Parable Life
Living the Stories Jesus told in Real Time
Michelle Van Loon

Edgy retelling of the parables of Jesus through the stories of real people living today, tapping into the worldview of the emerging church movement.

Jesus? most familiar parables are examined in three ways: From the context of the text, through an imaginative retelling of the story behind the story of the parable, and how the parable looks today in real time through actual stories of people living now.

There is a growing conversation about what it means to live as a follower of Jesus here and now. Living as a part of the body of Christ is more than just finding a slot on a church'' organizational chart and more than acquiring an impressive collection of Bible data by filling a chair in a sanctuary or Sunday School class. To many, the kingdom of God looks like a tangle of beautiful, sloppy, fast-growing rainforest plants, not a tidy line-up of plants safely contained in five-gallon containers on a shady patio.

Michelle Van Loon is a freelance writer who has published three full-length plays and written numerous articles in well-known publications such as Relevant magazine, Discipleship Journal and Charisma magazine. A spiritual seeker wandering through the landscape of current culture, she brings a mix of whip-smart secular Jewish heritage, thoughtful evangelical study and hair-raising church leadership experiences to her writing. She is author of "Uprooted: Growing a Parable Life from the Inside Out" (FaithWalk 2006).