Decorpulation

I've just finished reading this fantastic book. I would describe it as 'laugh-out-loud theological discussion'. Although I disagree on a number of the points made by the two american writers, I thought it was packed with interesting ideas and a great message to love the bride of Christ, the church, in all it's "organic and organizational mess and beauty".

Some interesting thoughts/overviews:
The bible describes the church not only as the bride of Christ, but as his body of which Christ is the head, and his temple of which Christ is the cornerstone. Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck make the point that loving Jesus, but not the church, would be like having a best friend who's wife you hate, making friends with a floating head or moving into the foundations of a house.
Clearly these situations are all crazy. We are called to love the church.

In the same way that "decapitation" from the latin caput talks of removing a head from a body, decorpulation from the word corpus, should then be used to describe the removal of a body from a head. This, the authors argue, is how we should describe the recent trend of church leavers who love Jesus but not his church.

Something I've thought a lot about today as well was their image of the church as a sausage. It is better for you to just eat and enjoy your sausage than to find out all the messy ingredients that have been squished together to make it. The church is made up of humans, of sinners, of people, like you and me, who get it wrong. However, throwing in the towel and leaving the church is not how God intended for us to grow and be challenged in our faith.

Those are just some of the points that really challenged me and got me thinking. I seriously recommend this book. Though, as I say, I don't agree with it all and I can see why they have made lots of people angry, so don't read it if you get angry easily.

:)