Michael Frost’s strength of character and personality shines through each page of his book, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Michael isn’t afraid of offending anyone, and he boldly takes on the contemporary church, blog writers, and even some of the finest Christian musicians of our time including Matt Redman and Steve Fee.
Michael is a great story-teller, and the book is full of stories about life on the edge as a beer-drinking crowd-defying follower of Jesus. Most of the stories are effective in calling us back to a truer reflection of the lifestyle of Christ. However, Michael’s story-telling style requires him to display extensive details about his subjects, and his ruminations in the fields of economics and corporations could have benefitted from more detailed research.
What Michael has to say is important and deserves to be heard. Nonetheless, in my view it does not present a complete picture, and the critiques which it presents are for the most part more convincing than the tentative suggestions which it makes. If you want some original insights into what’s wrong with the church, read the book; if you want to know how to fix the problems, look elsewhere.