BOOK REVIEW: Is artisanal a better example for today’s corporate-style church?

Do you like hot, freshly baked, whole grain bread?

What about incredible, rich chocolate? No, not the Hershey’s kind of chocolate, but the kind crafted by an artisan?

And do you like Jesus, too?

What do bread, chocolate, and Jesus have to do with one another?

John J. Thompson manages to connect these and more in his interesting, and even challenging, new book, “Jesus, Bread, and Chocolate,” (published by Zondervan) that uses today’s growing interest in things hand-crafted, organic, and artisanal to reveal our need for a lot of improvement and changes, especially in the church.

Add to baking great bread and making incredible chocolate interesting stories of roasting his own coffee, brewing his own beer, and a passion for music, and you’ll have the eclectic tools Thompson uses to challenge his readers into “Crafting a Handmade Faith in a Mass-Market World.”

A warning: today’s Christian who is deeply mired in and committed to the industrialized, institutionalized, corporate-style church will likely be tempted to dismiss this as Christian hipster angst. Indeed, you’ll spend plenty of time reading about baking awesome bread, re-discovering great chocolate, or roasting a fabulous cup of coffee, and sprinkled within all that are illustrations that connect to our faith in Christ. Finally, as the book draws to a close, Thompson pours on his messages, tying all his ideas together to challenge us to see how far off track the church has gotten and what we might do about it.

Even early on in the book, Thompson writes …

“Our industrial culture is exceptionally good at shaping and reinforcing what I call the ‘sacraments of progress’: consistency, customization, measurability, efficiency, progress, guaranteed satisfaction.”

“Our primary identity is that of producers and consumers of goods.”

“Our society reinforces these values constantly through the marketing we imbibe, the stories we tell, and the songs we sing. We are what we do. We’re entitled to comfort, stimulation and satisfaction … It seems the advances in technology that resulted from the invention of the assembly line were nothing compared to the Industrial Revolution’s ability to reframe our identity as human beings. In fact, all the Revolution did was pour lubricating grease on the greed, fear, and violence native to our hearts. Industrialism isn’t responsible for our destruction; it simply accelerates it.”

And …

“We adopt worldly, corporate definitions of success and live out our faith accordingly.”

Thompson uses his tales of his artisnal pursuits to compare cheap, bleached, white bread to the delicious delights of freshly baked whole grain breads, contrasting that with the church being the cheap white bread knockoff. He goes on to contrast Hershey’s “chocolate” that contains very little real chocolate to artisans re-discovering great chocolate, with the church being the Hershey’s example, and so on.

All of these stories are to help us see how we’ve settled for a cheap faith thoroughly lacking in spiritual nutrition, and a corporate church instead of a faith family.

“And when it comes to the formation of our faith and values, an artisanal approach — one that includes master and protege intentionally crafting something from God-given materials in a way that works because it is true — may be something that can actually change the world. As you’ll see in these pages, this is the process that is changing me right now.”

It could change you, too.

Pick up the book, enjoy the adventure of Thompson’s own spiritual development, and see if God wants to cleanse the corporate out of you to hand-craft a real, deep, pure faith in this mass-market world.

Scotty

I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for this review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”