Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you'll engage by leaving comments, be encouraged, occasionally chuckle at discovered quirkiness, and even be inspired in faith. Please use the button to subscribe via email so you won't miss a post!
Reflections on “Explicit Gospel” by Matt Chandler
I mentioned in this post that I’m beginning the new year by reading Matt Chandler’s book Explicit Gospel and invited anyone who’s interested to join me. This blog post will serve as an anchor and a conversation point.I’ll be periodically leaving thoughts, quotes and responses to what I’m reading in EG here.
It’s an anchor, because I hope you’ll bookmark this post and come back to it once a week or so to read the new comments.
It’s a conversation point because I hope you’ll interact with me – either through what you read in the comments or through what you’re reading in the book.
I’m going to attempt to read a chapter a day. You don’t have to do that, but that will give you an idea of how to interact.
To kick us off, here’s a powerful assertion/observation from the introduction. Matt (we’ll be on a first-name basis with him in the posts) has seen so many Christians who become Christian again later in life. They make the statement, “No one ever taught me that..” about the basics of the Gospel. Matt then wonders whether churches are teaching the Gospel or a “Christian Therapeutic Deism:”
This mode of thinking is religious, even “Christian” in its content, but it’s more about self-actualization and self-fulfillment, and it posits a God who does not so much intervene and redeem but basically hangs out behind the scenes, cheering on your you-ness and hoping you pick up the clues he’s left to become the best you can be.
Interested now?
I think this view becomes even more true and prevalent when looking looking closely at the area we are in…the Bible belt. It is more difficult to talk about this concepts to frequent “church-goers” who have this moralistic lifestyle passed down to them than it is to talk about it to a new Christian or non-believer. So far, I’m intrigued.
@George, you’re so right. After ministering near the buckle of the Bible Belt for 14 years, I can attest to how difficult it is to budge convinced moralistic religious people out of their self-confident postures related to God an into a fearful uncertainty of whether they belong to Him.
Matt’s first chapter is about “God.” He explores God’s:
1. Transcendant creativity
2. Sovereign knowing
3. Perfect self-sufficiency
4. Glorious self-regard
and then concludes the chapter with a lead-in to the next by examining how we’re all “wired for worship,” but that we worship the finite and trivial.
I’m really enjoying his writing style – he’s able to navigate easily between a biting and witty humor to a deeply intense theology.
Chapter 4: The outline of the book so far has been: 1. God 2. Man 3. Christ 4. Response Each of the above has been under the section called “The Gospel on the Ground” – which looks at the gospel at the personal level. The next section witll look at the gospel from the “air” and paint a broad perspective as to what God is doing through “creation, fall, reconciliation and consummation.” Chapter 4 is good.. really good. After describing the holiness of God, the sinfulness of every person, Matt deals with what God has done through Christ to remedy… Read more »
Still enjoying the book… at times immensely. At others, Chandler doesn’t necessarily stumble (because the content is good), but it’s clear that, like all books, some chapters just lack the focus, creativity and power of others. The chapter on consummation was like that to me. Here’s a topic that should soar in epic prose and creative beauty, and Matt just seems to be a loss to pull it off. Of course, who is able to write of the end times, heaven, Christ’s return and Christian’s transformation in a way that captivates and enraptures? … Well, several have, and Matt misses… Read more »
[…] began the year reading it, and I posted my reflections along the way in this post (which I encourage you to read; I posted more in-depth reflections in the comments section of it as […]