Customer Reviews

Christly Gestures: Learning to Be Members of the Body of Christ

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In Christly Gestures, Brett Webb-Mitchell moves from being an advocate for disabled persons within the church to being an advocate for a disabled church. With insight and grace, he diagnoses the disconnect between head, heart, and hands that plagues much of modern Christian education. Then, blending excellent scholarship with stories drawn from his own rich experience, Webb-Mitchell proposes an alternative (but age-old) practice of education that returns the church to its roots in relational, experiential, scriptural, and spiritually-grounded formation of mind, body, and soul. Christly Gestures gives an exciting way forward for those seeking to discover what it truly means to learn, live, and teach together as members of the body of Christ.

The author first challenges today's Christian education methods, conventional Sunday school and catechetical instruction, which in his eyes have almost failed its purposes for three reasons: 1) content is irrelevant to people's real lives. 2) Students are not engaged in true dialogue and learning. 3) Individualistic pedagogy fails to embrace community learning. Church life in its entirety should be formational instead of informational. The author argues that Christians should learn to perform Christly gestures rather than simply gain historical facts and other people's theological ideas. When Christians value Christly gestures, practice them in the church community, and learn to live them out in the real life with the help of Holy Spirit, transformation happens. Christly Gestures reshapes the very meaning of Christian education, exploring what the form and content of Christian learning would look like if local churches truly saw themselves as the body of Christ.

Another point I like about his book is that it equally emphasizes on the formation of spirit, mind, and body, and contends for a deep unity of body and mind, of thought and action. In fact, as Brett discovers, the formation of human body receives the least attention in the fields of religious education and theology. The cons: this book claims to write for lay leaders and local Christian educators, but its writing style, complex theological discussion, and short of practical examples make it more suitable for students and teachers of religious institutions than for Sunday school teachers.

Woderful book for this times of chaos. Well written and defiantly provocative to get out of the ordinary Sunday s[i]ndrome. A well versed oasis for the church and its components.
I recommend it very much to anyone that feels dthe wieght ofsocial pressures and sunday morning routine.

This book ignored the fundamentalism that traditional Christianity established and tries to redefine how it should be presented to those unwilling to take it seriously.
Webb-Mitchell follows the shameful tradition of manipulating the word of bible to phrase his own opinion of how others should worship.
Filled with meaningless euphemisms and anecdotal explanations, it is just a thin veil to cover his own new-age ideals, and lack of commitment to the REAL christian practices and knowledge.