The subtitle of this book by Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel is Searching For Jesus' Path of Power in a Church That Has Abandoned It. That peaked my interest so I started reading the book soon after it arrived. Basically, have church leaders become more like the world, in their quest for large churches and power... and less like Jesus?
You would think a book about where the church has gone wrong would be boring but this is anything but boring. Rarely does a nonfiction book cause me to not be able to put it down. The two authors are asking many of the questions I've wondered about over the years only silently.
For one thing, the quest to find the answer to this question led the two men to travel, meeting elder statesmen (and a stateswoman) and interviewing them to glean wisdom about the path many churches are taking today. These interviews alone are worth reading this book. These men and women include:
Marva Dawn
J. I. Packer
James Houston
John Perkins
Jean Vanier
Eugene Peterson
and
Dallas Willard
As you can see from the above list, the authors contacted elders of the Faith from various segments of the Church and every one of them was fascinating. It was interesting that each person was in a general agreement about the challenges facing the church.
The authors don't pretend to have all the answers. Instead they bring attention to some serious issues in the church and provide us with rare glimpses into what those interviewed say as well as others. The book is well written and very readable. I highly recommend it.
This book was provided by the publisher for the sake of review but the opinions are my own.
More information can be found... here.
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2 comments:
This is one of my questions too! I'll definitely need to read this.
Now that does sound good. A friend and I went out for lunch last Wednesday and we somehow became involved in these deep questions. She argues that a changing world means a changing delivery of the message. I told her that my inclination was to stick to the message without changing the delivery too much because, in the end, people are people and sin is sin. I mean, people's eternal futures are at stake. Either way.
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