“The Gospel” by Ray Ortlund

The criticism of the church, and churches, today seems non-stop. Churches are too political (especially of the right-wing variety). Churches are too patriarchal. Churches are inbred. Churches are losing millennials. Churches are not relevant. Church music and worship are – well, you either love it or hate it.

Criticism may not be one of the spiritual gifts cited in the New Testament, but it has certainly been a cottage industry for a long time.

So it’s somewhat refreshing to read a work like The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ (2014) by Ray Ortlund. Criticism has its place in the church, as it does in all other aspects of life. But the idea of building a healthy church – what it is, what your own responsibility is – is just as important, if not more so. And that’s Ortlund’s aim – to help us see what a healthy church is and what we can do to build it.

Not surprisingly, the lens he uses is the Gospel message – and what kind of job the church does in both teaching it and living it. “The test of a gospel-centered church is its doctrine on paper plus its culture in practice.” Healthy churches have both. Healthy churches need to have both.

And thus this book, which focuses on the gospel in our churches, “the gospel that must be fully believed and embraced by our churches.”

Ortlund considers the implications of the gospel for the individual, the church, and for all of life, and then what the implications are for the church. “The gospel does not hang midair as an abstraction,” he says. “the gospels creates something new in the world.” He looks at barriers to the gospel in the church (which may seem a non sequitur but isn’t) what can be expected as the church moves further into gospel doctrine and culture. And then he suggests a path forward.

Ray Ortlund

Ortlund is pastor at Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tenn., and president of Renewal Ministries. He is also a council member of The Gospel Coalition. He received a B.A. degree from Wheaton College, a Th.M degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, and an M.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans (1994), When God Comes to Church: A Biblical Model for Revival Today (2000), Proverbs: Wisdom That Works (2112), Isaiah: God Saves Sinners (2015), Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel (2016), and other works.

The Gospel, part of the 9Marks Series for Healthy Churches, isn’t a long, theological book or treatise replete with numerous footnotes. It is a highly accessible book and an important book. It’s not so much a prescription for what ails us as it is a blueprint for going forward.

Related: Conversion by Michael Lawrence.

Photograph: Mosiac of St. John at a church in the island of Patmos, by Ha’anala 76 via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“Conversion” by Michael Lawrence

Can “nice” be a pejorative? Can all those songs we sing in church about “Jesus healing me” be wrongheaded? That group of people who come together on Sunday – is what they are about simply coming together on Sunday?

In Conversion: How God Creates a People, Michael Lawrence, senior pastor of Hinson Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon, takes these questions and more, applies basic Christian doctrine, and outlines a view of the church that is historic, Biblical, and real. It’s startling to see the simplicity of Biblical doctrine applied like this – and to see just how radical it really is.

Take “nice,” for example. In too many churches today, the prevailing doctrine is the doctrine of “nice.” Things work like they’re supposed to as long as we’re “nice.” Everyone gets along because we’re all so “nice.” Being “nice” is doing all the right things.

Lawrence juxtaposes the doctrine of the new creation against the doctrine of “nice,” and “nice” doesn’t fare well. At all.

And he goes one, in what is a relatively short (128 pages) work packed with this same kind of upending discussion. Sincerity doesn’t save our souls. Christian conversion is not a decision you make. Faith is not about healing (the so-called “therapeutic model” that has engulfed everything form the church to education and politics). The church, and churches, are to be distinct, not designed like some marketing brand. In fact, the church isn’t about marketing at all.

Michael Lawrence

It’s a sobering account. It’s also a hopeful one.

Lawrence is the author of Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church (2010) and co-author of It is Well: Expositions in Substitutionary Atonement (2010). He’s also a regular contributing writer to anthologies and a number of Christian print and online publications. He received a B.A> degree in English Literature from Duke University, a Masters of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and a Ph.D. in church history from Cambridge University. He and his family live in Portland.

Conversion is part of the 9Marks Series for Building Healthy Churches. It tackles the basics of conversion and what it means in both contemporary culture and contemporary church culture.

Top photograph by Viktor Jakovlev via Unsplash. Used with permission.