1. John Piper. The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23, Second Edition. Written while Piper was teaching at Bethel College, this is an academic book not for the faint of heart. But the payoff is tremendous. Richard Muller’s blurb is right: “The Justification of God [is] the most compelling and forceful exposition of Romans 9:1-23 that I have ever seen.”

2. Ted Kluck. The Reason for Sports. Funny, entertaining, thought provoking. If you love sports you’ll love this book.

3. Richard Stearns. The Hole In Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer that Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World. Much to commend–compelling personal story, humble spirit, passion for those suffering and in need. But theology of the gospel, criticisms of the church, and plan for changing the world are off the mark at times. (I’m going to write a longer review on this book in the future.)

4. Jim Belcher. Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. Orthodox in theology. Avoids and exposes the worst of the emerging movement, but I’m not sure this is genuinely a third way.

5. Cornelis P. Venema. Christ and the Future: The Bible’s Teaching About the Last Things. A wonderful resource and introduction to eschatology from an amillennial perspective. Reads like an updated Hoekema.

Ah yes, another book on the emergent church. I admit I both really wanted to read this book and really didn’t. The wanting is because, as you may know, I too wrote a book on the emerging church. So naturally I was curious what another author–one with blurbs from the likes of Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, Rob Bell, Scot McKnight, and Tony Jones–had to say about the movement.

But a big part of me didn’t want to read the book. Believe it or not, I don’t live for controversy and I don’t wake up in the morning hoping to jump back into emergenty thoughts. I spent a year of my life researching and writing about the emergent church and then another year teaching and doing interviews about it. That was enough for me. Besides, perhaps I’m naive, but I think most people can now see the emergent movement for what it is. There are enough resources out there now for people to make up their minds and decide whether this is a healthy reform movement or a conversation pushing the boundaries of evangelical faith and sometimes jumping the bounds of orthodoxy itself.

Keeping Up With the Conversation
But, alas, I feel some obligation to keep informed of the conversation. So it was with a feeling of apprehension and intrigue that I read Jim Belcher’s book Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional. I was preparing for the worst when I read in the blurbs that this book “avoids the clamor for extremes” (Scot McKnight), is “the first to be truly gracious” and is great “for any who are tired of straw man arguments and polarizations” (Mark Oestreicher), and rises above “the usual shallow, facile critiques of the emergent church movement” (Tony Jones). I can’t help but assume that Why We’re Not Emergent is one of the “extreme”, “straw man”, “facile” critiques they’re thinking of. What would I be getting into with this book?

I am always skeptical of “third way” books anyways. Usually, the “third way” is basically the same as one of the other two ways, only a little nicer. In this case, I was expecting the third way to be emergent-lite with a less caustic attitude toward evangelicals. But actually Belcher was just the opposite. He is an evangelical–a traditional evangelical I would argue–who seems sound in his theology (he is a PCA minister after all), but wants to be non-traditional in a few ways. If I were titling the book I would call it “Why I’m Not Emergent, But I Like Many of the Emergent Folks and I Want to Do Church Differently Too.”

What is Deep Church?
The heart and soul of Deep Church is Belcher’s dream for traditional and emerging camps to find unity in the Great Tradition and not blast each other over second-tier differences (67-68). Chapter 3, “The Quest for Mere Christianity”, is the most important chapter in the book for understanding what Belcher is aiming for with his third way. On the one hand, Belcher wants to avoid the fundamentalist error of seeing every other kind of church as heretical and suspect. On the other hand, he also wants to avoid the liberal error of seeing theology as infinitely malleable. Belcher’s vision is for the traditional church and the emerging church to find common ground in the consensual tradition summed up in the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed (54ff.).

Second-tier doctrines are not unimportant. Many of them are weighty, and individual churches will come down in different places relative to these doctrines. But binding all churches together is a tradition of orthodoxy. It’s the Great Tradition, then, that matters most, not our respective traditions. For the Great Tradition unifies us and ought to arouse our greatest passion. Belcher’s book is a winsome plea for a return to Mere Christianity and the humility and unity that goes with it.

What Are the Camps?
The traditional camp is not well-defined by Belcher (a weakness I’ll come back to later). At times it seems to be the same as fundamentalism (61). In other places, the traditional camp refers to anyone who has critiqued the emergent movement, including John MacArthur, Ron Gleason, Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck, and D.A. Carson. Belcher acknowledges the traditional camp is not monolithic. But he suggests “the groups comprising traditional evangelicalism share similar views of culture, epistemology and the church” (10). Still, in the end, I’m not sure what makes someone a part of the traditional camp in Belcher’s estimation, other than that they have been critical of the emergent camp.

Having said that, Belcher’s analysis of the emergent side is much more helpful. I won’t retell his own story, but Belcher has the advantage of having been an insider in the movement at its inception. He knows the journey of the emerging church well and he knows well many of the key players. This is what makes his book unique and why the emergents have received it more warmly. Carson was a total outsider in their minds. Ted and I were at least demographically similar and culturally conversant, but still outsiders. Jim is a true insider.

But also an outsider. He writes: “As much as I feel like an insider to the conversation, I also feel at times like an outsider because of some reservations I have with aspects of the emerging conversation” (28). Similar to what Ted and I said in Why We’re Not Emergent, Belcher feels like emerging voices are raising good questions, but their answers are often disturbing. Similar to Carson, Belcher defines the emerging movement (which he makes clear is not identical to Emergent Village) as a protest movement.

The emerging church is protesting against the traditional church on seven fronts: (1) Captivity to Enlightenment rationalism. (2) A narrow view of salvation. (3) Belief before belonging. (4) Uncontextualized worship. (5) Ineffective preaching. (6) Weak ecclesiology. (7) Tribalism.

Under the label “emerging” are three different camps: the relevants (e.g. Driscoll, Kimball, and some Young, Restless, and Reformed types) who are trying to contextualize ministry while still maintaining conservative theology; the reconstructionists (e.g., Cole, Hirsch, Barna, Viola) who are experimenting with organic house churches and monastic communities; and the revisionists (e.g., McLaren, Jones, Pagitt) who are questioning key evangelical doctrines on theology and culture (45-46). Belcher’s analysis focuses mostly on the reconstructionists and the revisionists because they have gotten the most attention and faced the most push back.

Protesting Protestants
The bulk of the book deals with the seven areas of protest. Each chapter follows a similar pattern. Belcher usually begins with a personal experience that led him to see a problem with the traditional approach to church. Then Belcher explores the emerging solution, often interviewing key leaders in the movement and raising some possible objections along the way. Next, Belcher looks at the response of the traditional church to the emerging answers. And finally he proposes a third way that seeks to combine the best of both camps while avoiding the worst extremes.

Here’s a thumbnail sketch for each chapter/protest:

1. Deep Truth – Emergents reject classic foundationalism, which is good. But while they are right to reject self-evident truth, they are wrong to embrace a postmodern “constructivist” epistemology. “Even though I reject classical foundationalism,” Belcher writes, “I am not comfortable adopting a relational hermeneutic. I believe that God’s revelation in the Word tells us what is real and provides the authority for Christian community. We build our metaphysics on divine revelation. It gives us confidence that we substantially know ‘ready-made reality’” (82). In short, deep church rejects foundationalism built on reason, but accepts foundations built on belief.

Similarly, deep church is centered-set instead of bounded-set or relational-set. This means the church focuses on drawing people to the Well (Jesus Christ) instead of guarding all the fences (like the traditional church). It also means the church knows what it should be focusing on (the center), instead of allowing the community to determine truth for itself (like in the emerging church).

2. Deep Evangelism – The traditional church insists that belief must precede belonging. This has the effect of slamming the door on spiritual seekers. The emerging church insists on belonging before belief. But every community must have some standards and everyone in the church must be challenged to repentance, faith, and obedience at some point. So is there a third way? According to Belcher the third way understands that there are two circles around Jesus. There is an outer circle of seekers and an inner circle of committed disciples. Deep church welcomes everyone into the outer circle, regardless of their beliefs, but challenges them to become a part of the inner circle.

3. Deep Gospel - The traditional church has made salvation too personalized, too much like fire insurance. The message of individual salvation is important, but it must be balanced with Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom. We must avoided reductionist gospels and remember the gospel has a public dimension. We must not shrink the gospel to the forgiveness of sins. But, Belchers adds, penal substitution and justification must form the foundation for everything else we say about the gospel. The kingdom cannot be ignored, but it must be linked to the doctrines of atonement, justification, union with Christ, and our need to be forgiven (118).

4. Deep Worship – The emerging church tries to contextualize its worship, but in so doing it sometimes becomes untethered to history and too much a product of the culture around it. What is needed is not just a sampling of tradition, but a return to the Great Tradition. Belcher’s third way looks like this: “worship that embodies a genuine encounter with God, had depth and substance, included more frequent and meaningful Communion, was participatory, read more Scripture in worship, creatively used the senses provided more time for contemplation, and focused on the transcendence and otherness of God” (124).

5. Deep Preaching – Traditional preaching is often boring and uninspired. There is little drama to it. Most sermons boil down to two things: you suck; try harder (142). The emerging church tries to suggest a better way. In practice their “sermons” sound like sermons, except with a little more interaction from the congregation. But underneath the emergent view of preaching (at least that espoused by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones) is a radical shift, a hermeneutic of community that says nothing is privileged, not even the Bible, over the community in discovering and living out truth (145). Belcher rejects this hermeneutic, seeing that it leads to a rejection of classical orthodoxy. So neither traditional nor emergent preaching will work. We need a third way that is not deductive and legalistic like traditional preaching, nor open-ended like emergent preaching. Instead, those who belong to deep church “preach Christ in every text, laying out and analyzing the human condition through Scriptures and experience, and exposing the radical, shocking grace of God that enters our situation, transforms us and empowers us to live differently” (157).

6. Deep Ecclesiology – Traditional church gets bogged down in meetings, paperwork, and organizational bureaucracy. This is bad. So the emerging church calls for a more organic, open-source model for church. But even organic churches cannot survive long without structure and accountability. What we need is a third way that calls the church to be both institution and organism, respects the offices of elder and deacon, celebrates worship as a means of grace, and cultivates and learns from tradition.

7. Deep Culture – The third way between traditional and emerging approaches to culture accepts Abraham Kuypers distinction between the church as institution and the church as organism. The church as an institution focuses primarily on preaching, sacraments, worship, and caring for the body. The church as organism works to train secret agents who go out into the world, work for the shalom of the city, and create culture. With this institution/organism approach, our churches can have a deep culture, one that is neither a copy-cat of culture nor irrelevant to it.

Evaluation
As you can see, there is much to affirm in these chapters. Belcher understands the issues well and clearly rejects the worst of the emerging movement. His church sounds like a good church, and Belcher (whom I never met) strikes me as an honest, thoughtful, irenic pastor. I agreed with much more in this book than I thought I would. As a part of the PCA, Belcher is not only tied to the Great Tradition, but to the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition. As such, I imagine our theology is quite similar. We are on the same team. My agreements with him outnumber my disagreements.

Nevertheless, I have a few critiques for Deep Church. Let me mention four, each in the form of a question.

1. What is the gospel?
Belcher makes clear that he affirms penal substitution. He thinks it is foundational to the other views of the atonement. He believes that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins and take away our guilt. This is all wonderful. But I’m still a bit perplexed.

Belcher’s church holds to four core commitments: gospel, community, mission, and shalom. He admits that the church struggled the most to define the first of these four. “We had spent five years translating or contexualizing the gospel to the Orange County setting, and we wanted to be sure we had not reduced it any way” (120). First of all, I’m puzzled by the effort to translate the gospel. It seems to me that the news is still the same: Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day. Ministries may need to contextualize, but the gospel?

More importantly, I’m puzzled by the definition of the gospel Belcher’s church came up with.

The “gospel” is the good news that through Jesus, the Messiah, the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. Through the Savior God has established his reign. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us. We witness the radical new way of living by our renewed lives, beautiful community, social justice, and cultural transformation. This good news brings new life. The gospel motivates, guides, and empowers every aspect of our living and worship (121).

This is a fine statement of Christian theology, but is it the gospel? Surely, 1 Corinthians 15 gives us the best summary of the gospel and there we find no mention of cultural transformation or renewing the whole world. But we do here about sin, the cross, and the resurrection–three items given no specific mention in Belcher’s definition of the gospel. This is a problem.

2. Is unity possible?
Belcher’s dream is that traditional and emerging camps would find unity in the first-tier doctrines of the faith. But what if the Great Tradition is not a controlling tradition for the emergent church? “John and I,” Belcher writes speaking of John Armstrong and himself, “concluded that they [Jones and Pagitt] seemed to reject any commitments to the classical orthodoxy of the Great Tradition…I asked John, ‘If we are understanding them correctly, does this view put them outside of evangelical bounds as to many of their critics have been saying?’” (146). To which I wanted to reply, “Yes! And not just evangelical bounds, the bounds of orthodoxy too.” Belcher recognizes that Pagitt does not hold to the “rule of faith” or “classical orthodoxy.” The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed do not define mere Christianity for him (148). So why do people keep talking about Jones and Pagitt as if they are part of the evangelical conversation, when they aren’t even orthodox Christians?

In the end Belcher agrees that the traditional camp is not overstating its case when it comes to Pagitt’s views (152). So I don’t have a problem with Belcher’s theology on this point. In fact, I commend him for providing an honest assessment of the revisionist camp of the emerging movement. But I wish he would have stated more strongly and clearly that unity is not possible with those who reject the Great Tradition. True, Tony, Doug, and Brian are on the far left of the movement, but then at least let’s warn people about the far left of the movement. The hall of heterodoxy is not the same as the hall of Mere Christianity, and those standing in one hall cannot share spiritual unity with those standing in the other.

As much as Belcher doesn’t want to have a bounded-set church, if orthodoxy is to be a defining part of his church, it must have boundaries and those outside those boundaries are dangers to the sheep and the church’s shepherds should say so.

3. Is the Great Tradition enough?
I’m all for making the main things the main things. I’m all for differentiating between first- and second-tier issues. But is it enough to say the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed define orthodoxy, let alone evangelicalism? These creeds addressed certain pivotal issues that faced the church in its first few centuries. But what about other issues that have arise since then, like the atonement, justification, the authority of the Bible? I would say these are first-tier issues too, even though they were not specifically addressed by an early council or creed.

Along these lines. I was bothered by the references to “the version of the doctrine of the atonement that Piper holds dear” and “Pagitt and Jones don’t hold to Piper’s view of the atonement” (11, 12). Elsewhere Belcher explains that McLaren and others are not against “atonement theories” (111). This sort of language about the cross rubs me the wrong way. When evangelicals talk about Christ’s death in our place to propitiate the wrath of God as a “version of the atonement” or one favored theory, they give away too much.

True, there are different aspects to the atonement. But penal substitution is not a mere version. “So substitution is not a ‘theory of the atonement,’” writes John Stott. “Nor is it even an additional image to take its place as an option alongside the others. It is rather the essence of each image and the heart of the atonement itself.” Penal substitution is the plain truth of Scripture. I know that sounds hopelessly modern, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Christ dying in the place of guilty sinners deserves to be called more than “a view of the atonement that Piper holds dear.”

4. Is Deep Church a genuine third way?
In the end, the thing I liked most about the book is also my biggest criticism. Belcher’s way, despite is few differences in shape and tone (see critiques above), is not a genuine third way but the traditional way mediated through Tim Keller. Don’t get me wrong. I like that way. I love Tim Keller. I wasn’t disappointed to see that I agreed with Belcher on a lot. But if I’m traditional (which I am in the Deep Church taxonomy) then I think Belcher is too. Come to think of it, D.A. Carson is in the traditional camp too (in Deep Church) and he and Keller are very close friends. They started the Gospel Coalition together so I assume they agree on an awful lot. So is Carson another third way?

Deep church is essentially traditional doctrine with a softer edge and more cultural engagement. That’s not bad. It can be very good if done faithfully. But I don’t think it is a third way. Very few of the extremes of the traditional camp rejected by Belcher are footnoted or attributed to any leader in the traditional church. Consequently, I don’t think he is rejecting the traditional church as much as a bad experience of it.

Likewise, most of what Belcher offers as a third way are not new ideas to the traditional church. Almost all the conservative Christians I know reject classic foundationalism. Every conservative church I know of welcomes seekers and allows unbelievers to be a part of the church in the outer circle, even if they can’t be members until they believe certain things. Every good homiletics course teaches the difference between imperatives and indicatives and the need to preach Christ from all the Scriptures. In fact, I don’t think there is a single insight from the emergent church that cannot be gleaned from the best of the evangelical, and specifically the Reformed, tradition. We don’t need a third way between emergent and traditional. We need a revitalized, reformed evangelical church.

Conclusion
Deep Church confirms again that there are very serious problems with some of the theology coming out of the emerging church. It also confirms again that hide-bound, legalistic, unfriendly, uncaring traditionalism is not the way to go. If you need a refresher on either of these two points, this book will do the trick. Jim Belcher has given us an insider’s and outsider’s look at the most controversial church movement of the last decade. And though I have some disagreements with the book, in the end, he reaffirms the importance of the faith delivered once for all for the saints. And that’s a very good thing.

I’ve written two books with Ted Kluck. We’ve shared dozens of Hot N Ready Little Caesar’s pizza. I’ve been to his house for growth group about a hundred times. And our kids have bloodied each other on numerous occasions. All that to say, it would be hard for me not to like one of Ted’s books.

But Ted is not just a great friend. He is a great writer too. His latest book, The Reason for Sports: A Christian Fanifesto, is funny, entertaining, and full of good biblical sense.

There are plenty of books about Christian athletes, and plenty of books by Christian superstars. But there is precious little writing on sports from a Christian perspective. It’s amazing really. Americans are obsessed with sports, especially men, and yet Christians haven’t done much to reflect on the good and bad of sports. That’s why I love Ted’s writing. He knows sports. He’s played sports. He’s done real sports reporting. And he’s a strong Christian who knows how to write.

For example, here’s the opening paragraph to Chapter One on the Jock Apology.

My son watches a lot of sports because I watch a lot of sports. He’s five, and he’s giggle at beer commercials (he likes the Coors Silver Bullet train) and not (thankfully) asked me to define “erectile dysfunction” when forced to sit through commercials that portray old men either singing about Viagara in a deserted roadside bar or, inexplicably, two people sitting outside in different bathtubs, watching a sunset. He’s also watched an unhealthy amount of jock press conferences. He knows the phrase “it is what it is.” And as such, he’s sat through an inordinate amount of jock apologies (19).

Classic Moody don’t you think? But Ted is not just funny. He can also notice the profound lessons in sports.

Part of the appeal of the Rocky movies…is that Rocky seemed to care about only two things in life–beating whoever was in front of him at the time, and his wife, Adrian. This is appealing on both an athletic and a romantic level. His life seemed stripped of many of the complications that we experience. When he was training–doing one-armed push-ups, drinking egg yolks, running, and hitting the punching bag (and, in Rocky III, even racing and then frolicking in the surf with Apollo in one of the worst scenes in American cinema)–he seemed to want for nothing expect victory. This singleness of purpose is something that Christian guys long for but rarely achieve in our spiritual lives (111-12).

If you like sports you will like Ted Kluck writing about sports. In this book Ted talks about steroids, Tony Mandarich, Tony Dungy, bad sports movies, the scouting combine, humility, race relations, and letting your yes be yes–all of which is relentlessly interesting and full of wisdom. There aren’t too many writers who can quote Mike Tyson and J.C. Ryle and know what they are talking about in both instances.

Bottom line: The Reason for Sports is a terrific book. I highly recommend it.

And I’m not just saying so because Ted will beat me up if I don’t.

This isn’t the type of book I usually read. Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them is a church growthy, charts-and-surveys kind of book. A little bit of this reading goes a long way for me, but I actually liked this book.

Granted, I didn’t like everything. Like a lot of books that survey people and then interpret the results, there is too much over-interpretation for my liking. I would have preferred a shorter book with the bare-bones summary of the data, fewer stories, and fewer faux post-it notes in the text. I’m wasn’t crazy about all of the advice, and the recurring story at the end of each chapter was for some reason put into an annoying italics font.

But these points notwithstanding, Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes have written a book that will be helpful to many churches as they try to reaching young people with the gospel.

Good News, Bad News
I appreciated that Stetzer (he’s the main author) refused to hype the current church situation in America as the most dire of all time. Instead, he convincingly argues what many of us already intuitively understand: reaching the younger unchurched (roughly those in their twenties) is filled with unique challenges and opportunities. On the bad side, “the younger unchurched believe the church is too critical about lifestyle issues, full of hypocrites, and not necessary for spiritual development.” On the good side, “the younger unchurched clearly indicate they are willing to dialogue about Christianity and Jesus” (65). Basically, younger folks are turned off by religion, but they are very interested in talking about it and checking it out.

But while the younger unchurched would rather be spiritual than religious, this does not mean they hopelessly anti-churhc. In fact, Stetzer claims they are generally less fed-up with religion than older unchurched people (49). He argues that “as best we can tell, the younger unchurched are not more upset at the church than the older unchurched” (54). They may harbor a lot of negative stereotypes about the church and Christianity, but they probably don’t dislike the church more than others, and are actually more open to hearing about Christ than older generations.

Against the Grain
In Part Two of the book, Stetzer and his team identify four markers or values in ministering to young adults. From my experience as a young adult and in ministering to a church with lots of young adults, Stetzer’s conclusions ring true.

First, community is vital. We all know that. Young people want genuine relationships with others. They want a place to be real and they want people to be real with them.

Second, depth is important. Young people don’t want pat answers. They don’t want the church to stay away from the hard questions. They want content. They want Bible studies that actually teach the Bible. They want sermons that are meaty and challenging. “They told us,” writes Stetzer, “that they’d rather be ‘in over their heads’ in life as opposed to kicking around in the shallow end” (68). You don’t have to water down to reach out. In fact, you reach out by not watering down.

Third, responsibility is strongly valued. Young adults want opportunities to use their talents and abilities. They want to serve. They want to put their faith into action. Stetzer reminds us that service projects are a great way to make connections with the unchurched. They might not come to church with us right away, but they will probably be willing to build a house with us. That’s a good place to start.

Fourth, connections matter. This is, of course, true for everyone. We all want to know others and be known. What’s interesting is Stetzer’s assertion that young people want more connection what is old. This means many young people actually prefer cross-generational ministry to simply being placed in mono-generational or affinity groups. It also means that there is a growing desire for hymns, liturgy, creeds, and traditional architecture. Does this mean we just reinvent church to suit the whims of the 24 year old? No, but it means we cannot ignore the church’s musical and liturgical traditions any longer because they “just don’t resonate with young people.”

Keep On Keepin’ On
Much of the book’s content will not be a surprise to those who have read about younger generations before or belong to the younger generation. And many of the “characteristics” of churches that reach young adults are simply characteristics of good churches. But still, this book can give the pastor, college minister, or interested lay-person some good ideas on how to reach out to young people. (For example, if your church does not have a half-decent website you are missing one of the easiest and most likely ways that young people will find out about your church.)

The book contains many helpful summaries along the way, so even if you don’t read the whole thing you can benefit from the underlying points. As far as church growthy books go, this was a breath of fresh air. It emphasized the basics, like being humble and honest, giving people deep truth, fostering community, serving others, and utilizing the gifts and traditions of the ages (not to mention the aged). Reaching younger generations doesn’t take gimmicks, just a little bit of thought and a lot of faithfulness.

1. Timothy Ward. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God. A terrific treatise on the doctrine of Scripture from a Reformed and evangelical perspective. The first few chapters on God, human words, divine words, and the Word made flesh were especially helpful. Only question mark: affirms inerrancy, but downplays its significance.

2. John Piper. Finally Alive. A robust and inspiring look at the doctrine of regeneration. Penetrating exegesis, pastoral sensitivity, and good writing. One of Piper’s best.

3. Martin Downes. Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church. I really enjoyed this book. Lots of wisdom from some of today’s leading Reformed evangelicals.

4. Douglas Moo. The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT). Ok, so I haven’t read the whole thing, but I’ve read carefully some big chunks of it. The phrase is overused, but this book really is a gift to the church. Scholarly, readable, evangelical, Reformation soteriology, Lutheran on the law. As a plus, the NICNT and NICOT have the most attractive, readable, common sense layout of any major commentary series I’ve seen.

5. Greg Bahsen, Walter Kaiser, Douglas Moo, Wayne Strickland, Willem VanGemeren. Five Views on Law and Gospel. The book is a good resource to have on the shelf, but at 414 pages it is too long, and the responses are unwieldy at times. The most cogent defenses of their respective positions are provided by Bahnsen (theonomy), Kaiser (evangelical view), and Moo (modified Lutheran).

6.Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanely, and Jason Hayes. Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them. I would have liked it better as a long article, but still a useful book. Summary statements throughout the book are very helpful. Full of refreshing good sense and non-fadish advice. (FYI, I’ll do a full review on this book tomorrow.)

One of the most intriguing books I have read in the past few year has been Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. In 600 plus pages, Murray sets out to determine which human beings have accomplished the greatest things. “What can homo sapiens brag about as a species?” he asks. Or, to put it another way, “What can human beings put on a résumé?”

Since, we are thinking job interview, Murray does not examine acts of compassion (nice, he says, but too personal for a résumé). Likewise, he does not consider efforts to create prosperous and free societies, which are akin to paying the rent and putting food on the table. Military accomplishments are out too, because, well, “putting ‘Defeated Hitler’ on the human résumé is too much like putting ‘Beat my drug habit’ on a personal one” (Introdcution, xv).

What is left are accomplishments in the arts and sciences. Through a complex system of research and statistical analysis, Murray determines the roster of significant figures in twenty-one different categories. Whatever one might think about his approach to ranking human accomplishment–one reviewer described the book as “comprehensively wrong-headed”–Murray’s results sound plausible. For example, Galileo and Kepler top the list for astronomy, Newton and Einstein in physics, Edison and Watt in technology, Confucius in Chinese philosophy, Sankara in Indian philosophy, Beethoven and Mozart in Western music, Michelangelo in Western art, Basho in Japanese literature, and Shakespeare in Western literature.

Genius and Christianity

Human Accomplishment is fascinating and controversial. Murray not only asks “Who has achieved the greatest feats in human history?” but “Why?” As we might guess, population, peace, and prosperity have a lot do with it. But, if Murray is correct, so does Christianity.
What makes this thesis all the more interesting is that Charles Murray–author and academic–is not a Christian. His older children were raised Buddhist by their mother, his younger children Quaker by their mother, while Murray himself (though Presbyterian in up-bringing) is a self-professed agnostic.

When a friend of his predicted a the outset of the project that he would find Christianity’s role in Western human accomplishment to be pivotal, Murray had his doubts. After five years of research and writing, however, he came to see the crucial role Christianity has played in giving humans a sense of purpose and autonomy.

Murray’s conclusions are worth quoting.

“At the opening of the 21C, religion is an especially fraught topic in American life, with predominantly religious middle and working class alongside creative elites that are not only overwhelmingly secular but often aggressively so. Introducing Christianity as an important causal variable into an account of human accomplishment will engender more misunderstanding that I can possibly forestall, but let me try anyway.

“With regard to purpose, my position does not require that the secular life be a life without purpose. Rather, I argue that it is harder to find that purpose if one is an atheist or agnostic than if one is a believer. It is harder still to maintain attention to that purpose over years of effort. Devotion to a human cause, whether social justice, the environment, the search for truth, or an abstract humanism, is by its nature less compelling than devotion to God. Here, Christianity has its most potent advantage. The incentives of forgiveness of sin and eternal life are just about as powerful as incentives get. The nonbeliever has to make do with comparably tepid alternatives.

“With regard to autonomy, I do not see Christianity as its only source. It is easily possible to believe in one’s efficacy as an autonomous actor by holding the secular Greek ideal of the human….Possible–but, as in the case of purpose, harder if one is not a believing Christian. For evidence, look around at today’s intellectual climate in both Europe and the United States. “Unique,” “free,” “rational,” “powers of observation,” “critical inquiry”–every one of those words and phrases is problematic in today’s postmodern intellectual milieu. It is much easier to use them with confidence if one is a Christian, or still clings to the Christian/humanistic synthesis of early modernity.

“Finally my position is not at odds with the obvious fact that great human accomplishment has been produced outside Christian cultures and, for that matter, in cultures where the creative elites are secular. I am treating Christian religious belief as one of the variables that help to explain how human accomplishment in the arts and sciences has been ignited. I am arguing that Christianity is an important variable, one of the most important in the story of modern accomplishment. I am not arguing that it explains everything–just as, for that matter, purpose and autonomy do not explain everything. But they do explain a lot (407-408).”

Maybe Christianity is not as mind-numbing and culture-degrading after all. Perhaps, with all its faults and abuses, Christianity over the past two thousand years has managed once in awhile to be salt and light in a fallen world.

Genius and Gender

In an attempt to leave no stone unturned, Murray is bold enough (or foolish enough) to consider why so few woman populate his rankings. Legal and educational inequalities throughout much of history provide part of the answer. So do societal pressures and limited opportunities. But Murray offers one more explanation: motherhood. His argument has an interesting twist to it.

“Exceptions exist, but, as a rule, the experience of pregnancy and birth appears to be a more profoundly life-altering experience for women than becoming a father is for men. So closely is giving birth linked to the fundamental human goal of giving meaning to one’s life that is had been argued that, ultimately, it is not so much that motherhood keeps women from doing great things outside the home as it is men’s inability to give birth that forces them to look for substitutes” (287, emphasis mine).”

Read that last line two or three times. It is a bold argument. Could it be that motherhood, instead of preventing women from achieving some great purpose, is actually the accomplishment of something great already? It is a thought worth pondering.

Cheer up guys, at least one of your child’s parent is a genius.

I’ve often thought that one of the surest signs of Christian maturity is that we can root for each other. Love delights in the truth, which means we ought to thrill to discover that others parent better, exercise better, do school better, do church better. But I know the green-eyed monster as much as anyone. I can feel jealousy in my bones when someone excels at something I am supposed to be good at–preaching, writing, pastoring, reading, blogging, etc. I want to be genuinely excited to see gifts in others, even gifts that outshine my own. I want to cheer the truth wherever I see it being promoted, even if it means others get noticed instead of me. I don’t want to be like Cain, but sometimes I am.

That’s why I found these paragraphs from John Piper, commenting on 1 John 3:12 in Finally Alive, so convicting and helpful.

*****
So what would it be like for any of us to be like Cain? It would mean that anytime some weakness or bad habit in our lives is exposed by contrast to someone else’s goodness, instead of dealing with the weakness or the bad habit, we keep away from those whose lives make us feel defective. We don’t kill them. We avoid them. Or worse, we find ways to criticize them so as to neutralize the part of their lives that was making us feel convicted. W feel like the best way to nullify someone’s good point is to draw attention to his bad point. And so we protect ourselves from whatever good he might be for us.

But John’s point is: Love doesn’t act like that. Love is glad when our brothers and sisters are making progress in good habits or good attitudes or good behavior. Love rejoices in this growth. And if it happens to be faster than our own growth, then love is humble and rejoices with those who rejoice.

So the lesson for us is: Everywhere you see some growth, some virtue, some spiritual discipline, some good habit, or good attitude, rejoice in it. Give thanks for it. Compliment it. Don’t resent it. Don’t be like Cain. Respond the opposite from Cain. Be inspired by other people’s goodness.

Love is humble. Love delights in other people’s good. Love doesn’t protect its own flaws. Love takes steps to change them. What a beautiful fellowship where everyone is rejoicing in each other’s strengths, not resenting them! This is what the love of God looks like when the new birth gives it life in the people of God (158-159).

I’ve taken three days on this book because I think it very good and very important. Anyone with a heart for the poor or who has ever tried to help the poor should read this book. Today we come to the final section.

Part Three: Practical Strategies for Helping Without Hurting

The most provocative chapter in the book is Chapter 7, entitled “Doing Short-Term Missions Without Doing Long-Term Harm.” It’s no secret that the number short-term missions (STMs) have exploded in recent years: 120,000 in 1989, 450,000 in 1998, 1,000,000 in 2003, and 2,200,000 in 2006. In 2006 alone, Americans spent 1.6 billion (!) on STMs, most of them trips of two weeks or less. I’ve been on STMs. Our church sends them out. They can do good. But they often don’t. STMs are very often costly, ineffective, and harmful to the people they mean to help.

For starters, most STMs do relief work where rehabilitation or development is called for. It’s no wonder that STMs focus on relief. You can’t do rehabilitation or development in two weeks. But you can give things away, or build a house, or run a VBS. We can come in and do stuff for people, but this often reinforces feelings of inferiority, creates a pattern of dependency, and can lead to resentment toward local ministries. I know this will rain on a lot of good hearted parades, but why should a group of Americans go run a VBS in Mexico for week. Don’t they have parents who can do that for their children, and in Spanish?! Fikkert tells the story of a group that came to a poor community in Latin America to do Bible studies for children. After the group left, they kids did not want to go back to the indigenous ministry, because their materials and crafts were not as fancy. Many STMs reinforce notions of paternalism, undercut local initiative, and make learning dependence on God harder not easier.

People on STMs often don’t know the language and by nature of the trip itself they are trying to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. They also don’t understand the cultural dynamics of time and relationships. On top of this, someone must watch the group of 12 teenagers for a week, translate for them, cart them around, help them when they get sick, etc. It’s no wonder, that “research is finding that most host organizations would rather have the sending organization give them money instead of sending team” (171). Steve Corbett writes, “I know that if someone from Switzerland said to my small church of 130 people in rural Georgia, ‘You can choose between our sending thirteen people this summer to help with your VBS or our giving you the $25,000 it will cost to send the team,’ we would definitely take the money. We would use $20,000 to finish of the church addition we have been working five years to build debt free. And the remaining $5000 would nearly double our normal VBS budget, so we could have a dynamic VBS as well” (171).

But, the experiences we have on an STM are so rich! They can be then the trip is really about us and not about helping them (172)! If we want experiences, we can save up our money and go to Belize and visit a poor community while we’re there. But don’t make the church pay for it and call it missions. As a pastor I get solicitations in the mail for outfits that do nothing but cater to American STMs. The materials I get from some of these “missions” organizations are nothing less than appalling. They advertise the shopping trips and overnight stay on an island. They offer different trips for different costs. If you want the low rate you’ll have to sleep in a tent. But pay a little more and you’ll get a nice hotel and a visit to the art museum. This is a vacation, not missions.

This is not money well spent. Fikkert comments, “Spending $20,000 to $40,000 for ten to twenty people to be on location for two weeks or less is not uncommon. The money spent on a single STM teams for a one- to two- week experience would be sufficient to support more than a dozen far more effective indigenous workers for an entire year…The profound stewardship issues here should not be glossed over” (173).

But, STMs are an investment in the long-term. Many STMers will become missions advocates or long-term missionaries themselves. Actually, a recent study has concluded “that there simply is not a significant increase in long-term missions giving for either the team members or their sending churches” (174). If all the STMs were producing such long-term fruit, why have neither missions giving nor the number of long-term missionaries gone up in the US over the past two decades?

So are STMs nothing but a waste of money? Often, but not always. There are a number of ways to improve the impact of STMs. (1) Make sure the host organization and community members have requested your STM to come. (2) Design to trip to “be” and “learn” more than “do.” (3) Don’t do things for people they can do for themselves. (4) Keep the numbers of team members small. (5) Don’t think you are going to go change the world. (6) Include pre-trip, on-trip, and post-trip training. (7) Screen the team members. Don’t send people who just want to see the world or get a little adventure. (8) Make everyone on the team pay for at least a portion of their own expenses.

Chapters 8 and 9 finish off the book. Did you know “For the first time in U.S. history, more poor people live in suburbs than in cities” (183)? They are hidden in old houses, run-down apartments, and behind stip malls. That’s the point of Chapter 8 “Yes, in Your Backyard.” Chapter 9 looks at the possibilities and pitfalls of the global microfinance (MF) movement. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) can be great success stories, but most churches will not have the know-how, business sense, or guts to do them well.

Conclusion

This is an important book. You should read it. A wrong response to a book like this is: “Well, everything I’ve ever tried to do to help the poor is apparently wrong. So why bother.” Another wrong response would be: “See, the poor just need to do it themselves. We shouldn’t be wasting our time on this kind of thing.” No, the poor need our help. But passion and generosity may not, by themselves, be very helpful. Often, they are downright hurtful. We need wisdom, patience, and humility. The poor need our help, and we need their help too. We are all broken. We all have sins we can’t see. We all need reconciliation.

These are not truisms, but the very cornerstone of effective ministry. Sometimes we do more, by doing less. We can usually do more by doing it smarter. And we can always do more by realizing that God is the one already at work.

Part 1 of When Helping Hurts was good, but the most provocative chapters are in Parts 2 and 3. Today we come to the second part of the book.

Part Two: General Principles for Helping Without Hurting

In my opinion, Chapter 4 is the most important chapter in the book. Here Fikkert explains the three different approaches to poverty alleviation. The first is relief. Relief is the urgent, temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering. The second is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation begins once “the bleeding stops.” It seeks to restore people and communities to the positive elements of their pre-crisis conditions. The third approach is development. Development is the process of ongoing change that moves all people involved (“helpers” and “helped”) closer to being in a right relationship with God, self, others, and creation.

If you don’t ever read the book, or get anything else of these blog posts, try to remember the differences between relief, rehabilitation, and development. When North American churches think of helping the poor, they almost always think in terms of relief. This, says Fikkert, is “by far” the biggest mistake our churches continue to make.

Most people we come in contact with do not need relief. They are not about to die like the man helped by the Good Samaritan. Most people we see are not truly destitute. Before we give relief we need to ask: Is there really a crisis at hand? Is this person responsible for his crisis? Can this person help himself? Has he already been receiving relief from others in the past? If we do give relief it should be seldom, immediate, and temporary (108, 110).

Confused? Fikkert lays out a good rule of thumb that cuts through a lot of complexity: Avoid paternalism. Do not do things for people that they can do for themselves (115). Avoid resource paternalism which can undermine local businesses and undercut prices. Avoid spiritual paternalism, doing all the teaching or leading the VBS when local people can and should do so. Avoid knowledge paternalism, thinking we have all the answers, if only the needy would listen to us. Avoid labor paternalism, going on spring break trips to Mississippi to rebuild houses while able-bodied locals sit and watch. Avoid managerial paternalism, doing things our way on our time.

Chapter 5 is about one basic, powerful suggestion for helping the poor: begin with assets, not needs (126). Fikkert talks about several ways to do this, but the underlying approach is the same. Don’t start by asking people what their problems are. Ask people what they can do. Let the poor share their hopes and dreams. Give them opportunity to see and use their gifts. Don’t view the “helped” as clients of beneficiaries. Look at them as they are: people made in the image of God who have their own resources and abilities.

In Chapter 6 Fikkert explains that one of the main reasons efforts at poverty alleviation have been so ineffective is due to inadequate participation of poor people in the process (142). Despite 2.3 trillion dollars in foreign aid since World War II, more 2.5 billion people live on less than two dollars per day. Likewise, 45 years after LBJ launched the War on Poverty, the poverty rate in the U.S. still hovers around 12%. A big part of the problem is a lack of participation. Church and governments have tried to do things to poor people or to do things for poor people, instead of responding to the initiatives of the poor or doing things with them.

An striking example of the principles in Chapters 4-6 comes from Fikkert’s own life. He was in Uganda teaching classes on small business. During the class, a witch-doctor rededicated her life to Christ and starting going to church again. But she had gotten sick and was in terrible pain. She needed penicillin fast. Sensing her pain and dire situation, Fikkert gave Elizabeth, a Ugandan church leader, eight dollars so she could get Grace (the ex-witch doctor) the medicine that would make her better. This seemed like the compassionate thing to do. Grace needed help. Fikkert could easily give eight dollars to save her life. But looking back, he thinks he made the wrong choice. Grace needed relief, but Fikkert didn’t need to give it. He should have given the local church he was speaking at the opportunity to help Grace. Sure, the church was in a slum. But they could have mustered up eight dollars. This would have provided a much needed connection between Grace and a church. This would have given the church the opportunity to minister and establish a long-term relationship with a new convert. The pastor of the church would have been able to lead his church to care for this woman, instead of having his ministry subtly underminded by a tall (6’10″!) white man who comes into town for a couple weeks, draws big crowds for his class, sees a witch-doctor join the church, and then pays for her medicine. I think almost any of us would have given Grace eight dollars, or eight hundred dollars for that matter, right there on the spot. But this was not the best way to help her or the people at St. Luke’s Church in Kampala. If we are serious about reconciling all things to Christ, we need more than good intentions.

Social justice, mercy ministry, caring for the poor–whatever you want to call it, it is all the rage in Christian circles, especially among young people. Whenever some noble cause becomes popular there is the possibility for a ton of good to get accomplished, and the chance that a lot of harm will be done in the name of good intentions. That’s why every pastor passionate about the poor, every deacon, every missions committee, everyone interested in short-term missions, everyone fired up for “the least of these” should read this book. When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert is the best book I’ve read on ministering to the poor. Corbett and Fikkert both teach at Covenant College and work with the Chalmers Center for Economic Development.

Here are few things I really like about the book:

• Lots of thought-provoking examples. The book starts by asking what you do to help in the following situation: The tsunamis that hit Indonesia in December 2004 wiped out many small businesses in the city of Meulaboh. These businesses are the primary source of income for many poor people. Most of the shops, equipment, materials, and inventory were destroyed. Four months after the tsunami, your church decides to send a team to help restart these small businesses. Who should go on this trip? What will you do? What should you bring?

• Fikkert (the book’s main author) doesn’t just make us feel bad for not “doing more.” He gives us practical ideas on how we can help the poor (and ideas how not to “help”).

• This book is balanced. Fikkert argues that broken systems contribute to poverty, but so do broken people. Sometimes broken systems are oppressive. Sometimes life just doesn’t give everyone the same advantages. Christians need to be concerned about ministering to the whole person, but we cannot neglect evangelism and discipleship. We should listen to others (more than we do), but truth is not a social construct. We need to show love to others, but faith only comes by hearing.

• Fikkert keeps us focused on actually helping the poor. If the goal is really to help the poor, and not just to make ourselves feel better or “accomplish” something, then good intentions are not enough. In fact, many of our passionate pleas to “show the love of Christ to the needy people in the world” end up hurting the very people we meant to help.

The book is divided into three parts, each with three chapters. Part 1: Foundational Concepts for Helping Without Hurting. Part 2: General Principles for Helping Without Hurting. Part 3: Practical Strategies for Helping Without Hurting. I’ll take a day summarizing each part of the book, starting today with Part 1.

Part 1: Foundational Concepts for Helping Without Hurting

Jesus came to earth to reconcile all things to himself (Col. 1:15-20)–that’s the point of Chapter 1. Yes, Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we can go to heaven. This is a glorious message. But this is the central part of God’s comprehensive plan for the re-creation of the entire cosmos. This means helping the hurting, caring for the needy, and working for reconciliation in the world are not sub-Christians tasks. These things matter to God as well as evangelism.

God not only cares for the poor, he has chosen to reveal his glory chiefly among those who are weak and despised. Fikkert strikes the right balance when he writes, “The claim here is not that the poor are inherently more righteous or sanctified than the rich. There is no place in the Bible that indicates that poverty is a desirable state or that material things are evil. In fact, wealth is viewed as a gift rom God. The point is simply that, for His own glory, God has chosen to reveal His kingdom in the place where the world, in all of its pride, would least expect it, among the foolish, the weak, the lowly, and the despised” (43).

Chapter 2 tries to explain the problem of poverty. The book takes a wide-angle look at the nature and definition of poverty. Borrowing from Bryant Myers, Fikkert argues that “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. Poverty is the absence of shalom in all its meaning” (62). Poverty exists where one of more of the four foundational relationships for each person are broken: a relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation (57). This definition of poverty looms large in the rest of the book. Honestly, I’m not totally convinced that this framework can be exegeted out of Genesis 1-3, but the point is still a good one. Certainly, these four relationships matter and if we are to truly help people we’ll want to pay attention to all four.

Fikkert makes a compelling point in this chapter that many of us miss: poor people tend to describe their condition in more psychological and social terms. That is, most of us see poverty as lack of food, money, medicine, or housing. The poor talk about their poverty in terms of shame, inferiority, fear, hopelessness, isolation, and voicelessness (53). This has profound implications for how we help the poor. “One of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich–their god-complexes–and the poverty of being of the economically poor–their feelings of inferiority and shame” (65). In other words, when we march in and give the poor the stuff we think they need, we are only making them feel poorer, as they understand poverty.

From time to time our church has brought Thanksgiving baskets to the poor in our community. My family participated once. We bought some food and helped put a basket together. We called up the recipient and arranged a time to come over. We drove to another part of town, knocked on the door and delivered our expression of love. The family quickly took the basket and shut the door. Since then, I’ve thought a lot (and read some) about what we did. Now, I’m convinced that this was not a good way to help the poor. The whole operation reinforces a sense of shame. In fact, almost everyone notices that you never see the men at these houses or apartments. And it’s not because there are no men (though sometimes that’s the case). It’s because they are profoundly embarrassed to be seen when the strange family comes with smiles on their faces to deliver a turkey. And after time, those who deliver the baskets get tired. They notice that year after year the same people get the baskets. Some of the people don’t even seem very grateful. Some begin calling up the church the next year wondering where the basket is. The whole process, though very well-intentioned in your church and mine, does nothing to actually alleviate poverty. And it can do a lot to reinforce our sense of superiority and their sense of shame.

Poverty alleviation, Chapter 3 argues, does not mean making the poor all over the world into middle-class Americans (a group, Fikkert notes, characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness). The goal is not even to get the poor more money. The goal of poverty alleviation is to work to reconcile the four foundational relationships so that people can glorify God by working and support themselves and their families (78). Too often, church and governments have resorted to throwing money at the poor, but in most situations money is far from the biggest need. People need to see that Jesus’s death and resurrection changes everything. They–and we!–need to understand who God is, who we are, how we should relate to others, and how we should relate to creation.