Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me first off say that this book has some very good points. One can certainly appreciate the desire to cut through the fat in order to reach people with Christ. The book contains some excellent appraisals of American Christianity (as can be found in numerous other books today), but this strength of the book leads to its ultimate weakness, as was the case with many Emergent Church authors a profound reality was displayed as a problem and then a solution to the problem was given. Often the solution was worse than the problem, however this was not grasped by many readers who were enraptured by the clever phrasing of the problem in a way they could relate with coupled with the confident way the author asserted their solution. This is the scenario we find in Carl Medearis' book, "Speaking of Jesus." Medearis reasons that American Christians are weak in the faith, because they have been intellectualized into the Church instead of led to love Jesus. He believes that an evangelism of answers to questions serves only to convince the mind and leaves the heart out of the matter. Instead he opts to point people to Jesus by talking [about] Jesus with them, not calling people to conversion or salvation, but displaying Christ before them. His belief is that if you will display Christ people will come to Him, because they will inherently like Him. He sites as proof of this idea several surveys and encounters where people said they disliked Christians but liked Jesus. This all sounds like an interesting idea, until you evaluate the fruit of the process Medearis employs. Not once in his book does Medearis tell of someone who has surrendered their life to "follow Jesus," or who has repented of their sins, who has accepted the gospel, who believed in Christ's sacrifice for them or who has received Jesus Christ as their Lord as a response to his methodology. Medearis even says at one point that this isn't really what's important anyways (145). Medearis claims he believes all these things, but his methodology seems to leave people far short of this reality. Instead of new creations, we see people becoming Jesus approving non-committers. Medearis tells the story of 30 or so Muslims standing up and saying something nice about Jesus and thinks this is victory. The truth is, every single one of them who will not accept the death of Jesus Christ for their sins will spend eternity in Hell. Having a nice appreciation of Jesus will not save, repenting and submitting to His Lordship is the only way and does not appear to be produced by the style of "witnessing" Medearis advocates. Behind his claim that we should speak Jesus and not some message is Medearis' belief that Jesus equates with the Gospel, literally to Medearis, the gospel is Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. He quotes from 1Corinthians to support this idea. "I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ..." (2:2) He uses this to mean we should literally just talk Jesus, not about Him. He seems to do this by talking as if Jesus were actually there with Him in the room or by pointing people to the gospels since they portray Jesus. He so adamantly believes this that he even downplays the importance of the rest of scripture and especially the writings of Paul, saying that Christ's words are more important (82). He believes we have modeled our evangelism after Paul instead of Jesus (funny since he himself quotes how Paul ministered to the Corinthians). Of greater import, however, is that for most of the book Medearis leaves out the latter part of the text from Paul "...and Him crucified." What a fatal blunder! Medearis believes American Christians focus too much upon the deity of Jesus Christ and His crucifixion. As Medearis points out, these are two points lacking in the Muslim depiction of our savior. Let me ask you. If you do not trust in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross, can you be saved? The answer is: NO. You see, we cannot simply preach Jesus, but we must be committed to preaching His crucifixion as the full Corinthians 2:2 verse signifies: "I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Even worse than not seeing good fruit from the Medearis' method, some bad fruit seems to be evident. A couple stories in the book allude to people who appear to want to "follow Jesus" but they are simply attempting to add the life principles of Jesus' way of life and teaching to their lives. They have no understanding of the depth of their own depravity and so they attempt to clean themselves up by doing the things they read or hear that Jesus did. They become as the scripture proclaims white-washed tombs (because we must be cleansed from the inside out, not the other way around). Last I checked this is the belief in a works based salvation. So this is the process I see with Medearis, 1) Speak Jesus to people 2) They will appreciate Him 3) Some will try to act like Him 4) Hooray, we didn't offend anyone and they say nice things about Jesus now as well! Maybe that was said a little harshly, so I will close with this thought, before I fall into sin here. Sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ implies far more than just sharing stories from Christ's life. The gospel is a multi-faceted message that proclaims how someone can be saved (1Cor. 15:1-4, Rom. 1:16-17) and it draws a line in the sand that demands obedience and surrender (Mark 1:14-15) as 2Thessalonians 1:8-9 proclaim: "dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power." True this is a harsh reality, but one that we must proclaim, lest they unknowingly suffer that fate. My fear is that Medearis will "delude" many into suffering this fate, and worse, convincing several other "Christians" to lead people to the same. My recommendation: Don't read this book, you may find yourself sidelined for the impact you could have for the Kingdom of God.