Hirsch and Frost on Letting Jesus be Jesus

ReJesus came in the mail yesterday. Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost are the latest in a long line of folks (through the centuries) who want to "recalibrate" the church in line with the Jesus of the New Testament. The great question underlying their book is, "Why is our experience of church so discontinuous with the Jesus of the NT? And what can we do to change that?"

Hirsch and Frost are "missional" types (as you can tell by their cool facial hair). ;-) They say that if we get Christ right (see him rightly and thus know him better) we will get mission right, and then we will get church right. That's the order they insist on: Christology > Missiology > Ecclesiology. And it makes sense to me.

I'm excited about this book. Hirsch and Frost write with passion and yet also with deliberate care. Here's a brief snip from the introduction (p. 10):

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 brinb our biases to the task. But we believe it is inherent in the faith to keep trying and never to give up 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.