Following Jesus
In an Age of Hypocrisy
by David Lowry
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
We live in a time when many view the church as a relic of ancient traditions and cosmologies, often reactionary, mean-spirited, nationalist, and racist. They see those who call themselves Christians reacting in fear to the changes around them, rather than, like Jesus, boldly declaring and living out God's compassion and justice. Some, who view themselves as nonbelievers, point out, often with great clarity, the distance between so-called Christian witness and the teaching of Jesus. This book takes us back to the first followers of Jesus and their attraction to Jesus and his teaching. It reexamines what they encountered in Jesus that led them to follow him, and it analyzes the dynamics of following. This exploration becomes a call to let Jesus lead us into God's presence and liberating action. By doing so, we experience a stripping away of our false religiosity, misplaced commitments, and idolatries. As we join with others in a community of Jesus's followers, gathered by Jesus to be sent out, we exercise true, society-altering witness.
David Lowry served as pastor of St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Chicago for over twenty-eight years, a church with a strong outreach to children in crisis, a ministry to people recovering from addictions, and a commitment to social justice. Pastor Lowry received a PhD in theology from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He is the author of Released Outward: Liberating Congregations To Do Justice, Love Mercy, and Live Faithfully.
“David Lowry is helping to make Christianity Jesus-like again! Jesus commissioned his followers to make more followers, but that focus on discipleship has gotten muddled over the years—at least among significant segments within Christianity. Along with his theological astuteness, and his years of urban ministry experience, Lowry brings humility, pastoral concern, and prophetic urgency in this book. All of us who long for ways to help each other follow Jesus will benefit from this work.”
—Dennis Edwards, North Park Theological Seminary
“Following Jesus is the fruit of a faithful pastor’s life of following a Jesus who is not a ‘doctrinal abstraction’ but a living presence, who transforms human hearts and calls followers into communities to bear witness to Jesus’s liberating, loving, and justice-making work. This is both devotional reading and a manifesto for Christian action, grounded in careful biblical interpretation, years of faithful pastoral practice, and resistance to Christian hypocrisies of many kinds.”
—Kathleen D. (Kadi) Billman, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago