Vintage Jesus by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

Summary
In this book Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle answers questions like "Is Jesus the only God?" and "Did Jesus rise from death?"

There are twelve questions and each question gets its own chapter. At the end of each chapter, well-known theologian, Gerry Breshears briefly answers a few further questions that may have come to the reader's mind while reading the chapter. For example, at the end of chapter eight, "Where Is Jesus Today?" he answers the following questions: "Is Jesus reigning as King today?" "Are we under the power of curses?" and "Can people who are with Jesus see us?"

What I liked
The book has a fresh and unique flavour. It's the same old topic, don't expect any new arguments or groundbreaking discoveries in this book. But the writing is interesting. Mark Driscoll tries to bring in some humour, and he answers the questions in a way that demonstrates the topic's relevance. Also, he puts in a lot of statistics like polls on what the average American believes about the resurrection or the virgin birth and information like how and where Jesus shows up in pop-culture or what other religions believe about Jesus. So the topic is both interesting and relevant and the book is sometimes fun to read.

What I didn't like
Mark Driscoll can put a sentence together and knows how to use words but, in this book, he's not such a great writer. And this is my only complaint. The writing itself is good but the structure is poor. For example, at the end of chapter two, "How Human was Jesus?" the following three points are introduced by headings: "Jesus was Funny" "Jesus was Passionate" and "Jesus was Bummed." The third point briefly outlines some arguments to support Jesus being bummed and then goes on for a page and a half about how Jesus has been portrayed in film during the twentieth century without concluding the previous topic or introducing the new one, the one topic just runs into the other. And the chapter ends abruptly, no summary, no conclusion. Stuff like that happens repeatedly through the book. Also, it seems like the book is written based on a sermon transcript (which is generally a bad idea), so a lot of the jokes fall flat because they're written the way they would have been spoken and are so dependent on vocal cues, in the book, it just seems like he's purposely trying to push buttons and upset people because you can't write a joke the same way you say a joke.

Conclusion
A good book, relevant and interesting and informative. Well-researched, too. It has the potential to be a fun read. But poorly structured and poorly assembled. I hope Mark Driscoll's editors do a better job on his other books. So 3/5 redneck jokes.