RICHMOND, Va. — The gospel is universal but it takes new shapes in new settings — and spreads in ways that can only be called “viral.”
That’s the assessment of a just-released book featuring the insights of 50 youngish leaders of missional congregations around the world — including six with Virginia Baptist ties.
Viral Hope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs (and Everything in Between) expresses the reasons “why I follow Jesus and profess to be part of a people around the world — past, present and future — who seek to follow him,” said Chris Backert, emerging church strategist for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. Backert works closely with the Ecclesia Network, a collaboration of missional churches, whose publishing division, Ecclesia Press, released the book.
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“As I pondered the words of this book, I thought, this is exactly why the Good News of Jesus is so great: his life, death and resurrection is transformative,” Backert writes in a conclusion to the book. “His life and his words can speak to all people in all kinds of places in all kinds of ways.”
Viral Hope is based on a blog series hosted in 2009 by J. R. Woodward, a co-founder of the Ecclesia Network who ministers among a group of neighborhood churches in Los Angeles. The blog series featured a different contributor for each day of the Easter season — the 50 days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost — and explored “the rich and multicolored tapestry of the Good News,” said Woodward, who founded New Life Christian Fellowship in Blacksburg, Va., in 1989. Backert led the large church near the Virginia Tech campus to affiliate with the Baptist General Association of Virginia in 2003.
“The story of God is rich with diversity,” writes Woodward in an introduction to the book he edited. “There are plots, subplots and different ways to view the story, as evidenced in the four gospels. And while the Jesus story is a many-sided tale, his life, death and resurrection are at the center of the Good News.”
For Viral Hope, Woodward asked the bloggers to summarize their understanding of the Good News in 300 to 500 words, as if their local newspaper had asked them to write an article about it. The entries are designed to be read daily during the Easter season, he said.
A common theme expressed by the contributors, Backert writes, is that while something in the world is terribly wrong, “something better is coming, when all wrongs will be made right, when all the broken pieces of life will be mended, when creation will be restored, when joy will be made full, when relationships will only help and will not harm, when we will experience unity in diversity among the various people groups in the world, and when we no longer need to imagine that things could be any better.”
That hope, writes Woodward, will spread like a virus — “not one that brings disease and destruction, but one that brings hope, healing, reconciliation and peace.”
Excerpts from six Virginia Baptist contributors to Viral Hope:
“Perhaps Jesus’ story (God became human, died as a scandalous act of love, and then walked out of his tomb as a signal of God’s intention to resurrect everything death has ruined) tells us what our heart already knows: we are people of life not death. … And here we encounter the jaw-dropping good news. Death might be everywhere, but death does not have the final word. Jesus has come, and death (of every sort) will one day be emphatically undone. And life will dance free in the streets.”
— Winn Collier, pastor of All Souls in Charlottesville, Va.
“[C]an there be a type of news that is so broad and wide-sweeping that it would affect everyone in a good way? Most say no. That type of good news is a pipe dream. Pollyanna. Face it, there is no political party, no social or economic condition, no extent of global peace that can bring that type of good news. It’s just not possible. And that was the response of people two thousand years ago when Jesus began to tell people, ‘The good news is at hand.’ This news, his news, could positively affect everyone. Naturally, not everyone believed it. But that didn’t change the nature of the good news. And he didn’t just tell of it, he showed that his news was good: acceptance, forgiveness, healing, relief, truth, peace, compassion, friendship, love, patience and grace. This news was personal, intimate and pervasive. Its goodness had the potential to reorient all of life. It was the type of good news that was good for everyone. And it still is.”
— Brian Hopper, co-pastor of Imago Dei in Richmond, Va.
“What kind of meals are we eating? Here at one of the most prestigious universities in America, we feast on some of the best the world has to offer. … Isn’t it odd, though, that these small meals tend to leave us hungry, wanting more? This is because, at their very best, they are appetizers preparing our palettes for something with substance. The good news for us is that a kingdom is coming, and in this kingdom, Jesus continues to feast with tax collectors and sinners. And this is good news, because, if we are all honest with ourselves or even remotely in touch with our deepest longings, we recognize that our own banquets are sparse. The good news is that we are all invited to feast with Jesus. At a Jesus feast we can know and be known, see and be seen, being healed in the process.”
— Evan Hansen, Baptist collegiate minister, University of Virginia
“We are making an old building that had fallen from its original design beautiful again. We are doing it together. Not always smoothly, not always in the most straightforward way — but it is happening. … The building should remind us of why we are here: to take the hurting and the ugly and the inconvenient in this world on ourselves. Then, together, in the power of the risen Christ, we celebrate; we help it be transformed.”
— Jim Pace is lead navigator of New Life Christian Fellowship in Blacksburg, Va.
“The Good News is that God has created us for significance. For relationships. To be a part of something bigger than ourselves. To be part of his work in the world. The problem is that most of our neighbors have settled for very small stories — stories that revolve around their work and their possessions. Stories that highlight their problems and offer no better way of life. The Good News is that this doesn’t have to be the dominant reality these people live in. We don’t have to live that way anymore. … The Good News is that the world is even now being mended. … The Good News is that God is renewing all things.”
— Doug Paul, pastor of Eikon Community in Midlothian, Va.
“Something about the ‘Good News’ used to bother me. I’d hear at Easter that Jesus had shown us through his resurrection that he had defeated death and evil on the cross. But I work at Virginia Tech, where we just passed the second anniversary of the massacre there. My fellow Hokies and I can tell you: Death and Evil are still very much alive. … Christ reigns, yes, but his order has not yet spread to all the earth. There is work to be done, for he must reign until he has restored this failed state of a planet to its original good design. Then death will be destroyed, for it is the last enemy to go.”
— Matt Rogers is on the staff of New Life Christian Fellowship in Blacksburg, Va.