Gadfly: Reading Church Through Reading Jesus

By: John George Arthur

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Synopsis: John Arthur is looking for a church. Not literally of course, those are quite easy to spot usually. He is looking for "a reading" of church through a reading of Jesus. He wants to examine whether the Jesus we have in the church is, well, big enough really. Are the relationships we pursue, with God and each other, the authentic and costly ones Jesus exemplified, or diluted by our expectations and culture? Have we formed an edgy activism around Jesus' call to risk and journey, or a policy of endurance? Has the church fully accepted Jesus' trust of an incomplete kingdom? Gadfly is a conversational essay, part philosophy, part social observation and lots of unconventional exegesis posing questions about the purpose of Bible reading, the nature of Jesus and their implications for church identity. It challenges the dry readings of systematic theology that dominate so much of the public expression of the Bible in our churches. Gadfly wants to replace this with a call to risk-laden intimacy - the missing sacrament of the modern church.