Book Review: The Jesus Paradigm By David Alan Black

The church is set to undergo massive transformations in the coming years and decades. Many great authors have recently been describing desired and/or emerging models; David Alan Black is among them with his newest book, The Jesus Paradigm (Special thanks to Energion Publications who provided me a free advance copy to review; the book will hit the shelves in late July or early August, 2009).  The basic premise of the book is that the church has lost sight of our purpose and has become weighed down with meetings, bureaucracy, and structure and has neglected our primary call to make disciples of all nations.

One of the things that makes this book worth reading is the personality and experience of the author.  Black is professor of New Testament and Greek at South Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, the heart of the Southern Baptism conventions conservative resurgence (known by some as the fundamentalist take over).  There are many things in this book that would challenge the Southern Baptist/evangelical church to the core particularly its rejection of Christendom and American nationalism.  It is a challenging and provocative read for all.  With liberals and conservatives, Black is an equal opportunity offender as he seeks to lay out a new path “beyond politics” that bypasses these worn out positions.

The more mainline (non-Baptist) readers will find some parts challenging with the use of a more conservative lingo.  I was pleased to see the word evangelical used as a positive term again; and Black goes a long way in saving the word evangelical from the evangelicals.  Evangelism is a word that must remain in our Christian vocabulary.  He discusses very briefly the concept of Biblical inerrancy, which has never been intelligible to me.  I would love to have this Greek professor explain his position in greater detail.   I love the way that he stresses the need for every member of the church to be in ministry, but I think that his argument may be more beneficial to more independent churches pastor-centric churches.  In my denomination, the local and broader church are extremely lay led with thousands of committees (I am not sure if lay-led bureaucracy is what Black had in mind).  I have major disagreement with Black on many points of ecclesiology (the study of church).  I believe that an independent church is an oxymoron.  Black talks about a greater need to be in community, but it is too docetic (spiritual without a physical manifestation) of a communion for my taste.  For me, part of the definition of church is real accountability.  Most of these disagreements that I have with Black are the major disagreement that mainliners consistently have with Southern Baptists.

Despite these confessional differences, I believe this book has a lot to offer Christians from many traditions. During this time after the slow fall of Christendom in the West, Black sees the Anabaptist church as a potential model for us all.  For the Anabaptists, there is a clear distinction between the church and the world.  Anabaptists are not as interested in lobbying for political change as they are at embodying a new political reality.  This influences the incarnational and relational models of evangelism and mission that Anabaptists hold and offers a corrective to the mechanistic and propositional evangelism of American evangelicalism.  Black’s main concern is “that the church be the church, and to do that it must proclaim victory not through a political agenda but through the Christian Gospel.”

Recently, there seems to be a great convergence of traditions around some of these same themes.  Black’s voice should be added to others similar to his in the post-evangelical movement.  His themes bear close resemblance to Shane Claiborne’s books The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President.  It also is compatible reading with some of the Emergent Church material of Toney Jones and Brian McClaren (even though Black says that the “Emergent movement” may be a pseudo change).  These themes from the post-evangelical wing of the church are remarkably echoed in the post-liberal wing as well in the writing of William Willimon, George Lindbeck, and Stanley Hauerwas.  I find The Jesus Paradigm a helpful resource in thinking about the direction of the church.  It is a gift to have a strong Baptist voice speak on these important issues to the North American Church.

Black offers more than the Anabaptist tradition as a model, he offers Jesus as a paradigm.  The self-giving love and service that we find in our God who gave his only begotten Son is the foundation from which he seeks to work.  Jesus’ peace should look completely opposite from Pax Romana or Pax Americana.  Jesus’ ministry is about service not power and prestige.  The church in our age and all the ages has failed miserably at taking up our cross.  As our contemporary church is focusing on self-help and “me-centered” gospels, Black offers the only faithful alternative-the cross of Christ.