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Authors Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola have teamed up to produce a new book: Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ (Thomas Nelson). It will be released officially on June 1, 2010. There will be a special discount for Amazon orders of Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christon June 1, 2010. I was privilege to receive an advanced copy for review.

Jesus Manifesto is a book on Christology. Sweet and Viola offer their readers and invitation to reassess their understanding and relationship with the core of Christianity: Jesus the Messiah.

Recapturing an authentic Christology is critical for our 21st century mission. If we get our Christology wrong, we never get started with the real Jesus. Here is an excerpt from early in the book that gives you a feel for where Sweet and Viola go:

For many Christians, their occupation has nothing to do with spiritual things at all. For others who are not inclined to divine matters, their occupation is evangelism. For some it’s church multiplication that matters most. For others, it’s memorizing the Bible and learning theology. Many Christians, are most occupied with social action, while others are most occupied with leadership and its various principles. Still others are mainly occupied with missions, or praise and worship; the casting out of demons, or healing; miracles, holiness, or the end times; spiritual authority and submission, justice, or politics, etc. The list is endless.
But all of these are “its”–just things. In fact, the Christ family has swung so far from its Lord that most of our preaching and teaching today is an “it” rather than a “Him.”
…Yet the reality is that Christ trumps everything. The Father exalts Him. The Spirit magnifies Him. The angels worship Him. The early church knew Him as her passion, her message, and the unction of her life. Christ was her specialty. He was her Bridegroom and head. She specialized in nothing else.
All told, there’s nothing worth pursuing outside of Christ. (19-20).

The book contains an Introduction and Ten Chapters. Sweet and Viola carefully critique the contemporary Western expressions of the Church in a winsome way. This is not the typical “everything has been bad since Christendom” book. Not at all. It has a more constructive agenda. It exalts Jesus Christ and reminds all who read Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christthat the fundamental question remains the one Jesus asked his first disciples at Caesaria Philippi: Who do you say that I am?

Sweet and Viola write eloquently and passionately. This book is an easy read. Its simplicity is disarming. They relentlessly and carefully proclaim the beauty, the person, the work, and the mission of Jesus as both a man and as Son of God. Just when you think that they are painting a docetic view of Christ, they reintroduce Jesus in all of his humanity and vice versa. They achieve a balanced view of Jesus that is rooted in Scripture and in line with the earliest Christian confessions. One is left hungry to realign with the person of Jesus and follow him as our Risen Lord into the world on mission.

Remember: There will be a special discount at Amazon for those who purchase Jesus Manifesto on the day of its release–Tuesday 1 June 2010.

Tags: Gospels, Mission, New Testament, Old Testament, blogosphere, book reviews, calling, ecclesiology, humanity, missional church by brian
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My former OT teacher and now colleague, Lawson Stone, has written an insightful blog on his reflections on Daniel 1.

I have been pondering the biblical character of Daniel all day, probably because I’m teaching a Sunday School class on the OT books that center around the Babylonian exile. The last survivors of Israel, i.e. the tribe of Judah, finally succumbed in 586 B.C. to the Babylonians, who destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple of Solomon, ravaged the countryside and left smoking villages and a devastated economy in their wake, deporting thousands of Judahites to Babylon where they were forcibly settled in ghetto-like communities doing force-labor for the Babylonian King, the infamous Nebuchadrezzar.

But I wonder. Daniel might not have been such a comfortable guy to know if you were a devout Judean.


Read the rest.

Tags: Biblical Studies, Daniel, Holiness, Mission, Old Testament, asbury theological seminary, blogosphere, calling, culture, missional leadership by brian
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An excellent video on preaching the Gospel in our time.

Tim Keller Feb’09: Preaching the Gospel from Newfrontiers on Vimeo.

Main points:
Preaching in Western culture should be:

1) Gospel centered
2) Christ centered
3) Life Changing on the Spot
4) Culturally transforming

Tags: Hermeneutics, Mission, Preaching, calling, church, communication, culture, missional church, world mission, world religion, worldview by brian
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One of my students sent me a link to this video.

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

How on target is the satire? What are the lessons? How is the video being unfair?

Tags: Mission, blogosphere, change, church, communication, culture, missional church, pop culture, worship by brian
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I have the privilege of teaching a course at Asbury Seminary on the Psalter. I have been rereading Preaching the Psalms
by J. Clinton McCann, Jr, and James C. Howell. McCann and Howell do an excellent job of sprinkling in classic quotations about the Psalter from eminent Christian interpreters of the Scriptures.

Diodore of Tarsus:

He opens the prologue to his commentary on the psalms by quoting 2 Tim 3:16 and writing:

One would not be mistaken in applying this whle encominium of Holy Scripture to the book of the holy Psalms. For it teaches righteousness gently and reasonably to those who wish to learn, it reproves the rash carefully and without roughness, and it corrects whatever unfortunate mistakes are made, either by accident or by our own choices.

Martin Luther:

Where does one find finer words of joy than in the Psalms of praise and thanksgiving? There you look into the hearts of all saints, as into fair and pleasant gardens, yes, as into heaven itself. There you see what at fine and pleasant flowers of the heart spring up from all sorts of fair and happy thoughts toward God, because of all his blessings. On the other hand, where do you find deeper, more sorrowful, more pitiful words of sadness than in the psalms of lamentation? There again you look into the hearts of all the saints, as into death, yes, as into hell itself. How gloomy and dark it is there, with all kinds of troubled forebodings about the wrath of God! So, too, when they speak of fear and hope, they use such words that no painter could so depict for your fear or hope, and no Cicero or other orator so portray them.

Athanasius (Letter to Marcellinius)

…these words become like a mirror to the person singing them, so that he might perceive himself and the emotions of his soul, and thus affected, he might recite them.

Thomas Merton

…the Psalms bring our hearts and minds into the presence of the living God.” (Bread in the Wilderness (New Directions Classic)
, 13)

The Church indeed likes what is old, not because it is old but rather because it is ‘young.’ In the Psalms, we drink divine praise at its pure and stainless source, in all its primitive sincerity and perfection…for the Psalms are the songs of men who knew who God was…. For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms. (Praying the Psalms, 7-8)

John Calvin

I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, ‘An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul;’ for there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which [our] minds are wont to be agitated. (Commentary on the Psalms)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When read only occasionally, these prayers are too overwhelming in design and power and tend to turn us back to more palatable fare. But whoever has begun to pray the Psalter seriously and regularly and say: ‘Ah, there is not the juice, the strength, the passion, and fire which I find in the Psalter. Anything else tastes too cold and too hard. (Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible
, 11)

Walter Brueggemann:

The Psalms not only propose and constitute a world; they intend also to unmake, deconstruct, and unmask other worlds which seduce and endanger…. In fact, they articulate a counter-world, offered as a subversive alternative to the dominant, easily available worlds that are ever present in and tempting for Israel. The dominant, easily available world endlessly seducing Israel is one-generational, devoid of covenanting, morally indifferent, monologically closed, and politically indifferent. These Psalms voice a counter-world that practices exactly what the dominant world resists and denies. In its liturgic recital over a long period of time, Israel regularly enacted and embraced this counter-world as its true home. (Abiding Astonishment (Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation)
; 26 and 28)

Tags: Biblical Studies, Psalms, biblical theology, commentary by brian
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Dr. Walter Brueggemann, prolific author and Professor (emeritus) at Columbia Theological Seminary will be preaching and teaching at First United Methodist Church of Winter Park, FL on May 16 and 17.

Brueggemann is one of my OT scholars and biblical theologians.

Tags: Biblical Studies, biblical theology by brian
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