What If Jesus Was Serious about the Church?: A Visual Guide to Becoming the Community Jesus Intended

By Skye Jethani

Researchers have uncovered the following three trends: First, distrust of institutions, including the church, is at an all-time high. Second, young people raised in the church are leaving at alarming rates and not returning. Third, loneliness and social isolation are at pandemic levels. What’s the connection? It appears that an entire generation is starving for the very thing the church is called to provide but has chosen to look for it elsewhere. Why is this happening? Following the model set by What If Jesus Was Serious?—short readings and engaging illustrations—What If Jesus Was Serious about the Church? looks at what the Bible really says about the church, its purpose, and the impact of its modern captivity to consumer values. Rather than an event, a building, or an institution, the New Testament calls the church to be a community living in communion with God and one another for the sake of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780802499899

Skye Jethani

Skye Jethani (www.skyejethani.com) is the managing editor of Leadership journal, a magazine and online resource published by Christianity Today International. He also serves as a teaching pastor at Blanchard Alliance Church in Wheaton, Illinois.

Book preview

PART 1

THE FAMILY REUNION

One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

He went down with them and stood on a level place. A large crowd of his disciples was there and a great number of people from all over Judea, from Jerusalem, and from the coastal region around Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by impure spirits were cured, and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

LUKE 6:12–19 NIV

Contents of Part 1

If Jesus Was Serious …

1. Then We Must Be Dedicated to a Community and Not Merely an