Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Experience the Joy of Living and Giving like Jesus Review

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Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Experience the Joy of Living and Giving like Jesus ReviewIf you are cognizant of "Christmas Creep", sound the alarm. Too soon, unfortunately, the American marketplace will begin their assault on the consumer, hitting us on all fronts with holiday displays, special sales and price breaks, winter festivals, and Christmakwanzaku music. Be prepared for the invocation of the sentimental, predation upon our desires to please (or impress) friends and family through lavish gifts, and encouragement to buy, buy, buy! Christmas, as we hear year in and year out, has become a celebration of our ourselves, our capacities to purchase, the derivation of pleasure from novelty, and a basking in the glorious privileges of credit. Christmas often has little to do with Jesus.
Pastors and church leaders are not immune, and must keep watch over their own souls, as well as the souls of those entrusted to their care. The dominant secular Christmas narrative is as much the fault of the church as it is a convenient foil for our exhortation. The Advent season requires preparation, and while I am hesitant to post this review so far in advance, knowing that contemplation of Christmas creep, consumerism, and a counter-attack strategy may only accelerate the spiral of what may one day be a year round Yule-tide shindig of buying and selling, I am willing to take the risk if exposure to resources like this one will help churches engage in a serious and informed discourse concerning how we should live by an alternative narrative.
Mike Slaughter, in his book Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Experience the Joy of Living and Giving like Jesus, has launched an offensive on our prevalent, inwardly curved celebration of the birth of the world's Messiah. It is one such resource for establishing an alternative, truthful narrative needed during the Christmas season concerning both time (never in a hurry, for our Savior has come) and abundance (we have been given the riches of the Kingdom in Jesus the Christ). Rather than racking up debt, spending our resources on others either to impress or simply due to lack of self control, we can remember that in the manger, the payment of our debt has arrived, freeing us for generosity while also enabling us to live with frugality, discipline, and self-control, exercising faithful stewardship of our resources. Slaughter wishes for us to celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus, a beautiful child entrusted to a faithful woman, Mary, brought in to a world that was and is a mess to bring about redemption and hope and a foretaste of new creation.
Slaughter is the pastor of Ginghamsburg Church, located in Tipp City, Ohio. He is an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, and is known widely as an excellent speaker who is passionate about discipleship and evangelism. His church has made a tremendous impact through The Sudan Project, funded in part by the generosity of his congregation, who have given to this initiative since 2005, leading to provision of education, clean water, and subsistence agriculture assistance for the Sudanese. Under Mike's leadership, Ginghamsburg has invested in excess of $5 million in the region of Darfur.
Christmas is Not Your Birthday is a continuation of the ministry Slaughter has begun with his people and for the Sudanese. The dream Slaughter has for the church is evident: he envisions a generous people willing to be dis-comforted by the realities of Christmas. Jesus was born under oppression, to a poor mother, in unsanitary conditions, and amidst suspicion regarding the legitimacy of his parentage. Yet in this same Jesus we find very God and very man, a treasure that has been birthed to the world that will one day lay down his life for the renewal of his creation. The miracle of Christmas, once it has been truly grasped, should lead to the outpouring of our lives on behalf of others. We should be willing to face the grim statistics concerning world poverty and disease, giving up our quiet family evenings surrounding a fire, singing quiet hymns, resting content in our privilege. We should be motivated to give, give, and give some more, in response to the abundance we have been given in Christ. Slaughter reminds his readers that they are God's mission sent to the world to announce the gospel and to live in light of it. We celebrate Jesus' birthday truthfully when we do the things that he commanded us to do.
Slaughter has provided church leaders with a short, helpful resource that can stir discussion and inspire action surrounding the meaning of Christmas. As you prepare for Advent and look forward to Christmas, consider picking up his book and let it inform your preaching, teaching, or your personal discipleship. Each chapter is followed by brief discussion questions, and the book is stocked with pastoral examples that illustrate the kind of generosity Slaughter envisions a faithful church putting in to action.
Pick up this book. Read it carefully. And lean in to Christmas with a spirit of adventure, with an openness to how God might transform your conceptualizations of what Christmas is and should be. Christmas should truly be a time of joy, thanksgiving, gratitude, and generosity. Oftentimes it is not. It is rather a time of stress, frustration, greed, and miserliness. Slaughter, pointing to the New Testament, gives us an alternative.
It is high time we pay attention. The birth of God's Messiah demands nothing less.
DISCLAIMER: I received this book free directly from Abingdon Press, first as an advance reader copy, and later in final form. As always, though I do at times review works that I receive for free, I am committed to writing truthfully regarding what I find.Christmas Is Not Your Birthday: Experience the Joy of Living and Giving like Jesus Overview

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