Book Reviews

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Written by: Michelle Underwood

Created: 01 September 2018

Uncomfortable:
The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community
Brett McCracken
Crossway, 2017

It’s always Christians who make me want to give up the faith. The dumb, embarrassing things they do. Twee women’s evangelistic craft nights. Still singing songs that should have been left in the 1970s. International Roast as the standard morning tea fare. If you can think of similar experiences and cringe, then this book Uncomfortable by Brett McCracken is for you. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is easy to read, gospel focused, culturally astute, biblically faithful, personally challenging and funny. You don’t get that combination very often in a Christian book, let alone a book about church, which is what this is. I was so excited I could barely put it down.

Uncomfortable is one of a wave of books that are trying to help Christians live in a post-Christian world. McCracken sees the answer in committing to your local church, no matter how uncomfortable and challenging that may be. His thesis is that the church is uncomfortable for a reason—it is God’s plan to place us in communities where we do the hard work of ‘doing hard things, embracing hard truths and doing life with hard people for the sake and glory of the One who did the hardest thing’. (p26) Church may be weird, but that’s a good thing. As McCracken says,

‘The Western world doesn’t need a more muddled, confused “I love Jesus but not the church” Christianity made up of a million different opinions and to-each-his-own permutations. Rather, it needs a true, unified, and eloquent witness to the distinctly alternative vision of life that Jesus offers. And this will only come with a renewed commitment to the local church in all of its uncomfortable but life-giving glory.’ (p.37)

Instead of being like the culture around us, this book calls Christians to ‘debunk and destroy the toxic consumerist approach to church’ and be willing to commit to ‘the nearest non-heretical, Bible-believing church where we could grow and serve—and where Jesus is the hero—however uncomfortable it may be.’ (p.25) I think every Christian should read it.

The book starts with an outline of the author’s dream church. I found myself agreeing with every sentence. It went on for pages. I was constructing in my head a brilliant church with fantastic, purpose built spaces, wonderful music (just my taste) and super encouraging Christians connecting well with the local community. And then he explodes this fantasy by saying this is exactly what we cannot be doing. This consumerist mindset has infiltrated the way we approach church and it is poison. If we always approach church through the lens of wishing this or that were different, or longing for a church that ‘gets me’ or ‘meets me where I’m at’ we’ll never commit anywhere (or, Protestants that we are, we’ll just start our own church). But church shouldn’t be about being perfectly understood and met in our comfort zone; it should be about understanding God more, and meeting him where HE is. (p.24) I was soundly rebuked. And hooked.

Each chapter of the book explores an uncomfortable aspect of church, starting with the gospel. He explores the ‘foolishness of the cross’ (1 Corinthians 1:18-23) and how the Christian message has always been offensive to our pride and what we think redemption should look like. He speaks passionately about how ‘Christianity is not about “your best life now”. It’s about following Christ’s example who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). It’s about commitment rather than consumerism; finding ways to serve rather than desiring to be served; filling a need rather than finding a niche’ (p.50) It’s a message we all need to be reminded of. He goes onto explore the uncomfortable but essential process of pursuing holiness and not settling for mere authenticity. He talks about the importance of holding onto uncomfortable truths such as a biblical sexual ethic, the reality of hell, the idea that the universe was created ‘and any number of other unfashionable things’. He speaks about uncomfortable Christ-like love that doesn’t just look like the passivity of niceness or tolerance. He has chapters on uncomfortable mission, uncomfortable people, uncomfortable diversity, uncomfortable worship, uncomfortable authority and uncomfortable unity. All these chapters support his idea that ‘the church that will change your life is the one that challenges you to grow rather than affirms you as you are. The church that will change the world is the one that provides a refreshing alternative to, rather than an uncritical affirmation of, the way things are’ (p.188). Indeed.

There are so many funny lines in this book. ‘Every time we sing the praise chorus refrain for the SIXTY-SEVENTH TIME as if in the Hillsong equivalent of Groundhog Day…’ (p.191) made me choke with laughter until my coffee was pouring out of my nose. It’s the delight of the self-depreciating in-joke that only Christians can appreciate (without being mean, crude or sarcastic) that makes the book so enjoyable to read.

One chapter which made me rather uncomfortable was his chapter on the Holy Spirit, ‘the Uncomfortable Comforter’. He challenges ‘charismatic-skeptics’ (such as myself) to see that ‘the unpredictable and often uncomfortable work of the Comforter need not be feared or avoided’. (p.96). What he thinks this work of the Comforter consists of though, is the problem. But I weirdly quite enjoyed the uncomfortable experience of reading this chapter, as it did what I presume McCracken wanted me to do – to be challenged, to go back to the Bible, think hard and wrestle and pray. I was living out the thesis of the book while reading it. Read the book and see what you think.

The conclusion is hopeful, beautiful and inspiring. He encourages Christians to see that to live the uncomfortable life together for the sake of Christ is worth it in the end:

‘We are, mysteriously, part of a cosmic plan God has eternally known. And we have an eternal inheritance. The discomfort we endure in this life as a peculiar people will be a blip in the timeline of our infinite history. We will at last be the perfect church we presently long for; the unblemished bride at an unimaginable wedding feast. The dream will be real.’ (p.191)
Michelle Underwood, WA

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Written by: Anthony Nichols

Created: 01 September 2018

The Bible in Australia
A Cultural History
Meredith Lake
University of NSW Press, 2018.

Meredith Lake has provided a fascinating and authoritative account of how the Bible, in the hands of preachers, immigrants, suffragists, unionists, politicians, writers, artists and indigenous Australians, has played a contested but highly significant role in the nation’s history. Her opening allusion to the Bra Boy’s tattoo arrests the reader and illustrates how, in twenty-first century Australia, the Bible still ‘floats in fragments across the surface of the popular consciousness’. She then retraces the ebb and flow of Australian culture: the arrival of the First Fleet and the tragic encounter with indigenous people; Federation and the ascendancy of civic Protestant nationalism and White Australia; the 1950s—presided over by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, for whom the Bible defined the Australian people. This culminated in the remarkable 1959 Billy Graham Crusade’s interdenominational meetings attended by over three million people, while a broader radio audience heard his trademark ‘The Bible says’.

However, the cultural revolution of the sixties was reflected in the media landscape, public schools, and growing multi-culturalism. Television soon eclipsed reading as a leisure activity. Church decline, especially in the British-origin Protestant denominations, accelerated shrinking Biblical literacy. Roman Catholic numbers, however, boosted by immigration, have been more stable and now comprise the largest Christian denomination. New migrant groups such as Korean and Chinese, have bucked the trend of declining church affiliation. Pentecostal churches, led by Hillsong, attract a younger generation and have planted over a thousand congregations. Nevertheless, survey comparisons suggest that the proportion of regular Bible readers has dropped by more than 75% since the sixties.

Biblical literacy is also seen to have plunged because Bible reading has disappeared from radio and from public schools. NSW schools are the exception. Lake does not attempt to analyse possible reasons (In fact she seems studiously to avoid any mention of the Diocese of Sydney or Moore College). She does make the telling comment that in the same-sex marriage postal survey debates, the Australian Christian Lobby preferred the terminology of rights and values rather than the language of the Bible.

The book’s attention to the plight of Indigenous Australia is comprehensive, drawing heavily, but not exclusively, on John Harris’ magisterial One Blood. One question not addressed is: Why were colonial relationships with Aboriginal peoples so disastrous, given the different story in the case of Maori and Pacific Islander peoples?

One lesson this reader did learn is that the Bible played a key role in nourishing the cause of Federation—an achievement which now we do not even commemorate, but which was by no means a foregone conclusion. Both before and after 1901, the Bible was cited profusely in debates by both believers and non-believers. In Lake’s words, ‘The Bible stretched like a canopy above the forest of Federal feeling’.

In summary, Lake argues convincingly that, while current levels of Biblical literacy are at an all-time low, the Bible has a powerful history in Australia. ‘In various cultural and theological guises, it has informed efforts to educate the young, to extend the franchise, to meet the challenges of poverty. It has been applied to the formation of trade unions, schools and charities, as well as all manner of religious institutions. In the hands of indigenous Christians, the Bible has nourished movements for justice, for land rights, and for recognition and reconciliation’ (p.365).
Anthony H. Nichols, WA.

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Written by: Ben Underwood

Created: 01 June 2018

Church Growth Through Mentoring
Rhys Bezzant

The Mathew Hale Library Public Lecture for 2016
Available from http://mathewhalepubliclibrary.com/book-sales/

Our country has never been wealthier, we are one of the most stable democracies in the world with little to fear from the state, yet the church is losing ground’ writes Rhys Bezzant. We are asking ‘how we find children’s workers or youth workers, how we get people to come to church every week.’

He identifies impediments and distractions that may prevent us undertaking this work: the burden of compliance with increased regulation, the growing loss of traction Christian evangelism and a Christian outlook is experiencing in our society, disempowering church leadership and dejected Christian leaders.

He reflects on Paul’s example in 2 Timothy 2:2 ‘What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others also’, and expounds Paul’s strategy as relational, visionary and having theological content.

I am myself involved in trying to see a new congregation grow, and it is slow, long work, but one of the things which is making an impression is the patient, persistent personal work being done by my assistant minister among the people of this congregation.

Bezzant gives us a good reminder that we cannot do Christian ministry from a height or a distance, but we need to spend purposeful time alongside people, passing on, not just ideas, but attitudes, aspirations and ways of living that are shaped and energised by knowing God through Christ and that seek to serve the fruitfulness of the gospel of Christ in the lives of others.

Ben Underwood, WA.

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Written by: Pauline Dixon,

Created: 01 June 2018

The Wreck Redeemed: Stories of Suffering and Hope
Richard Elms , Richard Elms, 2017

Richard Elms is a Mental Health Social Worker who has worked in a variety of settings as a therapist, trainer and consultant. He is deeply embedded in the Australian context, working in New South Wales. He also provides supervision to others who work in the field and draws on a rich and varied range of clinical examples to answer the questions relating to suffering and hope in the modern context.

Elms presents a picture of the work of narrative therapy and gives insights into the use of this approach in working with those who are broken as the result of abuse. He cites the work of the father of narrative therapy, Michael White and gives a detailed explanation of how the use of ‘storying’ can bring hope to victims of abuse and to those who have experienced a troubled pathway in life. Elms identifies as a Christian with his motivation and understanding of his work deeply influenced by his faith and God’s word, the Bible. In a series of case studies and explanatory chapters, he links the work of narrative therapy and the practice of telling our stories to the Bible. The story of the Bible is linked to many of the stories in the book and he makes useful references to God’s story and his work of redemption in his Son. The case studies are not for the faint hearted as they depict many of the situations that present in a clinical setting and are sad and heartbreaking. They are many of the struggles that ordinary Australians live with and have experienced. There are also clear links to a Christian response to such suffering.

In Elm’s use of narrative therapy he gives the reader an introduction to the stages of work with individuals, couples and families. As people tell their story he examines the story with them, sharing his reflections, seeking to understand, repositioning the story and the person’s view of their part in the story, developing a new story and in the process building hope. He seeks to work with those who have experienced trauma to develop a fuller picture of their story that incorporates their experiences of suffering but is not limited to them. He uses concepts such as creating a map for life, the social and cultural context of stories, deconstruction of the story, creating alternative stories, multiple listening and the place of community in providing support to those who have suffered. Each of these concepts is introduced and explained with reference to a case study and the detail of an individual’s struggle to overcome the suffering they have experienced. God’s story in the Bible is threaded through The Wreck Redeemed. Elms provides helpful explanations and linkages from the stories in the Bible, the work of the apostle Paul and the Holy Spirit, and ultimately the work of Jesus Christ.

Many of the case studies outline the struggles that those who have been abused and suffered trauma have had in their understanding of God. Elms provides a number of excellent accounts of conversations with those he is working with as they have struggled to understand their experience in the context of a loving God. The first case study with an indigenous child sets out his preparedness to work through all her questions and seeks to help her understand her cultural context and her current circumstances. He demonstrates how to be responsive to her particular situation and is not afraid to enter into the realm of what are often difficult questions relating to spirituality and how abuse can affect our understanding of God. Elms works at her pace seeking to find links that are relevant to her life experience to help her build a story of hope. In this case study and many others in the book, a child or young person presents with very difficult behaviour. Elms’ use of narrative therapy provides an understanding of how our emotions, behaviours and overall mental health are affected by our history and need to be understood in this context. Many of the situations presented will be experienced in the life of a parish. Elms shows the need for expertise in managing these situations on a clinical level, however also provides excellent insights and models a way of approaching each individual that is helpful for anyone involved in parish life or any other kind of ministry. Many will find this book helpful.

The Wreck Redeemed is packed with insights from a career spent responding to those who have suffered. It gives some very specific instruction as to how people function and how those who have suffered can find a pathway through to hope. It is also very clear about the kind of work that those who have harmed others need to do in order to repair their relationships. He offers insights into what is happening in a person and in a society that results in the vulnerable suffering. He also provides a biblical understanding as to the origins of such behaviour and the distortions that have led to oppression and suffering. At a time when the church has a reputation to rebuild, many of Elms’ insights provide a pathway to restoration of relationship and hope. I would have found this book very helpful when starting out on my career as a Social Worker and would recommend it as a helpful addition to any reading list.

Pauline Dixon, WA.

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Written by: Ben Underwood

Created: 01 June 2018

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Jordan B. Peterson, Allen Lane, 2018

I don’t know about you, but suddenly I can’t move without bumping into Jordan Peterson, the Canadian professor of psychology who has become a public intellectual almost overnight it seems. He is a polarising figure, who has been involved in controversies over the use of newly-coined transgender pronouns, and whose online interviews and lectures are viewed and listened to by millions. He is outspoken in his intense dislike of the ideological left, and the feeling is mutual. He was recently in Australia, and his conversation with former deputy prime minister John Anderson is at the top of Peterson’s youtube news feed as I write this review. The conservative side of society feel Peterson has cut through in articulating many objections they have to the ways we are being encouraged to think and feel about ourselves, our history and others in a post-modern, politically correct world.

Beyond his controversial profile, Peterson seems strongly motivated to help people live more satisfying, successful lives, and as a psychologist and intellectual he has ideas about how to do that. He is influenced by Jung, Nietzche, Dostoyevsky, the Bible and the Tao. He believes in the wisdom of the past, expressed in stories, myths and cultural practices passed down over millennia. His first book was an academic work on the psychology of religious belief. His second book, 12 Rules for Life, is the top selling book on the Amazon nonfiction charts in the week I write this review and aims to convey what Peterson believes will help people live well. The place to live well, according to Peterson, is on the straight and narrow path between order and chaos. For Peterson it is primary to say that chaos is a threat to life, and hence we need order, routine, tradition, discipline (and so the book’s title and subtitle). But something else also needs to be said, that ‘order can become excessive, and that’s not good’ (p. xxxiv). Chaos is also needed for exploration, creativity and transformation. The individual lives well by living on the boundary of order and chaos, in the zone of their fruitful intersection.

12 Rules for Life is a self-help book with a polemical edge, a critique of a certain current sensibility, rooting for taking responsibility for yourself, burying envy as a motivation, aiming at the good without seeking to be avenged upon the world for its unfairness, and sitting at the feet of tradition expecting to be schooled well, amongst other things. Peterson is unusual in his great respect for and extensive use of Biblical episodes and texts like Genesis 1-4, or the Sermon on the Mount. The twelve rules are cast in the form of wise advice, sometimes quirkily expressed. Rule 5 is ‘Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them’ and rule 12 is ‘Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street’. Each rule gets a chapter, and the chapters wend their way towards the rules (which are the closing words of each chapter), covering a rich variety of topics and life issues. Chapter one is about hierarchy and dominance, the second about the necessity of sympathetically and realistically taking responsibility for yourself, the third about the company you keep, the fourth about what to pursue and why, the fifth about parenting, the sixth about responding to the outrages of the world, the seventh about sacrifice, evil and meaning in life, etc. Chapter 10, ‘Be precise in your speech’ has a lot about marriage in it. Peterson is bold, bracing and strident as well as sympathetic, careful and hopeful. He advocates living for meaning rather than happiness, and thus regards suffering as not merely unavoidable, but potentially the place of productive and meaningful growth and action. He is for the pursuit of the transcendent good, and against the reduction of human life to a contest of self-interested power. He is for the real distinction of masculine and feminine, and against artificial measures aimed at equality of outcome for all without distinction. He has a hard face, a sometimes aggressive twitter feed and huge doses of charisma. He has gotten lots of people talking. What shall we make of him and his ideas?

It seems to me that Jordan Peterson is for law. He is about recognising the non-negotiable realities of human existence. Instead of destroying yourself and your culture by resentfully and misguidedly going to war with the way things are, Peterson recommends living creatively and meaningfully according to the rules that lead to success in the midst of inevitable suffering. Jordan Peterson is not preaching gospel. His exposition of Biblical texts contains none of the notes of grace that a Christian might point out. This is not to say that Peterson has no mercy or compassion in him, it is more to say that for Peterson, Being (the way things are) is practically synonymous with God. The figure of God stands in at points for all the things (encompassing both chaos and order) that we must accept with awe and humility, and be reconciled to as what stands sovereign over us and cannot be changed.

But since Christians make a momentous distinction between God and the World, the Law of Being is not the final reality in our lives. There is the possibility of divine help coming to us that is utterly different to self-help, or to any other help offered by another. Help offered by another who is not God will take the form of instruction, guidance, counsel, listening and conversation to accompany what is ultimately self-help, a process started, carried out and concluded through an individual’s courage, resolution, reflection and action. Such help is not to be sneezed at, but God in his grace may help us in a fundamentally different way. His help can come to us as new birth, as regeneration, as life from the dead, as justification by faith, as conversion. I have not found in Peterson this gospel note. As far as I can see, for Peterson, Jesus is a teacher and an ideal, archetypal human being, but he is not the Risen Saviour who pours his Spirit upon his disciples and in whose name forgiveness of sins is proclaimed.

Still, Jordan Peterson has cut through. He has a great chord in our culture. To some it is beautiful, half-forgotten music. To others it is an ominous, dark and unwelcome sound. Christians may find what he has to say illuminating, and we may enjoy the respect he accords the Bible as a popular intellectual with a rather different angle on religion and Christianity than Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens and their ilk. Peterson may catalyse a softening of militant atheism and a revaluation of the Bible in our public discourse, and that would be a welcome development. Beyond that hope, we may also pray that some Christian, some preacher of the Gospel, might cut through and strike a mighty chord in our society in the way that Peterson has, and that the Spirit would blow our way and bring new birth, even to those who are old. For law is not our salvation.

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Written by: Mark Short

Created: 01 June 2018

God’s Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church

Brad Roth. Herald Press 2017

Sometimes myths get in the way of mission. In the opening chapter of God’s Country, US Mennonite pastor Brad Roth asserts that ‘all too often, rural people and places become objects of our cultural mythmaking, the focus of our fear or pity, meant to be saved or gawked at.’ That tallies with my observation of the Australia scene. Stereotypes such as the bush as hapless victim of natural disasters and economic change or the bush as the bastion of cultural backwardness and prejudice are neither accurate nor a helpful basis for faithful and fruitful Christian ministry. That is why theologically informed and pastorally realistic accounts like Roth’s are vital. Notwithstanding the cultural translations that need to be made at times, the book makes stimulating reading for anyone concerned to reach the millions of Australians who live outside major population centres.

Roth’s book contains a brief but important discussion of what constitutes the essence of rurality. He concludes that what makes a location ‘rural’ is neither the presence nor importance of agriculture but the way people experience the world:

‘The defining difference may be that rural communities are marked by knowing and being known. We know our neighbours and they know us.’ (p27).

For the Australian scene at least this conclusion would need to be qualified. There are communities in the bush, particular those with a mining or lifestyle component, which have quite high levels of transience. Even in more stable farming communities there is often a disconnect between long-term residents and those who’ve moved to town more recently because of relatively cheap housing. Roth’s catalogue of the structural challenges facing rural communities—the industrialisation of agriculture, declining and aging populations, the removal of government and other services—is consistent with the Australian experience, particularly outside major regional centres. More searching is his examination of the challenge of acedia (literally ‘without care’), which he describes as ‘a boredom that anchors its gangly roots in the belief that God is not present or at work in the places or life situations where we find ourselves.’ (p41) His antidote is a commitment to praise God wherever we are, recognise and name the signs of God at work and abide in situations of challenge rather than give in to the temptation to flight. Roth then explores the practicalities of ministry in a rural setting. He explores the process of discerning a community’s structure, working with rather than against its yearly rhythms and nurturing intentional evangelism that grows out of a commitment to sit with people and listen carefully to their stories. A particularly interesting suggestion is that rural churches express an intentional vocation to a ministry of focussed prayer, precisely because the challenges they face should encourage a deep dependence on God. Roth’s book offers a vision for rural ministry that is both wholistic and hopeful. There are certainly points at which I felt his case needed to be strengthened or supplemented. For example, there seems to be a tension in his theology of place. Sometimes he seems to suggest that rural locations have a unique relation to God; at other points their significance lies more in what they share with every other part of God’s creation. This tension is resolved to some extent in the final chapter when he develops the rudiments of a biblical theology of the rural church as a community located both in present realities but also in relation to God’s promise of a new heavens and new earth. It would have been good to have this perspective worked back through some earlier material. I also had some questions about the implied reader of the book. In most sections this appears to be an ordained pastor who has come to a rural community from elsewhere. Perhaps this is not surprising given the actual readership of ministry books! But given the importance of local, long-term leadership in many rural settings I thought it would be valuable to address them more directly. It’s one thing to think through what it means to abide in a rural community when you have the choice of accepting a call to a city church, another when re-location is not even an option because of the ties of family and work.

Notwithstanding the above quibbles this book inspired me to pray and dream about God’s work in our rural and regional places. It’s also challenged me with the need for similar resources that engage more directly with the Australian context—a challenge that I hope BCA and others will answer in the years to come.

Mark Short, Bush Church Aid.