Review: Jim and Casper go to Church

Summary: Jim Henderson, a Christian and former Pentacostal minister, and Matt Casper, an atheist, visit some of the largest and best-known Evangelical churches in America, and also some churches of other flavors. Much of the book is given over to their recounting their experiences at these churches, and of how Casper reacted to what was done in the church. You can find the Amazon description here.

For the most part, Jim allows Casper to speak. He allows Casper to relate and criticize what he has seen and experience without trying to interpret or "spin" it for Casper. Here are some of the criticisms that Casper levels against the churches he visited:

1. The church spends too much time and money on a professional production on Sunday.
2. The church treats the things that it does on a Sunday morning - lifting hands in worship, talking about physical healing- with too much familiarity for someone who has never experienced them before.
   
3. The church spends too much of its Sunday meeting on feelings and belief and not enough on talking about what they do to aid their community.
   
4. The church is given to celebrity worship.
   
5. Most churches lack a "call to action."
6. The church should be more racially integrated.
7. Too much of what happens on Sunday seems scripted and false.
8. Most people in church lack the courtesy to greet strangers.
9. Most of what the church does on a Sunday doesn't seem to have much to do with what Jesus taught.
   

Throughout the book, Jim injected little parenthetical sections about "defending the space." His basic message in these sections seemed to be that Christians should defend a space where they can talk to atheists on equal terms, instead of defending the faith to them. Basically, defending the space entails respecting people and their beliefs enough to listen to them and not be anxious to point out where they are wrong.

I mostly didn't enjoy this book. However, I don't like most Christian nonfiction books, so it is in good company. I find that a great majority of Christian nonfiction books spend their time telling the reader or, worse, the church at large what they are doing wrong. I dislike such books because I criticize myself frequently, and I find it too easy to accept the criticism of strangers. Reading such books often leads me to a sense of hopelessness and despair. This book in particular led to feel like what I've been doing in church for the last twenty-five years has been in vain.

(If you know of good Christian books that don't take this tact, please, let me know. Note that I've never really connected with Max Lucado.)

As I began reading the book, I had the suspicion that Jim had an agenda - that he had particular things that he wanted to say to the Christian church, certain criticisms that he wanted to bring, and that he felt that he had an ally in Casper who would lend weight to his criticisms. As I went through the book I began to wonder why Casper or any atheist should determine how we run church. Isn't our Sunday meeting for believers? Why should a nonbeliever determine how we do things? I got my answer at the end of the book: Casper evaluated Sunday morning meetings because those are the ones that are advertised, and those are the meetings that we are encouraged to bring "our unsaved friends" to. As long as this is the case, Jim asserts, it is reasonable to have a nonbeliever come and evaluate the Sunday morning meeting.

I finished this book about a week ago, and so my irritation with it has diminished somewhat and I have been able to gain a little perspective. There are things that I desire in church that Jim and Casper would appreciate - for example, greater simplicity in our Sunday meeting. I thought that their idea of joining with nonbelievers in existing service projects, rather than starting our own, an intriguing idea.

However, what I am left with overall is the sense that we try to put too much on Sunday morning. We try to make it both a believer's meeting and a meeting sensitive to the needs of seekers and outsiders. These two goals seem to be in conflict. I think that it is very important to preserve a whole-church believer's meeting, and I can't realistically see this happening outside of Sunday morning. I don't think that it is right to steal from the church for the sake of some potential outsiders, because the church needs to be strengthened so that it can help outsiders.

What I think we should do is provide a separate meeting for seekers and outsiders. As part of this meeting, they can be instructed in what we do on Sunday and why we do it. If they decide to attend the Sunday meeting, the seeker's meeting could be a place where they return to ask questions or argue issues.

I'm not sure how well this idea would fly, or whether seekers would skip the main meeting in favor of this explanatory one. However, I think that it makes sense to not force seekers to only learn about our church through a believer's meeting that they may find confusing or strange.