Focusing on the theological vision needed to connect our doctrinal foundation and our methodology, Center Church by Tim Keller revolves around three essential axis points: gospel, city, and movement. Over the last two posts, I’ve looked at the first two concepts and today I conclude my review of this book by looking at the final, “movement.”

Missional community

Part six of Center Church focuses on defining and articulating the key characteristics of a missional church.

Admittedly, some readers will likely shift uncomfortably even at the mention of the word “missional.” And this is understandable. The word’s been used so often and been so poorly defined that missional is equally applied to loosely organized groups of Christians meeting in coffee houses for spiritual conversations and highly attractional, “come and see” megachurches.

Keller, being a missional insider, does a fine job of clearing up some of the murkiness surrounding the term, while providing what may be the most explicit explanation of what a missional church ought to look like. In summary:

• The church must confront society’s idols.
• The church must contextualize skillfully and communicate in the vernacular.
• The church must equip people in mission in every area of their lives.
• The church must be a counterculture for the common good.
• The church must itself be contextualized and should expect nonbelievers, inquirers, and seekers to be involved in most aspects of the church’s life and ministry.
• The church must practice unity. (p. 274)

In his prior explanation of these six marks of a missional church, Keller makes it abundantly clear that there is to be no room for compromise on the doctrine of justification by faith. Indeed, missional churches can and must be committed to the historic, orthodox teachings of the faith as detailed in Scripture, otherwise we don’t really have anything to offer in place of the idols of our society.

The “alien righteousness” offered in the gospel is what puts to death the cultural idol of self-actualization. So I don’t need to be “the best me I can be,” because Jesus died to put that horrible god to death, offering me instead His perfect record and righteousness in its place. That’s the kind of message that is sorely needed by a world that has little to no grasp of the basic concepts of God, sin, and redemption. And this is what only the church can offer.

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Center Church offers readers a compelling theological vision for doing ministry in an increasingly urban world, one that revolves around the axises of gospel, city and movement. Yesterday, I started my look at this new book by Tim Keller by sharing thoughts on the gospel axis. Today, I’ll continue my review by focusing on the second section, “city.”

Gospel contextualization

This question of contextualization is one that divides many evangelicals today. Some see the surrounding culture as something to be outright rejected, where others see it as something to be embraced without reservation.

Keller is quick to point out that, despite our protests, “everyone contextualizes—but few think about how they are doing it” (p. 97).

Whenever we communicate the gospel, whenever we express it in any way, we are inevitably conforming to some culture in order for it to be understood. This is why it’s essential for us to be careful to be intentional in how we contextualize.

Sound contextualization means translating and adapting the communication and ministry of the gospel to a particular culture without compromising the essence and particulars of the gospel itself. . . . When we contextualize faithfully and skillfully, we show people how the baseline cultural narratives of their society and the hopes of their hearts can only find resolution and fulfillment in Jesus. (pp. 89, 90)

That’s the point of contextualization. We don’t do it to be hip or cool, but to clearly communicate the hope of salvation in Christ without being the gospel becoming “unnecessarily alien” due to our preferences.

The most challenging aspect for many reading part three of Center Church is Keller’s admonishment that we must recognize that we all contextualize—our approach to Christianity is always going to be in relation to the culture we are surrounded by and to think otherwise is naive.
But recognizing this doesn’t mean that we simply accept and integrate whatever the culture’s doing into our ministry. We must meet the culture with what he describes as crictical enjoyment and appropriate wariness (p. 109).

Like Paul’s, our approach to culture should be one that is neither completely confrontional nor totally affirming. We are to reveal “the fatal contradictions and underlying idolatry within [our] cultures and then point them to the resolution that can only be found in Christ” (p. 112).

City vision

Part four of Center Church focuses on the need for an intentional focus on urban ministry. Indeed, Keller describes this as one of the highest priorities of the Church in the 21st century. Why?

Aside from the biblical connection between God’s people and cities—He commands them to seek the welfare of the city in Jer. 29; calls Jonah to preach repentance in unbelieving Nineveh; and uses the Apostles’ ministry to people within cities to create a movement that leads them to be dragged before the authorities as those who are turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6)—we live in a time where more people than ever are living in cities (over half the world’s population by most estimates).

The city represents an opportunity to impact a wider diversity of people than anywhere else—the cultural elite (the influencers), the younger generations, accessible “unreached” people groups, and the poor are all found in the city in abundance. Therefore we need to be in the cities, building churches, engaging in intentional evangelism and discipleship, and serving the community as a whole.

“Christians,” he writes, “ should seek to live in the city, not to use the city to build great churches, but to use the church’s resources to seek a great, flourishing city” (p. 172). This might sound odd, but it’s an important distinction. Our churches need to be churches for our particular city, regardless of size, seeking the wellbeing of the whole community, not just our island within it.

While Keller writes with a more optimistic viewpoint on the impact of this than I’d subscribe to (no matter how beneficial we are to the community, those who are opposed to Christ will always be more likely to rejoice in our leaving than lament it), I really appreciate the emphasis he puts on the need for this kind of engagement.

Cultural engagement

Part five, “cultural engagement,” represents some of Keller’s strongest work within the “City” axis, but also within the entire Center Church theological vision. Here, Keller sets to work examining the models of cultural engagement that are predominant within Christian circles—the transformationalist, relevance, counterculturalist, and “two-kingdoms” views. Keller, as always, is very careful in his critique of each, pointing out their strengths as well as their weaknesses.

Careful readers should come away with not only a better understanding of the different models, but also for the need to humbly recognize our own blind spots and be willing to learn from others.

No model gives us the full picture of the gospel’s relationship to culture, even though they all have some aspect they get right. No one’s got it all down pat, and we’d be foolish to believe that our way of doing ministry is the way for everyone.

This, I suspect, will be the hardest thing for many readers to accept. We all want to believe that our way is the right way, and the others have it wrong. But if our goal is to challenge the idolatry of the culture, to show them how their hopes, longings, and misplaced desires only find their fulfilment in Jesus, then we need to learn what we can from others for the sake of the gospel and, Lord willing, see gospel renewal in our communities as the new churches are planted and Christians faithfully engage in their spheres of influence.

Title: Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Zondervan (2012)

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I doubt there’s a church leader alive who wishes their church would be less successful—that fewer people would be coming to faith in Jesus, their influence within their communities would diminish, and everyone would settle into a nice rut and eventually it would fade away.

I’ve never seen that book written or message preached. What I have seen a lot of, though, is a lot of pastors—implicitly or explicitly asking, “What’s the secret behind so-and-so’s success? If I do what they do, will my church be successful too?”

More often than not, the results are less than encouraging. Many books and conferences tout methodology, offering just the right combination of music, lighting and cultural relevance to draw a crowd (and remember, keep the theology to a minimum).

Others eschew this pragmatic approach. Instead, they focus on our doctrinal foundation; that is, on reinforcing theological fidelity and practical obedience to the Lord in all things. Numerical growth is not the measure of success; instead, it is the purity of the Church.

Both approaches have their strengths. Our theology ought to be robust; we must never compromise on the pursuit of holiness in the lives of God’s people. Equally, we must use methods that allow us to meaningfully connect with the people we are trying to reach.

But what is it that connects the two? In his new book, Center Church, Tim Keller argues for what he calls the “middleware” of ministry—theological vision, “a faithful restatement of the gospel with rich implications for life, ministry, and mission in a type of culture at a moment in history” (p. 19).

This is, frankly, what far too many books on church ministry miss. Our doctrinal foundation matters immensely. If we get that wrong, everything else will be also. However, we need to understand how to express our doctrine in a way that’s meaningful to a culture with no significant understanding of the essentials of the Christian faith. Keller spends the bulk of this book explaining the basic elements of what makes up the “Center Church” theological vision: gospel, city, and movement.

It’s not often I review a book in multiple parts, but because each of these concepts—the axises of the Center Church—is so vital to the vision Keller puts forth, I felt it best to examine the strengths of each separately. And so we begin with the gospel.

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Although figuring prominently into the biblical story, predestination more likely to generate more arguments than adoration. Some paint predestination as evidence that God is a cruel puppet master, making us dance for His good pleasure. Some seem more passionate about the doctrine of predestination than sharing the gospel. To be sure, whenever the topic comes up, battle lines are quickly drawn.

In Chosen by God, R.C. Sproul tackles this contentious doctrine by examining its impact on God’s sovereignty, free will, original sin, regeneration, foreknowledge and the assurance of salvation.

Dr. Sproul’s primary purpose is to both help readers understand a misunderstood doctrine and challenge us to examine our affections for God.

“Do we love a God who is sovereign? Do we love a God who demands absolute obedience?” he asks. “I am not asking whether we love this God and this Christ perfectly; I am asking whether we love [them] at all” (p. 166). This is heart of the debate—how we react to the way the Bible speaks of predestination reveals much about our understanding of the God who is sovereign over all things. And to be sure, if predestination means “that our final destination, heaven or hell, is decided by God . . . before we are even born” (p. 22, 48), then we must wrestle with this question.

The primary issue that comes to mind is that of justice and goodness—is God truly just and good in saving some and not others? Sproul’s point on this matter is simple: At no point does God ever do evil or commit an act of injustice in saving some and not others—to some He shows justice and others mercy (non-justice), and in all of it God “reserves the right of executive clemency” (p. 38).

For those of us wrestling with this, we have to ask ourselves one question: What is it we’re really doing when we say God “ought” to save all? Are we not being arrogant beyond all measure?

As a human being I might prefer that God give his mercy to everyone equally, but I may not demand it. If God is not pleased to dispense his saving mercy to all men, then I must submit to his holy and righteous decision. God is never, never, never obligated to be merciful to sinners. That is the point we must stress if we are to grasp the full measure of God’s grace. (p. 38)

The result of our wrestling should lead us to have one reaction: humility. We see the intricate relationship between human freedom and God’s absolute sovereignty—something Sproul notes isn’t unique to Calvinism or even Christianity, but is a basic tenet of theism (“If God is not sovereign, then God is not God,” he writes [p. 26])—and naturally become confused. And if we’re not careful, we begin to see the relationship in a way that Scripture does not: as a contradiction. The two cannot coexist, and therefore if God is sovereign, humanity doesn’t have freedom.

Yet, a careful reading of the Bible shows that there’s no room for contradictions of this sort or any other. There is a paradox, a mystery that we will never be able to fully understand or explain. But that does not mean that we are left without the ability to comprehend it in part. But what we do comprehend necessarily leads us to humble ourselves before a God who is so far above and beyond being fully understood by finite beings.

In some ways, reading Chosen by God is a crash course in humility. Sproul’s robust defense of this doctrine is cogent and careful, but it’s clear that none of us will every fully plumb the depths of its riches. And that is a very good thing. Whether you come away agreeing with Sproul’s position or not, you will be challenged by Chosen by God. Read the book, wrestle with it in light of the Scriptures and see how God might use it to grow your understanding of His sovereign work in the salvation of humanity.

Title: Chosen by God
Author: R.C. Sproul
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers

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Look at the bookshelf of nearly anyone in leadership and you’re bound to see a number of familiar names. Patrick Lencioni, Jim Collins, and John Maxwell, among others, are staple authors in the field, offering challenging and usually helpful advice to the current and prospective leader.

Dave Kraft is one who ought to be a staple for church and ministry leaders. His first book, Leaders Who Last, continues to be one of the most helpful books I’ve read, and one I’m always quick to recommend to any leader who wants to know what it takes to survive the challenges of leadership. His new book, Mistakes Leaders Make, builds on this foundation, looking at common errors in leadership based on his own experiences over his 35+ year career.

Kraft identifies and examines 10 common mistakes leaders make:

• allowing ministry to replace Jesus;
• allowing comparing to replace contentment;
• allowing pride to replace humility;
• allowing busyness to replace visioning;
• allowing financial frugality to replace fearless faith;
• allowing artificial harmony to replace difficult conflict;
• allowing perennially hurting people to replace potential hungry leaders;
• allowing information to replace transformation; and
• allowing control to replace trust.

While certainly not exhaustive, these 10 mistakes represent the most common and serious errors that threaten our ministries and those we serve. Kraft approaches each with a welcome sobriety, choosing to confront leaders with the most fundamental error we face early on: idolatry. Kraft writes:

Allowing ministry to replace Jesus opened the Pandora’s box that contained many other mistakes that over time infected the entire leadership team—with severe implications. The first stone had been cast into the water, and the ripples had begun. . . . Ministry idolatry is becoming increasingly widespread in evangelical Christianity in America, reaching epidemic proportions. . . . “Idolatry creep” sneaks up on you because you can easily and quickly justify it by saying that everything you do is for the Lord, believing your motives are pure. We recognize this in businessmen who work obscene hours while insisting they do it all to benefit the family, when in reality it’s all about them. (Kindle location 300, 305, 308)

We see this all the time, don’t we? Leaders who begin using their ministry as an indicator of their standing before God. Their character may be reprehensible, they may be terrible spouses, or they may nurture secret sin, but they’ve got a large following. So obviously God must be pleased… right?

Similar problems lie at the heart of all the other issues. We compare ourselves with others because we’re deeply insecure in our standing with Christ. We avoid taking calculated risks because of fear. We refuse to trust those we lead to do the right thing because we love the feeling that comes from being in control.

It’s important to note that these kinds of errors are rarely isolated incidents. They’re habitual. “Leadership mistakes are often not a single event but an attitude, habit, or mind-set that has been forming for years” (Kindle location 451). They’re ultimately the fruit of an unhealthy relationship with God and attitude toward leading others.

Perhaps the most challenging mistake Kraft addresses is that of being satisfied with artificial harmony rather than facing difficult conflict head-on. Failure to face difficult conflict is a morale and trust killer. It’s easier to just avoid conflict and have the appearance that everything’s going well. But it comes with a cost: your ministry and your credibility.

Not knowing how and/or being unwilling to deal with conflict is a major issue that is undermining organizations today. I run into this problem everywhere I go… I cannot imagine anything more devastating to effective leadership than the refusal or inability to resolve conflict. To be frank, I meet very few leaders who honestly, gracefully, and promptly deal with conflict. I don’t mean this to be unkind, but many leaders are “relational cowards.” (Kindle location 1192)

It takes great courage to make tough decisions. It takes courage to deal with conflict and do the right thing—especially when it may result in someone leaving your team. But it’s so necessary for leaders to get this; if we don’t, we only injure those we serve.

Regular readers of the leadership genre will note  that Kraft liberally borrows from a number of modern leadership gurus—particularly Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team—as he examines each leadership mistake. Depending on your perspective, this might be a bad thing, but I quite appreciated it. While he does borrow, he sufficiently differentiates, especially in his leadership parables surrounding Covenant Community Church, the representative ministry facing each of these 10 mistakes.

Kraft wears a pastoral heart on his sleeve in Mistakes Leaders Make. He clearly wants to see Christian leaders get better and to avoid the mistakes he’s seen—and made—far too often. Mistakes happen. They’re inevitable; but they’re not irreversible. This book is a great starting point to identifying the mistakes that have crept into your ministry and how you can recover to the glory of God. I trust it will be blessing to you.

Title: Mistakes Leaders Make
Author: Dave Kraft
Publisher: Crossway/Re:Lit (2012)

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A lot of time is spent discussing of the mission and purpose of the church in the world. What should it look like? What makes it unique? Does it still matter? The answers are incredibly varied and nuanced, but usually they tend to focus on a couple of elements: doctrine and practice. We need to develop a sound theology to undergird our understanding of the church and our practice ought to flow from this. For the most part, most books I’ve read all agree on this point (even if the particulars of these vary drastically).

But there’s something else that’s missing in the discussion—the culture of your church. The church’s culture reveals what’s really at the heart of the congregation… and if we’re careful to look closely, we might find a disconnect.

It’s why so many churches face the difficulty of saying they’re about the Bible, yet the congregation never opens it, or we value evangelism, but our event schedules are so booked with classes, lectures or pot-lucks that we don’t have time to actually get to know anyone who’s not a Christian.

So how do we develop a culture where we’re actually about the things we say or think we’re about? In their new book, Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centered Church, authors Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson, and Eric Geiger offer their insights into creating a gospel-centered culture that fuels every aspect of the local church.

The gospel and community

The authors divide the book into two parts, first examining the unique attributes of the “creature of the Word” (that is, the Church)—how God brings together a people, forming a body for His purposes in the world, and how it is to behave, worshipping, multiplying and serving in community. While many might consider this a “yeah, I get it” point, the authors remind us that we must always start here:

For just as an individual must continually return to the grace of Jesus for satisfaction and sanctification, a local church must continually return to the gospel as well. Our churches must be fully centered on Jesus and His work, or else death and emptiness is certain, regardless of the worship style or sermon series. Without the gospel, everything in a church is meaningless. And dead. (Kindle location 201)

We cannot move too quickly past the need to honestly examine ourselves in light of the gospel, whether individually or corporately. If we fail to do the hard and necessary work of self-examination and repentance, we’ll fall flat on our faces. There won’t be anything to sustain a truly Jesus-centered culture within our communities.

This point is arguably one of the authors’ strongest as they explain there really isn’t such a thing as true Christian community without the gospel and all it entails, for, “The gospel is the deepest foundation for community.”

They continue:

…any attempt to build community on something more than the grace of Christ becomes a subtle move away from grace, a move toward pseudo-community that only puffs up and fails to transform. If something other than the person and work of Jesus becomes the foundation for a group of believers, that “other thing,” whatever it is—economic level, social manners, music preferences, common life experiences—becomes what they use to differentiate themselves from others. And it immediately becomes a point of boasting, a way to feel justified. (Kindle location 933)

Consider this critique carefully. This isn’t meant only for the seeker church or the “progressive” church… it’s got those of us in theologically conservative churches in mind, too. Over the last few years, there’s been a renewal of concern over what it means to be a biblical church. And frequently you hear that a true church is “gospel-centered.” While this is unquestionably a good thing, there’s a danger in turning it into a new measuring stick; so it becomes about how many months our sermon series runs, how long the preacher speaks for, how many churches we’re planting… The things meant to serve the gospel wind up enslaving us.

Creating Jesus-centered culture

Part two of the book focuses heavily on the mechanics of fostering a Jesus-centered culture within your church. The authors remind us that, first and foremost, if we want to build a culture like this, it must be founded upon the clear teaching of the Word of God. From the pre-school to puberty to the pulpit, every member of the church must be taught the Scriptures.

“To form a church centered on the gospel, the church must strategically and seamlessly pass the message of the gospel on from generation to generation,” they write. “The church must be united from the preschool ministry to the pulpit around one central understanding: the gospel transforms” (Kindle location 2228).

Sadly, even in churches where the gospel is heralded as the essential message of the Christian faith from the pulpit, children and students are often pummeled with curriculum designed for behavioral modification rather than gospel transformation. It is foolish to feast on the life-giving gospel in one area of the church while using a placebo in another. Quite frankly, children and student ministries are often a wasteland for well-intentioned morality training. (Kindle location 2222)

They continue:

Churches centered on the gospel aggressively go for the heart, not for behavior. Morality, or good behavior, is not the goal of godly parenting nor the goal of sound children’s ministry. A changed heart is. Obedience or morals may be the result, but a changed heart must be the goal. A change in behavior that does not stem from a change in heart is not commendable; it is condemnable. A church that goes after a child’s behavior and not the child’s heart is shepherding that child in opposition to the gospel. Children can be taught how to behave without hearts impacted by Jesus, but the “good behavior” that results will only last for a season because it lacks the power of inner transformation. (Kindle location 2290)

That’s really what we’re about, isn’t it? We want our churches to be places where people at any age are being transformed by the Holy Spirit as the Word is taught; we don’t need to be told to do better, try harder, or be nice for niceness’ sake. We need to be reminded constantly of the natural state of our hearts and our utter helplessness before God. Imagine what that would do to our children’s and student ministries; to our small groups and pulpit ministries.

The gospel-centered leader

Arguably the greatest challenge the authors make in the book even more than their cultural critique, is the one they level at leaders. “Culture and ethos is a reflection of leadership. Your church culture—over time, at least—is a reflection of the leadership of the church,” they write. “The kingly function of leadership is as vital to the health of a local church as is the prophetic function of teaching” (Kindle location 2522).

Leaders are frequently reminded that how they live and lead directly impacts the culture they create. What a leader believes is acceptable in practice, the followers pick up on and emulate. So when a pastor is concerned about how little the congregation reads the Bible, he may need to examine his own practices. When he is concerned about a lack of zeal for evangelism in the church, his own attitudes are necessarily called into question.

A gospel-centered church is infused with gospel-centered leadership. If a local church corporately bears the fruit of the Spirit, then you can be confident individuals who have been marked by the gospel of Jesus Christ lead it. There is a direct correlation between the personal impact of the gospel on a leader’s heart and the way he leads. The gospel is not good advice simply to be taken into consideration in certain situations; rather, the gospel is good news of sweeping transformation. A gospel-centered leader will lead differently. (Kindle location 2529)

The authors offer this reproof not harshly but as a brotherly word of concern for their fellow pastors. How we lead matters. What motivates us matters. The people following us serve as a mirror to the realities of our hearts. What are we seeing?

Conclusion

Creature of the Word is among the most helpful books on church ministry I’ve read in a long time, so much so that I rarely went more than a few paragraphs where I didn’t find myself equally encouraged and encouraged. Highly accessible and practical, this book offers a powerful blend of theology, philosophy, and methodology that’s sure be a benefit to church leaders and members alike.

Title: Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centered Church
Authors: Matt Chandler, Josh Patterson, and Eric Geiger
Publisher: B&H Publishing (2012)

Buy: Amazon | WTS Books

We’ve all heard and read the stories of ministry failure—some due to moral or ethical failure; some by abandoning the faith; some simply so burnt out, disheartened, and lonely that they can’t do it anymore.

Whether looking at the weird rock-star culture that’s built up around certain mega-church pastors in North America (whether intentional or accidental) or in conversation with friends in pastoral ministry, I’m more than a little concerned.

What is it that makes pastoral ministry so dangerous for those who enter it? Why do so many who seemingly start well end poorly? Why is it so easy to create a division between the public persona and the private man—and how do we pull back from potential disaster?

Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry is Paul Tripp attempt to answer these questions. Based on his many years of ministry experience, Tripp’s insights may well be the most necessary corrective to ministry leaders written in recent years.

What causes our spiritual blindness?

Divided into three parts, Dangerous Calling opens with an examination of pastoral culture, followed by two critical dangers:

• Forgetting who God is (the danger of losing your awe)
• Forgetting who you are (the danger of arriving)

Tripp wastes no time cutting to the heart of the issue of the pastor’s spiritual blindness. Using his own experiences as an example, he identifies three key themes underlying the spiritual blindness of many pastors:

• We let ministry define our identities
• We let biblical literacy and theological knowledge define our maturity
• We let ministry success becomes confused with God’s approval our lifestyles

When these themes become predominant in the lives of leaders, it’s deadly. When ministry becomes who we are, how will we react if it’s taken away? If knowledge is the definition of maturity, what happens when our head knowledge is out of step with our character? If our churches are growing, should we automatically assume God’s pleased with our efforts, even if our home lives are a train wreck?

These are not questions to be taken lightly, especially in a time when concerns about someone’s fit-ness for ministry are ignored an all-too-common assumption that growth in attendance necessarily equals faithfulness in ministry. Yet, as we’ve seen time and again, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.

The public/personal divide

Tripp unpacks these themes in greater detail and as he does so, it becomes evident that they lead to a disconnectedness not only between the public and personal life of the pastor, but between the pastor and the people he serves.

We can often assume that a pastor is working on creating agreement between the public and the private, he’s handling his finances well, and growing in grace… but is it safe to assume so? “Doesn’t every member of the body of Christ need the ministry of the body of Christ, including the pastor?” Tripp asks (p. 79).

Pastor, are you in a small group—one that you don’t lead? Do you let others minister to you? Do you have spiritual mentors? Does your church provide the means for care, refreshment and counselling for you and your family? Tripp hammers this point again and again—pastors need to be in community. They need the ministry of the body just as much as they’re needed to minister to the rest of it.

The war of ministry

Ministry is a war—it’s a war not just for the gospel, but for the pastor’s heart. It’s so easy to see faith become academic when a huge portion of your time is spent in study (something Tripp notes the modern seminary system doesn’t help with). Faith can become theoretical, people can become projects, and the wonder of God can lose a bit of lustre if we’re not careful.

Equally dangerous is what happens when we forget that our successes are not the result of our own efforts, but all flow from the sovereign will of God. We buy into our own press far too easily and are far too much like the child in C.S. Lewis’ oft-quoted analogy, “who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Dangerous Calling is easily among the most important books I’ve read this year. Although written specifically for pastors, it will be a blessing to both leaders and laity alike as pastors are challenged to examine themselves for the good of their own souls (and the people they serve) and laypeople’s eyes are opened to the unique challenges of pastoral ministry.

Title: Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry
Author: Paul David Tripp
Publisher: Crossway (2012)

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My review at The Gospel Coalition:

Suffering is one of those subjects we—especially Christians in North America—have a hard time dealing with honestly.

Sometimes our view of suffering better lines up with notions of karma—if bad things happen, obviously we’ve done something to deserve them. We moralize suffering, pile guilt and shame on those experiencing it, and view God more like a cosmic tyrant than a loving Father.

Other times, we see suffering as a means to an end, something to get through as quickly as possible so we can get to the big lesson and character change God has in store for us. We minimize suffering, centralize personal development, and treat God as our life coach.

But the problem with both of these attitudes is that neither really captures the biblical essence of the purpose of suffering.

Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, argues that we’re often asking the wrong question when it comes to suffering. Rather than asking why suffering happens or how God will use it, Tchividjian suggests it may be better to ask who is with us amid our trials. Glorious Ruin unpacks this fundamental question—“the only [one] God has seen fit to answer, concretely, in the person and work of Jesus Christ” (25).

Keep reading at The Gospel Coalition.

Is the gospel the start of the Christian life? Something you “get” and eventually move on from? Or is the work of Christ and all its entailments—is our union with Christ something that you graduate from or delve deeper into?

Jared Wilson, like a lot of evangelicals, grew up unintentionally believing that the gospel was the starting point of the Christian faith; it was “for the evangelizing of unbelievers only, not for the already convinced” (Gospel Deeps, Kindle location 186). He missed the depths because of a truncated gospel that treated Christ’s work on the cross as a transaction—a one-time event, rather than a life-time pursuit.

But this ought never be our mindset as Christians. The depths of the gospel ought to overwhelm us with awe even as it challenges us in how we live in the day-to-day. Gospel Deeps is an attempt to capture and pass on that sense of wonder as Wilson examines the many facets of the gospel and the “infinite excellencies”of Jesus.

A Matter of First Importance

Wilson argues with passion and conviction that this kind of dwelling in the gospel isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s not something that’s good for some and not for others. No, standing in awe of Christ is of first importance:

We must get this. And we have to understand that not getting it is not just an informational “miss.” Venturing into the depths of the gospel—seeing Christ’s accomplishment (the gospel’s content) and what is accomplished by his accomplishment (the gospel’s implications)—is vital to better knowing and loving God. When we miss the depths of the gospel, we hinder our worship. In reflecting on how the good news of Jesus creates the people of God, Paul cries out, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33). (Kindle Location 254)

This truly is essential to grasp when reading this book or else you’ll be incredibly frustrated. In fact, those who prefer books offering ten steps, four keys, or three principles of being more gospel-centered will be infuriated by Gospel Deeps. Wilson just doesn’t go there. Not once.

Instead, he examines the many facets of Christ’s work in a way that (ought to) stir your heart. He wants you to be excited about the unceasing depths of Jesus; to see every aspect with renewed wonder and joy.

Which, if you want to get technical, is the ultimate in application.

The Sin of Boredom

Perhaps the most shocking quotable (and one that we desperately need to hear in our attention-span-of-a-gnat-on-a-sugar-rush culture) is the truth about boredom with the faith: ”If Christ is true, then boredom is a sin” (Kindle Location, 1335). Wilson continues:

When we are bored, it can be only because we have stopped looking at Jesus. He can’t be boring. If we find him boring, it’s because we are boring. The deficiency is ours, not his. (Kindle location 1338)

You know how it’s tempting to look at a book like Leviticus or Numbers and assume because they’re legislative and filled with censuses, they’re skippable.

But reading both with an eye fixed on Jesus opens them up–you see the wonder of God’s grace in offering us Christ’s righteousness and the sheer amazingness of that same righteousness when you realize that Jesus kept every single rule recorded there.

Perfectly.

Shouldn’t that blow all our minds?

And yet it seems like so many of us continue in this pattern unabated. We leave our Bibles untouched for days, weeks, even months, seemingly never realizing all that we’re missing out on. We treat reading of all God has done and continues to do as a “have to” and thus become inoculated to the wonderousness of the fact that we get to. Our affections and our expectations are too small.

We worship a God whose wonders we will marvel at for eternity, because eternity cannot exhaust his wonders. We’ve got a ten-dimensional Jesus in a heaven so heavy our thin space can’t conceal it much longer; it must crash into this world. Maranatha! (Kindle Location 3363)

With unrestrained excitement about the gospel, Wilson offers readers a challenging, engaging and provocative look at the myriad excellencies of Christ. Read this book and let it stir up your affections for Jesus.

Title: Gospel Deeps: Reveling in the Excellencies of Jesus
Author: Jared C. Wilson
Publisher: Crossway (2012)

Purchase: Amazon | WTS Books

There’s a funny thing that happens to people whenever they get a bit of notoriety (perceived or otherwise): They tend to get really excited about it. It starts out innocently enough—honest surprise that people are paying attention to what they’re saying or doing. But eventually, we can too easily slip into thinking we’re a kind of a big deal.

It’s not that influence is wrong, but for the Christian especially, being a “somebody” may be more dangerous than we realize.

The author of Embracing Obscurity gets this. Choosing to remain anonymous, the author confronts the dangers of pursuing notoriety while challenging readers to regain a right perspective of who we are in light of who God is.

Regardless of who we are and what we’re capable of, most of us are going to obscure, unknown… we’re not going to be “somebodies” (whatever that means). Anonymous wants us to be okay with that. Rather that continuing to perpetuate our cultural addiction to self-importance, we must embrace the kind of humility that Christ modelled (cf. Phil 2:6-8).

Indeed, Anonymous reminds us that Jesus Himself, for the majority of His earthly life was, by all accounts, kind of a nobody.

Have you ever wondered what might have filled the space between the apostle’s narratives? What transpired between Jesus’ birth and His first miracle at Cana? Apparently nothing worth the gospel writers’ ink. We are left to assume the details of His early life based on the details of our own, normal lives. Jesus got taller. His voice deepened. He probably learned to work at his father’s business. He became a man, a wise man who found favor with the people who knew Him, and favor with God. But to most He was just Yeshua, Mary and Joseph’s oldest kid—a small-town boy with a love for God. With such a common name, He could have been any Yosef, Loukas or Yohanan! Nothing to raise the suspicion of his fellow Jews that He might be the long-awaited Christ, hidden in plain sight. It was all just the way God wanted it.

This is very helpful for us to remember—an average life isn’t less glorifying to God. In the years between His birth and public ministry, Jesus perfectly glorified God in all he said and did, yet he was pretty normal. Nothing to write home about. He wasn’t living an audacious-world-changer-rock-your-socks kind of life.

He worked with His dad. He did chores. He went to Synagogue.

He was, more or less, like us. And if that was good enough for the God of the universe for the better part of 30 years, it ought to be good enough for us, shouldn’t it?

To be clear, Anonymous isn’t advocating that Christians shun public influence. He’s not suggesting that those whom God allows to receive wider appreciation and/or acclaim hide under a basket. Instead, he calls them to embrace the spotlight as Christ did—giving glory to God and pointing others to Him, rather than succumbing to our pride. We must remember that such “success” isn’t due to our accomplishments, ultimately, but to the grace and purposes of God:

We don’t deserve special privileges, luxury living or a higher level of respect from others because of our talents or bank accounts. We can’t excuse snobbiness, hoarding or passive-aggressive pride because we won the popular vote or appeared in Adventure magazine. Some privileges and accolades may come in our lives, but if we start feeling entitled to them, we’re already flirting with the Saul Syndrome [a deadly combination of pride and the fear of man]. All our successes, and all the earthly rewards that come with them are from God. It’s all from God. We can’t pretend we’re ultimately responsible for our success any more than a homeless man can ultimately blame society for his homelessness.

Is Embracing Obscurity the final say on the matter? Not remotely. But it’s an important opening to a necessary conversation. We all, regardless of the level of public influence afforded to us, need to wrestle with what it means for us to decrease so that Jesus’ renown would increase (cf. John 3:30). I trust Embracing Obscurity will give you a great deal to consider and might challenge you to discover where you need to become less in others’ eyes (and your own) in light of Christ.

Title: Embracing Obscurity: Becoming Nothing in Light of God’s Everything
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: B&H Publishing (2012)