SUSAN E. Isaacs calls northwest author, Karen Spears Zacharias "trailer-trash wonderful."
Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? ('Cause I need more room for my plasma TV) By Karen Spears Zacharias, Zondervan, 2010, Hardcover, 240 Pages, ISBN-13: 978-0310292500, $16.99
Instead of promised jobs, lottery and prosperity preachers are the only "growth industries" northwest author, Karen Spears Zacharias sees. She writes too many preachers offer a "name it and claim it" theology that has little to do with the Bible. "We have this notion that God owes us better than we've gotten," she says in, Will Jesus buy Me A Double-wide? (Cause I Need More Room for my Plasma TV).
Zacharias associates important life moments with trailers, perhaps because she, her mother, ailing grandfather and two siblings moved into a 12 X 60 single-wide after her father's death in Vietnam. She remembers, "I had my first kiss in a trailer. I smoked my first and last cigarette in a trailer. I asked Jesus into my heart on bended knee in a trailer. I fell madly in love (several different times) in a trailer."
Susan E. Isaacs calls Zacharias "trailer-trash wonderful." She likes the author's use of subtle humor and rich storytelling to dispute prosperity preaching. Stories that illustrates the lives of those "who are spiritually richer than any slick TV preacher ever will be." She's speaking of those who promise physical and spiritual blessings if you only send money.
Zacharias toured back roads, from Oregon to North Carolina asking people's beliefs about God and money. She learned some people treated "God like a slot machine, yanking on the prayer cable, hoping...the triple 7's...appear?" Others lived out the gospel of the Bible and "became the least of these for the sake of Christ."
Nineteen chapters with titles like, The Ambassador, The Evangelist, or The Mogul, tell one persons story. Messages are deep, often humorous and thought-provoking. Their message lingers long after the stories are finished.
For example, in the Ambassador's story an 80 year old man, raised with siblings by a single mom in the south "headed off to a Southeastern Bible College" when he came home from military service. He encountered what he called the "Cash-and-Cadillac Gospel." And felt such preachers were "smooth-talkers" because they told people what they wanted to hear, instead of relating how to be the "hands and feet of Christ"
The Beautician's tale exposes what Zacharias calls television's "Jesus Hawkers," pseudo-preachers who offer empty promises in their solicitations. Such as:
· "Tonight is the poorest you'll ever be...just send your seed money."
· "If you can't trust God for $58 you'll never be debt free...act now."
· "...obey the Holy Spirit...make that call...plant that seed."
She names names in this chapter. For example, Benny Hinn Ministries has an anticipated take of one hundred million dollars a year from donors. Hinn's annual salary is estimated between half-a-million and one million dollars and he lives in a ten-million-dollar seaside mansion with his family, according to the author.
Zacharias explains about Wall Watchers, an overseer group for Christian ministries, similar to Consumer Reports. They report current financial information on 500 of America's leading ministries. Benny Hinn Ministries didn't make their list in 2008, nor did Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, or Paul and Jan Crouch among many other well-known preachers, "who failed to provide financial transparency," reports Zacharias.
Chapter-by-chapter discussion questions complete Zacharias's refreshing book that criticizes the formula, "God's favor + Our Obedience = Riches." Or as William P. Young, author of The Shack writes, "If the prosperity gospel had a heart, Karen...stomped that sucker flat... "
She certainly has! Her book is an eleven in a ten-out-of-ten.
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