Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Jim and Casper Go to Church



This was another book I finished about an atheist and a Christian going to church together and writing about their experiences. Jim (the Christian) was the same guy who paid $504 for Hemant to go to church in the book "I Sold My Soul on eBay. This time he went to church with the Casper (the atheist) so they could discuss it and talk about it from both viewpoints.
They went to all the big ones, from Saddleback, Willow, Lakeview, and Mosaic. They went to some emergent churches, Imago Dei and Mars Hill. Casper even went to a house church with one of his friends. They went to one church in Chicago that I had never heard of called Lawndale, and that seems like a church I would like to go to. Lawndale meets in downtown Chicago and they really try to meet the needs of the people there. They've started a free medical clinic. They have a developer who helps lower income people with homes. They have a recovery program. It's all to help this community, which I think is awesome.
Casper didn't like churches that seemed to go over the top in their spending. He seemed irritated by all the technology that churches had, when they could have been using that money to do real ministry, like Lawndale was doing. Why spend thousands of dollars on a crane to operate a camera. Did it really make that much of a difference in worshiping Jesus? I think that was a great point. Is the Sunday Morning service that important that we must spend all of this money on equipment. Or can the same message get shown without the pastor's head being on a 20 foot projection screen. Unlike Hemant, Casper liked the small churches and didn't like the mega churches at all. It all seemed to polished and fake.
The only part I didn't like about this book was the conversations between Casper and Jim seemed very fake. Nobody talks like they did to each other in the book. It was usually to make a dumb joke or pun. Also, Jim kept talking about his other books, which seemed like a sales pitch every time. Maybe the editors edited the conversations to make them a little more smooth. But to me, it made them sound weird and unrealistic.
Anyways, I think the book was good to see what we take for common in church and how it is interpreted from someone who doesn't believe in God and isn't connected to church.

1 comment:

Matt Casper said...

Thank you so much for your kind words... you're right about the dialog... it is, shall we say, "clunky." But it is all written by me and Jim... so our bad :(

If there's anything I hope this book does it is to help many church goers become better followers of Jesus.

Because even though I don't believe he was the son of a supernatural god, I do believe he was 100% right about how we should treat each other.

Also, maybe it can help make atheist a 7-letter word instead of a 4-letter one.

Jim and I blog/continue the dialog here, should you like to join us: www.churchrater.com

Thanks again,
Matt Casper