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Book explores hours leading to Crucifixion


By Kathy L. Gilbert*

Dec. 1, 2009

The Rev. Adam Hamilton is challenging Christians to spend six weeks focused on a day that changed world history: Jesus’ Crucifixion.

In “24 Hours That Changed the World,” Hamilton retraces Jesus’ footsteps “from the Mount of Olives to Mount Calvary.”

“It’s the central story of our faith about a God who suffers for us and the price that God is willing to pay to redeem us and save us,” he says.

Hamilton is senior and founding pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States. The church has grown from four people in 1990 to more than 12,000 adult members with an average weekly worship attendance of over 7,500 in 2008. “24 Hours That Changed the World” is Hamilton’s 10th book published by Abingdon Press and includes a DVD, leader’s guide and 40-day devotional book. He spoke recently with United Methodist News Service about his latest project.

Q: What was the inspiration for this book?

A: The model for this was the television show “24,” where an entire season is one 24-hour day. I began thinking about what would happen if we took the events of Jesus’ final 24 hours and did this.

The book begins with the preparation for the Last Supper as Jesus sends the disciples into town to prepare the Passover Seder. And then each chapter takes a successive event in that last 24 hours.

In churches, we have Palm Sunday … one Sunday on which to focus half of the service on the most important event in world history, and that was the death of Christ. So we began saying, “How about if we spend six weeks … an entire Lenten season focused on just that last 24 hours of his life?”

Q: What went into your preparation and research for this project?


The Rev. Adam Hamilton is pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.
A UMNS file photo by Kathy L. Gilbert.

A: I spent a lot of time researching things like Roman crucifixion methods and how exactly meals were served in the first century for the Last Supper. I went to the Holy Land and actually retraced the steps of Jesus. I walked the exact journey to get a feel of what that might have felt like.

My goal was to teach people something that they may not have known about this story to help them think about its meaning for their lives. So teaching about the facts, helping them think about what this means – how does the story of Jesus’ Last Supper speak into my life? How does his arrest and the events that were happening with the disciples in the garden – what does that mean for me?

The last four chapters are devoted to a different theory of the atonement. We look at four theories of the atonement or understanding. How did Jesus’ death on the cross bring about salvation for us? I find a lot of Christians struggle with that. We believe that Jesus died for us, but we’re not exactly clear how we can explain how that happened. So that’s another dimension of the book.

And finally my hope is just to inspire people when they read it. There are stories in there that would touch their hearts and help them, you know, identify with the suffering and death of Christ at a heart level.

Q: What was it like for you to go to the Holy Land to retrace Jesus’ steps and film your journey?

A: My wife and I spent a week in the Holy Land virtually by ourselves just meeting with scholars, other people there, to learn all that we could about the events and places. So while we were preparing the videos, it was just a time of real renewal.

Typically the videos that we’ve done for my studies are edits of the sermons from which the books emerged. But in this case, it’s totally different. I take people to walk inside a first century tomb in Jerusalem. We build a Roman cross in the video where people can see how they went together and what the elements were, and (we) set up a Last Supper where they actually have a chance to see how it probably occurred.

I’m just very excited about this because I feel like each of these components has something that will deepen the faith of people and for churches to use it.

In our own church when we did this, I was astounded at how it affected our people. I mean, their faith was deepened. There was a greater sense of reverence. There was a greater anticipation of Easter. More people signed up for missions than had signed up for missions before. More people showed up for our prayer vigil than we’d had before. It just really had a profound impact.

So I’m just so excited to share this with other people and hopefully have this kind of impact in their churches.

Q: How do you find the time to write books?

A: I learned something from Jim Moore, who served as pastor in Houston years ago. I asked him the same question, and he said, “I write every sermon as though it’s going to be a chapter in a book.” That helped me begin thinking when I have a sermon series that I think might be also a good book, I make sure I’m going to spend 20 hours writing that sermon. And that gives me a pretty good foundation up front.

In this case, it was 120 hours crafting, reading and researching and studying for these sermons. But it also was preparation for writing the book. And then the church will typically give me a week off during the year to do writing and those kinds of things. I get away by myself somewhere and I’ll spend another 70 hours that week. And then there’s a lot of late nights. I had probably two or three nights where literally I was up all night long.

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It’s really a labor of love. And this book in particular, between the book and the study – the small-group study – and the devotional, it was a two-year process of getting all that finished.

Q: What do you do to feed your creativity?

A: I’ll tell you part of it is doing the reading and research for books like this. So when I was studying and I would learn something new I hadn’t learned in seminary about, you know, Roman crosses or about the way the Last Supper was set up or these kinds of things, as I would learn those things, I found myself excited. I’d get energized by something new that I had learned.

My wife and I each have motorcycles, and when the weather is nice, we’ll go out and ride out in the country. I’ve got an old 1964 John Deere tractor, and we live on 13 acres of land. And I’ll go hook up the brush hog and go mow stuff down. I find that refreshing. On a more spiritual front, we’re in a small group, and usually I’m constantly reading something that’s renewing my faith.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish with this book, DVD and devotional guide?

A: It’s set up to be something that a congregation or a small group or an individual could do over 40 days. And ideally that ties into the season of Lent, but it wouldn’t have to.

I was thinking, you know, Rick Warren and others have done the 40 days of purpose, the 40 days of community. What I’m excited about … is this is 40 days about the cross. This is 40 days focused on the central, most important event in human history from a Christian perspective. And so I feel like there’s an opportunity here for this to really have an impact on people’s faith and to deepen their faith.

And so I hope people will take advantage of it and that it actually does that for folks, and they come away with a deeper appreciation and a deeper understanding of what happened on the cross or in the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life and what it means for them.

*Gilbert is a news writer for United Methodist News Service in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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