In many ways Brian Zahnd is like many of Nomad’s guests in that he deconstructed (although he doesn’t like that term) what he came to see as a very narrow faith, and reconstructed something much deeper and broader. The difference with Brian, though, is that he went through this process while pastoring a mega-church. So we asked him, how can you lead a church, or indeed be a member of a church, when your faith is changing and you feel like you’re in a very different place from everyone else.
Interview starts at 13m 25s
Image provided by Zahnd Photography Used with permission.
BOOKS
Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News
Water To Wine: Some of My Story
QUOTES
“I tend to not say that my view of Jesus has changed, I would say that my view of God is more Christlike. So, there would have been a time […] that I perhaps saw God as somewhat different than Jesus. Today I would say I have made the beautiful discovery that God is like Jesus, and God has always been like Jesus. There’s never been a time when God wasn’t like Jesus. We haven’t always known this, but now we do.”
“We can’t view the Bible as a flat text. Let’s say that I love the idea of war. Well, it’s gonna be hard to enlist Jesus in support of that, but if I approach the Bible in a wrong way, no problem; I just need to go find some other verses in the Bible that I can use to counter what Christ has clearly taught; and so that is what I see a lot of people doing… And hiding behind the Bible is the cleverest way of all of hiding from Jesus.”
“I don’t see the Church as a second step, as an option. I see it as the natural outgrowth of following Jesus, and Jesus immediately leads us into his community of other people doing the same thing.”
