I love a good biography. It’s always fascinating and often inspiring to read the account of a life of special significance. Yet for all the biographies I’ve read, A Light on the Hill may be the first whose subject was not a person but a church. It surprised me what a blessing it was to read about that church and to see how God has seen fit to bless, preserve, and use it for so many years.

In late 1867, Celestia Anne Ferris, a young member of E Street Baptist Church in Washington, called her friends together to pray for the establishment of a church on Capitol Hill. Only a few people were present that evening and their specific prayers were not recorded, but it did not take long for God to begin to answer them. By 1871, they began a Sunday school in a rented building and by 1874 they were ready to purchase property and associate together as the Metropolitan Baptist Association. On February 6, 1876, nine years after their first prayer meeting, they dedicated a new chapel to the Lord—a chapel called Metropolitan Baptist Church. Though the building was later demolished in order to make way for a larger one and though its name has changed a couple of times, the church has remained ever since. Today it is known as Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

In early 2020, CHBC, along with almost every other church in the world, was forced to contend with the opening days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time Caleb Morell was working as Pastor Mark Dever’s personal assistant. Dever tasked him with finding out how the church had responded to the Spanish flu epidemic a century prior. Morell began to rummage “through the dusty pages of minutes, stored in filing cabinets in a basement closet underneath the baptistry.” As he did so, he “began to reconstruct the events of 1918 that led the church to cancel services for three weeks in response to the onset of the Spanish flu.” A few days later, he published the story at 9Marks.org and gained an overwhelming response that extended to the mainstream media. “I began to experience the firsthand impact narrative history can have on current events: to draw needed light from the past to put present challenges in perspective. For the next months, I spent any spare time poring over newspaper clippings and members’ meeting minutes.”

This study led to a class on CHBC’s history and, eventually, to this book. And what a book it is. While the great majority of the people who attended CHBC over the years were as ordinary as you and me, it has been home to a few outsized personalities. Through them and its strategic location, it has been able to have a significant impact on evangelicalism within the United States and beyond. In his foreword, Mark Dever highlights a few of the noteworthy people: “Joseph Parker, the abolitionist pastor who argued with Lincoln in person; Agnes Shankle, the faithful member who stood up to the pulpit search committee and perhaps, thereby, saved the congregation from liberal compromise; K. Owen White, the reforming expositor who later gained fame for a question he asked Senator John F. Kennedy when he ran for president. So packed with characters is this story that not all of these tasty details could be included. But there are so many more stories and so many interesting characters.”

There is the first African-American member who persevered through many challenges because she loved the Lord, loved the church, and loved its worship. There are the reforming pastors who pulled the church back from the brink of compromise. There is Carl F.H. Henry who was the founding editor of Christianity Today. There is the fallen leader who risked destroying the church even as he destroyed his own ministry, and tied closely to him, the godly man whose wife was victimized but who endured and forgave for a higher cause. There are those and so many others.

As he comes to the end of the book, Morell considers how the church remained centered on the gospel and rooted in its local community for 150 years. He offers a three-part answer: Pastors who preached the gospel, members who lived lives of quiet faithfulness, and a congregation that prayed. “Through the faithful preaching of the word, the selfless labors of godly members, and the prayers of God’s people, God has preserved a brightly shining beacon for the gospel on Capitol Hill.” May he continue to do so for another 150 years and far beyond.

Life most certainly brings its challenges. Some of these are just little ruts along the way, some are deep and dark valleys, and some are lower still—the kind of rock bottom experiences that are so dreadful we wonder if we will be able to endure them with our faith intact. As Ray Ortlund says,

You don’t need to go looking for it. Sooner or later, it comes and finds you—something horrible, some experience unforeseeable and even unimaginable. It comes upon you. It lays hold of you. It changes you. And the reality you always understood to be your life—suddenly that life is gone for good. Now you’re stuck with a different reality, and not one you chose. It was forced upon you. And however it happened, things are different for you now. And not in a better way.

It could be loss. It could be betrayal. It could be the bewilderment of a terminal diagnosis and the knowledge of impending death. But at some point, each one of us encounters a trial that takes us lower than we thought we could go.

Ortlund wants to assure us that there is good news at rock bottom. “What helps us most, when we need help urgently, is to discover who Jesus is for people like us. His wisdom is better than our escapism. What we want deep down is Jesus himself, with us, even us.”

And the good news is that Jesus is available to us. He knows rock bottom. He waits for us at rock bottom. He is our good news at rock bottom. And ultimately he is the subject of the excellent and encouraging book Good News at Rock Bottom.

Ortlund frames the book around an exposition of Isaiah 57:15, a wonderful verse that assures us that God dwells with those who are of contrite and lowly spirit. “The healing powers of this one verse can flow down into the deepest crevices of anguish within us,” he says.

He writes one chapter for those who have been betrayed, one for those who are trapped, one for those who are lonely, and one for those who are facing death. In each case, he ministers the hope of that one verse and, beyond it, the hope of the gospel. He draws deeply from Scripture and also from the wells of Christian writers and theologians. He is honest, pastoral, and fatherly in his tone.

Ultimately, he does exactly what he sets out to do—he proves that Jesus offers us the deepest hope in the deepest valley—that when we hit rock bottom we will find him waiting there to assure us, comfort us, and bless us. And because each one of us will hit rock bottom at one time or another, this is a book that can bless us all.

I don’t remember encountering the word “trauma” very often in my younger years, yet recently I seem to hear it all the time. What was once deemed a rare experience or one rarely talked about, has become a common experience and one talked about both openly and often. Where perhaps it was once defined so narrowly as to apply to almost nothing, today it may be in danger of being defined so widely that it becomes almost devoid of meaning.

I’m convinced that if we define the term well and apply it judiciously, it can help us learn to understand and come to terms with our own experiences. I’m convinced it can also help us extend love and care to other people through their experiences. Not all of us need to be experts in trauma care or recovery, but all of us would benefit from understanding the language of trauma and the way it manifests in those who have experienced it.

Dr. Steve Midgley has been both a psychiatrist and a pastor, though now he is Executive Director of Biblical Counseling UK. From all three perspectives, he has seen trauma. Particularly, he has seen how churches can help or hinder those who are grappling with the effects of trauma. His desire in his new book Understanding Trauma: A Biblical Introduction to Church Care is to help churches help people. “This book is not intended to be a trauma-recovery guide,” he says. “Nor is it designed to equip people for any kind of trauma counseling. Some Christians will want to develop the experience and skill to engage in care at that level, but for most of us our ambitions will be much more modest. We simply want to better understand people who have experienced trauma so that we can be good friends and can provide wise pastoral care. We want to know how to speak wisely and avoid clumsy missteps.”

To accomplish this, Midgley begins with a series of relatively brief chapters that define trauma and provide examples of it in the Scriptures. He also tells how churches can be helpful and unhelpful in their response to it.

With these opening chapters behind him, he looks at contemporary perspectives on trauma, focusing predominantly on Bessel van der Kolk’s perennial bestseller The Body Keeps the Score, a book that has done more than anyone or anything else to inform culture’s perspective on the subject. He also explains how trauma affects memory, the body, and relationships.

The third and final section of the book focuses on ways the local church can respond compassionately to those who have been traumatized by life’s difficulties. He talks about lament, beauty, hope, and care. He encourages the church to be both sensitive to trauma and faithful in caring for those who are dealing with its long and discouraging effects. He urges local churches to be a place of understanding, a place of compassion, a place where the Lord can bring the best kind of trauma recovery.

This book was extremely helpful to me as I considered people I know who have been traumatized by grief, pain, and abuse. It was helpful to me as I considered how I could better relate to these people and others like them, extending to them the comfort and grace of God. It was helpful to me as both a pastor and a church member, one who longs for his church to lovingly support the ones among us who are bearing heavy burdens and carrying sore wounds.

I am convinced it is appropriate to acknowledge those who bear with chronic pain and illness and that it is especially fitting to give special honor to do those who do so with a deep sense of submission to God’s mysterious purposes in their suffering. But if that’s true, I believe it is also appropriate to give honor to those who walk with them and care for them.

As much as we acknowledge the difficulties inherent in chronic pain and long illnesses, we also need to acknowledge that suffering is never only personal. Rather, suffering extends outward to spouses, family members, and other caretakers. They, too, deserve recognition and they, too, need support. It is for these carers that Nate Brooks has written Disrupted Journey: Walking with Your Loved One Through Chronic Pain and Illness (which I thought was releasing this week but have since learned will remain on pre-order until mid-month). “This book is a meditation on trying to faithfully live out [the Bible’s] oh-so-simple-sounding commands [about loving others] when life veers far away from being the best of times. How do we love God when he in his providence has allowed life-altering pain and illness into our loved one’s life? And how do we love our loved one well when they are wrestling with their whole world being turned upside down?” This book is meant to offer hope, instruction, and encouragement.

While Brooks is appropriately discrete when it comes to details, he reveals that his wife has long suffered from chronic pain and that he has been her primary carer for more than 10 years. This means he is all too familiar with medical conundrums, with rewriting every category of life as chronic issues manifest themselves, and with dark nights of the soul as he and his wife have been forced to reconsider what they thought they knew about themselves and God. “Chronic pain and illness are the backdrop for the movie of our life. They were there when we were newlyweds trying to figure out how to take two lives and blend them into one. They were there as we welcomed three kids into the world and lived in four states. They were there as we watched God take Kate’s father home to be with him. They have wound their way through every event, every milestone, every day of our existence. And barring something unexpected, we have about forty-five more years to go.”

With such experience in the background, Brooks writes about those situations in which suffering isn’t merely a season but an ongoing reality. He expresses the despair that comes when a carer realizes that he or she didn’t sign up for this. He considers how those whose life is framed by chronic pain and illness almost become strangers to the society around them as it presses on while they are forced to slow down or even stop. He reflects on the nature of God and humanity and takes the time to describe the lives of three historical figures who also cared for suffering loved ones. In other words, he writes a book from one carer to another, from someone who is familiar with the joys and difficulties of being called to the special task of walking with a loved one through the most difficult of times.

Appropriately, Brooks closes his work with a statement of confidence that in the end, God will make all things right. Both the pain of the one suffering the chronic illness and the pain of the one who cares for them will be swept away in a great tide of healing and joy when Christ returns. That confidence and the hope that comes with it is meant to encourage any carer to press on through every difficulty and every trial. His book is both comforting and encouraging and I gladly recommend it to anyone who knows what it is to have their journey through this life disrupted by chronic pain, long illness, and other such trials.

It is sometimes difficult to know how to follow Jesus. It is sometimes difficult to encounter a situation, look to Scripture, and know how to live in a distinctly Christian way. Often it seems there are two options before us that appear to stand opposite one another. Do we respond by expressing truth or by expressing love? Should we speak straight or speak with tenderness? Should we display courage or meekness? Or should we perhaps pursue some kind of a mushy middle?

Gary Millar has thought a lot about questions like these and answers them in his new book Both/And Ministry. He concludes that living a Christian life often involves embracing two practices that may seem (but are not actually) paradigmatic. In other words, instead of choosing one option, God means for us to embrace both. “This book aims to help you avoid the danger of settling for less than what God offers. It’s written to help you spot where you have made bad choices, excused yourself and opted out of an authentically gospel-shaped life. It’s an encouragement to pursue the beautiful, Christ-like, Spirit-empowered life of repentance and faith that God has called you to—a life that isn’t complicated but is hard. A life that is marked by contrasts and paradoxes that reflect the glorious richness of our God and Saviour.”

Millar begins by showing some examples of both/and theology. Thus God is both immanent and transcendent, sitting above all things in this world yet being intricately involved in them. The Son is both God and man, the eternal God who took on human flesh. The salvation Christ offers is both a matter of divine election and human responsibility and we cannot understand it without accounting for both. We live our Christian lives as citizens of a Kingdom that is both now and not yet. Hence we are accustomed to these both/ands.

Having established that God and his works involve both/and, Millar shows how the Christian life does as well. Our identity, for example, depends upon knowing that we are both righteous and sinful, that we are both mortal and immortal, and that we are both complete in Christ even as we are also works in progress.

This is true also in our relationships, in our various forms of ministry, and in our leadership. In our relationships, we must speak and listen, we must point out sin in others and own it in ourselves. In ministry, we must depend upon God even while we exert the greatest effort and must use the gifts God has given us even while we remain open to any avenue of service. In leadership, we must be godly and effective rather than choose between them and we must be both servants and leaders rather than only one or the other. In so many ways and so many situations God calls us not to either/or but to both/and.

It would, of course, be easier to live by the either/or approach to life. We would choose the attitudes that come most naturally and pursue those at the neglect of the other. But that would be an incomplete and immature way to live. It is only by acknowledging and embracing the both/and that we emulate Jesus and most become full-formed followers of him. Hence, I commend the book to you and trust it will help you better understand how to live a life that’s fully pleasing to our God.

It is hard to disagree with someone you love. It is harder still to disagree well—to retain genuine respect and true friendship despite differing opinions or convictions. And, as we all know by experience, there is just so much to disagree about.

But not all disagreements are bad. Gavin Ortlund says, “Without disagreement, life would be boring. Disagreement is where we discover opportunities for learning, freshness, new beginnings. Someone once said that you get married for your similarities, but you stay married for your differences. … Handled well, our disagreements can be both enjoyable and productive. They can deepen our relationships rather than destroy them—and can deepen us along the way.”

The trouble, of course, is that few of us are good at allowing our disagreements to better our lives or deepen our friendships. Instead, we find them threatening and use them as an excuse to distance ourselves from others. We even allow relatively minor disagreements to convince us we ought to part ways.

If you have read any of Ortlund’s books or watched any of his YouTube videos, you will have observed that he knows a thing or two about disagreements. He is not a controversialist and not the kind who likes to pick a fight. However, he does like to consider difficult topics and think them through thoroughly. His new book The Art of Disagreeing explains what he has learned about disagreeing in a distinctly Christian way.

It’s a simple book and a small one, but it packs a punch. In the first couple of chapters, he considers kindness and courage since he believes they are foundational virtues for any healthy disagreement. “Both are needed: kindness without courage is too flimsy; courage without kindness is too brash. Only by combining courage and kindness can we arrive at healthy disagreement.”

He then writes a chapter about the skill of listening and another about the skill of persuasion. Like courage and kindness, these two go hand-in-hand, for we can only persuade well when we have listened well. Both contain lots of specific instructions so that the book is not merely theoretical but eminently practical. And this matters because “underneath the deep disagreements of modern culture, there is often pain and fear. Instead of feeling only threatened by the vitriolic nature of many public disagreements, we can see an opportunity. People are aching for truth and meaning. If they are not persuaded by good ideologies, they will be persuaded by bad ones.”

The final chapter is on the greatest of virtues: love. “Disagreement itself is not the problem. But what grieves me these days is the way we conduct our disagreements: without any sense of love for one another. In the worst cases, we display the same rancor and ‘cancel culture’ tactics of the world around us. If I could change one thing about public Christian discourse, it would be this: that all our disagreements, however vigorous, would be constrained and beautified by those two great teachings of Jesus … in John 13 about love and in John 17 about unity.” It is as we disagree in love that the world can see how much God has transformed us by his gospel.

I am tempted to say that today’s world gives us more to disagree about than at any other time in history. But I actually doubt that’s the case, for fallen humanity has always been disagreeable and always will be until the Lord returns. Until then, we can serve him best by disagreeing well. That is to say, we can serve him best in our disagreements if we follow the wisdom of a book like this one.

We all love to be part of a movement, don’t we? There is a kind of exhilaration that comes with being part of something that has energy and excitement. There is a kind of spiritual thrill that comes with being part of something that is premised upon sound doctrine and fixated on the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what compelled so many to associate themselves with what was varyingly labeled “New Calvinism,” “Young, Restless, Reformed,” or the “Gospel-Centered Movement.”

It is a bit strange, only twenty years after it all began, to read what is already a kind of post-mortem of the movement. Yet that is a part of what Jared Wilson offers in his new book Lest We Drift: Five Departure Dangers from the One True Gospel. In its pages he asks: What went wrong with this movement? How did it gain such momentum, then lose it again? What mistakes were made and how can we avoid them in the future?

Let me pause for a moment to address the matter of nomenclature. I have never been a fan of the term “gospel-centered.” I generally eschew it because I find it novel (new to the Christian lexicon) and abstract (difficult to understand and apply). Nevertheless, it is the term Wilson uses for the movement and he defines it this way: “Gospel-centrality as a concept is essentially a summation of historic Reformed theology and Protestant spirituality that adherents would argue are as old as the Bible. … in its paradigmatic sense, gospel-centrality is shorthand for a Reformed understanding of biblical spirituality, bringing with it distinct truth claims that give the ideology substantial implications for life and ministry.” At some point, a movement based on Reformed theology was challenged to become a movement based on gospel-centrality. In my estimation, it never quite took and never quite worked. But let’s press on.

Wilson begins with a short biography of himself that could easily be the biography of so many people who had come to faith in seeker-friendly churches but then began to long for something more—a faith that had more content and more substance. Through the new technology of the internet, they encountered John Piper, R.C. Sproul, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, or some of the other prominent preachers or teachers. Before long they had embraced Reformed theology and, in many cases, the idea of gospel-centeredness. But that was then and this is now.

More and more leaders my age who once seemed so committed to the ministry philosophy of gospel-centrality now seem to have moved on. And they haven’t all migrated to the same place. The balkanization of the young, restless, and Reformed tribe has resulted in silos and splinters, some more substantial than others. They run the gamut from social gospel–style progressivism and Christian “wokeness” to right-wing political syncretism and legalistic fundamentalism. Even among the numbers who still hold to the doctrinal claims of Reformed theology and its implications for gospel ministry, there are now a number of factions and divisions along political and cultural lines. I thought we were “together for the gospel.”

Didn’t we all, at least for a time? Wilson’s particular concern is the idea and doctrine he has championed and defended for all this time: gospel-centrality.

Gospel-centrality really is God’s way for the Christian life and church. Gospel-centrality really is biblical. But part of doggedly committing to the centrality of Christ’s finished work in all things is being sober-minded—aware of our own inclinations to add to, subtract from, or otherwise attempt to enhance or augment the powerful work of the Holy Spirit through the message of grace in Christ. It’s not enough to be aware of how Mark Driscoll and others drifted. It’s our own drift that calls for our attention.

This drift is the concern at the heart of his book. Understanding what happened is the theme of the first couple of chapters and understanding the consequences is the theme of the next five.

So what happened?

For this particular armchair coroner, the primary cause of death was that the influencers and authorities of gospel-centrality failed to rise to the occasion of quickly changing cultural challenges and threats to theological orthodoxy. The movement’s thought leaders were assimilated into the pacifying (and compromising) swamps of “Big Eva” and thus lost their reformational fire—and their reformational credibility.

If you were along for the ride, you’ll appreciate his history of the movement’s rise and fall, and perhaps sometimes cringe as you remember some of its defining moments.

But more important than this is his warning about five different kinds of drift, which are not drifts from a movement but drifts from the gospel. Hence, whether or not you are “gospel-centered,” you will benefit from reading and considering them.

He begins with a drift into victimhood and explains that if we root our identity in anything other than Christ, we effectively place ourselves at the center and can soon become convinced we are victims of society or circumstances. “The cross does not secure your body from victimization,” he says. “But it does secure your identity from victimhood.” He then discusses the all-too-common drift into dryness in which Christ no longer thrills our souls and we go casting about for different kinds of delight. This will always lead to spiritual dryness and drift. “Religiosity cannot ultimately keep us from apostasy. If anything, it might expedite it, as we find it harder and harder to keep up the religious efforts without a renewed heart. The machinery of ‘spirituality’ cannot move for long without the oil of spiritual vitality. And this spiritual vitality can come only from friendship with Jesus.”

Wilson warns as well about the kind of superficiality that weds Christianity to a consumerist culture and the kind of pragmatism that replaces trust in Scripture with confidence in whatever methods appear to be effective. A chapter that may take some by surprise in a movement characterized by its commitment to the gospel is one about the temptation of legalism, for “the leaven of legalism is subtler than we realize.” We may think our focus on the gospel inoculates us against legalism, but legalism can take on new and deceptive forms. “We see the new legalism at work in evangelicalism today when we conflate secondary and even tertiary doctrines with primary ones. We see it at work when we prioritize cultural conformity over gospel unity and insist on extrabiblical litmus tests for orthodoxy that are more in line with tribal affiliations than with Christian communion.” A concluding chapter pleads with Christians to be aware of the tendency and temptation to drift—to leave behind the gospel and center the Christian life and the Christian church on anything else, anything less.

I have read most of Wilson’s books over the years and appreciate this one as much as any of them. His telling of history is both interesting and illuminating (though I think there could have been more said about the role of women in popularizing the movement such as writers like Gloria Furman, Emily Jensen, and Laura Wifler who rose with the movement and carried it to their demographic of young moms). Of more importance is his focused and timely warnings about both the tendency to drift and the specific ways in which each of us is prone to drift. No matter what movement we are part of or what label we prefer to wear, as long as we are “Christian,” these chapters are pure gold.

Life is made up of so much that gives the appearance of being futile. There are so many tasks and responsibilities that we intellectually know to be important but emotionally feel to be fruitless. And if everyone struggles with this to varying degrees, I have it on good authority that mothers are prone to struggle with it to a greater degree than most.

Simona Gorton is familiar with the challenges of motherhood and the struggle to find significance in it. This is the subject of her book Mothering Against Futility: Balancing Meaning and Mundanity in the Fear of the Lord. As she cared for her family and grappled with the mundane nature of so many of her tasks, she began to dig into the book of Ecclesiastes. She found that it spoke to so many of her challenges as a mother.

How could the multitude of inconsequential dishes and diapers and dinners that crowded my days feel so trivial but also hold so much real meaning as the building blocks of a life to which God had called me? How could my days as a mother, made up of “nothings” like going to the library and wiping small popsicle faces be the instruments of God’s eternal plan through generations? Ecclesiastes had an answer to this tension, and I started to meditate on the truths of this book as they applied to the days and to-do lists I was learning to submit to the Lord.

Her book is not a commentary on Ecclesiastes but rather a series of meditations on some of Ecclesiastes’ big themes applied specifically to the calling of a mother. “Ecclesiastes has something to say to us mothers,” she insists.

As we face the “vanity” of menial work every day, we have the privilege of learning to not only see through it to greater realities but to see the tasks themselves as accomplishing something of lasting value in us and in those around us. In the calling of motherhood, God transforms our sight and opens our eyes to the gospel dichotomies of weakness as strength, smallness as glory, inefficiency as faithfulness. Our lives and actions as mothers, surrendered to Him like loaves and fishes, can become stunning showpieces of gospel hope, glimpses of eternal hilarity and joy.

Gorton doesn’t write as someone who has found all the answers and solved every question. Rather, she writes as someone who is learning and growing even as she carries out her responsibilities as a wife and mother. Through ten chapters she reflects on ten different passages from Ecclesiastes and brings their truths to bear very pointedly and specifically on the joys and challenges of motherhood. She writes in the tone of a friend and sister rather than an authority or expert. She offers hope, help, and instruction in those ways mothers tend to struggle the most. She shows that the mundanity of motherhood is exactly where God gives mothers the opportunity to serve others and bring glory to his name.

Her prayer, she says, is that “you, my friend, might glean something of value as you read this little book and become increasingly equipped for the responsibilities of your days and the training of young warriors for the King. May our Jesus ever get all the glory for Himself.” May he, indeed. And may Mothering Against Futility equip many mothers to not just endure the challenges of motherhood, but to enjoy and embrace them as God’s good and perfect will for their lives.

I’m quite certain you have heard of the New Age movement. Though its popularity seems to have crested and begun to wane some time ago, it continues to wield a good bit of influence. But I wonder if you’ve heard of another similarly-named but quite different movement called New Thought. Unlike New Age which originated within Eastern religions, New Thought originated within a Christian (or Christianesque, at least) context. This means it has a guise of Christianity and uses many of the same words and concepts. It can therefore disguise itself within churches and movements while maintaining a veneer of Christianity. It’s a clever deception.

New Thought is the subject of Melissa Dougherty’s new book Happy Lies: How a Movement You (Probably) Never Heard Of Shaped Our Self-Obsessed World. As you may surmise from the title, Dougherty believes New Thought is not merely a movement that infiltrates and perverts Christian contexts, but also one that has helped shape the Western world. Have you ever wondered why objective truth has been diminished in favor of subjective feelings or why young people are told to relentlessly focus on positivity yet seem sadder than ever? Have you ever wondered why some churches preach messages of personal empowerment in favor of biblical emphases like meekness and poverty of spirit? The answer—or partial answer, at least—is New Thought.

New Thought originated in the United States in the early nineteenth century. If you have heard of Phineas Quimby or Franz Mesmer you have heard of some of its early founders. If you’ve encountered the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson or Napoleon Hill you’ve read the works of people who popularized it. By this point, New Thought largely existed outside of churches, but then certain forms of Charismatic expression embraced its teachings so that today you can find it syncretized with Christianity in prosperity gospel churches or in churches like Joel Osteen’s. Where Christians are told to visualize outcomes, make “I am” statements, or “name and claim,” New Thought is in the background. It is a pernicious foe.

In a well-paced and reader-friendly book, Dougherty goes to great lengths to explain New Thought and show where it makes its presence known both in the wider culture and the church. It has influenced the rise of relativism and new notions of identity. It lies behind certain forms of self-help and the Law of Attraction. And it makes its presence known in Word of Faith, progressive Christianity, and even (to lesser degree) the seeker-sensitive Church Growth Movement. She writes to explain New Thought so Christians can identify and combat it. Yet she also writes to persuade those who may be entangled in it, who think they are Christians but are actually denying the gospel by looking for salvation from within instead of without.

I appreciate the work Dougherty has done in Happy Lies to uncover, highlight, and counter a dangerous movement. I don’t think she has fully convinced me that New Thought is quite as prevalent as she may suggest and, when it comes to New Thought’s influence, I think there may be some distinction to be made between correlation and causation. While I would be surprised to learn that the average reader of this blog, and therefore of this review, has been substantially influenced by New Thought, I would not be surprised to learn that they know and love someone who has been. In that way, I believe this book may prove both influential and beneficial. For that reason and others, I am glad to recommend it.

Churches have few responsibilities more urgent and few honors more profound than teaching and training children. Every week these little ones show up with their parents and every week there are opportunities to reach them with truths that will change their hearts and transform their lives. It is little wonder, then, that there are multitudes of books, resources, and programs available to reach them.

But what about books for the teachers? What about books that teach the teachers the principles and practices they need to instruct children with conviction and competency? Now the field grows narrower, doesn’t it? And this is just where a new book titled How to Teach Kids Theology: Deep Truths for Growing Faith comes into its own.

I’ll say from the outset: If you are in any way involved in teaching children, this is a book you should consider reading. It is for pastors, ministry leaders, Christian schoolteachers, or anyone else who is involved in helping big truths make sense to little hearts. I don’t think I could recommend it too highly.

Here’s why. The authors, Sam Luce and Hunter Williams, provide both the big-picture vision and the practical pointers that could transform any children’s ministry. They steer readers away from the allure of ministries that are fun and attractive but devoid of significant content, for “Unless God is rightly taught and highly honored, our ministries are nothing more than glorified babysitting services.” Yet they also know the importance of making learning age-appropriate and enjoyable. “God should be the goal and prize of our ministries! Teaching about him should be the most exciting thing we do. Kids can love the activities we create and enjoy the snacks we supply, but they especially should look forward to the times when God is taught. Seeing him should be the most exhilarating thing they experience.”

If this is going to happen, there must be a relentless focus on God. There must be a great deal of effort invested in knowing God and displaying his glory. “If kids can leave our classrooms or small groups without having their view of God expanded, we’ve missed the mark. With every Bible lesson and interaction, God should become bigger in their eyes. That’s the goal! Anything less is distortion.”

This is their goal for a children’s ministry. It takes them a book to describe the pathway and the process, but it is a brisk and enjoyable read. Through 8 chapters they explain what theology is and why it is so crucial that we teach it to children. They tell how to explain difficult concepts to young minds. They describe how to structure and organize church-wide teaching programs. They give churches the tools they need to build a ministry that will harmonize with what parents are teaching in their homes, for “without the local church, theological training from parents would be lacking, and without parents, theological training from the local church would be limited.” Home and church are to function in harmony in bringing up children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

“The need for depth and richness of theological truths in our children’s ministries and churches has never been more necessary,” the authors say. “It is not something we can ignore in our day and hope for the best. It is necessary that we understand our times and know that the answer to those times is not political activism or spiritual pessimism—it is a robust understanding of what is true and what has always been true.” Their hope, and mine, is that this book can serve as a catalyst to help children in their lifelong pursuit of God through his Word. I hope you’ll consider reading it or passing it to the person in the church who is best positioned to read, enjoy, and implement it. It’s that good.

I suppose by now we all know a least a few people who have begun the process of deconstructing their faith. Meanwhile, we have undoubtedly heard of many more who are doing so in a public way—celebrities who have decided to rigorously examine the faith they once professed and to reject much of what they once held dear. Deconstruction, it seems, is all the rage.

Ian Harber is familiar with both the allure and the process of deconstruction. He was raised in the church and followed the rules of conservative evangelicalism. He tried to live a godly life. But as he grew up and began to grapple with deep matters, he found himself increasingly concerned about what he had been taught about hell, science, the roles of men and women, and much else. Eventually, he determined the Christian faith could not provide satisfying answers. And so he left it all behind.

Today, though, he is following the Lord. He worships God as a member of a church, he creates content for Christian media outlets, and he writes a newsletter where much of his emphasis is on reconstruction. He is also the author of a new book titled Walking Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith.

As you may surmise from the title, he did not set out to write the kind of book you might hand to a loved one who is beginning to express significant doubts about the Christian faith or who is even well into the process of deconstructing it. Though I suppose it could function that way, that’s not its primary purpose. Rather, this is a book to comfort, guide, and challenge those who long to help loved ones who are deconstructing.

The term deconstruction has come to have many meanings, leading to lots of confusion about what it is and isn’t. It’s become a word with a negative connotation because its definition is so ambiguous. I believe we need clarity, not to confine anyone or gatekeep an experience, but to understand and minister to those truly going through it. Lots of books are being written about deconstruction right now. Most of the books I have seen have been written by pastors, professors, or writers for people who are in the process of deconstructing—and some of them are very good! We need these books to be written.

And here is where he gets to the purpose of his book.

But what about from the opposite direction? From someone who has deconstructed and reconstructed their faith writing to the church and for the church. Plenty of angry exvangelicals have written their tell-all memoirs railing against the failures of the church. Plenty of fundamentalists have written to warn people about the dangers of deconstruction. What I hope to do in this book is serve the church in this crucial ministry as someone who has been deeply hurt by the church and wonderfully healed by Jesus through the ministry of the local church.

Thus, the “walk” in Walking Through Deconstruction is not so much the walk of the one doing the deconstruction but the ones who are lovingly accompanying him or her. “This book is about you and the people you love and minister to who are deconstructing their faith. I imagine you are coming to this book with lots of questions. What is deconstruction? What causes it? What is the experience like? How can we help people who are deconstructing? Is there anything we can do to make deconstruction less intense and prevalent in our churches? These are the topics that this book sets out to address.”

Harber lays out what he calls “the path of deconstruction and reconstruction.” The first part of the book focuses on the former. He first defines the term and considers the reasons people deconstruct their faith. Then he situates deconstruction within the Christian life and lexicon before describing how it is experienced by those who go through it. From there he considers how deconstruction affects an individual’s beliefs, how the church plays a role, and how different cultural pressures influence the process. He wraps up this opening section by considering the different potential outcomes of deconstruction: replacing faith with something else entirely, remixing faith into some hybrid of Christianity and something else, or, far better, renewing faith. “This is when someone pushes through The Wall of deconstruction and comes out the other side with their faith in Jesus stronger than before. It doesn’t mean all their questions are answered, or all of their doubts are relieved. No, the person who has gone through deconstruction isn’t going to be fooled into thinking they need to have perfect certainty about much anymore. What they have instead is trust: a settled confidence.”

In the second section, the focus turns to reconstruction and here Harber considers how to construct satisfying Christian beliefs in those very areas that most often contribute to deconstruction: relationships, suffering, the strength or force with which we hold different beliefs, and so on. He expresses the importance of the local church and concludes by simply gazing at God in his beauty because in the end, God isn’t just some answer to our questions but a beautiful, satisfying being to whom we can relate in love and wonder.

Ultimately, Harber wants Christians who are witnessing a loved one beginning to deconstruct their faith to withhold panic and to ensure they do not respond with unnecessary fear or harshness. Instead, he wants them to prove trusted friends and a non-anxious presence in their life, to remain engaged and available, and to prayerfully seek God’s grace. He ultimately wants them to trust that God can work great good as people pass through a severe testing of their faith. “Deconstruction is a messy and complicated process. My hope is that you are equipped for all kinds of different situations at the end of this book. Our goal is to faithfully walk alongside our loved ones who are deconstructing their faith and surrender ourselves as an instrument in God’s hands, praying for the renewal of their faith.”

Deconstruction is a scary process to witness, but Harber is proof that it doesn’t have to be the end of a person’s faith. “While deconstruction is a long, dark night, it gives us the opportunity to see God’s light break over our doubts and disillusionment and shine in our lives, revealing things that were there the whole time that we never saw before. The darker and more harrowing the night, the more awe there is at the sight of morning’s first light.” May God use this book to help faithful Christians guide their wavering loved ones through the darkness of night and into the light of a whole new day.

We are all people of habits. To some degree, we are always battling to establish good habits while battling to supplant bad ones. This is true of us in many different areas of life and most certainly true in our spiritual lives. In fact, some have argued that when we describe the way we relate to God and participate in his means of grace it makes more sense to talk about “spiritual habits” than “spiritual disciplines.”

Of course, there is an important difference between exercise habits and productivity habits when compared to spiritual habits. That’s because spiritual habits are not a task to accomplish or an item to strike off a list, but an ongoing conversation with the Creator of the universe. Yet even then, having a quiet time or doing personal devotions is still a habit, a discipline that must be established, built, and fostered.

Rachel Jones has written a book that is meant to help new Christians—or long-term Christians who have never quite gotten going—to kick-start their quiet time. She compares The Quiet Time Kickstart to a “couch to 5k” program that slowly but incrementally leads people from rarely exercising to being able to complete a full 5-kilometer run. “As with running, it’s getting going with reading the Bible that’s often the hard part; once you’re in the habit, it will feel much more natural. And as with running, it can be helpful to start small and build up.”

Her methodology, then, is to begin with relatively brief and simple quiet times and then slowly increase them. “We’ll begin with just a couple of verses and a single thought—a three-minute devotional that anyone can make time and headspace for. Then we’ll build up gradually to something a little closer to a ‘5k quiet time’—a comfortable level of Bible fitness that is going to nourish your spiritual health and wellbeing. Along the way you’ll pick up some simple Bible-reading skills that will help you make sure you’re listening carefully to what God has to say.”

There is not only one right way to relate to the Lord through Word and prayer, so what she lays out is merely a guide and one way to establish this habit. But it is a tried, proven, and effective one. She offers five sessions a week for six weeks that begin brief and simple and then grow in both length and breadth. For day one of week one there is just one verse to read and just a few simple questions to ponder; by day five of week six there is a longer passage of Scripture and some more advanced questions to consider. In that way, it is a program that helps beginners learn, grow, and progress until they have established a habit that can be with them for life.

The Quiet Time Kickstart is a simple book but one with a clear and important purpose. It’s just the kind of book a church may do well to keep on hand to distribute to those who are new Christians or who may be flagging in their habits. It’s just the kind of book a mentor may wish to go through with a friend to help them better understand how to relate to God in a way that will help them for life. It’s just the kind of book that I love to recommend.

I sometimes wonder what future generations will make of the modern West here in the early decades of the 21st century. I sometimes wonder what they will think of us when they discover that one of the defining questions of our age is also one of the most straightforward: What is a woman? Yet an answer to that question seems to be elusive, opaque, and fraught with peril. The “wrong” answer to that question can identify you as a dogmatist or a bigot. The “wrong” answer to that question can cause you to be alienated from your family, fired from your job, or cast out of polite society altogether.

I’m thankful that many concerned authors have stepped into the fray to clarify the confusion and provide compelling answers to the questions. Among them is Katie McCoy and her book To Be a Woman: The Confusion Over Female Identity and How Christians Can Respond. She is right, I think, to focus on female identity because in the end, it is women and girls who stand to suffer from this confusion more than men and boys. And she is right to focus on female identity because if we can establish a stable basis for a woman’s identity, many of the related issues and debates should be quickly and satisfactorily resolved.

McCoy begins by pointing out some of the difficulties and contradictions young ladies face today. “If young women express disdain for their weight, shape, or skin tone, society tells them not to change themselves, but to accept who they are in the name of body positivity. The message is: you shouldn’t feel shame about your body. You should fully embrace it as it is. But when those same young women express disdain for their biological sex, society tells them the opposite—rather than hear they should accept and embrace their bodies, they are flooded with suggestions to change themselves through medical and surgical alterations … all in the name of self-acceptance. Self-harm is the new self-care.”

Gender dysphoria was once a rare condition that was treated in such a way as to bring the mind into harmony with the body. But today it has become exceedingly common and is treated in such a way as to bring the body into harmony with the mind. The condition is unevenly distributed between the sexes so it is much more common among women than men and is especially prevalent among young women. It is predominantly young women—teens and even preteens—who are determining they are actually the opposite gender and that for the sake of being true to themselves, they should make a transition.

McCoy believes that to address transgenderism we first need to address identity. To that end, she considers five different spheres that shape and form female identity: theological, biological, relational, philosophical, and social. These can also be expressed as who women are in relation to God, what makes women who they are, where gender identity is expressed, why social views of gender have degenerated so badly, and how confusion over identity has become so prevalent.

Throughout the book’s seven chapters, McCoy works her way through these spheres in reverse order and builds upon a three-part framework: First, she unapologetically holds to a Christian worldview and examines this issue through a biblical lens. Second, she believes that a woman is an adult human female and that a girl is a prepubescent human female. Though such statements were once incontrovertible and may seem unremarkable to some, today they must be explicitly stated and are considered nothing less than scandalous. Third, she believes that “gender dysphoria is a psychological condition, one that deserves compassion and expert care to overcome.” Yet true compassion and care do not involve adopting a new identity but rather accepting one’s body and adjusting the inner self to embrace the outer. Throughout her work, she drives toward this main idea: “Female identity is socially guided, philosophically formed, relationally confirmed, biologically grounded, and theologically bestowed.”

One strength of McCoy’s work is in ensuring that as we consider transgenderism we do not focus solely on the professors, philosophers, and ideologues who push this gender ideology on society. As much as such leading figures need to be addressed, we must not overlook the victims who have become caught up in it and who suffer a terrible cost from it. “As we consider the beliefs and practices within gender ideology, we must never forget the human beings affected by it,” she says. And rightly so. Because the tragic reality is that “a generation of girls are manifesting their pain through transgender identities, while those charged with their care neglect the sources of their mental suffering.” They are being harmed by the ideology and harmed even worse by the supposed cures.

Another strength is her conviction that the Bible offers the wisdom, guidance, and answers that can help those who are caught up in gender ideology. It is the Christian’s love for God and, therefore, the Christian’s love for our fellow man, that motivates us to stand firmly opposed to gender ideology and firmly committed to biblical truth. “Because we love God, we love what God loves—people. And for the sake of people, we speak out against ideas and practices that harm them.” And we can do this with confidence and boldness when we believe that God’s word is infallible and sufficient.

I am thankful for McCoy’s work and the strong response it offers to the cruel and dehumanizing ideology that has swept through the modern West. As she says, “Gender ideology has invaded and overwhelmed our social consciousness and our culture like a tyrant. It has become a cultural dictator that demands allegiance and controls through fear. And it has plundered what is immeasurably priceless—countless women (and men) created to know and reflect their Creator.” This book will help Christians better understand and better respond to one of the most pressing issues of our time. And even better, it will help them show compassion and bring healing to those who have been swept up in it.

Trends come and go. Certain habits or interests rise for a time, wane, and then rise again, often at unexpected moments. One of the recent trends I have found particularly surprising and also particularly interesting is the rise (or re-rise, if you prefer) of liturgy. This may be liturgy within formal worship services of the local church or liturgy within times of private worship. Did this trend begin with Douglas McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy series? If it didn’t begin there, his books certainly popularized it. Regardless, over the past few years, we have seen a substantial number of books that share liturgies for times of worship.

New among them is Douglas Sean O’Donnell’s Daily Liturgy Devotional: 40 Days of Worship and Prayer. He begins his book by explaining what he means by liturgy. “The Greek word leitourgia, from which we get the word liturgy, is found a few times in the New Testament and can be translated as ‘service,’ ‘ministry,’ or ‘worship.’ So think of this Daily Liturgy Devotional, with its various set prayers and forms, not as boring or mechanical but as exciting and life-giving, a book that will serve you so that you might better worship God and minister to others.”

His purpose is to help Christians develop and practice good devotional habits through a forty-day commitment. The book is arranged in a daily devotional format so readers can simply read through one each day. As they do that, they’ll first encounter a prayer that may be traditional, may be original, or may be based on a passage from the Bible. They can pray these prayers verbatim and then supplement them with their own words. Then they will read a passage of Scripture and a brief devotional. Then there will be a prayer prompt, a memory verse, and a related hymn. It’s a simple format but a traditional and effective one.

Daily Liturgy Devotional is a kind of all-in-one daily devotional book. With a commitment of perhaps 20 or 30 minutes a day, those who read it will learn how to have a deep and meaningful time with the Lord. They will find themselves learning to read Scripture and pray it, to lodge it deep in their hearts and live it out through their lives. If you are looking for something to encourage your faith as you close out this year or begin a new one, I recommend you give it a try.

Here is something I have been considering over the past few days: Every one of us acknowledges there is a lamentable lack of unity among Christians today. Yet none of us seems to consider that we ourselves may be the cause of that disunity, or at least contribute to it. In our minds, it is always other people who fracture the peace and disrupt the harmony. But sometimes I wonder: Could I be one of the bad guys?

God created us as social beings. God, who is himself triune and who has enjoyed perfect and unbroken communion within the godhead, created us in his image as beings who are communal. Yet because of our fall into sin, what should only ever have brought joy now brings pain. Where we should be displaying the kind of unity that pleases and imitates God, we now display the kind of disunity that displeases and grieves him. Sadly, this is true even in the local church and even in the wider community of those who have been redeemed. In fact, sometimes it seems easier to see evidence of disunity than unity, of fighting than harmony.

Yet we cannot allow ourselves to be content with this sad situation. Rather, we must learn to exist in harmony and to genuinely love one another. This is true of the relationships between individual Christians, true of the local church, and true of the church across the globe. This kind of unity is the subject of Conrad Mbewe’s book Unity: Striving Side by Side for the Gospel. It is a simple and brief book, but one that is both important and badly needed.

Mbewe begins where any call to unity must begin—with “the simple fact that unity is something already secured for us by God. Strictly speaking, our role is not to become united but to remain united, not to attain but to maintain unity.” When Jesus died for his people, he died not only to reconcile them to God but also to reconcile them to one another. Whatever divisions may have stood between God’s people have been negated as legitimate causes of disunity—gender, racial, national, financial, tribal, and so on. Where God’s people had once been one nation, they are now one body called “the church” and “everyone comes in on the same terms—repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This means that our goal as we consider unity is not so much to create unity or demand it of ourselves, but to acknowledge that it already exists and to simply live it out. We can do this boldly and confidently because we know Jesus longs for it and has prayed to the Father about it. Unity is dear to the heart of our Savior.

After explaining how unity is accomplished in Christ, Mbewe explains how unity is applied by the Spirit—how the Holy Spirit “takes what Jesus Christ has done for us and applies it to our hearts.” He unites us to the one body, he dwells within us, and he guides us into the truths that make us value unity and pursue it.

With those two indicatives of unity in the background, Mbewe turns to two imperatives—two specific ways Christians are to foster unity. First, he shows how it is to be jealously guarded by believers. We guard unity by understanding the gospel and knowing who rightly professes it and who does not. Once we have ascertained who is rightly professing the gospel, we carefully ensure we are not allowing secondary differences to drive us apart, even as we may need to value different doctrines or worship in different contexts. The second imperative is to evidence unity in gospel endeavors. These are ways that Christians can actively and proactively display their unity in either the local church or in ventures that involve multiple churches or traditions (e.g. book publishing, training institutions, and fighting social ills).

In all of this, Mbewe shows that the stakes are high. “Jesus is saying that when the gospel reaches societies and the church is born, onlookers will be amazed at how people from diverse backgrounds have genuine love for one another. They will notice that these people come from different tribes, ethnic groups, and nations, and yet they are united. They will notice that they gladly worship and work together for a common cause. They will have to admit that something extraordinary is happening. They will be forced to give the claims of Christ their attention. How else can they explain the unity among God’s people? Where does this love come from?”

This book made me ponder whether I am increasing the unity that is so meaningful to God or if I am hindering it. It also gave me specific ideas for fostering it—specific practices I can embrace, implement, and pursue. I am confident the book will do the same for you if you read it—something I highly recommend.

I once participated in a panel discussion alongside a seminary professor. He had far more education than I did and far greater expertise in the subject matter. A few moments before we took to the platform together, the moderator went over some of the questions he would be asking us. I found it strangely comforting to see that professor pull out his iPad, dig up some old notes, and begin to skim through them. “I need to remind myself what I believe about that,” he told me.

The fact is, we are forgetful people and often need not just to learn what we believe but to re-learn it. There are exams we might pass at one stage in life but fail in another, not because our doctrine has changed or because we have apostatized, but because we have become forgetful. It’s not that we are ever likely to forget the fundamental doctrines of the faith like the inspiration of Scripture or the divinity of Jesus, but we can certainly grow hazy on some of the lesser matters and waver on some of the secondary issues.

A while back I realized I needed to brush up on some of these and began to organize a system of spaced repetition—a way to encounter these doctrines on a regular basis, thus reinforcing them and keeping them fresh in my mind. And it was right then that I learned about Kevin DeYoung’s Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology. In fact, an Advance Reading Copy showed up in the mail and I knew immediately it was what I was looking for.

Daily Doctrine is in a familiar yearly format much like a daily devotional, but its content is theological in nature rather than devotional. Its purpose is to teach the truth more than to apply the truth—admitting, of course, that there can be a hazy line between the two. DeYoung explains in the introduction that he believes his niche as a writer is “translation—not from one language to another, but from one register to another. That is to say, I think I can best serve the church by reading the old, dead guys (and some living people), digesting their technical arguments and terminology, taking the best of their insights, and then writing with clarity and concision for busy pastors, students, leaders, and laypeople.” And this is exactly what he does.

This means that Daily Doctrine is not a groundbreaking work of systematic theology and is not intended to be. Rather, it is an introductory work that focuses on easing people into the subject. It introduces the discipline as a whole, describes the most important terms, and explains the key ideas. In that way, it provides a framework for Christian doctrine and then builds upon it over the course of a year—with 5 readings per week over 52 weeks, each of which is about a page long. It can be read in that daily format, read straight through, or serve as a concise reference work. I expect many couples or families will want to integrate it into their daily times of devotion.

The format is fairly standard for a systematic theology book, beginning with prolegomena (preliminary considerations and the doctrine of Scripture), then advancing to theology proper (God’s being and works), anthropology (man’s creation and fall), covenant theology (how God relates to his creatures), Christology (the person and work of Christ), soteriology (salvation), ecclesiology (the church), and eschatology (the last things). DeYoung is Reformed and Presbyterian in his doctrine and is clear about the positions he holds, but also charitable when it comes to the alternatives. So, for example, I agree with some of what he teaches about baptism but disagree with much of it as well. But I appreciate the tone with which he discusses the issues and defends his position.

Knowing how important it is that we both learn and re-learn Christian doctrine, I was excited to discover that DeYoung had written Daily Doctrine—what one endorser refers to as “a daily diet of doctrine.” Now that I have been able to read through it, I gladly commend it to you. It will help you learn what Christians believe, it will help you remember what Christians believe, and in that way, it will grow your love for the Lord and your ability to serve him with faithfulness.

We are not lacking when it comes to daily devotionals. To the contrary, there are more options than we could possibly read in a lifetime. Yet not all daily devotionals are created equal, so it can be difficult to find a good one—one that is worthy of a full year’s attention.

Several years ago, Paul Tripp wrote New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional and it quickly proved not only popular but also meaningful and helpful. It has sold over a million copies and guided all those people to better understand the gospel and apply it to their lives. Writing a 365-part book is a major task, so it is no great surprise that it took ten years for him to write another. But we have it at last and it is called Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life.

Everyday Gospel has both similarities and differences when compared to New Morning Mercies. It is similar in that it provides a full year of devotions and in its relentless focus on the good news of the gospel. The foremost difference is that it follows a one-year Bible reading plan that leads from Genesis to Revelation. Therefore, each of the entries reflects on that day’s Scripture reading. The purpose of it all is to connect Scripture with life—to show how the truths of God’s Word are meant to transform all you are and all you do. And that’s true whether the passage in question is within the application sections of one of Paul’s epistles or the sometimes hard-to-understand narratives of the Old Testament. We know that all of Scripture is breathed out by God and therefore profitable (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17), and a key part of Tripp’s task in this work is to show how.

Everyday Gospel comes in a standard hardcover format that is about 500 pages long, though I suspect leather or leather-like versions will be available in the future. It also comes in a format that integrates the text of the ESV so that the day’s Bible reading and devotional are within the same volume. This edition is called ESV Everyday Gospel Bible: Connecting Scripture to All of Life and is available in hardcover, leather, and TruTone (a kind of faux leather finish).

While I have not yet read every entry, I have read enough to know that it’s a devotional I will recommend freely and distribute widely. New Morning Mercies has been on our living room book table for years and Everyday Gospel will soon be joining it. I would encourage you to consider doing likewise.

It has been a few years since I have had a substantial number of people reach out to ask my view on a particular author. Do you know anything about him? Have you read him? Would you consider reviewing some of his books? But after this break of a few years, it has recently begun anew with John Mark Comer. I, too, have heard his name and seen his books on the lists of bestsellers. Yet I had not read anything by him. Eventually, based on all the inquiries, I decided to buy and read his most recent title, Practicing the Way, which seems to be a kind of culmination of his earlier works.

There is often a certain degree of sameness to Christian publishing and, sure enough, I was only a few pages in before I thought, “Oh, we’ve been here before!” About twenty years ago many popular authors were discovering or rediscovering the traditions of the mystics and monastics. As they did so, they curtailed or dismissed certain aspects of traditional Protestantism in favor of elements drawn largely from Roman Catholicism. And in many ways, this is what Comer has done for a whole new generation of readers.

Practicing the Way has an understandable appeal. Comer focuses a lot of attention on some of the obvious and frustrating shortcomings of contemporary Evangelicalism. He addresses the common longing for a faith that is more substantial than what so many churches teach and more grounded in ancient practices. If you are living as a Christian and sometimes feel that there must be more to the faith than this, he wants to affirm that there is. I understand the appeal of an author who addresses the longing for more and who provides a neatly produced program you can follow—especially one that purports to meet the challenges of the modern world while drawing on the deep history of Christian practice. But, of course, much depends on the nature of that program.

Comer is a self-professed mystic and agrees with Karl Rahner who says, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.” He does not quite define the term other than saying it indicates “a disciple of Jesus who wants to experience spiritually what is true of them theologically,” but it generally indicates an expectation of receiving original and unmediated revelation from God. It is associated with practices like lectio divina, contemplative prayer, and with meditation, stillness, and silence—practices Comer endorses and regards as essential. He draws upon a broad group of thinkers and practitioners who come from Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Quaker backgrounds and who are united primarily by their mysticism. This includes the ones well-read readers will probably expect: Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Henry Nouwen, Brother Lawrence, and so on. Comer does add some other elements to his beliefs—a dose of charismatic theology (e.g. words of prophecy; deliverance from demons; speaking in tongues) and, what he is becoming known for—a Rule of Life. He also tells about the importance of at least one Jesuit spiritual director who has shaped and formed him. (And on that note it is probably worth remembering that the Jesuit order was founded specifically to counter the teachings of the Reformation and, therefore, to combat the Protestant faith—a purpose it has never revoked.)

Comer writes often about the gospel and expresses the importance of telling others about it. He is somewhat vague about the content of his gospel, though he makes it clear that it is not the gospel of Evangelical churches—a gospel of penal substitutionary atonement. He especially abominates the gospel of street preachers and its message of “repent of your sin so you won’t go to hell.” Rather, his gospel is something like “live like Jesus and live for Jesus so other people can become interested in Jesus.” In fact, the major divisions of his book, and hence the major themes of the Christian life, are: be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did. While he includes a section about suffering for the gospel, I cannot see anything in his gospel that is offensive enough to earn the disapproval and hence persecution of others.

He begins the book with a lengthy section on what it meant to be one of the original disciples of Jesus, though he prefers the term “apprentice.” Here he draws heavily on early Rob Bell and Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus to teach what it meant for Jesus to be a rabbi and for his disciples to follow him in “the Way.” (He much prefers speaking of “the Way” than “the Christian faith” or “Christianity.”)

To be with Jesus is to essentially embrace the practices of mysticism, to turn abiding with God into a life-long and life-consuming practice—what some might call practicing the presence of God. It is to engage in lectio divina and contemplative prayer. It is to pray without words and to focus on mindfulness. It is to “practice the way” and, in the words of one of his previous books, “to ruthlessly eliminate hurry.”

To become like Jesus is to pursue spiritual formation. This is to rest in Christ in such a way that he transforms us from the inside out so that we become people of love. “This, then, is spiritual formation: the process of being formed into a person of self-giving love through deepening surrender to and union with the Trinity.”

To do as Jesus did is to live a life that imitates Jesus. It does not so much involve asking “What would Jesus do?” as “What would Jesus do if he was living my life?” This involves three rhythms: making space for the gospel, preaching the gospel, and demonstrating the gospel. “The gospel,” he says, “is that Jesus is the ultimate power in the universe and that life with him is now available to all. Through his birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Spirit, Jesus has saved, is saving, and will save all creation. And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into this kingdom and into the inner life of God himself. We can receive and give and share in Love Loving. We can be a part of a community that Jesus is, ever so slowly, forming into a radiant new society of peace and justice that one day will co-govern all creation with the Creator, in an eternity of ever-unfolding creativity and growth and joy. And anyone can be a part of this story.” To demonstrate this gospel is to live it out through healing, deliverance from demonic forces, prophecy, and justice.

How do we ensure that we are doing this? Through a Rule of Life, a term that is gaining a fair bit of traction today. The book culminates in a substantial section that teaches how to understand and implement it. Rule of Life is a Benedictine practice that, taken in isolation, is simple enough and perhaps even useful. It is less a rule and more a set of disciplines—disciplines customized to the individual or community that provide guidance and restraint so Christians can live meaningful and satisfying lives. It may include devotional habits, limitations on the use of devices, and the practice of a sabbath. Comer’s version of it is notable for what it includes and excludes. It includes mystical and charismatic practices, for example, and excludes the evangelistic proclamation of the gospel and explicit direction about feeding the mind or growing in understanding of Christian doctrine.

It also seems to exclude what we might understand as a traditional local church. Comer is clear that Christianity is meant to be pursued in community and in a type of community different from Evangelical or Reformed churches, but offers little guidance on what this might look like. I suspect, though, that it is similar to the communities so many people tried to build in the era of what became known as the Emerging Church—a movement that drew upon many of the same thinkers and treasured many of the same values. While he often mentions the church he has founded so that he and others can practice the Way, he provides few details about it.

If you, like me, were reading Christian books 20 or 25 years ago, much of this will sound familiar, and rightly so. I would not necessarily say that Comer is creating Emergent 2.0, but I do see that he is advocating something that expresses similar concerns and rejects similar components of Evangelicalism, and something that shares similar influences and is built on a similar foundation. It would seem likely to me, then, that it will eventually trend in a similar direction and suffer a similar fate—becoming first sub-biblical, then unbiblical, and then altogether unrecognizable as a faithful expression of the Christian faith. I hope that I am wrong but, frankly, wouldn’t be surprised if that proves true. Feel free to circle back in 10 or 15 years and call me out as necessary.

That’s not to say that Comer doesn’t offer any legitimate critiques or valuable insights or that he fails to teach any useful practices. There is much in his book that is true and useful. Yet there is much that is false and unhelpful and therefore much to be concerned about. I am especially concerned that people who feel that longing for more—that sense that there must be more to the Christian life than this—will allow their disquiet to draw them into his teachings, into his practices, and ultimately, perhaps, right out of recognizable Christianity. What he offers is not merely a different perspective on the Christian life or an alternate set of practices, but a different gospel and ultimately a different faith.

Thus, I would suggest great caution with Comer’s teaching and urge you to count the cost of embracing it. As I understand it, if you follow his counsel and adopt his teaching, your life will need to change, your understanding of theology will (probably) need to change, your practice of devotion will need to change, your church will need to change, and your gospel will need to change. It is not overstating the matter that almost the whole of your life will need to become different. You will need to reject much of what you believe and practice in order to embrace new beliefs, new priorities, new convictions, and new practices. The cost, I’d say, is high. Too high.

It has always been important that children establish their identity. From the time kids are young, they are being formed in a host of ways and gradually coming to terms with who they are and who they will become. Historically, identity arose from outside—from the people they came from, the place they were born, and the expectations of parents and community. An innovation of the modern West is that identity is now expected to come from within. Identity is meant to be determined by the self rather than anyone or anything else.

Today’s children and teens are feeling immense pressure to determine their own identity. Their parents are feeling the pressure as well—the pressure of needing their children to decide who they will be as they grow older and become independent. Christian parents are feeling the pressure of helping their children find an identity that is consistent with God’s design for their children and with God’s design for humanity. This is the subject of Jonathan Holmes’ new book Grounded in Grace—a tremendously helpful book for parents and anyone else who influences children and teens as they grow in their self-understanding.

Our children are under enormous pressure to figure out who they are in an environment and culture that is sending them conflicting messages. 

“Stand out, and be who you want to be!” but on the flip side we don’t like who you are choosing to be and we’re going to make fun of you for it. 

“Live your own truth, and don’t let anyone take that away from you!” but if someone else’s truth contradicts “your truth,” our teens are told that those individuals are dangerous and toxic. 

“Who cares what other people think about you? You do you!” but you do need to care what other people think about you because you need their approval.

So where should children turn? Holmes wants them to turn to Scripture with the help of their parents (primarily, but also pastors, and other mentors) to begin to form an identity that is rooted in an understanding of who God is, the purpose for which he has created us, and what he means for us to be. “My hope is that parents can understand the challenges our kids are facing related to developing, maintaining, and resting in their identity. However, the contents of this book will be beneficial for a variety of individuals who are teaching and discipling children and teens: youth workers, Sunday school teachers, Christian school workers, and Christian counselors.”

He begins the book by looking at different ways identity is formed—the traditional and the contemporary. Today’s parents probably grew up around the tail end of the dominance of the traditional way so may fail to understand some of the pressures their children are facing today. Yet Holmes is not so naive as to believe the traditional view is without its flaws, so he helps parents see where they may pressure their children in ways that may seem intuitive and superior but are still unhelpful. 

Having done that, he looks at five different areas where kids and teens tend to struggle with their identity. He looks at academics, sports, moralism, gender, and sexuality. The first three represent areas in which kids begin to build their identity on what they do—their performance in the classroom, sports field, or church. The final two represent areas in which kids begin to build their identity on what they feel about their gender or their sexual longings. 

What Holmes advocates is building an identity on the gospel rather than anything that arises from performance or feelings. “What we need to pass on to our children … is an identity that is received and not achieved. A gospel identity comes from outside of us and relies on the unchanging, steadfast words of a God who is the final authority. We do nothing to earn God’s approval. He creates us in his image, redeems us from sin, and brings us into his family. The identity he gives us is bigger than ourselves, more permanent than anything we could ever imagine, and true today and forever regardless of our circumstances or situations.” Not surprisingly, yet counterintuitively for the modern generation, it is when kids focus on discovering God’s purpose and intention for their lives, as revealed in his Word, that matters of identity come into focus and become resolved. “When we focus our energies and passion on discovering what God has called us to do, our very identity often takes care of itself as we find our meaning and purpose in him. What an amazing truth that we can pass along and live out before our children.”

With lots of illustrations and many insights originating from his counseling practice, Holmes offers a book that will be a tremendous blessing to today’s parents. It will help them help themselves as they teach their children about this matter of identity and it will help them help their children as they ground their self-understanding in something so much more lasting than performance and something so much more enduring than feelings. It will help parents help their children establish their identity in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the work he has accomplished on our behalf. I am thankful that Holmes has written this book and gladly commend it to all parents.

It does me good to pause from time to time to read an account of a person coming to faith. It never ceases to fascinate me how many different paths we take to that one door and it never ceases to encourage me to read about another person’s experience of coming to the end of themselves before finally entrusting themselves to the Lord. God is endlessly creative in the ways in which he draws his people to himself.

Ashley Lande spent much of her life looking for The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever. That search led her down many different paths, but the one that most compelled and attracted her was psychedelics. She revered them and related to them almost as if they were a god, the means through which she would come to complete self-understanding, complete wholeness—the means through which she would achieve transcendence.

From the first time Lande tasted a psilocybin mushroom she was hooked and eventually graduated to LSD and other psychedelic substances. She was never a junkie as she might have been had she pursued hard drugs, but she was addicted nonetheless—addicted to the experience, to the effects, and perhaps most of all, to the conviction that these drugs would eventually bring her a kind of salvation.

There was no single thunderclap moment that broke her commitment to drugs and made her loyal to Jesus. Rather, it was a succession of small moments—faithful Christians living godly lives, faithful churches speaking gentle truths, and a faithful husband who was on a similar journey but a few steps ahead. In the end, she began to understand that she had made herself her own god and realized this was an utterly futile pursuit. “Suddenly my grande pursuit of enlightenment through psychedelics seemed to position me no better than a junkie. I wasn’t a seeker, or a sojourner, or a pilgrim courageously plunging into unmapped worlds. I liked getting high. I loved drugs.” As soon as she was willing to admit the futility of her own attempts to be enlightened and instead trust in Jesus, she was saved—wonderfully, miraculously, and radically saved.

Though I have read many conversion memoirs over the years, I had never read one quite like Lande’s. The writing is top-tier and so is her self-understanding. She probes deep into her actions and gazes deep into her soul to explain what drew her to psychedelics, what she thought they would do for her, and why they eventually and inevitably let her down. She offers insights into the intersection between the New Age movement and the use of drugs. And she explains why the Christian faith offers hope and assurance that are reliable and compelling.

The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever is a thoroughly enjoyable read and, like any great memoir, turns the reader’s attention far beyond its author and to the One who is ultimately the Author of her story and all of ours as well.