Loving the Church

I am looking forward to reading the latest from my friend John Crotts, pastor of Faith Bible Church in Sharpsburg, GA. His prior titles on biblical manhood and womanhood, marriage and family I highly recommend. In his newest, Loving the Church: God’s People Flourishing in God’s Family, Crotts looks at the biblical necessity that the believer be in a right, loving relationship with a local body–His Church. The book is further described below:

Product Description

Loving the Church reminds us how glorious God’s family really is, and the countless ways that you can flourish within it. In recent years the family has experienced a revival within Christian culture, but with this increased emphasis on the importance of the family, less value has been placed on God’s family, the church. One of the most important relationships for all Christians is their involvement in God’s family. Loving the Church lays the vital foundation for applying his glorious plan to our own lives. Enter as friends and explore together what it means to love the church. Follow the story of five friends as they wrestle with important questions about the church. After each of their discussions about the church, the author leads the reader to understand the beauty and joy of being a member of the household of God.

The Battle for Men’s Souls

I recently began reading this book for the first time. These two men certainly have a finger on the pulse of man’s greatest temptation — sexual sin. I have found that those in the church that seem surprised by this often are caught in their own web of deceit and justification. Arterburn and Stoeker leave no stones unturned in this book – a book that I warn you is very detailed. From a pastoral perspective one of the things that struck me was their comment that many young men expect that their sinful tendencies in sexual matters will go away once they are married. But the sinful habits of the eyes and flesh that permeate their mind and heart will follow them into the marriage union. That is why young men must begin to slay sexual immorality. As John Owen once stated, “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.” While there are many books young men can read (and should!) on the danger of sexual sin (Josh Harris’s  Sex Is Not the Problem (Lust Is) [formerly Not Even a Hint] and Eric Lundgaard’s The Enemy Within are excellent counterparts), this one certainly makes the list. Young ladies might also consider the companion book, Every Young Woman’s Battle.

Unrealistic Expectations

Relationships are often messy.  Those whom we love often disappoint and leave us with a feeling of frustration.  If you have never experienced difficulty in all of your relationships then I would submit that you are physically dead.  You see, on our best days with our best efforts, all relationships are between sinful people.  True, some relationships are better than others — the best we would admit would be between mature believers who have experienced and grown in the grace of God.  But even mature believers are sinners.  Sin makes all relationships messy at times.  Further, the arena in which we live our lives is a fallen world full of evil and selfishness.

These things lead to the premise of Paul David Tripp’s book on marriage, What Did You Expect?? (subtitled: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage). His premise is that most marriages have been, are currently, or will be in turmoil because of unrealistic expectations that two people bring into marriage that fuel the flames of sin.  The purpose of the book is to glean from the essential wisdom perspectives that Scripture gives us that enable us to have realistic expectations for our marriages.  These are that we recognize:

1) You are conducting your marriage in a fallen world.

2) You are a sinner married to a sinner.

3) God is faithful, powerful, and willing to transform our marriages by His grace.

He then proposes six commitments in order for marriages to be reconciled:

1. We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness.

2. We will make growth and change our daily agenda.

3. We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust.

4. We will commit to building a relationship of love.

5. We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace.

6. We will work to protect our marriage.

Yes, marriage is hard work! It is much more difficult to set it right than it is to mess it up. Yet, by God’s grace and our understanding of who He is, who we are, and what our marriages are to reflect, our households can be the gospel outposts they are supposed to be.  Read this book — whether you have been married fifty years or fifty days.  Read it if you have plans to marry in the near future.  “Realistic expectations are not about hope without honesty, and they are not about honesty without hope. Realism is found at the intersection of unabashed honesty and uncompromising hope. God’s Word and God’s grace make both possible in your marriage… Are your expectations for your marriage realistic?” [from back cover]

When Helping Hurts

When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert is an in your (our) face critique of the way individuals and churches often approach missions — the wrong way.  Both men serve in the economics department at Covenant College in Chattanooga, TN (a PCA school for those unfamiliar with Covenant). They have also served extensively in missions, both in going and in training.  So their observations are worth noting both didactically and practically.

One of the main concerns the book points out is what is called the “god complex” that many in America have when it comes to the work of missions around the globe, particularly  in alleviating poverty in poor nations. This “god-complex” is defined by one author as something “the economically rich often have… a subtle and unconscious sense of superiority in which they believe that they have achieved their wealth through their own efforts and that they have been anointed to decide what is best fo low-income people, whom they view as inferior to themselves.”  As the authors note, few are conscious of having a god-complex, which presents a major problem in missions in poverty: One of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being economically rich–their god-complexes–and the poverty of being of the economically poor–their feelings of inferiority (p. 65).

This “poverty of being” is a reminder that we all suffer from poverty, we all have broken relationships that need to be restored.  This is the essence of poverty: Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable (p. 62).  Poverty then is rooted in these broken relationships with (1) God, (2) self, (3) others, and (4) the rest of creation.  Obviously, then, all suffer from poverty as an effect of the Fall.  Every human being is poor in the sense of lacking in these four areas of relationship.

So how do we work to alleviate poverty?  We need a paradigm shift in our approach to missions that begins by recognizing our poverty (“god-complexes”) and the brokenness experienced by all mankind.  The key to alleviation is to reconcile these relationships so that others can live in right relation to God, self, others, and His creation.  Then we can move forward — but how?  We must then discern what is needed to alleviate the poverty: Relief, rehabilitation, or development. “Relief” is an urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from a natural or man-made crisis.  “Rehabilitation” begins as soon as the bleeding stops and seeks to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their precrisis conditions.  “Development” is a process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved–both the “helpers” and the “helped”–closer to being in relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation.  Development is not done to people or for people but with people.  One of the biggest mistakes that North American churches make–by far–is in applying relief in situations in which rehabilitation or development is the appropriate intervention (pp.103-105).

The book then offers ways in which individuals and churches can design and implement practices that are helpful in alleviating poverty. I strongly recommend this book to all who have a heart for missions, whether it be at home urban and suburban or internationally.  It is possible that while our hearts might be right, our methods can be disastrous.

DeYoung on McLarenism

Kevin DeYoung has an excellent series of posts this week reviewing Brian McLaren’s latest book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. If you are not familiar with Brian McLaren, he is what I consider to represent the far left in the emerging church movement (what is now called “the third way” in some circles).  You can find the entire review in .pdf format here.