Shane Pruitt, national next gen director for the North American Mission Board (NAMB), has released a new Bible study, titled “Not My Jesus,” aimed at encouraging people to reject false views of Jesus and boldly follow the Jesus who is historically recorded in the New Testament.
Pruitt, in conjunction with Lifeway, published two versions of the study: one for adults and one for teenagers. “Not My Jesus” highlights a cultural trend where people follow a personalized version of Jesus rather than the biblical one. In the study, Pruitt emphasizes the importance of sound doctrine, authentic worship, and generational discipleship.
The global evangelist also explores how parents’ incomplete discipleship can influence their children and can be detrimental to their spiritual transformation, which begins with trusting Jesus, not just following rules. The study is designed for families, churches, and individual readers, and includes free video resources.
“This has been a message on my heart for years,” Pruitt shared with ChurchLeaders. “My wife has been pushing me to write this Bible study for years because she’s like, ‘It’s so relevant. You need to talk about this.’”
Pruitt explained the shift he’s witnessed in culture that prompted the study. “We’ve seen a cultural shift, especially with young people over the recent years, that really in the public square, you can talk about Jesus,” he said. “Because whatever your thing is, whatever your cause is, Jesus is like the hero of that movement—you just can’t talk about the Bible.”
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“So in the public square, you can talk about Jesus, just don’t talk about the Bible,” Pruitt continued. “The problem with that is that often the Jesus that people are talking about, the Jesus people are following, the Jesus people are telling others about, worshiping, raising their hands to, is not the Jesus of the Scriptures.”
“It’s more of a Jesus shaped by their opinions, their preferences, their own personal tolerances,” he added.
The Jesus that Christians often display is a “Jesus” that “cares about what they care about and gets angry about what they get angry about,” Pruitt argued. “Really, what we’re doing is creating an idol named Jesus. We’re making an image of ourselves. It’s like in the Old Testament—we want to be the potter and him be the clay instead of vice versa.”
