Product Description

Christ followers everywhere are leaving the church. Where is Jesus taking them? When you sit in church on Sunday, do you ever get the feeling that something is missing? Do you long for a deeply genuine connection with God and other believers but often walk away empty and unsatisfied? You are not alone. Many church-goers are stumbling onto a path that leads out to the other side of the stained-glass window. They are finding God there and discovering a powerful truth--we are the church! As a jouney guide, this book delivers compelling answers to some difficult questions: What was Jesus' original church like? How is God reshaping Christianity today? Has God left the building before and do I have to leave the building too? In Jesus Has Left the Building you will find the courage to follow Jesus, wherever He leads.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #806308 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

Customer Reviews

Recognizing the Times
Are you tired of "going to church"? Finding that the institutional church is not measuring up to the church described to us in the book of Acts? Learn how many are leaving "the building" to follow Christ into deeper Christian community and LIVING OUT the true Gospel in the real world!

This book is a testimony of one young man who God called out of the "religious" and into discipleship. This is Vieira's first book and I believe he does a wonderful job telling his own story about how he left the building. His book is an easy read. You will enjoy his insight into what God has done, is doing, and is going to do with the culture at large. He is setting the stage for a magnificent display of his glory.

How is God doing all of this? He is raising up a generation who will no longer settle for the "religious." Vieira is prophetic in how he explains how the Lord is using the institutional church and the "Religious Right" to bring about intolerance from the world. This intolerance will do away with popular pop-culture Christianity where everyone and their dog is a "Christian" and make way for authentic Christianity shining brightly in a world of suffering and persecution.

Vieira is very humble in his writing. I did not feel that he was writing with a push for people to leave the institutional church for first-century styled house church, but he leaves you wondering why you are still in the institution. If you have already left the institution like me... you will find that Vieira's message only confirms what the Lord has been speaking to you. Jesus has left the building!

I think you will enjoy Vieira's honest assessment of Christianity today. He believes it's time to stop "going" to church... and start "being" the church. He does a fine job of defining "post-modern" and how the church needs to respond to Generations X and Y. Why is there such a huge generation gap in the institutional church? Because God is working in a fatherless generation who will no longer swallow dump and say, "Mmmm good!" This generation and the next wants to experience Christ and not spoon fed "religion".

I am a part of Generation X. Vieira is too. And so he knows our generation. I believe his cry in this book is that this generation would no longer be Fatherless! In Vieira's point of view (and one that I share), "If you are not comfortable leaving the organized church at this time, in the near future you may not have a choice."

It is comparable to Israel and the exiles. Some will never leave the comfortable religiously pagan organization of the church... only the remnant of revolutionaries will participate in God's good Kingdom in this present evil age. Those who recognize the times will be on the front line of God's story. Read this book and decide what you will do.

* This book does not trace the pagan beginnings of and influences on the institutional church back these last 1700 years. For thorough research on this man-centered church... read "Pagan Christianity?: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices" by Frank Viola and George Barna.

For further study, I recommend reading (in this order):

Going to the Root: Nine Proposals for Radical Church Renewal
Rethinking The Wineskin: The Practice of the New Testament Church
Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting, Revised Edition
The Release of the Spirit
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
The Centrality of Jesus Christ (Works of T. Austin-Sparks)

A life-giving assessment of church without condemnation.
"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings." Pr. 25:2 Paul Vieira has functioned as a glorious king presenting a panorama of God's Church from God's perspective, and explaining much of the excitment and happenings in our very pregnant day. This is a must read for serious Christians. It is a refreshing drink of cool watrer for those who have felt like an odd man out in the modern church scene. Thank you, Paul.
Frank B. Smith

Returning to the core values of our faith

Jesus has left the Building
Paul Vieria contacted me many months ago. his book "Jesus has left the building" really has captured my attention. the big picture is that Jesus like Elvis has left the building. Yet, the thought is, maybe Jesus was never in the building! Paul does a great job in contrasting modern and postmodern thinking in some great "talk pass" conversations. This book should be on every one's list. Paul has some unique, some not so unique but still needed, and some very insightful things to say. I think this book may be one that will change one's life.