A Book Proposal
Recovering the Majesty of Jesus in an Age of Domesticated Faith
§ 1
Most Christians know the plan of salvation but have never been introduced to the King it proclaims. They can explain why Jesus died but cannot say what he is doing now.
Meet the King walks through the historic doctrine of Christ in twenty chapters, from his existence before Bethlehem to his return, and reads every piece of it through his kingship. Written for theologically curious lay readers in plain language with stories and humor, it gives them the whole Christ, person and work, and a reason to stop treating the Lord of the world as a personal assistant.
“Jordan, Jesus is Lord.”The first words spoken over the author as a newborn, and the thesis of the book.
§ 2
The primary reader is the theologically curious Christian who has read Gentle and Lowly or Mere Christianity and wants the next book. They have met the heart of Jesus and want to meet the King. Words like Chalcedon or hypostatic union will not scare them off, but they want to know why any of it matters on a Tuesday.
Those who came to faith through the gospel presented as a transaction and have never heard it as an announcement. The author pastored young adults for five years; this group reacts most strongly to the thesis.
Twenty chapters, most between 2,000 and 3,000 words, run fall to spring at one chapter a week, and every chapter ends with a payoff for daily life.
Ministry students and teachers who need a readable introduction to Christology they can hand to the people they teach.
The book communicates to them because it was built in front of them. Its illustrations were tested on undergraduates and congregations before they were written down. It draws on the whole church's reading of Christ: the Fathers, the Reformers, and the recent recovery of the Jewish story the first Christians lived inside. Because it stands on the creeds, readers across traditions can follow it without feeling recruited.
§ 3
Twenty chapters in three parts. Open a part to see its chapters, and a chapter to read its summary.
Sets the question the whole book answers: who is Jesus, and what did he come to do? It opens with the author's grandmother's first words over him as a newborn and introduces the problem that drives the book: we domesticate Jesus in two directions, reducing him to a private spiritual companion or recruiting him to serve our earthly allegiances. The gospel announces something larger: Jesus is King.
The chapter opens before time. A seven-year-old's bedtime cross-examination about Jesus' birthday leads into the pre-existence of Christ: John 1, Colossians 1, the angel of the Lord, the fourth man in the furnace. Justin Martyr and Athanasius frame the historical argument, recovering the eternal Son who existed before Bethlehem.
Starts with skeuomorphs (the fake camera-shutter sound on your phone) and moves to the full humanity of Christ. Jesus grew tired, wept, hungered. The chapter works through why his humanity saves: representation as the second Adam, substitution, sympathy, and the healing of human nature. You have a God who gets it, and a mediator who still wears flesh.
The divinity of Christ, argued from the New Testament's reuse of Old Testament texts: John's Genesis language, the worship Jesus accepts, and the divine names he carries. The claim is traced to the earliest documents, centuries before any council met. The one who sympathizes with us is also the eternal God who made and sustains us.
A short chapter that joins the previous two. One person, two natures, fully God and fully man. The Chalcedonian definition, taught the way it is taught in the classroom: everyday language and practical illustrations, ending with an honest confession that we hold this doctrine with mystery.
Drops the reader into a first-century marketplace and lets the names do the work: Messiah, Son of Man, Lord, the Word. Each name carries its Old Testament heritage, Daniel 7 especially. By the end the reader hears “Jesus is Lord” the way Rome heard it: a rival throne.
The offices of prophet, priest, and king structured ancient Israel's life, and Jesus fulfills all three. Each role is walked from its Old Testament shape to its fulfillment in Christ, showing how the threefold office still describes the way the King rules his people now.
One person in history never lied, never cheated, never snapped in unrighteous anger. His sinlessness is taken seriously as doctrine and as a reality that shapes our lives: real temptation means real victory, why your substitute had to be spotless, and why your assurance is anchored.
The thesis chapter and a writing sample. How did Jesus view his own mission? Three layers: the legal (the sweet exchange), the ontological (recapitulation and theosis), and the narrative (the enthronement of the King). Three streams of the church's reading, united around one mission: Jesus is King.
Opens in a Walmart checkout line in 2011 with a young man who could not answer the question “What is the gospel?” The chapter clears away the common substitutes, defines the gospel as a royal announcement, tells the story in four movements, and names the three layers of entering the kingdom: forgiveness, redeemed life, new vocation.
The shape of the King's three years: baptism, miracles as signs of the kingdom, meals with all the wrong people, the long road to Jerusalem. The ministry read as royal policy, the King showing in villages and at tables what his rule looks like.
The Sermon on the Mount and the parables as the constitution of the new kingdom: a portrait of human flourishing under the King's rule, with the parables as his favorite way of smuggling the kingdom past our defenses.
Defines the kingdom, works the already-and-not-yet tension through Oscar Cullmann's D-Day and V-E Day frame, and shows what citizenship asks of us in the meantime, in a kingdom that relativizes every national, partisan, and cultural allegiance.
Mark tells the passion as an enthronement that looked as if it had gone wrong at every point: the robe, the crown, the acclamation, the placard naming the charge, two men at his right and left. Rome staged a mockery and ended up staging the truth. A writing sample.
The atonement in layers: recapitulation, Christus Victor, and penal substitution, presented as three voices in one harmony. Then a seat at the table: the Lord's Supper, what the traditions have said about the bread and the cup, and why the meal proclaims the King's death until he comes.
The historical case for the resurrection. The pre-Pauline creed in 1 Corinthians 15, dated within a few years of the crucifixion by believing and skeptical scholars alike, legend-formation timelines, and the early testimony around the empty tomb, closing with Paul: the persecutor who became the herald of the King.
Jesus stayed on earth for forty days after Easter, but few books work through what those days mean. Breakfast on the beach, Peter's restoration over a charcoal fire, and the Emmaus road, where the risen King leads the first post-Easter Bible study.
The ascension as Daniel 7 fulfilled. Where Christ is now and what he is doing: reigning, interceding, preparing. A King absent in body and present in power, restoring the vertical dimension often missing from contemporary portraits of Jesus.
Opens with Miles Davis and a trumpet that stays silent brass until breath fills it, then traces ruach and pneuma across roughly 800 appearances in two languages. The Spirit is the King's own presence with his people, and Pentecost is proof the King is reigning.
Geneva, winter 1559: a feverish John Calvin revises the Institutes one last time. Union with Christ is the doctrine that holds the Christian life together and the one most Christians know least. United to the King, his people are seated with him and will one day reign with him.
The parousia taught the way first-century readers heard it: the formal arrival of a king at his city, roads repaired, citizens streaming out to escort him in. The last page returns to the first words ever spoken over the author. He is Lord now.
§ 4
Matthew W. Bates
Eerdmans, 2023 · $17.99 · 198 pp.
Bates explains what the gospel is for: allegiance to the King. He assumes the reader knows the King. Meet the King introduces him, chapter by chapter, and is the book a reader needs before or after Bates.
Dane C. Ortlund
Crossway, 2020 · $19.99 · 224 pp.
Ortlund opens the heart of Christ through one verse, Matthew 11:29. Meet the King is the next book for the same reader: the one whose heart they met, now seated on the throne.
N. T. Wright & Michael F. Bird
Zondervan Reflective, 2024 · $22.99 · 208 pp.
Wright and Bird start from politics and reason toward Jesus. Meet the King starts from Jesus; politics shows up as one consequence of his throne.
Mikel Del Rosario
IVP Academic, 2025 · $24.99 · 256 pp.
A historical defense of one claim, Jesus' divinity, for an apologetics reader. Meet the King covers divinity in one chapter and gives the lay reader the other nineteen, with the apologetic edge kept and the footnotes carrying the evidence.
Michael Reeves
IVP Academic, 2015 · $21.99 · 144 pp.
A short Christology following the same arc in five devotional chapters. Meet the King runs the arc at greater length, reads every stage through kingship, and adds the names, offices, teaching, and kingdom chapters a short book has to skip.
§ 5
Dr. Jordan Vale is Teaching Pastor at The Chapel and Adjunct Professor at Southeastern University, where he has taught for twelve years (Pauline Literature, the Gospels, and Systematic Theology) and served as interim chair of Ministry and Theology for Extension Education. The doctrine of Christ has been part of his classroom and his pulpit for over a decade, and the chapters of this book were preached and taught before they were written.
§ 6
Potential endorsers include Kenneth Tanner, Joe Thorn, and Dan Kimball, along with Dr. Kent Ingle, President of Southeastern University.
The Chapel: a sermon series built on the book, with copies for the congregation and small groups. Southeastern University: course adoption in theology and ministry classes, and promotion through the College of Christian Ministries and Religion.
Launch-season promotion across the podcast, YouTube (announcement video, Shorts, in-video promotion), Substack (pre-release excerpts and a paid deep dive on the coronation material), Theology Made Worship (a launch-season hymn), Instagram, Facebook, Theology Made Kids, and the Theology Made shop for signed copies and a companion print.
Advance copies to endorsers and twenty pastors in the author's network, a launch sermon series, and a free one-page-per-chapter study guide through Substack to drive small-group adoption.
§ 7
The manuscript stands at about 52,000 words across seventeen drafted chapters, with 5,600 words of footnotes in Turabian style. The three remaining chapters and the introduction will add around 8,000 words, and editing will bring the text to around 55,000.
Chapter 8
The thesis chapter and the book's teaching voice: the Reformers' courtroom, the Fathers' sickbed, and the Jewish story of a king taking his throne, held together.
Chapter 13
The narrative center and the book's storytelling voice: Mark's passion read as a Roman triumph staged in mockery that turns out to be the real coronation.
Sample chapters are available to publishers and agents on request. Request the samples
