LEAVING (& FINDING) JESUS
Trading Bad Thoughts About God For Something Better
AN INTRODUCTION
In Leaving (& finding) Jesus, Jason Clark shares his de/reconstructing Emmaus Road faith journey, where he has discovered lasting joy, peace, a confident assurance for today, and hope for the future.
Jason is a bestselling storyteller who writes to reveal the transforming kindness of the love of God in a world traumatized by the religious abuses done in the name of the love of God.
With grace and humor, Jason juxtaposes an inclusive, reconciling, self-giving view of God’s love against an excluding, hierarchal, punishment-focused view of God’s love.
Based on scripture, recent studies, personal and shared stories, church history, and Jason’s experience as a pastor and relational theologian, Leaving (& finding) Jesus encourages readers to stop building their faith upon the broken foundations of a transactional view of God, and instead, embrace the self-giving love of God that truly transforms our lives and our world.
This book focuses on one life-changing, joy-inducing, world-reconstructing thought; that nothing, absolutely nothing, not life or death, powers or authorities, not present or future, not our understandings, beliefs, systems, or actions, nothing separates us from the reconciling love of God.
AN INTRODUCTION
In Leaving (& finding) Jesus, Jason Clark shares his de/reconstructing Emmaus Road faith journey, where he has discovered lasting joy, peace, a confident assurance for today, and hope for the future.
Jason is a bestselling storyteller who writes to reveal the transforming kindness of the love of God in a world traumatized by the religious abuses done in the name of the love of God.
With grace and humor, Jason juxtaposes an inclusive, reconciling, self-giving view of God’s love against an excluding, hierarchal, punishment-focused view of God’s love.
Based on scripture, recent studies, personal and shared stories, church history, and Jason’s experience as a pastor and relational theologian, Leaving (& finding) Jesus encourages readers to stop building their faith upon the broken foundations of a transactional view of God, and instead, embrace the self-giving love of God that truly transforms our lives and our world.
This book focuses on one life-changing, joy-inducing, world-reconstructing thought; that nothing, absolutely nothing, not life or death, powers or authorities, not present or future, not our understandings, beliefs, systems, or actions, nothing separates us from the reconciling love of God.
WHY A PRE-SALES CAMPAIGN?
Writing a book is an expensive undertaking. Forget the years it takes to write it, there’s editing, cover art, and book design, printing, publishing, and marketing.
Because I’ve been writing for years, I’ve developed relationships within the publishing world. With my experience and these connections, I can create this book at a lower cost. That means I can finish writing, and produce the book for —
- 10,000 (approximately 500 copies pre-sold) provides for editing, cover design, and printing enough copies to fulfill the pre-orders and set the book up with booksellers for future sales within the US.
- $20,000 PLUS (approximately 1000 copies pre-sold) provides marketing, an Audiobook option, larger publishing house opportunities, and international publishing. All of which leads to a larger audience for the message which means a greater impact!
Either way, this pre-order campaign will be a HUGE jump start for this book and message, and also give you a discounted price and early access to the book. It’s a win-win!
By contributing to this book project, you’ll not only be personally encouraged and empowered to live and love with abandon, but you’ll also help thousands of others be encouraged and experience abundant life as well.
HOW TO PARTNER?
- Buy a book or 2 or 5 or 50.
- Help promote. Share on all your social media platforms.
- SIGN UP to The Book Launch Team and commit to posting prepared videos, memes, articles, and quotes on your social media, 2 to 3 times a week between July 26th and, Aug 22nd, AND RECEIVE a FREE copy of God Is (Not) In Control.
Sharable Meme’s
THE MESSAGE
The gospel so many of us grew up with? The good news most of us Westerners know by heart? At its very foundation, it has been built upon a Father who abandons His Son in His greatest moment of need, on a cross.
Separation is a core conviction for most Christians today, for many, our faith is built upon a God who leaves. A Father who looks away is in our songs and our children’s bibles.
But God did not look away (read more).
The idea that God leaves, rejects, or abandons His creation is a myth nearly as old as time. Separation is a lie passed down through the ages and woven into the very fabric of religious thinking. And specifically today, Western Evangelical Christian thinking.
A God who leaves has been propagated by mostly well-intentioned preachers, which has led to dualistic, behavior-focused, hierarchal, thinking. And has ultimately empowered great abuses in the name of God’s love.
But there is a fresh de/reconstructing movement taking place within the church. Christians are repenting, they are leaving the abandoning God and all the fruits thereof. They are leaving the angry, retributive Jesus they have been taught about for generations, and realigning with the self-giving reconciling Jesus so powerfully revealed on a cross.
Sixty-five million adults in the U.S. have dropped out of active church attendance and about 2.7 million more are leaving every year. Christians are re-thinking what they’ve been taught about Christianity, the Bible, and what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
And though this can feel scary and unsettling, and while many leaders are concerned, I believe this is a good and holy thing! And it is my hope this book encourages and empowers us to de/ and reconstruct well.
The gospel of Jesus has been beautifully expressed in 2 Cor 5:19 “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us.”
On a cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. Luke 23:34
Then, before His last breath, “It is Finished”
And the veil that represented humanity’s enslavement to separation thinking was forever torn. The problem of separation and the fruits thereof were forever settled.
There is no veil between heaven and earth, no veil between God and humanity, God is with us, God is for us, God is within us!
The good news is that there is no shadow of turning, there is no separation in the nature of God. And this book dives headlong into what that means for today.
This book starts at the cross where we exchange a retributive God lens for reconciliation, separation for inclusion. Following the Emmaus Road journey, the book then confronts the church’s participation in dualistic thinking and invites the reader to rethink our approach to scripture, sin, hell, and injustice.
Reconciliation is who God is, oneness and belonging is the finished work of the cross, and all humanity is invited to awaken to this reality.
THIS BOOK CONFRONTS
For too long Christians have been taught to build their faith upon the trust compromising belief in a God who leaves. This has led to,
- a dualistic, for or against thinking, that practices exclusion, and is used to justify violence, control, racism, sexism…
- a retributive view of God that defines hell as God’s ultimate form of justice.
- a hierarchal elitist approach to leadership that is complicit with rampant spiritual and emotional abuse.
- an inability to release reconciliation or speak authentically to issues of inequality.
- a spirituality that condemns anyone who does not hold to an unwavering defense of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
- an institutional approach to community that is unaccepting of differences in beliefs, cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, or races and promotes isolation and tribalism.
THIS BOOK IMPACTS
I believe this book will have a profound impact on the
- millions of Christians who are exhausted by the politics of nationalism, socialism, or any other ism; the ‘for or against,’ paradigm that seems to rule and define the Christian narrative today.
- those spiritually moving from a transactional approach to God defined by adhering to a set of beliefs, and moving toward a relational approach to God defined by self-giving love.
- those who are theologically rejecting the image of God as a violent, retributive, controlling Being, and embracing the image of God as the kind, reconciling and renewing Spirit at work within us and our world for good.
- the faithful followers of Jesus who no longer identify with organized religion but are passionate about the work of reconciliation.