You Are Viewing Parchment Reviews

It’s amazing the power of what’s been done before. I believe I first heard the term “chronological snobbery” from John Piper. He used it in an effort to communicate the danger of the cult of “now” and our culture’s obsession with the latest and greatest.

This embrace of the temporal should certainly be warred against in the church which all too often in its ever-reaching quest to be relevant sometimes overreaches and begins to dilute the power and purity of its essence by embracing trends and movements that may prove damaging in the long run.

This book is a reminder – perhaps a rebuke even – to the church, particularly the Methodist tribe – of some of our roots and things that have been used by God in the past to accomplish life and cultural change. It’s a study of John Wesley’s strategies of group discipleship that turned 18th century England upside down and according to some actually aided in the creation of an informed, industrious and respected middle class for the first time in history.

Wesly formulated his group discipleship method through trial and error and constant comparison to how he interpreted the movement of the early church in the New Testament. From his tireless efforts to communicate the Gospel of Christ to the outcast and lower rungs of England’s 17th century society, he was able to witness the Lord doing an amazing work to elevate the status and spiritual life of the people to whom he involved in his comprehensive system of whole life discipleship.

Wesley’s approach at its highest point had five distinct rungs of involvement, with the highest rungs only attainable by those who had proven faithful at the entry levels. His distinction for advancement was ignorant of class or economic level (a drastic departure for England’s society at the time) but was rather completely centered in the willingness of the individual to grow, change, and develop.

The five rungs were:

1. The Society – a large group that assembled mainly for teaching and instruction by a qualified teacher.
2. Class Meeting – members of the Society would break apart and be led by layman in these groups that targeted the behavior. They were expected to apply what had been taught in the Society, as well as meeting the standard of conduct that Wesley and his leaders had drawn up for them (and these were comprehensive).
3. Band – these were smaller groups intended to address the affective, or emotional. They were intended to challenge the disciple in his or her love for Christ.
4. Select Society – this was a level for leadership that involved training and mobilizing to meet the needs of the other levels.
5. Penitent Bands – these were still in development by Wesley, and they were the most sparsely implemented. Essentially, they dealt with special cases of addiction and behavioral issues (a significant precursor to the recovery movement and things like AA).

Wesley’s methods (which led his followers to be called “Methodists”) were so successful that after a beginning of only 20-30, it involved tens of thousands by the time of his death.

Author Michael Henderson identifies eight foundational principles that enabled the successful propagation of Wesley’s system and the influence of the gospel through it:

1. Human nature is perfectible by God’s grace.
2. Learning comes by doing the will of God.
3. Mankind’s nature is perfected by participation in groups, not by acting as isolated individuals.
4. The spirit and practice of primitive Christianity can and must be recaptured.
5. Human progress will occur if people will participate in “the means of grace.”
6. The gospel must be presented to the poor.
7. Social evil is not to be “resisted,” but overcome with good.
8. The primary function of spiritual/educational leadership is to equip others to lead and minister, not to perform the ministry personally.

It is Henderson’s expansion of each of the above eight principles that makes the book a dynamic and profound read.

In this day of explosion and continued renewal of small group ministry in churches, leaders must and should review the successes and mistakes of the past – particularly those of Wesley – in order to be a good steward and practitioner of the truths that were learned and applied to the 18th century society of England.

The transferral of many of these concepts to 21st century small group ministry might revitalize ministries and churches as they seek true transformation in the lives of members and participants. The study of Wesley’s methods might also help us avoid his mistakes and excesses.

I waded through the first story, F-bombs and all. Then came the second story with more of the same…

What?!

Really?!

If these are the “Best American Short Stories of 2005,” we’re really hurting.

I was looking for brilliance and all I got was bawdiness. It’s hard for me to read stories and appreciate their content when they’re clothed in profanity. Sorry. There are too many really good books out there to waste any more time on this grab bag publication.

This is one of those generational message books. It seems that often the Lord seems to raise up a message and a book for a particular time in the life of His church. Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God was/is one of those books that surfaced in 1990. John Piper’s book, Desiring God (1986) is another, in my opinion.

Francis Chan is the pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in California, and as a dynamic and uncomfortably authentic communicator, he is able to couch a stinging rebuke of western Christianity into a gracious and loving message. It is biblical exhortation in 21st century style.

I love a book that asks great questions. This is one of those. Some of the questions are hidden in the middle of chapters, but a few that I caught and pondered were:
• Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?
• Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?
• So why does God still love us, despite us?
• Do you love this God who is everything, or do you just love everything He gives you?
• Are you satisfied being “godly enough” to get yourself to heaven, or to look good in comparison to others?
• Is the idea of the non-fruit bearing Christian something that we have concocted in order to make Christianity “easier?”
• Was your decision to follow Christ flippant, based solely on feelings and emotion, made without counting the cost?
• Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people He has made?
• Why do so few people genuinely find joy and pleasure in their relationship with God?

These are just a sampling. Any one of them is enough to ponder seriously and lead to life-altering change.

If you haven’t read the book, imagine what he says rather than just what he asks.

It’s interesting to note that Jesus Christ taught similarly. In Luke 9.25, He asks, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?”

It’s all about a love relationship with God through Jesus Christ. It’s been my life theme, and Chan’s Crazy Love challenges you to make it real.

I have read the Circle Trilogy and reviewed Black and Red on my blog. I was thrilled to see that Thomas Nelson publishers was offering Green as part of their blogger review program.

After receiving it from them, I tore into it, and after a week of steady reading, I have to say that Ted Dekker’s prequel of the Circle Trilogy is superb. Dekker has effectively created a spiritual epic series that is moving, powerful and provocative.

Green opens on Thomas of Hunter’s life years into the future of the Circle – a group of Elyon’s followers. They are living lives of seclusion from the Horde and a new group called Eramites. Both of these groups have rejected Elyon’s ways. The Eramites follow the counsel of an audacious leader intent on destroying the Horde, while the Horde rejects Elyon completely and instead follows the teachings of the evil being Teeleh.

After years of Elyon’s silence and supposed absence, things are beginning to unravel in the circle. Thomas’ own son, Samuel, questions the ways of Elyon and whether he is even alive.

Dekker portrays a startling parallel in this fictional series with the apathy of the church. His tale exposes the tendency of Christians to withdraw from the world rather than seek to redeem it with the gospel of Christ.

Green is a real nail-biter and it sets up the conflict between good and evil, holiness and pragmatism in a profound way. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all Dekker’s books so far. This was no different.

Buy Green now!

Even before I was able to read this dynamic account of Brother Yun’s life as a Chinese pastor and underground church leader, my book was persecuted. I found it on the floor one morning with the front cover partially ripped and chewed off – a victim of our dog.

The Heavenly Man will definitely challenge the Western Christian’s comfortable assertions of one’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” So many American believers claim those rights that they forget they are found in a Declaration of Independence – not in the Word of God.

In fact, it should concern every Christ-follower that too many American churches equate democracy with Christianity and the tenets of capitalism with the teachings of Christ.

The dramatic experience and story of Brother Yun is one of torture, faith, persecution, and soaring victory. Yet it is a deeply disturbing one.

Yun is gracious in his comparisons of the faith life lived by Chinese believers and that lived by Christians who are not persecuted daily for their beliefs. However, you can’t help but marvel as you read page after page of accounts of healings, miracles, signs and visions and compare them to our own poverty of the same.

His perspective of the miraculous is powerful, as is his reflection on living in a country whose political system is defiantly opposed to the Gospel:

Once I spoke in the West and a Christian told me, “I’ve been praying for years that the Communist government in China will collapse, so Christians can live in freedom.” This is not what we pray! We never pray against our government or call down curses on them. Instead, we have learned that God is in control of both our lives and the government we live under… God has used China’s government for His own purposes, moulding and shaping His children as He sees fit… We shouldn’t pray for a lighter load to carry but a stronger back to endure.

On the signs and wonders:

Many Christians have also asked me why miracles and signs are so prevalent in China, but not so evident in the West. In the West, you have so much. You have insurance for everything. In a way, you don’t need God… In China, the greatest miracles we see are not the healings or other things, but lives transformed by the Gospel. We believe we’re not called to follow signs and wonders but instead the signs and wonders follow us when the Gospel is preached. We don’t keep our eyes on the signs and wonders; we keep our eyes on Jesus.

I can’t recommend this book enough to those who are steeped in Western churchianity. If you’re offended by that term, “Western Churchianity, then you most definitely need to get a grip and understand that what too many embrace as Christianity is actually what Paul describes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.5 happens in the last times. It’s only dead religion – “a form of godliness but denying its power.”

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. (2 Timothy 3.1-5)

If you’re looking for a reading prescription to renew your perspective and allow your heart to drink deeply of God’s heart for the nations, I’d suggest the following books:

• From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, by Ruth Tucker
• Let the Nations Be Glad, by John Piper
• Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (if you can, find a Perspectives class and take it!)
• The Heavenly Man

What other books or resources are you familiar with that will be good electro-faith-shock therapy for a comfortable Christian?

I’d close with these words from Brother Yun, “I can assure the Western church with absolute certainty that you don’t need any more church buildings. Church buildings will never bring the revival you seek… The first thing that is needed for revival to return to your churches is the Word of the Lord.” God’s Word is missing. Sure, there are preachers and thousands of tapes and videos of Bible teaching, but so little contains the sharp truth of God’s Word. It’s truth that will set you free.”

Note
Brother Yun’s fantastic account of the growth, persecution and ministry of the underground church in China has been attacked significantly by some claiming he is a charlatan. Here is an excellent response to their attacks.

It’s not that I didn’t like The Toyota Way. On the contrary, the principles behind the Toyota Company’s process and philosophy are dynamic. This book, however, is drier than Corn Flakes.

I plowed through a full 50% of it before I finally set it down. The author was completely unengaging. It’s a shame to make the TPS (Toyota Production System) as boring as he successfully did. Because TPS is anything but boring.

Toyota’s revolutionary way of doing business has defined, and in some sense, is the model for lean manufacturing. For them, money is not the bottom line. Rather, making a lasting contribution to society is. That, and their people are the foundation of all they do and drive their ultimate decision making processes.

I took a lot away from the book – simply by skimming to get the dynamics and highlights of the material. In particular, we have even begun to implement some of the thoughts behind what is known as visual management by beginning a simple wipe erase board process in our church office. We had a friend and disciple of the TPS help our church staff implement the basics of it.

The Toyota Way as a book is a real snoozer. The Toyota Way is definitely not. Read the Cliff Notes or find another book on the business principles beside this one.

It’s been a while since I read a book by John Maxwell, and now I remember why that is.

Maxwell’s most recent publication, Put Your Dream to the Test should be a must-read for anyone wanting to see their hopes and ambitions become reality. But it isn’t.

For starters, I’m not really sure who actually wrote the book – John Maxwell, his staff of quote researchers, or the hundred+ people whose quotes and anecdotes he strings together to try to make a cohesive statement.

Don’t get me wrong. At times, PYDTTT soars and is inspiring. At other times, it plods. Maxwell’s uncritical use of quotes and their context is like reading a Chicken Soup for the Soul book (He tells the story of the chicken soup books in this book).

He does help you evaluate your dream/goal with diagnostic questions which form the basis for each chapter’s content. The 10 questions are:

1. The Ownership Question: Is my dream really my dream? (I would love for him to ask, “Is my book really my book?”)
2. The Clarity Question: Do I clearly see my dream?
3. The Reality Question: Am I depending on factors within my control to achieve my dream?
4. The Passion Question: Does my dream compel me to follow it?
5. The Pathway Question: Do I have a strategy to reach my dream?
6. The People Question: Have I included the people I need to realize my dream?
7. The Cost Question: Am I willing to pay the price for my dream?
8. The Tenacity Question: Am I moving closer to my dream?
9. The Fulfillment Question: Does working toward my dream bring satisfaction?
10. The Significance Question: Does my dream benefit others?

The chapter on the cost of your dream was, for me, the best one in the book. I found myself underlining more there, at least.

Each chapter begins with an inspirational story of someone who has achieved a great dream. These stories alone make the book better. It’s when Maxwell attempts to derive steps and propositional bullet points from their experiences that the book becomes stale and linear.

Andy Stanley’s Visioneering remains one of the best books out on the subject of vision/dream pursuit. Maxwell’s book, Put Your Dream to the Test is inspiring, but its content seems to be more cut and paste than cohesive.

Alan Hirsch has done it again. He made my head hurt… and my heart.

In The Forgotten Ways Hirsch uses a lot of trendy church terminology like missional, DNA, emerging, etc. but this book is anything but a faddish critique of the western church. Rather it’s nothing short of a declaration of Revolution.

Where the Protestant Reformation reclaimed scripture from a professional, isolated clergy, this Protestant Revolution seeks to urge the Church today to reclaim scriptural living.

TFW is a very challenging book, and while I’d love for folks in my church to read it, I also wouldn’t want to scare them. First of all, Christian leaders would do well to put down “From Good to Great” and pick up TFW. While Collins’ book is awesome, it has become a little overused in some circles in church life as a primer for leadership.

I would encourage Christian leaders to first read Hirsch’s first salvo called The Shape of Things to Come and follow it up with TFW.

One of the tenets of TFW is essentially that we in the western church must become missionaries again in our thinking and strategy. Hirsch points to radical movements of God in history, including the early church’s first 200 years and the Chinese church and claims that there are inherent traits of of the people of God that enable such explosive growth, health and movement.

Where the church has stagnated, it has lot sight of its identity and ability in Christ. He presents in the book six components or elements to mDNA (missional qualities inherited by the innate people of God everywhere):
1. Jesus is Lord – This is the center. It’s a simple confession “that fully vibrates with the primal energies of the scriptural faith.” I love how he unpacks this confession and urges for us to make it more central in our lives and churches.
2. Disciple making – This is not optional. Too many of us in our churches have allowed the attractional model (ya’ll come!) to be our only strategy. We have not faithfully made disciples. We have unfortunately only created crowds.
3. Missional-Incarnational Impulse – this combines the outward focus of God’s people with the deepening impulse. We must remember that we are “on mission,” and that mission requires infiltration and penetration into our communities.
4. Organic systems – We must rethink how we are structured and organized in order to be fluid and effective.
5. Communitas, not community – “Community” too often conjures ideas of warm feelings while the idea of communitas communicates people on mission together.

All in all, it will be a book that hurts your head and your heart at the same time. However, it is akin to what needs to happen when you discover a life threatening illness. You welcome the knife of the surgeon because it can bring renewed energy and health.

The Rainer father and son authorial team – Thom and Sam – have shot the latest signal flare to urge, warn and compel the church to reach young people or die.

Based upon a comprehensive research project, the authors write, “With more than 80% of North American churches stagnant or declining, the church is quickly becoming nonessential to society. With nearly 4000 churches closing their doors permanently each year, a turnaround is imperative.”

The book focuses on the age group of 18-22 year olds and asks why they have left our churches in alarming numbers. Their study confirmed what collegiate ministers have anecdotally known for years: 2/3 of churched young people leave the church during the years of 16-22, with the largest surge occurring at age 18.

While the Rainers make clear that many of these are not leaving their faith but only leaving the institutional church, further research into those that dropped out revealed that even those claiming “faith” are dismally unaware of the most primary Christian teachings and doctrines.

Only half of our young adults agree with the church’s teachings. To be blunt, God has convertedour children, but we have failed to disciple them.

The Top Ten Reasons given among church dropouts?
1. Simply wanted a break from church.
2. Church members seemed judgemental or hypocritical.
3. Moved to college and stopped attending church.
4. Work responsibilities prevented from attending.
5. Moved too far away from the church to continue attending.
6. Became too busy though still wanted to attend.
7. Didn’t feel connected to the people in my church.
8. Disagreed with the church’s stance on political or social issues.
9. Chose to spend more time with friends outside the church.
10. Was only going to church to please others.

The rest of the book unpacks these reasons and seeks to examine ways the church can address them and also exposes faulty thinking in the lives of those who dropout. Both groups bear significant responsibility for change.

Their main conclusion, however, is revealed in the title of the book. Young adults wouldn’t drop out of church if their church was essential to them. They then offer prayerful and practical guidelines for helping a fellowship of believers to become more essential in life.

The four focal points to becoming an essential church are 1) simplify, 2) deepen, 3) expect, and 4) multiply.

The section of the book that dealt with “simplify” built on a previous Rainer book, Simple Church. Their main point is that structure, while not the most important element, can hinder or promote the elements that matter most. If a church’s structure is wrong, no matter how well-intentioned it is, it will become nonessential in the lives of its people. Churches must simplify. Cut programs, cut activities, and focus upon what really makes a church a church.

Essential Church?:
Reclaiming a Generation of Dropouts

Their research revealed that young adults want deep, clear, biblical teaching. They do not want fluff and pep rallies. Churches should not be afraid to go deep, but rather should realize that only by going deep can you prepare your people for life’s joys and hardships with a biblical worldview.
Too few churches expect much from their members. Rather, there seems to be a growing fear that if we expect too much from folks, they’ll bail. The opposite is true. Young adults want to be involved, to contribute, to matter. People generally rise or fall to your level of expectations.

Finally, a church must have in its DNA the goal of multiplying. Churches do not exist only for the people who are members but for the people who aren’t. Churches should be centered and focused on living and communicating the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This would be a fantastic book for a church leadership at a crossroads to read together. Any church located in a college town should digest the material from this book and consider how to prayerfully apply it.

Ever since George Barna released his much-disputed survey about Christians having a higher divorce rate than their secular counterparts, the church has been on the defensive about the issue of marriage and divorce. There’s so much confusion and conflicting teaching about the issue from church to church, sometimes within the same denomination. All the flap compelled Barna to do a much broader (and some say better) Divorce And Remarriage in the Church: Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities. The conclusion he reaches may surprise some and encourage others. I found the book to be well-researched and at the same time faithful to scripture while being practical in ministry. It doesn’t dispute Barna’s findings but rather seeks to bring biblical and practical ministry light to a desperately-needed topic.

Essentially, Brewer examines Jesus’ words that were a response to a specific question posed to him in Matthew 19.3-9:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

The author then does an analytical study of the causes and teachings related to divorce in the Old Testament (to which Jesus was referring) and the understanding of first century Judaism and the Roman Empire. What he helps us see is just how prevalent divorce was. It was extremely common, and more often than not, women were the victims of fickle husbands. When that was the case, they were left without recourse and help.

Brewer shows how the Old Testament changed all that in passages like Exodus 21.7-11 and Deuteronomy 24.1-4. He also uses findings and teachings from first century divorce documents and Judaism to show that what Jesus was disputing was one of the two schools of thought in Judaism: the Hillel school. The Hillel school of thought had reinterpreted the Exodus 21 passage to mean a husband could divorce his wife for “any cause.”

When the Pharisees approached Jesus, they were essentially referring to this well-understood issue of his day. Brewer says they were asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for ‘any cause?’” To which Jesus upheld the sanctity of marriage. He was not, Brewer says, addressing the neglect issues present in the Deuteronomy 24 passage.

There were two prevailing schools of thought in Judaism during Jesus’ day. One of them (Shammaite) eventually was snuffed out during the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Brewer says that this and other mitigating factors led to the church’s misunderstanding of what Jesus taught about divorce and even led the Catholic Church to see marriage as something undesirable for its priests. This ongoing misinterpretation and misapplication of scripture about this issue has led to countless conflicts and pain in churches over the issue of marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

I highly recommend the book to you for your own research and conclusions. However, it should be essential for every church to have a scripturally-grounded and grace-based policy related to marriage and divorce.

Brewer suggests the following:

1. The biblical grounds for divorce are adultery, neglect and abuse, any of which is equivalent to broken marriage vows.
2. No one should initiate a divorce unless their partner is guilty of repeatedly or unrepentantly breaking their marriage vows.
3. No one should separate from their marriage partner without intending to divorce them.
4. If someone has divorced or separated without biblical grounds, they should attempt a reconciliation with their former partner.
5. Remarriage is allowed in church for any divorce after a service or repentance, unless they have divorced a wronged partner who wants to be reconciled.

Divorce And Remarriage in the Church:
Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities

Overall, it’s one of the best books on the topic presently out. If your church has not adopted a clear policy on marriage, divorce and remarriage, what is it waiting for? Clarity, grace, love, and ministry demand it. By communicating the truth redemptively, a church can become proactively involved in defining, saving and redeeming marriages than by simply adding to the statistics linked above.

It’s rare that I discover two really great books back to back (or cover to cover). However, that’s been the case with my last two reads. Tim Challies’ The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment“>The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment was a powerful challenge to the 21st century Christian. My review of that book is here.

I regretfully put down Michael Craven’s Uncompromised Faith: Overcoming Our Culturalized Christianity last night. While I urged Christian leaders and church members to snatch a copy of Challies’ book ASAP, I have to trumpet the urgency of reading Craven’s book for the same group.

This book is incredibly timely, as well as well-researched and powerful. Simply put, if you are living in 21st century Western culture and want to know what and how to speak and relate intelligently during these new rounds of culture wars, read this book.

It is not for the faint of heart. In fact, I am 100% positive it will make most Christians mad. It will disturb you. It will appall you. It will convict you. The Christian church in Western society has capitulated to the philosophies and attacks of godless worldviews. More than likely, your position on many current cultural issues is more informed by junk science and false research propogated by the main stream media, politicians and Hollywood than it is by the clear teaching of God’s Word.

In hard-hitting chapter after chapter, Craven unpacks such crucial cultural issues such as sexuality, homosexuality, the definition of marriage, consumerism, feminism and new age spirituality. Pulling from research, journals and the scientific community, he cites source after source documenting not only a steady but an intentioned undermining of the ethics and teaching of Jesus Christ. That so many Christians hold opinions contrary to the clearly revealed will of the Creator in these areas is not just alarming. It reveals a church in a crisis of righteousness.

The voice and influence of the church in our culture is negligible because we stand for nothing. And when we do, the angry froth coming off the lips of self-righteous and self-appointed leaders of the Right blinds the eyes and closes the ears of a public more concerned about sound bytes than truth. Craven compares the reactive response of religious leaders today to throwing “Christian hand grenades.”

…occasionally entering culture to present our one-sided arguments for the truth of Christianity and then retreating to our churches as soon as we’re done. Being missional means we act more like a rescue force that is determined to stay until are rescued than like a commando unit that occasionally enters hostile territory to harass the enemy.

Craven provides considerate, loving and wise counsel for churches and Christians who would seek to be a city on a hill once again. Our light must shine. Our works must glorify the Father. We must think again.

His chapter on postmodernism is particularly good. In the past 10 years, Christian leaders have obsessed over how to do ministry in a postmodern age. Many have made money off of books, speaking engagements and the like, claiming to offer and help churches and ministries understand postmodernism. It has almost developed into hysteria. Craven offers instructive counsel, “But upon closer examination, postmodernism is overstated concerning its impact on the culture: Modernity remains in my mind a much more influential impulse.”

He quotes Dick Keyes of the L’Abri Fellowship in Massachusetts in which postmodernism is compared to a flood whose waters have receded: “While the water may be gone, the damage nonetheless remains.”

His assertions on how to dialogue and respond to those who hold a postmodern world view (and a modernistic worldview) are a much-needed corrective to the postmodern hype and hysteria currently being digested in Christianity.

Another excellent chapter was the one on sexuality. Craven makes some bold, and I believe, dead-on claims in this chapter about the pervasive and insidious effect that redefining sexual ethics and morality have had on our culture. Looking back to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, he says

It was, for all intents and purposes, a declaration of war against God’s revealed moral standards. The sexual revolution was the beachhead from which the final assault of God’s absolute moral truth was launched. The battle to redefine sexual ethics has become the ground out of which springs the cultural rejection of moral absolutes and ultimately, I believe, Christianity in America.

If nothing else, find a chair in Barnes & Noble, and read this chapter. It’s a revealing and startling look at how the agenda to redefine what is right and wrong with sexual behavior affects almost every significant cultural issue in Western society: abortion, the definition of marriage, love, the definition of family, trust, selflessness, homosexuality, and life itself.

It’s not just about prudish Christianity saying sex outside marriage is sinful. It is by its very nature a brutal rape of truth itself. Is there a revealed truth outside of our own preferences? Is there a standard for morality? Or can our behavior be individually determined by what leads to our “happiness?” We are not looking at the slippery slope. We are on it, and we may even be looking back up at it – flat on our backs.

The church has capitulated in its embrace and defense of truth and God’s revealed will. In the name of love and tolerance, we have allowed overtly sinful and offensive behavior in our churches and even in our private lives. A compromised church offers nothing to the world worthy of emulating.

Craven is not afraid to take on Hugh Hefner’s legacy in the book, nor is he hesitant to deal with the societal taboo of homosexuality and its causes. Craven offers scientific studies and other proofs that dispute the pseudo-science offered up by agenda-ized media and political sources that would try to persuade people that homosexuality is genetic. In short, people aren’t born gay, he points out.

Even if homosexuality was inborn (and it’s not), Craven urges readers to consider the logic of claiming the morality of something that is inborn. “Everything from alcoholism, obesity, violence and adultery, according to Time magazine, may be in our genes. If that were the case, would we then say that these tendencies are morally acceptable because they may have their roots in biology?”

He quotes Joe Dallas, a former gay-rights activist who pointed out that also said even if homosexuality was inborn:

…that does not necessarily mean normal. There are a number of defects or handicaps resulting from disruptions in the genetic development, which are inborn, but we would not call them normal for that reason alone. So why should we be compelled to call homosexuality normal, even if it were inborn? Inborn tendencies towards certain behaviors do not make those behaviors normal.

In a contemporary climate where in the past 12 months five states have legalized homosexual marriage, it becomes apparent just how intent a small minority of vocal influencers are in crucifying the claims of God over man are again. Craven’s chapter on the definition of marriage is another vocalization of the fact that as goes the attitude of society towards marriage, so goes society.

For churches and Christian influencers seeking to understand how to respond to the all-out attack on the revealed will and desires of a holy God, Craven offers surprisingly gracious and loving counsel as he deals with such topics of polarizing viewpoints.

Please, go buy 5 copies of this book now for your Christian friends and leaders. Start a reading group and give yourself two months to be done. You’ll be glad you did. And the church in the West may begin to take some steps toward a godly and redemptive response to our culture once again as Christ’s followers stop blending with society and start transforming it once again.

Tim Challies has long been one of my favorite Christian bloggers. On top of being an excellent designer, he’s a great practical theologian. He’s not afraid to write lengthy, in-depth entries where most of the blog world has succumbed to short “sound-byte” type content in order to keep skimmers. He wants thinkers, real readers. Not those who might scan his material for whatever their current itch is.

I was excited last year when he revealed his work in progress was on the topic of spiritual discernment. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart, and after finally getting around to reading it last month (my mom ordered it for me for Christmas), I was not disappointed.

He pulls no punches in lambasting the Western church for having a childish faith in Christ rather than a to-be-commended childlike faith in Christ. In the first chapter, he takes to task those who would denigrate “theology” as being for seminary-trained, boorish, and argumentative types. Rather, he states unequivocally, theology is for every Christian.

Good theology helps us all to know and understand the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, left and right. Only by knowing truth as revealed in God’s Word are we prepared to avoid know and identify falsehood.

In firm but loving tones, Challies lays out the challenge of discernment for today’s church. He says we must become discerning because there is more falsehood and half-truths than ever before wafting through the airs of Christianity, competing for our attention.

Whether it’s the latest faith-healer, prosperity teacher, multi-mansion owning pastor or stadium-crusader, how is the church to know who are teaching truth and who are masquerading as shepherds when they are actually spiritual wolves?

To make matters worse, Christians, for the most part:

• Have a secular worldview. (A study by Barna says that as few as 9% of professing Christians have a biblical worldview.)
• Have a low view of Scripture. Quoting James Montgomery Boice: “Inerrancy is not the most crucial issue facing the church today. The most serious issue, I believe, is the Bible’s sufficiency,” Challies commented,

[Christians] forsake biblical reason in favor of feelings, voices, visions, or other subjective means of supposedly knowing God. This is a deadly error, for spiritual discernment must be founded upon God’s objective revelation of Himself in Scripture.

• Have a low view of theology.
• Have a low view of God.

When we think wrong thoughts about God we soon serve Him in wrong ways as well. We must get our theology right!

I was not disappointed with Tim’s first effort at publication. In fact, it’s destined to become a must-read in this crucial area of church health. He puts forth such a compelling argument for the urgent recovery of biblical discernment that I would encourage every believer – but especially every Christian leader to read it.

We do indeed live in a day where folks are eager to have preachers, teachers and flamboyant personalities simply affirm how they’re already living. Paul had powerful words for his protege Timothy who would be called upon to continue communicating and demonstrating the Gospel in a society much like ours:

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
2 Timothy 4.1-4

Except for a couple of pages at the back of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed Yancey’s book that seeks to bring Jesus “down to earth” -again. He does not attempt to reincarnate Christ. Rather, he deftly gives us a grounded perspective of Jesus without the frills of accumulated church history or 20th century evangelical hype.

Yancey brings considerable resources to supplement his work, probably from his vast range of contacts and readings as editor for Christianity Today magazine. He remains one of my favorite Christian authors. Few books can touch his Where is God When It Hurts? and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (which he co-wrote with Dr. Henry Brand).

If you’re looking for a book that will help you get beyond assumptions and presumptions about Christ to simple observations based on what his life revealed from the pages of the New Testament, this book will do that. It will also begin to warm your heart if you’ve grown somewhat cold.

It’s a wonderful encouragement for those who have grown distant from Christianity because of Christians. It reminds us once again that we all fall short of the glory of God as revealed in Christ. No church and no group of Christians can claim exclusive control of Christ. He will not be boxed up and merchandised. He is God.

And finally, I like how Yancey reminds us how “other” Jesus really is/was:

In many respects I would find an unresurrected Jesus easier to accept. Easter makes Him dangerous. Because of Easter I have to listen to His extravagant claims and can no longer pick and choose from His sayings. Moreover, Easter means He must be loose out there somewhere.