Reviewed by: J. J. Hanna, a Professional Writing major at Taylor University.

Introduction

Book Title: Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different

Author: Michael Frost

Publisher: Navpress

Publication Date: September 4, 2018

Format: Print Book

Length: 170 pages

OVERVIEW

In Keep Christianity Weird, Frost calls back to the “Keep [insert city here] Weird” movement that took over places like Austin and Portland as an attempt to keep the cities away from the normality and uniformity of suburbia. These cities’ values of clean energy, affordable housing, access to healthy food, and general freedom of expression set them apart from other cities in the United States. In the same way, Frost wants Christians to hold onto the eccentricity of the Christian faith. What makes Christians different from the world is what makes us important in the world.

Frost looks at Christianity from its beginning to the present, from Christ to the most recent evangelicals. Those Christians who made a splash in their communities were those who followed Christ in his eccentric ways—loving those who were culturally unclean, treating every person they met with innate value, and giving the outcasts a place to be part of the kingdom of God.

According to Frost, this is what Christianity is supposed to look like. Unlike some “weird” churches whose pastors “ride wild mustangs during the service” or “zipline from the sound booth to the pulpit” in order to gain attention through stunts (his examples), Frost suggests that in order to authentically live out the values Christ set in place for us when he loved his neighbors and cared for the lost, we need to be “weird” like Christ was.

ASSESSMENT

Rating:

4 stars

Suggested Audience:

Adult Christians looking for ways to live out their faith in their daily life.

Christian Impact:

This book looks at the eccentricity of Christians who came before us—notable monks, preachers who broke social norms, and the first Christians living in the Roman Empire—and dissects how they lived and why it made them “weird” in relation to the world around them. This book will challenge your perceptions of what modern Christianity should look like.

Other Notes:

The author has included questions for further thought at the end of each chapter.

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