American Jesus Madness officially kicks off tomorrow, but before it does I wanted to take a moment to talk about holiness.
Because nothing goes together better than an absurd imaginary tournament and holiness, right?
Ok, maybe not, but bare with me because I have a bit of good news to share with you.
As many of you already know, I signed a book deal with CLC Publications last fall. Now, I’m excited to announce that I finally have a title and release date for my book!!
It’s going to be called The Scandal of Holiness and will be released this September!!
So, what’s it about?
Having grown up in the so-called “holiness tradition” the call to holiness is something very near and dear to my heart. It’s also something I think we as a church collectively, whether members of the holiness tradition or not, have tragically misunderstood or altogether ignored. The aim of my book is to not only rediscover this fundamental call of the faith, but to reimagine how it can be authentically lived out in the twenty-first century.
I believe Jesus understood the call to holiness not as a list of things we’re not supposed to do or people we’re not supposed to associate with, but as a call to actively and creatively incarnate the love and grace of God to a lost and dying world, particularly for those people and corners of the world we’re “supposed to avoid.” In short, the book is a call to embrace the “unholy” (particularly people) rather than avoiding it/them like the plague, so that holiness becomes less about ethical perfection and more about healing and redemption.
To get a little bit better of an idea about the tone of the book, you can check out this video I made a while back. It’s not directly connected to the book, but it does capture the basic message.
Needless to say I’m very exciting to see this book finally published. It’s been a long journey.
But there’s still more work to do.
I will get my edits back from my editor in a couple of weeks (funny how that works), then I have a couple of weeks to finish them before sending them back to be prepared for publishing. After that you’ll be hearing a lot more from me about the book, its release, and how you can get involved (and get your hands on a copy) with the launch of the book in just a few months. Seriously, I’m definitely going to need your help with this thing. I only got to this point because you thought I might have something interesting to say. I’ll only be able to move forward if you can help me convince others of the same.
Until then, there’s some serious, you might even say “sacred” business we need to take care of.
We need to crown a champion of American Christianity for 2013!
(See? I told you American Jesus Madness and holiness were connected.)
Grace and peace,
Zack Hunt