Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Dicisions in a Consumer Chruch

I loved this book for several reasons. 1. I love this book because it is a critique of evangelicalism by a man who is a committed evangelical. I love the humility of the book as Dr. Metzger admits to being a part of the problem, but boldly calls us to move and take action. I think this brokenness and humility is very Christlike. It is definitely something that I want to follow him in. 2. I love this book because it deals with a major blindspot of evangelicals: race and class divisions in the church. I was talking to a Hispanic pastor (Jessie) who I met in Nashville. Jessie is pastoring in Texas, and Rich Stafford and I were asking him about his ministry. He commented that Texas is completely integrated. Mexicans and Caucasians do everything together. The only place that is not integrated, he said, is the church. This is tragic. And this is not just a Texas problem. 3. I love this book because it helps to identify subtle ways that we contribute to race and class divisions in the church. We often run our ministries and programs in such a way that they feed our comfort levels. We willingly divide by taste. We have a homogeneous model, which basically drives us to appeal to a certain kind of person and then surround them with people who are like them. We do this all kinds of ways, whether it is by small groups that are affinity groups, whether it is by having a contemporary service and a traditional service, or whether it is by highlighting and emphasizing ministries that are more about appealing to tastes than about following Christ (not wasting our lives). 4. I love this book because it rediscovers the biblical emphasis of walls being broken down by the gospel. Ephesians 2 talks about Jews and Gentiles becoming one in Christ. 1 Corinthians 11 (the communion passage) rebukes the Corinthians because the rich are disregarding the poor. Jesus said that outsiders will know that we are his disciples by our love for one another. The gospel is reflected beautifully when we experience unity between young and old, rich and poor, black, white, hispanic, asian, native american, and any other group that we often segregate. That's what I want! How awesome would it be to have our churches reflect the unity that Christ brings, instead of unintentionally communicating that you need to be like us to go to our church. Otherwise, go find one that meets your tastes. 5. I love this book because it challenges me on who my heroes are. Are my heroes those who have glowing success stories? Or are my heroes those who have been poured out for the work of the gospel? At the end of his life, Paul said that he had no regrets. He said that he had fought the good fight, run the race, kept the faith. Then he talked about being poured out as a drink offering. Paul's version of success was to be poured out for Christ. Jesus himself, in John 12, said that unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground, it cannot bear any fruit. I want to follow Christ (and Paul, and Wilberforce, and MLK,

If someone is known by the company he keeps, Dr. Paul Louis Metzger is an important prophetic voice for and to 21st century Christianity. Metzger's book sports a foreword by platinum best-selling author Donald Miller (of Blue Like Jazz fame) and an afterword by famed civil rights leader and community developer Dr. John M. Perkins (whose vision inspired this book). Writing from Portland, Oregon, Miller rightly points out that Metzger's book isn't simply a critique of race and class divisions in today's consumer church; it also offers solutions based on the groundbreaking work of Perkins (and others). Writing from Jackson, Mississippi, Perkins writes a profound essay inviting readers to join Metzger as drum majors for love, truth, and justice. It's an inspiring call, to be sure. In the end, Metzger's book not only critiques the roots and present troubling realities of the American church, but also shows how that church (especially the evangelical branch) can do better. Highly recommended.

For the sincere Christian who has often struggled with understanding why the Church today seems so ineffective and irrelevant in our society and without the transformative power that fills the New Testament, this book is for you. It will not speak of new ways to "position" the gospel or of strategic methods of evangelizing the uninterested; instead it will confront you and disarm you as it holds up a mirror to us, the Church, to see just what it is we've become as the Bride of Christ in these United States. Metzger builds a case for how divided the church has become, because of its "disordered vision" and its resulting blindness to "omnipresent consumer-market forces, ever-evolving racialization and evangelical social structures", a "fallen power", a world-resistant and worldly gospel instead of the world-changing message that exploded out of Jerusalem over 2000 years ago. This is where the mirror comes in. Metzger challenges us, he challenges me, about the choices I make in how, where and with whom I fellowship. He writes about the "way churches today cater to the market forces of homogeneity and upward mobility" for "our kind of people". He goes on to state, "Today's problems of race and class in America are not rooted in torture or oppression, but in liberated choice and pleasure: they are bound up with the subtle law of consumer preference." Ouch. Thankfully, we are not left in our remorse without a message of redemption and hope. Metzger goes on to explain how "reordering" our understanding of cosmic powers, our Christian lives and the body of Christ to which we belong, will create a path out of our dishonoring and dividing consumerism. He invites us to a life of reconciliation, relocation and redistribution that has at its very core a driving mandate of love that overcomes the evil one and restores life-giving power to the church. "It is not by choosing and consuming but by being chosen and consumed by Christ that we triumph over Satan." If you'd like to be uncomfortably challenged about how you view the vision and purpose of the church, and how Jesus longs to see her, you'll want to read this book.

The title does raise some questions...that is if you think about more than what color curtains should decorate your new sitting room. In a world of consumption of material goods that either make us fat or make our creditors fat, Metzger calls us to a new paradigm of consumption and/or a new paradigm of actually being consumed. There are so few books that will challenge where we are as a Christian community with sound biblical support. His theological approach is readable for anyone willing to focus and question concepts that may be unfamiliar. Yes thats right you may actually have to think through this one and not breeze through it, which is not a bad thing once in awhile. I appreciate his approach which is historical and systematic as it weaves the common theme through characters in history like D.L.Moody and theological truths such as Atonement, Communion, and many others. The ideas and paradigms presented in the book have been central to my daily ministry of community development. Most importantly, they help me understand and come to know on an ever deepening level the one who is My Savior. At the end of the day that is all one would hope for from a book about the consuming love of Jesus.

"That ain't my culture and heritage!" - Homer Stokes in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Tasteless, sure, to start a review of a book subtitled "Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Culture" with a quote delivered by a wizard at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. But just wait, it's perfect. The line comes in the midst of a series of fundamentalist epithets that the wizard (who we soon find out is actually Homer Stokes, the upstart challenger against Pappy O'Daniels for governor of Mississippi) levels against the so-called "progressive" developments sweeping across the depression-era south. Here's the line in full: "And then there's some folks say we done descended from monkeys! That ain't my culture and heritage! Is that your culture and heritage?!" The resounding "no!", then, with which the robed and hooded crowd responds is dripping in irony, for they're completely right - that's not their heritage. Their's is much more horrible, a regime of terroristic racism, whose symbolic apogee - the torch-bearing lynch mob - they are enacting at that very moment. This silly side-track provides us with two poignant metaphors with which to frame Paul Metzger's new book, Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions In a Consumer Church (Eerdamans: 2007). The first metaphor comes at the end of the wizard's speech, at which point he removes his hood to more closely inspect the hideous sight of an approaching color guard, which is, in fact, colored (sort of). Upon this unmasking, the audience is informed that the grand wizard - American mythology's own grand wizard of evil incarnates - is actually the hereunto noble and progressive Homer Stokes, "candidate for the little man." So the unmasking of the villain means not that we find a good guy underneath, but rather that we find out that the good guy was a bad guy. The task of the first two chapters is a somewhat opposite one: to unmask the seemingly benign and often extolled forces of consumerism and racial prejudice at work in the church today for the heretical impostors they are. Chapter One, "A Faulty Order: Retreating Battle Camps and Homogeneous Units", is perhaps poorly titled, since it doesn't say much at all about the homogeneous unit church growth principle here, but is a fantastic critique of the historical progression and carry-over of a "retreat till the rapture" attitude from fundamentalism into evangelicalism. (The history of evangelicalism that is being written by the heavy hitters in American church history - Marsden, Noll, and Hatch - is put to good use, beginning the book's pattern of referencing with sources that are accessible and useful for a lay audience that wants to pursue the issues introduced.) Here Metzger makes a simple and reasonable case that good pre-millenial theology should not lead us to withdraw from society, but rather just the opposite. It ought to be a source of hope that motivates us to engage society and work to change it in anticipation of the coming kingdom. Chapt