This is a wonderful little book for a number of reasons. (1) Target audience. Although this book is certainly for Christians, it has a strong evangelistic thrust to it. It is designed to be given to non-Christians. (2) Methodology: Anderson has written this book from a presuppositional perspective and demonstrates that such an apologetic approach is really practical, understandable, and effective for evangelism (despite perceptions to the contrary!). (3) Creativity. This book is distinctive in terms of how it is structured. Anderson takes the reader through a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of journey, where the path is chosen by the responses of the reader. There is really nothing else like it.
The basic point is this: I, like many young evangelicals, don't need more worldliness. I need less. That applies to a good number of movies and television shows I could watch but don't, because frankly they won't help me. I teach college students, and I can say with great confidence that their chief need is Christward conformity and transformation.
Cultural watcher and engager though I am, I cannot help but think that the Scripture has a great deal more to say about gospel-driven holiness than about cultural engagement. We are surely free to consume and enjoy cultural goods. But, starting with the Scripture's doctrine of God, I am called to lose myself in marveling at the holiness of the Lord (Isa. 6:3). With God's grace looming large in all that I do, I'm called to be set apart (Rom. 12:2), killing sin constantly (Col. 3:1-11), making no provision for the flesh (Rom. 13:14), and putting on all the holy armor of the Lord (Eph. 6:10-20). "Without holiness no one will see the Lord," Hebrews 12:14 says. To use Miroslav Volf's language, I think there's more of a "hard difference" between the church and culture than we might suppose.
This last reality can perhaps help us apply McCracken's numerous insights. It is not cultural, worldly artifacts that are most pleasurable. Holiness itself is pure delight (Psalm 16:11). This is what makes the prospect of life in the new heavens and new earth so exciting: We will taste the full sweetness, and luxuriate in the aesthetic splendor, of holiness. We will be, as Jonathan Edwards once said, "wrapt up" in God forever, enjoying all the fruits of a renewed city whose light is the slain Lamb.
Christian freedom entails several revolutionary realities: liberation from the law, from guilt, from a moralistic—but demoralized—way of life. Above all, though, Christian freedom is the freedom to obey Christ, and in so doing to savor the goodness of God above all else.
Pastor Rob Bell is shaking up the way we think about God and religion. I love his new book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God(HarperOne). When I first started reading it, I was highlighting my favorite passages, but then I realized—what’s the point? I’ve marked every page! It just wowed me. In the book, Bell explains that God is and always has been with us, for us, and ahead of us—and then explores how we can really absorb this knowledge into our everyday lives to become more connected to spirit.
People read Oprah recommendations. They think about them and talk about them. That means a lot of people are going to be reading and thinking about Bell’s work, so we should should be ready to talk with them about it. As I wrote before:
…hopefully those who read the book and come away saying, “We will hear you again about this,” (Acts 17:32) manage to find churches who engage them just as well as Bell does, while pushing them towards even deeper, richer, more complex ways of talking about God.
So—and this goes especially for more conservative readers—before you jump all over your friend who’s excitedly reading Bell’s book because Oprah said great things about it, slow down. Wait a minute. Ask questions. Trust that Jesus can be at work here, even if you would have preferred that he use a different book. As Paul said, “Cling to what is good, hate what is evil” (Rom. 12:9). We might paraphrase him here: “Build on what is good, gently expose what isn’t so great.”
In other words, if you talk to your friend in a sane, open, and wise way about Bell, that person might later be ready for you to hand them something like Keller. Who knows what can happen?
…hopefully those who read the book and come away saying, “We will hear you again about this,” (Acts 17:32) manage to find churches who engage them just as well as Bell does, while pushing them towards even deeper, richer, more complex ways of talking about God.
For those of you looking for thoughtful engagement with Bell’s book, here are a few reviews:
The key to enjoying Accidental Pharisees and benefiting from it is this: look for yourself in it before looking for other people. Let the book challenge you before you begin to think about all those other groups and their misplaced passion. If you only see applications for others, you are either reading it wrong or you are Jesus.
Some will inevitably accuse Osborne of writing a call for complacency. I don’t see it that way as all. Some will dislike his tone. I don’t blame them since in certain places he tips over into anger or sarcasm. He overstates his case, deliberately I’m sure, and doesn’t always say things the way you might want him to. At times he seems to fall into the very thing he hates—allowing the Bible’s black letters to speak louder than the red, or the red to speak louder than the black. He is not as quick to appreciate radical Christianity as he is to critique it. He is better at diagnosing the problem than proposing the cure.
But you should read Accidental Pharisees anyway. Take a deep breath, be humble, and listen. I guarantee you will find at least one or two things that apply to you, to your church, to your passion. It will do you good.
In the end, my overall concern about this volume is a simple one: it is not Christian. Bell's makeover of Christianity has changed it into something entirely different. It is not Christianity at all, it is modern liberalism. It is the same liberalism that Machen fought in the 1920's and the same liberalism prevalent in far too many churches today. It is the liberalism that teaches that God exists and that Jesus is the source of our happiness and our fulfillment, but all of this comes apart from any real mention of sin, judgment, and the cross. It is the liberalism that says we can know nothing for sure, except of course, that those "fundamentalists" are wrong. It is the liberalism that appeals to the Bible from time to time, but then simply ignores large portions of it.
Bell's book, therefore, is really just spiritualism with a Christian veneer. It's a book that would fit quite well on Oprah's list of favorite books. What is Rob Bell talking about when he is talking about God? Not the God of Christianity.
I'm just glad we are all clear now. Back when Velvet Elvis was all the rage (ten years ago), Rob's theology was not quite at clear as it is now. Clarity is always a good thing. Sadly, in Rob's case, his clarity does not equate to orthodoxy.
Leadership is endurance. Leadership measures the time, and evaluates the days. How would it be possible for a good basketball coach not watch the clock? All leaders will die, and so all leaders should prepare their legacies in advance. My favorite line in the book spoke to this point. "An old preacher . . . told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. 'They are going to put you in a box,' he said, 'and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad" (p. 203). And Mohler quotes one of my favorite commonplaces from Charles De Gaulle to the effect that graveyards are full of indispensible men.
For any one currently in a position of leadership, or anyone who aspires to a position of leadership, this book is a necessity.
"...this book is gold. A few of Keller's articles have had a profound influence on my life. Imagine, then, almost 400 pages of such material. If you're in pastoral ministry, or if you are interested in a theological vision of the church, or any number of related topics such as church planting and cultural engagement, then this book is a must. Buy the print edition if you can, and refer to it often. You won't be sorry."
Center Church truly is exhaustive. Its hefty form reminds me of the Harcourt Brace Jovanovich social studies textbooks I was loaned in high school—you remember, the ones that had the names of previous upper classmen in the inside cover, various scribbles and highlighted pages, and invariably a corner or two that had been chewed by a pet. Center Church has double column pages, lots of sidebars, and tiny endnotes that require me to grope for my reading classes. The only thing it’s missing is a few pictures of U.S. Presidents, and I’d be back in high school.
Center Church promises to bring some much needed clarity to the current controversy between the Kuyperians and the Two Kingdoms School—is the mission of the church only to make disciples or does it also include ministry to the poor? How should the church relate to its surrounding culture? There is a very helpful diagram on p. 231 that explains the balance needed between Kuyperians, Two Kingdoms, Liberal, and Counter-Cultural churches (my only quibble is that the Two Kingdoms quadrant doesn’t list an extreme as do the other quadrants, which seems a bit unfair. If you’re wondering, its extreme would be a sacred-secular dichotomy).
Keep Your Head Up joins an important discussion already well underway between the conservative Cosby types who argue that African Americans need to accept and exercise more personal responsbility in addressing social problems and the liberal-progressive Dyson types who do not deny the need for personal responsibility but argue Cosby and his ilk overlook the more pervasive and debilitating effects of structural racism. Both Cosby and Dyson would criticize the Black Church for failing to play an effective role in resolving these social ills.
Keep Your Head Up speaks up to the church and for the church. The book really doesn’t break new ground, depending largely on the data and analysis already provided by Cosby and Dyson. The book’s main contribution is the insertion of the gospel in these discussions about African-American progress. If it did nothing else but repeatedly make known the Good News that the Lord Jesus Christ redeems sinners from their sin and brokennes, making them new, removing their guilt, and giving eternal life and everlasting hope through His death, burial, and resurrection, then it would have done a lot.
Perhaps it’s best to think of Keep Your Head Up as an early comment from evangelical Black Christians. There’s more that needs and certainly will be said. We can look forward to that. Read Keep Your Head Up for a start.
Doug Wilson has been reviewing Mark Driscoll's "Real Marriage". I think his post today (part 4) cuts to the heart of the issue. He models a charitable and generous review that reflects a relationship with Mark. It's harder to light someone up in a review when you actually know someone and have spent time with them.
I would encourage likely critics of The King Jesus Gospel to hear out the argument, setting caricatures and false choices to one side. There is a lot in this book that should resonate with Reformed Christians. Whatever inaccuracies in his description of the views of others who deserve better, Scot McKnight is reacting against a serious weakness of contemporary evangelism that plays out in church life abundantly. To enthusiastic readers of the book, I’d caution against exchanging one set of reductionism for another. Let’s not polarize into even more extreme camps of “story-people” and “doctrine-people”; “kingdom” and “personal salvation”; “Jesus is Lord” and “Jesus is Savior.” We can all be evangelical soterians, rejoicing in the gospel as the Story of Jesus that proclaims the only one who saves us from our sins. Despite my concerns, this is a great starter for some remarkably important conversations.
Abortion, like lynching, is the shedding of innocent blood, is it not? Have you made peace with it? Have you navigated around it? Can you lift up your hands and say, “I did not shed this blood, nor did I see it happening”? … Have you understood with moral clarity the need to rescue the weak and the innocent? Have you asked God for the moral courage to do so? When I asked myself these questions a while back, I came up short. I was Pilate. My silence had left my own congregation with bloodguilt. This is all the more tragic because in the unfolding glory of the redemption, God has gone so much farther than to offer the blood of a heifer. I decided to repent. (pp. 57-58)
To think of abortion as a secondary issue—or worse, a merely political issue—is to fundamentally misunderstand the defining experience of our times. It also means we fundamentally fail to see the central truth that the cross alone can cleanse the conscience from the debilitating effects of bloodguilt. Our capacity to simply ignore the influence of abortion is crippling the effectiveness of the gospel. Abortion’s role in the consciences of hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone is a boil that festers just under the surface of all Christian endeavors, and it needs lancing. It needs to be called out by name, confessed by name, and brought under a gospel that declares that there is no forgiveness for the shedding of innocent blood except by the shedding of innocent blood, that is, by the blood of Christ. (p. 68)
All in all, this book represents what I believe to be God’s gracious work of calling his church back to the simple and revolutionary power of the gospel. I am grateful for it, and for David Platt. David’s book led me to serious reflection on where I have led our church to place its emphases, what we have spent our money on, and to what end we are expending most of our energies. It is one of the most helpful books I have read this year. I purchased a copy for every member of our staff to read. I would encourage you to do the same.
My dear friend, Mike McKinley (Pastor of Guilford Baptist Church) has finally done it. He has addressed the elephant in the American evangelical room. That elephant is the massive presence of nominal Christians (Christian only in name) that severely skews the witness of the gospel and a true representation of what a follower of Jesus Christ really is. He has sufficiently done this in his new book, Am I Really a Christian? just released a few weeks ago. Mike’s witty, humorous writing style only heightens the enjoyment of this biblically rich book that calls all Christians to examine their faith and the genuineness of it. Mike has done much of the heavy lifting for us in this short, helpful book. There is also a website connected to the book to serve pastors and those wrestling with this needed self examination here.
Pastors, we simply need to buy stacks of this book and give them out to both those in our church as well as out who need to be challenged in this way.
In the past, I've been accused of being critical of the seeker-sensitive, seeker-driven, and seeker-centered approaches to what some people call "doing church." That's accurate. I have been. My motivation - I hope - has not been driven by anything other than an effort to stand back and examine the contemporary church in light of contemporary culture. I don't pastor a church so I can't be angry at or jealous of others who are leading at places where numerical growth is lateral (people coming from one church to another). Rather, my critique has come from my understanding of the Scriptures, how the Scriptures define the life of discipleship, and trends in contemporary Western culture. Overall, I've increasingly been unsettled by and lamented the fact that attractional methods are sought and employed - with good intentions, by the way - to draw in the greatest number of people so that they might hear and respond to the Gospel. In the end, I wonder if that does more harm than good to the cause of the Gospel and spiritual growth.
I love the church. CPYU exists to serve the church. And, we are always working to promote deep spiritual growth in Christ in a world that promotes consumerism. So, when we see things that might be troubling and that need to be considered, we've worked to raise those issues directly, but with sensitivity. Until now, my company in concern over the market-driven approach to church has been traditionalists and friends in the emerging church movement. . . who tend to recoil against what has been mainstream consumer-oriented Evangelicalism. But over the weekend, I read a very refreshing and thoughtful book from a couple of pastors who passionately and single-mindedly lived on the inside of a movement that they are now trying to convince people to move out of, and into deeper things.
Renovation of the Church: What Happens When A Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation, by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken (IVP, 2011) captures so much of what I've been thinking and wrestling with for years. . . all thought out and framed in ways that states a case beyond what I could ever come up with. These guys had a wrestling match with their deeply-held convictions and their honesty and transparency is refreshing.
This book is so rich, especially in its critique, that I could never do it justice by rehashing its basic message. You have to read this for yourself. And by the way, I want to encourage all - ALL - of friends in youth ministry (young and old alike) to read this book. It's that timely, necessary, and even prophetic. Go at it with your defenses down and a heart prayerfully open to what God might just tell you. Seriously.
The reading public loves war stories. This is no new development. Consider The History of the Pelopennesian War, written by the Athenian general Thucydides in 431 B.C. Wars change the course of entire civilizations. They are a matter of life and death, and not only for the soldiers who fight in them. No wonder they capture our interest and imagination.
War stories also give us heroes and villains. We name schools, streets, and cities after the heroes. We dance in the streets upon the death of the villains. We curse them for decades, even centuries, after they wreaked destruction upon our friends, family, and other loved ones. War is personal.
John Woodbridge was only a child during World War II, growing up in the home of a Presbyterian pastor in Savannah, Georgia. He did no fighting, but the war was personal for him. He knew one of its heroes—Ira “Teen” Palm, an Army officer who helped lead the American push into Munich at the end of the war. And by the strange, sovereign work of God, his minister dad became the owner of a coveted artifact from the war’s greatest villain. Woodbridge, research professor of church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, tells this fascinating story in Hitler in the Crosshairs: A GI’s Story of Courage of Faith, co-written with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Maurice Possley.
...this book shows how the “great questions” that have always confronted Christian theologians–questions like the number and nature of the attributes of God, how to (best) understand the Trinity, for instance–are, despite what many in our generation are wont to believe, not simply dry and dull points of anachronistic quibbling that can be done away with while we “build the Kingdom,” or something like that. They are, as Horton ably shows, the very areas from which our everyday Christian lives–our praxis–derive their significance and meaning. From arguments about God’s aesity and simplicity (read the book) to the questions surrounding infused vs. imputed righteousness, each of these admittedly abstruse issues has a clear and definite analogy to everyday life and, like Steve Jobs, affect your life whether you want it to or not. While the level of theological reflection in this book may not be suitable for everyone’s ability, time , or even interest(!), it stands as a particular challenge to every Christian teacher, pastor and theologian in particular, because this 1000+ page tour de force is a powerful witness to the profound, deep, sophisticated and defensible “faith once delivered.”
J.D. Greear 
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Brian Croft 
just released a few weeks ago. Mike’s witty, humorous writing style only heightens the enjoyment of this biblically rich book that calls all Christians to examine their faith and the genuineness of it. Mike has done much of the heavy lifting for us in this short, helpful book. There is also a 
Trevin Wax 
. This is 
Walt Mueller
, by Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken (IVP, 2011) captures so much of what I've been thinking and wrestling with for years. . . all thought out and framed in ways that states a case beyond what I could ever come up with. These guys had a wrestling match with their deeply-held convictions and their honesty and transparency is refreshing.
. This is no new development. Consider The History of the Pelopennesian War, written by the Athenian general Thucydides in 431 B.C. Wars change the course of entire civilizations. They are a matter of life and death, and not only for the soldiers who fight in them. No wonder they capture our interest and imagination.
Mockingbird blog reviews 
. Their conclusion: