Let's take Jesus out of his packaging

Image by bookgrl via Flickr

The other day a friend told me a story. Apparently some college professors wanted to use the Shane Claiborne's book "Jesus for President" as a starting point for a class the were going to teach.

It resulted in a couple of students committing to spend the year getting a homeless man off the streets. What surprises me is not so much that they were successful, but that their teachers were shocked that their students would do such a thing.

My question is this. What is the state of religious teaching in the church if professors would be so shocked. What are we expecting students to get out of religious training if not to become more like Jesus. Why do we care so much about teaching Greek and systematic theology? Sure these are important things but they are not as great as a group of college kids learning to be more like Jesus.

Let's take Jesus out of the box we package him in and see what happens.