Greg Paul - Resurrecting Religion: Finding Our Way Back to the Good News

I have a growing suspicion that the antireligious sentiment, which is so pervasive in Western culture and is captured by the mantra, Im not religious, but Im spiritual, is simply the latest version of that old enemy and heresy, Gnosticism. Its like saying, I love football; Im just not into the organized kind. Unless our faith is rooted in and structured around practices and pathways that have stood the test of timeunless it is, in some real and deep sense, religiousit will not hold together. Indeed, the root of the word religion is exactly that: to re-ligament, to tie broken things back together. Greg Pauls book Resurrecting Religion comes just in the nick of time. Gregwho claims to be neither theologian nor writer, but who does both these things brilliantlyspeaks winsomely, urgently, convincingly about our need to reclaim our religious identity and heritage, while also doing what Jesus and the prophets did: rejecting all bad religion. This is a book for our times if ever there were one.

MARK BUCHANAN

Author of Your Church Is Too Safe

In this book, Greg Paul speaks an urgently contemporary word about the church. He knows about the church. He knows its faults: excessive accommodation to culture, privatism that is mostly irrelevant, and intellectual schemes remote from reality. But he also knows better than that. His pages teem with testimony about the other shoe of gospel obedience that lives in the real world, that moves in ways of mercy, compassion, and justice, and that heals and transforms. Paul is a story teller; he has rich, concrete, compelling tales about real people living out gospel lives. His book is a treasure house of evidence that there is a way that need not yield to bad religion. We will not want to miss out on this rich testimony!

WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

Columbia Theological Seminary

Its easy to criticize religion. Its an entirely different thing to offer thought-provoking insights of your own religious practice from the trenches. Deep inside the muck and mire of human existence is where the gospel first gave light and the religious impulse was born anewone that would care for widows and orphans in their distress and spark a living faith in a living God. Greg Paul lights up the dark realities of our post-religious talk with the hope of a religion that matters in real life to real people, right now.

DANIELLE STRICKLAND

Author of The Ultimate Exodus

Greg Pauls central premise, that true religion is vital for the life and salvation of the world, is backed by an experiential authority that is uncomfortably hard to dismiss. Particularly, reading the book of James through the lens of the Beatitudes is a lesson Ill not soon forget. This is a timely and important book.

STEVE BELL

Singer, songwriter

True religion, writes Greg Paul, is to faith what voice is to a thought. It puts flesh on the bones of faith. This book describes the gritty intersection between incarnational theology and integrated spirituality. With raw vulnerability and buckets full of hope, Greg Paul will restore your faith in the church.

STEVE WIENS

Senior pastor of Genesis Covenant Church, author of Beginnings and Whole

I highly recommend that you read Resurrecting Religion for these reasons: stories that will move and inspire you; insight that is wise and practical; writing that is vivid and lucid; a guide (Greg) whom youll enjoy spending time with and who has lived this story with integrity and by grace; and, finally, because this book will give you a vision for more faithfully loving your neighbors in response to our common prayer that Gods Kingdom will come on earth as in heaven.

KENT ANNAN

Author of Slow Kingdom Coming

Resurrecting Religion will inspire you to live out the biblical call to justice and Jesus teachings from the Sermon on the Mount. In a world that continues to create distance between the rich and poor, Gregs book teaches us the importance and power of having close relationships with those living on the margins of society.

AARON GRAHAM

Lead pastor, The District Church

Resurrecting Religion couldnt be more timely. Greg Paul is one of the few clarion voices whose vocational fidelity has embodied this message in a way that its not only credible, but proven by the way he lives. His insightful ability to take difficult conversations and make them safe and accessible is fresh. While deconstructing religion may be trendy, Gregs book leads in the reconstruction through a hopeful imagination of what we all hope for. May you have the courage to live into the responsibility of the gifts contained within the pages of Resurrecting Religion.

CHRISTOPHER L. HEUERTZ

Founding partner of Gravity, a Center for Contemplative Activism, and author of The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth

NavPress is the publishing ministry of The Navigators, an international Christian organization and leader in personal spiritual development. NavPress is committed to helping people grow spiritually and enjoy lives of meaning and hope through personal and group resources that are biblically rooted, culturally relevant, and highly practical.

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Resurrecting Religion: Finding Our Way Back to the Good News

Copyright 2018 by Greg Paul. All rights reserved.

A NavPress resource published in alliance with Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

NAVPRESS and the NAVPRESS logo are registered trademarks of NavPress, The Navigators, Colorado Springs, CO. TYNDALE is a registered trademark of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Absence of in connection with marks of NavPress or other parties does not indicate an absence of registration of those marks.

The Team:

Don Pape, Publisher

David Zimmerman, Acquisitions Editor

Helen Macdonald, Copyeditor

Cover photograph of hands copyright by Nico Beard/Bossfight.co. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph of cross copyright Merydolla/Shutterstock. All rights reserved.

Published in association with the literary agency of Daniel Literary Group, LLC, Nashville, TN 37215.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-63146-666-3

Build: 2021-04-21 22:34:42 EPUB 3.0

For the Beatitudes people of Sanctuary Toronto, who for twenty-five years have been teaching me what the church is supposed to look like.