Jim & Casper go to Church: Frank Conversations about Faith, Churches, & Well-Meaning Christians

Jim & Casper go to Church was by far one of the most interesting books I have ever read. It was fascinating. It was written by Jim Henderson, who is the executive director of Off the Map & Matt Casper, who was the atheist that off the map chose to be a part of this project. After the popularity of Hament Mehta’s book I Sold my Soul on eBay which chronicled Mehta’s journey through some churches around the country as an atheist. Ironically, Henderson’s organization was the one who won the bidding and launched Mehta on his journey. You can read more about that here on their blog. After that, Henderson decided to find another atheist who would join him of a tour through some of America’s churches and rate them. The book follows this fascinating journey to different churches, their impressions and conversations while there.

The churches of note they went to were Saddleback, the Dream Center, Mosaic, Willow Creek, Imago Dei, Mars Hill, Lakewood & the Potter’s House.

One of the things that Casper said after many of their stops was “Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?” It is a question that I have been mulling around in my head since finishing the book. How much of what we do is actually not biblical, but simply cultural for our American Christianity?

When they went to many of the megachurches, Casper kept saying, “I keep wondering, how much did all of this cost? And is that the best use of the money?”

Most of the churches they went to preached using what is called ‘topical preaching’ and a few did ‘expository preaching’ which is preaching through books of the Bible. After one such church Casper said, “One thing I really liked was their use of the Bible. In many of the churches we’ve ‘worked’ they pull one sentence or even just one clause from one verse, and we get no context…I often feel like the pastor makes up his mind on what he wants to say and then does a keyword search in the Bible to find whatever verse he can to support it. But here, we read a whole passage (Acts 26:1 – 29), and we got the whole story in context…The Bible is chock-full of interesting stories, and sometimes it may be more effective just to let them speak for themselves.” This is from an atheist. You can read my thoughts on preaching here, here, & here.

Another thing they saw at each church was how they did offering and ‘asked’ for money. Some churches were very outright in asking for money like Lakewood & the Potter’s house and other churches like Imago Dei were not. At Imago Dei one of the things they said about giving was “Giving isn’t really giving until it interrupts your lifestyle.” That is so true and was one of those statements that made me stop and I have not been able to get that out of my head.

Another thing that came up was equality and love among Christians and the love Christians have for those outside of Christianity. Casper said, “Tell me why I should join a movement that preaches love and equality and one body but for 2000 years has itself essentially resisted the very change it preaches about? It makes a good case for being an atheist if the very people who claim to be serving God and obeying him aren’t doing what they say he’s telling them to do.”

For me, this was a fascinating book. It took me about a day to devour this book. It really challenged me about Beginnings and the things we do and the way we communicate things to people. I read several reviews of people wondering why Jim didn’t defend Christianity and our practices more to Casper. This is where I think Christians fall outside of what Jesus calls us to. We are not to defend ourselves, especially practices that fall outside of the teachings of scriptures. Also, it rarely does any good to argue with someone. None of want to argue anyone into the kingdom of God, we are not called to do that.

Click here, here, here & here for some reviews by others of the book (good & bad).