Off the Bookshelf: WHO STOLE MY CHURCH? By Gordon MacDonald

 

We were supposed to have this book as the basis for a series of sermons at church, starting in March of 2020 ... and guess what happened?

Things got disrupted, and our church staff made pretty heroic efforts to transfer to worshipping online and making it as easy as possible for our church membership to be fed and have needs met and watch over those with special needs during the whole pandemic mess. Which is still going on today, just with a little less isolation. God has been good to us, and our church staff are wonderful, sacrificing people.

Anyway ... this book basically follows a group of people who are concerned and sometimes cranky and sometimes downright ticked off over changes taking place in their church, reflecting changes in society and the media and the needs of modern life. They deal with a lot of questions and gripes and fears. Some of them stomp away in a snit and some of them are humbled and some of them grow and learn to serve and get excited about worship again.

Usually I avoid "talking heads" books, where the author creates a pretty unbelievable "fictional" setting and creates some cookie cutter characters, and then spends the next 200 pages lecturing the reader. (Can I hear an "ugh" from the congregation?)

This ain't one of them. The members of the discovery group are real, three-dimensional people and they're not copies of each other and they most certainly aren't yes-men. This feels believable, and in places uncomfortable, and in some places reveals a lot about the reader's prejudices and fears as the characters learn from each other. It's an uplifting and encouraging book, and quite frankly, every church member today and especially their pastors and worship teams and church staff should read this. Some need to be slapped across the face with this book, to get them moving and let go of the "but we've never done it that way before" attitude that, quite frankly, is killing churches and driving members away, to find teaching and spiritual food given in the language and style they understand.

Wake up, behind-the-times churches. If you don't use the language people understand to tell the unchanging truth from God's Word, they won't listen! If they don't listen, they won't learn and grow, and then what use are YOU?