Starving Jesus
Craig Gross & J.R. Mahon

David Cook Publishing—Religion | Christian Ministry | Evangelism
239 pages

This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting… although admittedly I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I picked this book up at a Borders after browsing the shelves looking for another book. This one in particular caught my attention because I had seen it laying around the office at Community and figured it must be worth a read, so I snatched it up and paid for it with a gift card.

Starving Jesus was the dream of xxxchurch.com founder Craig Gross and his associate J.R. Mahon born out of numerous rants about the church. It certainly takes on the form of a rant in its writing style, however in the middle it takes a major shift away from what’s wrong with the church towards the spiritual discipline of fasting—particularly 40 day fasts.

I’m not quite sure there was a cohesive theme that ran throughout the entire book, and if there was one I completely missed it. However, if you see each chapter as a sort of essay tied around the hope of what the church can be then it hit the mark. There was deconstructionist tones towards the beginning that found themselves muted at the end, lost in the conversation of fasting. I’m not sure there was a great deal of understanding that I gained from the book, however if you’re looking for something to explain fasting this can certainly be a good start ripe with story and testimonial that I found to be somewhat helpful. Otherwise, I’m not sure there’s anything in this book that I haven’t read or heard elsewhere.