Evangellyfish - Exposing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good: God; The Bad: Us Christians; The Ugly: Our Sin

I just saw that Pastor Doug Wilson has a new book coming out, Evangellyfish. Here is a blurb from Christianity Today:

“Before I dipped into this novel, I was told it was a satire. What satire? I was a pastor for 10 years, and reading this made me squirm. Wilson grasps the untold ambiguities that contemporary pastors experience. This is realistic fiction. No, make that just realistic.”
— Mark Galli, Senior Managing Editor, Christianity Today

“I have no desire to read yet another Elmer Gantry knockoff about a sex-obsessed preacher and his congregation of hypocrites. Fortunately, Evangellyfish isn’t one more on the pile. Doug Wilson isn’t writing about ‘those crazy Christians,’ he’s writing about us crazy Christians. When you start this short novel, you’ll want to believe it describes that big church across town. By the time you finish, you’ll remember that it describes the bigger church you’re a part of, that scandalous body that God keeps calling his. Wilson understands better than most that ‘judgment must begin at the house of God,’ and that God still dwells there despite the most squalid conditions.”
— Ted Olsen, Managing Editor, News & Online Journalism, Christianity Today

What’s it about?

John Mitchell is the pastor of a small, modestly successful Reformed Baptist church in a city in the Midwest.

Chad Lester is one of the most successful pastors in North America, and he is the leading light at Camel Creek Community Church in the same city. He is, speaking in theological terms, a dirt bag. And yet, his quasi-secret sexual misbehavior leads only to church growth success followed by publishing success, followed in turn by ever more church growth.

John Mitchell hates everything that Lester stands for and yet, unbeknownst to him, envy of Lester’s success has him secretly by the throat. He thinks of it as indignation, or righteous concern, or something, but the real issue is that he is peeved that Lester appears to be blessed by God for being a creep, and he, Mitchell, struggles in obscurity for being faithful.

When Lester is falsely accused of the one rotten thing he didn’t do, and his ministry starts to implode, John Mitchell is dragged into it much against his will.

According to pastor Wilson, Evangellyfish is not a dark comedy but rather a medium brown comedy. He also wants to make clear that “all the characters in Evangellyfish are fictional, I made them all up out of my own head. Any resemblance to any real people, living or dead, is their own darn fault.”