Customer Reviews

The Jesus of Suburbia: Have We Tamed the Son of God to Fit Our Lifestyle?

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An excellent perspective on how we often sell out the true call of our faith for a consumer substitute. A challenge to guard against being so lulled by the comforts and trappings of suburban-American life that we literally begin to mix values that don't belong in our faith. That's called syncretism and as The Jesus of Suburbia makes clear, it's a big mistake.

To take the vision of this book seriously would lead to a beautiful living out of our faith as followers of Christ in the midst of our culture. This is excellent and accessible material that you can easily use in a small-group setting or to inform your teaching. As a pastor myself, I highly recommend it.

You may also be interested in learning more about ROCKHARBOR Church in Costa Mesa, CA where Mike Erre is the Teaching Pastor. It is a community of faith striving to live it's values in impressively unique ways despite it's location in the plush sun-drenched mall-topia of Orange County. If anyone has authority to speak of the challenges of truly being the Church in suburbia, it is Mike Erre with ROCKHARBOR as a living example.

Great book! Mike challenges our comfortable watered down faith but does it in a challenging yet encouraging way. I love his frankness and his commitmment to scripture.

I would highly encourage pastors to read this and begin to think about if their church is safe or involved in the revolution to bring His love to the world. If you are not a pastor then read this and reflect on your life. Are you living a nice little suburban life or joining Jesus in His kingdom revolution?

Mike Erre's book takes a look at the Jesus that has been created by modern religion and questions how true that view of him really is. This is a wonderful book with many unique insights that provoke the reader to consider the source of their beliefs and challenge him/her to action.

This is a serious but readable book by a man who is now a pastor who has seen that the Jesus of the church is not the same as the Jesus of the gospels. Erre writes with an informal, passionate autobiographical style.

I classified this in my category Culture and Trends. This book, while being written within a Christian thought milieu and addressing the church in America, is an analysis of the social trends in the United States. From another perspective, this is Theology. But it is not an abstract, rationalist system of thinking.

Erre's book is a practical focus on real-life as the Gospels seem to portray Jesus presenting it. This author attempts to explain to Christians how the institutional church has changed and domesticated the figure of Jesus to serve their own social purposes.

What does the term "Christian" connote? What do people think of when you mention "the church?" Erre tries to explain. But the important underlying value here is that he concludes that it is the church that has fostered this in several ways. Primarily they have accommodated the values of the cultures, thus making the church redundant and meaningless.

The spiritual and social revolution Erre sees in the Gospels and the New Testament has been sold old, he says, by the church. The "Jesus" presented and celebrated in most American churches, Erre declares, is not the same personality as the Jesus we read of in the Gospels. The message presented in these churches does not very closely resemble the message we read in the actual words of the Gospels.

He develops his topic by presenting a testimonial of his own growing realization as a young man that the Jesus he was discovering in the New Testament looked and sounded very different from the simple version presented to him in the suburban church of his childhood. He issues a call for a radical shift form Religion to Jesus!

He realized the religion he had been taught a child in his Baptist church was a legalism that defines righteousness as being nice and doing what is expected. Do good things and avoid bad things. This false piety, based on personal effort and achievement, he came to realize, is just what Jesus condemned in the false righteousness epitomized by some Pharisees he referred to. Erre was amazed when he discovered that the biblical message is one of radical transformation by God's direct spiritual act of grace!

Erre focuses on the growing alienation of the formal church and organized "Christianity" from the community at large in American society. He is concerned to find ways to more authentically and consistently represent Jesus Christ in daily life and in the church at work.

What Erre observes about the church in his era is similar to my own early observations as a college student. The attitudes have not seriously changed in many quarters, though there are strong signs of a new movement in American Christianity to express faith in Christ in a meaningful, active way that makes a difference in the lives of the community.

He likewise calls to task the new activist political Christianity that arose in the late 20th century in the US. He outlines how misguided right-wing Christians confused the Kingdom of God for the political coercive power of temporal government. He lovingly, but firmly describes how manipulation of the political processes to accomplish some form of supposed Christian social engineering betrays the Rule of God, which is based on different principles and values than those of the societal systems.

Erre focuses on the New Testament call to live as people experiencing the Rule of God ("Kingdom of God"). Erre takes seriously the line of the Model Prayer that the God's Rule come to be on earth just as it is in the spirit realm. The Jesus of comfortable, affluent, self-centered Suburbia will not do that. The radical revolution of Jesus is at hand. Erre calls us to join this reality.

Erre provides an excellent practical survey of the portrait of Jesus and the Kingdom of Heaven as portrayed in the Gospels. This, he says, is the model for what life is supposed to be like. Serious students will appreciate Erre's grasp of the integrity of the text as a whole, rather than following the common analytical approach that pulls individual verses or passage out of context for focus. He honors the story format of the Gospels and the underlying principles of life that unify them and instruct us on a dynamic life of freedom in the Spirit.

"The Jesus of Suburbia" by Michael Erre is one of the better books I have read over the years. It challenges me in my living out my Christian life. There are so many things that we can easily get wrong about our Christian walk.

I found that reading "...Suburbia" a chapter at a time worked best for me. Reading it is not like reading a page-turning novel. Reading short passages in one sitting allowed me to reflect on what the author said. The chapters are not overly lengthy, and they are divided into sections that make tracking one's progress easy. Erre offers much scripture and extensive sources in his notes not only as documentation but also to allow the reader to pursue the subjects further.

I will be reading the book again shortly. I will be meeting with several friends for a book study in which we will consider ways that we need to rethink and change the ways we live.

Ken Rhoades

If you want a fresh look at Jesus, here's a great door! Readable, and great for a group study or personal reflection. CS Lewis comes to mind in a number of places. Great wisdom.

Mike Erre challenges the "average Christian" to really take a look at JESUS and how He lived his life - against the grain, counter-cultural, and subversive - and then asks if we too will live in this same way. I certainly felt challenged and convicted. I liked the book's focus not on methods or checklists, but truly on Christ our Savior, and modeling the way we live after Him.

You can tell Mike knows his stuff - his writing demonstrates that; yet it is relevant and accesible to any reader. I highly recommend this book.

This is a well written and inspiring book. Mike Erre notes that in suburban America, we prefer the Jesus who wants to make us prosperous and secure and comfortable. We want the Jesus who does what we want, not the Jesus who wants us to do what He says. Erre observes that just as Christ's earthly parents lost sight of Jesus in the crowds one day in Jerusalem, we too sometimes lose sight of Jesus amidst the trappings of religion.

The first chapter reminds us that the Jesus movement as depicted in the Bible was a revolution that was in your face. Caesar Augustus was considered Savior and Lord, but Luke tells us int he Christmas story that the Christ child is the true emperor, he alone is Savior and Lord.

Chapter two talks about forcefully laying hold of the kingdom by ministering to others in the name of Jesus. He mentions an newly saved AIDS patient going to college campuses and sharing his faith in Christ, and a woman with MS who made a decision to share her faith and her love of life with others. Erre does not err when he says that instead of sitting around waiting for God to show us His will, we need to do the ministries He lays on our hearts, and He will stop us or leads us to other things if He has something else planned for us. His example was Acts 16, when the Spirit of Jesus wouldn't let Paul go into Bithynia, but instead, He gave Paul a dream of a man in Macedonia pleading for him to go there.

There is a great chapter about the scandal of grace. He talks about the "whoeverness" of Jesus, that Jesus ministered to whoever, even to people that others might be horrified to hang with. He discusses Jesus touching and speaking a word of healing to a leper in Matthew 8, and Jesus reaching out to a "scum of the earth" tax collector in Luke 19. Erre talks about seeing himself for the first time as one of the whoevers that Jesus came to seek and to save.

There is also a dynamic chapter about the danger of theology. In short, the danger of theology is that we sometimes substitute knowing facts about Jesus with knowing Jesus Himself. Erre points out in James 2:19 and in Mark 1 that the demons had a better theological knowledge of Christ than any of the disciples, and they didn't know Jesus Himself. Powerful point! Erre goes on to show what real belief in Christ looks like. He describes the sinful woman in Luke 7 who was willing to break social protocol just to get close to Christ and worship tearfully at His feet. Belief in Jesus, therefore, is doing everything you can to get close to Jesus.

Erre also has a chapter about how in the eyes of Jesus and other pious Jewish people, all of life has a spiritual element, and that everything we do should be done for the glory of God in the name of Christ.

There are several more chapters, but this is enough to give you a taste for the book. Do not substitute a false American Dream Jesus for the real, wild, revolutionary Jesus of the Bible. Give your life to the true Jesus.

Mike Erre is a fantastic writer! His book is to the point, but very entertaining. I would recommend it to everyone!

The Jesus of Suburbia challenges the America church to become what Jesus intended: a fellowship of Christ-followers which redeems and transforms the culture around it, reaching out to others with the incredible love of God. Read this book to rediscover biblical Christianity.