [Read more…]

Reflecting on the Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day A Week Later – Post 1

I took some time off last week, hung out with my family and decided to cut back on my social media intake and blogging. I know I’m late in posting on this but like with many things, I want to add to the conversation and be counted for whatever it is I am for/against. These thoughts have been brewing for a little while now and though I thought twice about posting on the Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, I am getting a handle on my words now.

I had the privilege of given the sermon last week; it was on the imprecatory Psalms, specifically Ps. 109 and was called, “A Song to My Enemy.” Toward the end, I tried to make the point that Christians can not simultaneously build the Kingdom of God and fight a culture war. They are mutually exclusive and simply put, Jesus calls us to seek first the Kingdom of God.

I also tried to make the point that “others” are not our enemies and that includes “liberal ‘whatevers’, ultra-conservative (insert [Read more…]