Outsiders in Christ: Conversations Near The Edge of Faith
Book Details
Author(s)Aaron Kelsay
ISBN / ASINB00RJEIRVE
ISBN-13978B00RJEIRV2
Sales Rank1,234,231
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
Believers and outsiders to relationship with God alike wrestle with uncomfortable questions about faith. "It takes a minute to explain the story of Creation – the created are in perfect relationship with the Creator. It takes another minute for someone hearing this story to ask the obvious followup question: If God is real, then where is he now? So he created everything and then left?" For those living in the spiritual vacuum left behind in this post-Christian and even post-secular environment, regardless of their religious background, these questions remain.
Outsiders in Jesus is a series of conversations covering, first, how someone raised in a non-religious background can sense of Christianity and, second, how to experience God inside and outside the church. The questions commonly asked by people first deciding to follow Jesus like How do I know the Bible is true? and How do I hear from God? ultimately point to deeper, relational questions. The person, the "who" behind the sacraments, trumps so many of issues that Christians face – the controversial issues facing the church, and the "correct" methods, information, styles, titles, traditions. In this series of conversations, the author points these pagans, now following Jesus, to the person of Christ who is the object and author of faith.
Outsiders in Jesus is a complete work of non-fiction, a loose re-telling of real conversations over years of ministry-work, with a word count of approximately 72,000. I have written several fiction novels in the past, including one published in 2001, and this is my first work of non-fiction. As the director of a Christian outreach non-profit in Portland, Oregon, I have the privilege of working with Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists and a whole spectrum of lapsed or former Christians. In this book, I have set out to create and deploy a new language – often borrowed from paganism, the Occult, mystic or esoteric spirituality, and other religions – that makes Jesus Christ make sense to people in a predominantly non-Christian culture.
This book is aimed at a new generation, written with an explicitly post-modern perspective in mind – experience, subjective as it is, is as authoritative as knowledge and tradition. The conception of God is always lower than God Himself, and as the aim in this book is not to point readers to a perfect conception of God but to a relationship with God.These propositions are shared in the context of real conversations, interspersed with stories of the young men struggling with these questions of faith. These conversations often leave the reader with uncomfortable uncertainties about the nature of faith and religion, though there is an explicit affirmation of truth in scripture and the church. Where church can be an obstacle to God for outsiders, the motivation behind this book is to bring a new generation into the church and to help these young believers find God in Christianity. My desire in this book is that people inside, but especially those outside the church would experience relationship with God.
Outsiders in Jesus is a series of conversations covering, first, how someone raised in a non-religious background can sense of Christianity and, second, how to experience God inside and outside the church. The questions commonly asked by people first deciding to follow Jesus like How do I know the Bible is true? and How do I hear from God? ultimately point to deeper, relational questions. The person, the "who" behind the sacraments, trumps so many of issues that Christians face – the controversial issues facing the church, and the "correct" methods, information, styles, titles, traditions. In this series of conversations, the author points these pagans, now following Jesus, to the person of Christ who is the object and author of faith.
Outsiders in Jesus is a complete work of non-fiction, a loose re-telling of real conversations over years of ministry-work, with a word count of approximately 72,000. I have written several fiction novels in the past, including one published in 2001, and this is my first work of non-fiction. As the director of a Christian outreach non-profit in Portland, Oregon, I have the privilege of working with Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists and a whole spectrum of lapsed or former Christians. In this book, I have set out to create and deploy a new language – often borrowed from paganism, the Occult, mystic or esoteric spirituality, and other religions – that makes Jesus Christ make sense to people in a predominantly non-Christian culture.
This book is aimed at a new generation, written with an explicitly post-modern perspective in mind – experience, subjective as it is, is as authoritative as knowledge and tradition. The conception of God is always lower than God Himself, and as the aim in this book is not to point readers to a perfect conception of God but to a relationship with God.These propositions are shared in the context of real conversations, interspersed with stories of the young men struggling with these questions of faith. These conversations often leave the reader with uncomfortable uncertainties about the nature of faith and religion, though there is an explicit affirmation of truth in scripture and the church. Where church can be an obstacle to God for outsiders, the motivation behind this book is to bring a new generation into the church and to help these young believers find God in Christianity. My desire in this book is that people inside, but especially those outside the church would experience relationship with God.
