“… the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.” – Shane Claiborne, Irresistible Revolution.
Recently I finished reading Shane Claiborne’s book Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I found it incredibly refreshing. I got the book when I was talking with a friend about social activism in the church, and how we as believers ought to be voices in our society against injustice – whether it’s homelessness, poverty, human trafficking or any of a variety of other social ills. To which my friend replied, “Have you read Irresistible Revolution?” and promptly gave me a copy.
The basic thrust of this book is a call to the Church at large to return to our first love, Jesus, and our true purpose, which is to establish a “different kind of kingdom”, not church institutions that follow the pattern of this world, but communities that operate upside down from the ways of this world, where people really take Jesus at his word, and the first become last and the last become first. The book is a call to a grassroots movement of love, community and radical servanthood. It paints a dream of a different kind of Church, “a people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now.”
I recommend this book for anyone who is tired of church as usual, anyone who may be wondering where Jesus has gotten to in the midst of our modern American church life.
Caution: read this book at your own risk.
