Spencer, Michael. Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality. WaterBrook Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780307459176.
Meet the Author
Michael Spencer is best known for founding and serving as the primary writer of the Internet Monk, which was consistently rated among the top twenty Christian blogs for many years. Spencer earned a seminary degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, preached each week at a private school and a Presbyterian church, and retained his membership in a Southern Baptist church. For the last seventeen years of his life, he taught bible and served as campus minister for a Christian school in Kentucky. Mere Churchianity is the only book he ever wrote and was completed shortly before his death.
Book Basics
Mere Churchianity is a timely book confronting a growing concern that something is wrong with American Christianity. In Spencer’s analysis, the problem is that too often American Christianity looks markedly different from what Jesus envisioned. The solution is for individual believers to embrace a Jesus-shaped spirituality rather than an institutionalized religious experience, which he terms churchianity. Written in a casual style that at times reads more like an extended blog, Spencer addresses his primary audience as those who have left the church and those who are considering doing so.
For Spencer, Jesus-shaped spirituality includes five components:
- Jesus-shaped spirituality is both personal and communal.
- Jesus-shaped spirituality is mentored.
- Jesus-shaped spirituality is saturated in the Scriptures.
- Jesus-shaped spirituality grows in the context of service and the gospel.
- Jesus-shaped spirituality is found in relationships (p.198-207).
So What?
Spencer describes himself as a “post-evangelical, reformation-loving Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality” (p.219). He has witnessed a great deal done in the name of the church that looks nothing like the ministry of Jesus and seeks to bring the two together once again. I am unsure that this book makes much headway toward that goal apart from providing a word of hope to those on the margins that Christianity really does begin with Jesus and not with the institutional church. Unfortunately, Spencer often portrays a world of two extremes (churchianity and Jesus-shaped spirituality) rather than the rich tapestry of experience that is found in a sampling of local congregations of varying sizes and traditions.
- Is Jesus-shaped spirituality a helpful construct for your journey of faith? If so, how? If not, why not?
- What is at the center of your Christian spirituality? your congregation’s?
- What type of reform within your own congregation or denomination/tradition do you believe would be most helpful? Why?