Skip to main content

Speaking of Jesus

Have you heard the one about Jesus? According to Carl Medearis, author of Speaking of Jesus, you'd like that one. No joke.

I just finished Carl's book in less than a week, and I'm not the fastest reader. The sub-title, The Art of Not-Evangelism, says it all. This was a refreshing conversation that ended with me face-to-palm saying, 'of course, it is that simple!'

At under 200 pages, Carl pounds the point home that Jesus is what we should be talking about, not religion. Jesus is what attracts people, not our explanations of how our denominations began or even why our non-denominations began. He walks us through his experiences, his conversations and through the Gospel accounts of Jesus and points out the simplicity of living like this.

At the same time, he naturally points out the need and his belief that doctrine is important. He's not about to start denying basic truths about Jesus, God, the Bible, or anything else that we defend. He just says we don't need to defend them when we're talking to people.

I think he may be on to something here. If you knew the end of your conversation wasn't going to end with 'I guess we'll have to agree to disagree' but instead 'I'd like to know more about a guy like that', wouldn't you want to change what you talk about? If our whole purpose is supposed to be about pointing people to Jesus, shouldn't we spend more time pointing people to Jesus?

I received this book for free from my friends at Speak Easy. They ask me to say what I think, but they don't tell me what to think. I think this book is a very good, and important, piece of conversation we should be having. Here's some more you can check out from Carl.

Carl’s blog: http://www.carlmedearis.com/blog/

Book excerpt from Speaking of Jesus read by Carl Medearis (seriously, give this a listen: this will either make you fall in love with the book or decide it isn’t for you): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfgk1sTJGYU

Please tag your posts for this book as #SpeakingOfJesus
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accountable

I recently officiated a wedding. The ceremony was simple, lovely, and ended with another couple professing to keep the covenant of marriage. But it all started with a clarification...from me. At our first premarital counseling session, as I have done with every couple I have agreed to marry, I clarified a couple of matters. First, I officiate Christian weddings, where both spouses-to-be are professing Christians. I firmly believe that marriage is difficult enough, without adding disagreements about God into the mix. Second, as a minister of Jesus Christ, I believe the pastor’s role in a wedding is to represent the blessing of God on that union. So we have several sessions of premarital counseling where we discuss married life. It’s not that I have this imaginary card in my head, with a picture of me on the front and my stats on the back. (You know, like a baseball card.) Ok, I do picture cards. Pastor cards! And being a competitive guy, I want my stats to look good. The number of coupl
Post a Comment
Read more

Patience

I am more than halfway through the last year of dropping one of my children off at school. It's my eighth grade daughter, for anyone keeping track of my family.  See, next year she will be at the high school, and her brother will drive her. He says that it's not cool for seniors to drive their freshman sister to school, but I bet it's cooler than being dropped off by your mom in a minivan.  So rather than groan about this daily responsibility, I've been reminiscing about what the drop-off line used to look like, way back in elementary school. Once our children were about halfway through their elementary years, the drop-off line became a test of patience.  Do you know which group you do not want to get caught behind in the parent drop-off line at an elementary school? The kindergartners. These little ones are barely able to walk, but now we put them in the high-pressure situation of trying to unbuckle their seat-belt, grab their backpack (which might be as tall as they a
Post a Comment
Read more

Jury Duty

I was recently summoned to jury duty. I know, groan. Except I didn't. I had never experienced it before and was curious to see what it was like.   When the day to report arrives, they separate you into groups, asking various questions to decide if you will be selected to serve. Do you know the accused? Do you have conflicts that would keep you from serving? Can you stay focused?  I wanted to answer well, if only because my kids kept wishing me luck the day before, telling me they hoped I made the team. After all, who wants to be rejected? It occurred to me that there are things you probably shouldn’t say right away if you’re wanting to serve on a jury. I know, I know, people don’t typically want to serve on a jury. But that list didn’t seem nearly as humorous to me. Here are the things you probably shouldn’t say if you want to be selected for jury. I hold myself in contempt. You can’t handle the truth. We find the defendant guilty. I believe the judge looks pretty in his robe. I’d
Post a Comment
Read more