“Contesting the Body” Review at Mere Orthodoxy
I have a review of Myles Werntz’s Contesting the Body of Christ: Ecclesiology’s Revolutionary Century up at Mere Orthodoxy.
“I believe in the church.”
This article of the Christian faith seems unusual compared to others in the church’s creeds. Our faith, like everything else about us, is fallible and marked by sin. Still, this is a confession of God’s divine action and preservation of Christ’s body. There is a church, and it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. But what does this pronouncement look like in practice? The early twentieth century’s ecumenical movement had promising energy, but it has largely faded. Now, after a century marked by fragmentation, schism, and deepening denominational stratification, discussions of the church and its oneness seem exhausting and exhausted…
The church is one because it is the body of Christ animated by His Spirit. Its unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity are not external additions; they arise from its very life. To be the church is to be these marks. With this overall thesis in mind, Werntz traces the ways different twentieth-century Christian traditions “contested” or worked out what the church’s essence meant for their lives and practices…
Measured by the Sowing: Article up at Ref21
I’m back at reformation21 with an article on what constitutes church health when things are declining. Here’s an excerpt:
“Who can change the sinner’s heart?”
Imagine if Jesus told the parable of the sower as if he were a church health guru:
The seed is the word of God. Those ones that fell along the path, snatched up by the birds? They heard the word, but your preaching wasn’t enthralling enough, and so the devil got ‘em. And the ones on the rocky soil? Well, what did you expect? If you call people to repentance, to be completely reconstructed by God’s grace on his terms, they’ll walk away. Duh. And then of course the ones that fell among the thorns couldn’t find the perfect programming tailored for their niche demographic at your church, and so they didn’t mature.
This is preposterous! This absurdity is not how Jesus talks.
And yet something very much like this logic has quietly settled into parts of the modern, evangelical (and dare I say it?), Reformed church. When the gospel does not appear to “work,” we assume the problem must lie in the delivery system—insufficiently compelling preaching, inadequate programming, or a failure to craft the right strategy. The implication is subtle but powerful: if we would only improve the machinery of ministry, the harvest would follow.
But that is not how Jesus tells the story…
Mere Orthodoxy Web Forum Bonus Q&A
I had a great time participating in Mere Orthodoxy’s first ever author forum to discuss my book Keeping Kids Christian. We ran out of time to cover all the questions, so I wrote up a series of short answers that Mere Orthodoxy published, along with a link to a recording of the forum.
Mere Orthodoxy Forum on Keeping Kids Christian
This Tuesday, March 31st, I have the privilege of participating in Mere Orthodoxy’s forum series, “Conversations for Humans”. It’s hosted online and open to the public; you can register for the event here. I’ll be talking about my book Keeping Kids Christian and what the church can do to promote faith transmission to the next generation.
Feasting on Hope
I’ve made the case that the gospel-centered movement needs a shot of confessional sacramentology if it wants to be refreshed and missionally potent in the coming years. My focus has been on the spiritual reality of participating in Christ with the sacraments, but especially when it comes to the Lord’s Supper, the rubber meeting the road in the life of the church is being able to articulate how Jesus meets us at the table. Pastorally you can hammer the point all day long that in the Supper you truly feed on Christ, but what that means for the regular Christian who comes to the Table can sometimes feel vague.
My friend Hannah King has written the most wonderful book addressing just this. Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness is part memoir, part pastoral theology about what it means for God to feed his people with Jesus at the Table. Not that she is short on good theology, but her focus in the book is what it means for us to receive Jesus. Not the doctrinal question — but what does it mean to meet Christ?
