Jesus in the Margins: Finding God in the Places We Ignore

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 192 pages
• Published by: Multnomah Books January 20, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1590523873
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1590523872
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 5.6 ounces

Product Description
Good News Unpacked

Jesus is our ultimate model for finding identity, acceptance, and legitimacy from the Father. As we pull back the curtain on His life, we discover that Jesus knows what it’s like to be marginalized. He understands how it feels to have society shove you to the side, to not really be accepted, and in the end to be totally rejected. He can identify with life in the margins because when God came to earth in the human being of Jesus Christ, He landed in the margins. On purpose. And He picked to land there because it’s in the margins that broken lives get mended, prisoners are set free, and the poor hear the Good News.

Reimagine Your Life

Welcome to the crowded margins of life. It’s a place where normal people don’t feel normal. Where the daily grind drowns out the soft cry within that says, “I do not have it together.” Where just beneath the surface we long for meaning and—dare we hope?—wholeness.

Rick McKinley writes from experience: Only God can rescue a human being from the margins. Why? Because when He came to earth in the human being of Jesus Christ, in the margins is where he landed. On purpose. To find you.

Don’t wait till you get yourself together. Meet Jesus in the margins just as you are, and reimagine your life through the lens of His transforming love.

Story Behind the Book

This book was birthed out of Rick’s ministry at Imago Dei Community Church. Rick’s heart is to communicate God’s Word in an understandable way to those who are outside the reach of traditional churches. He often calls this “unpacking the gospel”—a gospel he sees as the predominant theme in all of Scripture. Rick says the kind of people he ministers to “are not afraid of the language of theology, but the theological ideas need to be brought down from the mountain.”

About The Author
While reading Acts 20:24, Rick McKinley felt God calling him into ministry, and within nine months of his conversion, he was a student at Multnomah Bible College. He worked full time as a youth pastor at a Presbyterian church and went to school full time while his wife, Jeanne, had her hands full with twins. Over the past fifteen years of following Christ, fourteen years of marriage, and thirteen years of full time ministry, they both continue to be amazed at God’s grace and goodness in their lives. Rick and Jeanne live in Portland, Oregon, with their four children. Rick is the lead pastor at Imago Dei Community Church.

Reader Reviews
McKinley writes an excellent work examining Jesus ministry to people in the margins. Many may be familiar with McKinley as 'Pastor Rick' in Don Miller's books (Blue Like Jazz, etc). Pastor Rick really picks up on a lot of the ideas Miller writes about but puts feet to them. He presents a view of Christianity that recognizes how many people feel broken, damaged by family/friends and lost in a world that seems to be heading in the other direction. This is where understanding how the Bible shows Jesus and his work to those left in the margins is so valuable. McKinley writes from experience, as they guy who has had his own struggles with acceptance and letting people in. I recommend this book as both individually healing and as a great presentation of what the Kingdom of God should look like.