Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions (Relit Theology)

Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions (Relit Theology) | Gerry Breshears, Mark Driscoll | Great book

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Vintage Jesus: Tim...

	Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions (Relit Theology) Gerry Breshears, Mark Driscoll Crossway Books, 2008 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Some two thousand years after he walked the earth, Jesus Christ is still a hot topic. And for all the ridiculous, twisted, Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracy theories and lies about Jesus that have permeated popular culture and even the academy over the years, the truth about his character, nature, and work has not changed. So what exactly is the truth about Jesus Christ?
That's the question the authors of Vintage Jesus seek to answer by breaking it down into a number of sub-questions about Jesus, including Is Jesus the only God? Why did Jesus come to earth? Did Jesus rise from death? Why should we worship Jesus? and others.

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Vintage Jesus

If you only can read one other book in your life, other than the Holy Bible, this is it. The authors meet you head-on, no sugar coatings, no fluff or beating around the issues. This book is substanciated by scripture and after reading many books about the Bible, Jesus and other outside the Bible publications, this book nails it. I have ordered other books by Mark Driscoll and have preordered several that are due out soon. I have purchased 10 books to give to my children and friends and will probably purchase another 10 in the near future. They all agree with my enthusiam about this publication. It's a must. It may step on some toes, but it will open your eyes. It also doesn't hurt that Mark Driscoll has a sense of humor that I can relate to.
I highly recommend this for anyone struggling with their christian existance, as well as ones who think they are already saved. A must.

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Great book

This book does a good job of describing the necessity of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ

Solid as a rock!

This book is very well written. It's got everything a bible-believing Christian would want in a book- theology, sarcasm, humor, facts, stories, and JESUS! I love Driscoll because he holds fast to the Bible and to Jesus yet is able to hold culture in an open hand. So much of the American Christian culture now blends with the secular culture around it. The result is truth is relative, in order to be an "educated" Christian we need to engage in "conversations" about Christian beliefs and allow room to change what the bible says about God and what the culture says about Jesus. Well, Driscoll does not let that happen, amen!!

This book is a great hermaneutic about the life of Jesus and answers so many questions that both non-christians and christians have about Jesus and his life. Driscoll really keeps Jesus at the center of the book and then lets culture come from the outside. In this book Jesus influences culture. So much of the Christian church today lets culture be in the center and Jesus sits on the outside.

This book benefits everyone, both for the non-christian who knows peanuts about Jesus, to the new christian who needs a foundation for his life, and to the pastor who preaches to hundreds and thousands of people every week about Jesus. I think that this book will have the same influence on the church 50 years from now that C.S. Lewis's books now have.

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Vintage Jesus: Mark Driscoll, technology, and timely questions

I'm currently reading a book called Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions by Mark Driscoll, pastor of a megachurch in Seattle. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek in places, but quite appropriate and provocative. Living in the Bible Belt for the past two years, I've come to realize how much American culture has become inundated with pop Christian iconography. Where I live in Tennessee, everyone is a "Christian." Sometimes, it makes me not want to be one. It brings back memories of living in Seville, Spain, where every street corner and public edifice had a picture or reference to Christ or his mother Mary. Yet, most people I ran into had no idea about the biblical Jesus, the God who came to earth as a man to liberate all of humanity from sin and death. Maybe what America (and Spain) needs is a fresh look at the real Jesus, not how we want him to be, but who he was and is.

To introduce such a Jesus, Driscoll's book begins with a sobering and less-than-conventional Gospel story:

Roughly two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in a dumpy, rural, hick town, not unlike those today where guys change their oil, think pro wrestling is real, find women who chew tobacco sexy, and eat a lot of Hot Pockets with their uncle-daddy. Jesus' mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was mocked for claiming she conceived via the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted a crazy story to cover the "fact" that she was knocking boots with some guy in the backseat of the car at the prom. Jesus was adopted by a simple carpenter named Joseph and spent the first thirty years of his life in obscurity, swinging a hammer with his dad. (Vintage Jesus, p. 11)

Just as his book begins unconventionally, Mark Driscoll's career as a minister wasn't your textbook Bible school graduate story. Raised behind a strip club, Driscoll got his start at life by getting into fights, being sexually promiscuous, and joining a social fraternity in college. As a business school undergrad, he became a Christian at age 19. When he was 20, he finally read the Bible cover-to-cover and started questioning what it meant to be part of the mission of Jesus. At age 25, without any formal seminary training, he started his own church with 12 attendees. In 11 years, church attendance has increased to over 6,000.

At Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA, which is reported to be the least-churched city in America, Driscoll tackles taboo topics that many mainline preachers are wary to approach. Having his beginnings with the likes of Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt, he was initially an advocate for the "Emerging Church" movement in the 90s. He has since distanced himself from those who adopt more of a "progressive theology" stance on doctrine. He often criticizes liberal Christians and "their Emergent offspring," saying that he wants more than the "Jesus in a pink dress" or a God that he can beat up. (In Jesus for President, another book pointing to the cultural success of Jesus as a pop icon, authors Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw actually criticize Driscoll's treatment of Jesus as being unbiblical. Someone is always reacting to someone else, it seems.) Mark explains his reasoning for disassociating himself from McLaren, Pagitt, and others, despite their common desire to see Christianity represented in a culturally relevant and "seeker-sensible" manner:

"In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake." (Wikipedia)

Driscoll is open, authentic, and brutally honest. He is known to regularly shout out not-oft-mentioned sins from the pulpit (such as oral sex outside of wedlock) followed by a call to genuine repentance and to life in Christ. He does not walk on eggshells in his preaching nor in his writing, and this authenticity is what makes him so particularly appealing. With Vintage Jesus, he takes what might be considered dry theological vignettes and makes them extremely relevant by providing real-life examples and injecting pieces of pop culture into each chapter.

By quoting the likes of Hugh Heffner, Ghandi, and Bart Simpson, while juxtaposing that with biblical doctrine, Mark can make you laugh and squirm in your seat at the same time. He pulls no punches, but also preaches a message of hope and salvation based on grace alone.

In his preaching ministry, he uses technology to connect with a younger audience. Whether it's addressing his 3900 friends on Facebook or utilizing text messaging (within the walls of a church!) to answer difficult life questions about anything from making crude jokes to hating religion, he is passionate about connecting a younger generation with theological truth and a practical Christian worldview. Because of these and other non-traditional methods of incarnating Christ, Driscoll's church has quickly become the eighth most influential in America. It continues to grow exponentially.

In the spirit of openness, Driscoll encourages his congregants--and the world--to "Ask Anything" of him. He continues this practice in Vintage Jesus by pairing up with theologian Gerry Breshears to answer simple questions about Christian orthodoxy at the end of each chapter .

Mark often marries his passion for the Bible with technology. He recently prepared for a sermon series entitled "Religion Saves and Nine Other Misconceptions" by soliciting questions on his website (www.marshillchurch.org). The results were more than 900 questions, 550,000 comments and 343,000 votes that determined the top nine questions Driscoll would be answering in the series.

This pastor's rise to success can be traced back to people's increasing fascination with a preacher who is curiously liberal in cultural propriety (he is an avid viewer of TV sitcom The Office and calls those who aren't fans to "repent"), while theologically conservative (he claims John Calvin and C.H. Spurgeon among his personal heroes). To say the least, Driscoll is an anomaly in the church, but one who is welcomed with a sigh of religious relief and maybe a scratch on the head. Every Sunday, he preaches to urban twenty-somethings and young families, many sporting mohawks and tattoos. On each side of the stage are bouncers who wear fitted black T-shirts reading "SECURITY". Apparently, he has needed them ever since he started receiving numerous death threats and was charged while preaching on-stage by a man with a knife in 2006.

As a preacher and writer, Pastor Mark is indeed provocative, to say the least. Yet, his provocation (although sometimes met with a knife mid-service) is also welcomed by many. His sermon podcast is ranked Number 1 in the "Religion and Spirituality" section on iTunes. Perhaps, no one has yet done such a fine job of combining complex theological truths with cultural relevance and technology, but who knows what Driscoll's methodologies will provoke. His new book will do probably what his preaching has already done - anger many, while calling others to life-changing repentance. Most likely, that was the author's intention - to leave no gray areas, but to present readers with a clear decision to accept or deny this Jesus presented.

Although it is still too early to tell, Driscoll's Vintage Jesus may do for this generation of young seekers what Lewis' Mere Christianity and McDowell's More than a Carpenter did for theirs... with the addition of quotes by Marilyn Manson and the described-in-detail bodily functions of baby Jesus.

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good college small group book

This is a great book to use with a college small group. It is easy to read,entertaining,informative, and funny yet very orthodox. We're using it to train new leaders and get to know where students are with their basic beliefs. Driscoll can be caustic and over the line at times as he is want to do, but i think the way he confronts common misconceptions and ideas in the world of christendom more than makes up for the burned bridges. He is logical, upfront, and honest . . . with a few glimpses of compassion! :-)

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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