We facilitated our first book reading tonight at Eagle Harbor Books, our favorite local bookstore. After reading a few excerpts from our book, some diverse views and great questions emerged from the group…

I’m seeking to learn about Jesus. The Bible seems so complicated. How do I learn about the true Jesus? Where do I look?

I was raised to follow what I believed to be right and not just what someone says. Do you need to read a book to follow the Way of Jesus? Shouldn’t it be simple?

What are your thoughts on other spiritualities… such as Hinduism and Buddhism? Why is Jesus so special?

Is the Way of Jesus walked individually or in community?

How do you stay centered? Can you center individually or do you need community?

Some of my family are pressuring me back to the tradition I was raised in… How have friends and family responded to you and your journey?

I identify with Jesus more than with any particular religion. But when people ask me what I believe I say I’m a Christian but I don’t know why I say this. What do you think?

You say you follow Jesus…would you die on the cross like he did?

Our questions reveal our longings and our longings reflect both the desires and the wounds of the heart…

The gospel is like a seed, and you have to sow it. …Now, when missionaries came to our lands they brought not only the seed of the gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flower pot included!

So, what we have to do is to break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the Gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our own version of Christianity grow.
— D.T. Niles of Sri Lanka (1908-1970)

This is not the book we began to write.

It all began with asking questions about religion and seeing the widening gap between the life of Jesus and today’s church. There had to be more. We became tired of doing religion while talking about spirituality. Like the apostle Paul simply said, ‘The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.’

We’ve been amazed at the number of those we have met around the world who are breaking out of the complexities of religion to get back to the powerful simplicity of life in Jesus. They likewise have seen the widening gap between talking about Jesus and walking with Jesus. It’s not that they are against church; they are just making more room in their lives to experience the living reality of Jesus in community with their family and friends.

Several years ago we left the comforts of the organized church to rediscover what it means to follow Jesus. It has been a process of putting off and putting on–making room for God to birth a new thing in our lives. What looked like a pile of rubble at times was actually just the beginning of something ultimately constructive.

So the book has become a travelogue of what we have discovered living outside the “system” of organized religion. We wanted to offer hope for those who where searching for a deep and meaningful spirituality; who had become disenfranchised with what religion offered them but couldn’t and didn’t want to quiet the voice within them that longed for a deeper relationship with God.