By Adrian Plass
Illustrated by Ben Ecclestone
HarperCollins. 68 pages. £9.99
ISBN 0 551 03223 5
What would happen if Jesus came in person to visit your church for a few weeks? This is the startling and imaginative scenario explored by Adrian Plass. The text of the book was first published in 1987 in a collection of other work, but now stands on its own in a beautiful slim hardback, illustrated with lovely water-colour pictures.
I have to say that I picked up this book with great anticipation, but came away rather disappointed. The Lord Jesus visiting a church like mine! I expected to be challenged and to be made to feel very uncomfortable and I was. But not always for the right reasons. There are some terrific ideas and scenes in the story, but I was left very much with a feeling that I had met a Jesus who had been created in our own end-of-the-20th-century image, not the real one. Plass's character seemed shaped rather too much by the aspirations and guilt-feelings of middle-aged suburban charismo-evangelicalism - all spontaneity, no discipline, all therapy and nothing too much straight from the shoulder about heaven and hell. I may be overstating it, but perhaps the church doesn't like the Jesus of the Bible very much.
