Life Tastes Better is a short and punchy new give-away book from Terry Virgo, the founder of the Newfrontiers network of churches. It’s aimed at – and ideal for – those who are wanting to explore the Christian faith, demonstrating the life-changing surprise Jesus brings. Virgo’s friendly and conversational tone, as well as the fact the ‘book’ is only five short chapters (each between 6-14 pages) mean it’s a very light and inviting read.

A Christianity That Works

As the title suggests, the book is written from the angle of showing that what Jesus adds to life makes him well worth considering. This is a legitimate and helpful evangelistic approach: rather than being concerned with Christianity’s objective truthfulness, many people want to know if Christianity actually ‘works’. What does it bring to my life? Appealing to this instinct doesn’t mean Virgo dilutes the gospel call to turn and trust in Christ, nor does it mean he promises material prosperity or the absence of suffering. And yet it did mean that the book takes a slightly different line of engagement to many of the evangelistic books I’ve read.

The booklet focuses in on Jesus’ appearance at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11) and the hook is that Jesus can help us when we’re running out – whether it’s running out of answers, options or hope. There’s not many of us who would say our lives are all sorted – so Virgo’s appeal here raises interest. He grounds this helpfully in the apostle John’s bigger purpose of showing that Jesus’ ‘signs’ should lead to believing that he is the Messiah, in turn receiving ‘life in his name’ (John 20:31). In other words, the ‘sign’ of water being turned into wine in John 2 demonstrates that Jesus has an authority that means he is worth trusting with our lives.

A Jesus Full of Surprises

In the next three chapters Virgo seeks to show how this incident at Cana demolishes a number of common stereotypes about Christianity.

Firstly, in chapter 2, we see that Jesus was willing to be at this party. In other words, he is interested in the things of real life. Is this the kind of Jesus we often think of? Is this what we imagine about religion? More than that, this party is a wedding party – which leads to Virgo skilfully introducing Jesus as the Bridegroom of the Bible’s greater wedding storyline. Setting this against the backdrop of a modern resistance to the commitment of marriage, we see Jesus as giving himself to us, “for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health”.

Chapter 3 was my favourite chapter. Virgo addresses Jesus’ seemingly rude comment to his mother in John 2:4 (“Woman, what does this have to do with me?”) and shows how it reveals the bigger truth that Jesus has not come to complete our agendas and plans. I thought this was a really powerful way of highlighting how we can all bring our own expectations to Jesus, but in effect we’re trying to redefine him, expecting him to pay more attention to our hopes and goals than his. And yet Jesus wants to turn that perspective on its head:

“Acknowledging Jesus’ authority to be in charge in his world unlocks the door for us to enter into a new world where he will do amazing amazing things for us.”

Or to put it simply, “Jesus helps by taking over.” We have been taken from our surface-level problems – or even our under-the-surface-level problems to consider that Jesus has come to put his finger in an even bigger problem.

A Life That Is Not Our Own

In the final chapter Virgo leaves us seeing the need to respond to Jesus. Reflecting on his own Christian journey, he shares that he’d been living as a Christian for a while before someone showed him that God wanted his whole life:

“I wanted Jesus to do his thing for me, but not to be in charge of me… [But] Jesus wanted to take charge – not coexist with a load of competitors. I never really understood that before, but I could feel God saying to me, Are you mine or not? I was suddenly really aware of the awesomeness of God. I want your life. Do I have your life? 

This is the rub of the book: that Christianity involves a change of ownership (or at least acknowledging a change of ownership!) – but that this is for the better. As the one who can deal with our greatest need and give us peace with himself it is a much better thing for us to hand over our lives to God.

A Resource to Share

This is an evangelistic book with a lot of strengths. It is brief – surely increasingly important in our cultural moment. It is warm in tone. It is engaging – even the title and presentation seeks to connect with the reader. And yet you couldn’t miss its central message, which doesn’t pull any punches and leaves you fully aware a response needs to be made.

Perhaps this is a generalisation, but many evangelistic books seem to be either written in response to a particular objection or they assume substantial pre-existing Christian interest. (The exception to this would be testimony-led books, e.g. Marcus Nodder’s excellent City Lives). But I wonder if this means such books can tend to come across as either just solving a logical problem, or they just struggle to engage. Either way, it makes the opportunities to give them away more niche. Life Tastes Better models something different, and it means I’m already thinking about people I’d love to hand it to.

Life Tastes Better is currently available from the publisher for £1.69 per copy here, with further discounts for bulk purchases.

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Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, but I hope this is still a fair review.

Did Rest Get Trendy Or Did We Just Get Crazy-Busy?

There’s obviously something amiss in our Christian culture when books on burn-out or rest seem to be about as common as, I dunno, church-plants using those pull-up banner-stand things. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a complaint in either case. For one, don’t knock the stands – they do the job – and in terms of rest, the sad reality is that by all accounts we’re in great need of some fine-tuned resources to help us out in this area.

When you think about it, it’s unsurprising that writing on rest often comes from a personal angle. We learn – and write – from experience. And sadly, what’s going to convince you of the importance of rest more than crashing and burning? That comes out in Christopher Ash and David Murray’s recent books, and it’s also the case with The Art of Rest, a new, punchy paperback from Massachusetts-based pastor, Adam Mabry. Hopefully these ‘pre-emptive’ resources can do the rest of us the world of good, before we find out the hard way.

Doing Do Is Easier Than Doing Rest

Mabry’s opening chapter is titled, “I Don’t Do Rest”; he shares that his wife’s reaction to him announcing he was writing a book on rest was to laugh in his face. The problem he highlights is that many of us aren’t so good at doing rest, but we’re pretty hot at doing ‘do’. In fact we’re suckers for do. We see busyness and think it means we’re achieving something, getting somewhere. It makes us feel important. We idolise being productive and being ‘high-capacity leaders’, but we forget that, ultimately, “God has wired us to require rest.”

The ‘art of rest’ refers to Mabry’s conviction that rest is less about rule and more about rhythm. We might be diligent at taking a day-off or marking the Sabbath, but we still need to consider whether we’re truly resting – and the reason. As he says, the why of rest is just as important as the how. To skip the ‘why’ is to attempt to grow a tree on top of some pavement; you need to bust-up the concrete and get under the surface before you can grow anything of significance. It’s a powerful image, and throughout the book Mabry seeks to get under the surface of why we’re so prone not to rest, and therefore why we need it so much.

Reasons To Rest

So why rest? In four easy-to-read chapters, Mabry serves up a range of different motivations:

• Rest is for remembering. It’s for remembering God, ourselves, and true story of the world: “regularly stopping to rest in God allows us to remember that the meaning of our lives isn’t to wander around inside ourselves and choose what aspects of our desires we’ll wear as an identity badge.”
• Rest is resistance; building on the work of Walter Brueggemann, Mabry suggests rest is resistance against a world that defines itself by work and career: “[rest] is open rebellion against the systems of this world that demand we do in order to be.” Here Mabry is brilliant at exposing the default mode of our culture – and even our church culture: “in order for you to be the most you-ey you you can be, you just need to look within.” Yes, that’s a lot of ‘you’s but that’s exactly the point. Part of the problem here is that we become complicit in the tendency towards self-justification, self-actualisation, because, after all, “the most powerful god of the West [is] the one in the mirror.” In contrast:

“[T]he truth is that you only come into contact with your truest self when you come closer to Christ. You won’t find you by clambering about in your own subconscious, but by bringing your whole self to him.”

• Rest restores relationships. Our restlessness often leaves a trail of damage: “dead marriages, distant children, and fair-weather friendships all lie in the wake of the Western wanderer and their quest to quiet the inner voice and find the end-point of the pursuit of happiness.” Instead, rest brings with it “relational room,” the oxygen to allow relationships to live and grow.
• Rest brings reward. Mabry shows that rest is a God-given means for our Father in heaven to bless us – through reflection, through memory, through security, through endurance, and through anticipation.

Keeping Sabbath Special

Obviously you can’t write a book on rest without engaging with the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath. Mabry acknowledges that how we apply this command as Christians is a topic that can easily divide churches and lead to endless discussion and debate, e.g. how does Jesus fulfil the Old Testament law? Is every command still binding, as it reads? These are important questions, but Mabry’s own take is that this command doesn’t apply directly to us today, having been fulfilled in Christ (Hebrews 3-4; Colossians 2:16-17). Yet he makes the valid point – which is backed-up in some of the endorsements – that even if you disagree with him on this, you’d still be in agreement with 96% of the rest of the book. The wisdom and importance and significance of resting remains, even if that doesn’t involve a prescribed Sabbath day. In fact Mabry also challenges those who argue that keeping a Sabbath is legalistic: “simply ask how not observing Sabbath rest is going for you. It’s not rest that threatens to oppress you, but your refusal to rest.”

Rest in Practice

The final chapter gives some practical suggestions for rest: namely, sleeping, reading, praying, reflecting, avocating (new one for me!), recreating, eating and singing, as well as considering the categories of daily, weekly and yearly rest. I felt Ash’s Zeal Without Burnout and Murray’s ReSet probably were more expansive in this area.

My critique of The Art of Rest would be that occasionally the book’s structure and flow seemed a bit muddled. The first chapter is set-up as a bit of a Bible overview of rest, but we quickly got into ‘lies that Satan uses to convince us not to rest’. These were helpful in themselves, and maybe it’s just me, but it felt like we were racing to application before I’d really got going.

Despite that the four central chapters were excellent and really thought-provoking and compelling. In particular, the strength of Mabry’s contribution to the ‘rest canon’ is his ability to expose some of the ways in which we buy into a culture of ‘do’. He writes in such a way that you really want to grab a handle on your life and live restfully, in line with how God made us. If you’re ever tempted to think of yourself as ‘busy’, ‘too busy’, or you actually find yourself enjoying being busy, then The Art of Rest would be well worth picking up.

You can pick up a copy of The Art of Rest from the publisher here.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, but I hope this is still a fair review.

The Age of Unbelief

If you hadn’t clocked it yet, those of us in the West are living in an ‘age of unbelief’ – a season when Christian beliefs and ethics are being publicly pushed to the sidelines of life, with the claim they are out of date, out of touch, and even – made with increasing frequency – that they are hateful and dangerous. Like it or not, that’s our situation as the Western Church. And so it’s essential that we decide how we’re going to respond to this situation. Take Heart is Matt Chandler’s contribution to that debate.

Matt, 43, has been pastoring at the Village Church in Texas since 2002 – a good innings, by any standard. He now holds the role of Lead Pastor of Teaching at the Village Church in Texas and President of the increasingly influential and international Acts 29 church-planting network. I first came across Matt when he spoke at Oak Hill during my time there. Reading Take Heart is like hearing Matt speak: he is engaging, witty, and has an unassuming authority that flows from his passion for Jesus Christ.

We All Respond

By the way, I described Take Heart as Matt’s contribution to the ‘debate’ about how Christians should respond to these changing times, because it doesn’t take much to realise there’s a few different responses being advocated. In a real sense, we all respond – the question is whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, and whether its with theological conviction driving our response – or by way of knee-jerk pragmatism. Chandler summarises the three most common responses as:

• Converting culture, i.e. putting our efforts into ensuring our countries reflect our Christian values, especially politically and legally, and so re-establish Christendom.
• Condemning culture, i.e. removing ourselves from the culture and setting up a sub-culture where we are protected from the influence of the world around us.
• Consuming culture, i.e. accommodating ourselves – in beliefs and ethics – to the culture around us. In other words, we change to fit in, because we belief that’s how we will stay relevant.

As you mull these over, you start to see how these approaches play out in different ways. So take something like the changes in laws regarding so-called ‘equal marriage’. Some Christians will argue it’s critical we don’t change our nations’ laws, even if the majority of the population wants us to. Some will flee the public square and just batten down the hatches: the world is moving in and we just need to stay faithful. Some will say we need to change the Church’s position on sexuality and marriage, in order to stay relevant.

Chandler is concerned that all three of these responses have something in common: they are all “born of fear”. And so he puts forward a fourth option, which he describes as a “posture” of courage:

“I’m convinced that if we have a God-sized, God-given courage, then we will be freed up to be the people of God, living out the mission of God, marked by the joy of God. With courage, this season of history can be viewed not with fear or trepidation, but instead with hope and a sense of opportunity.”

Some might want more caveat in Chandler’s analysis of the flaws of Christendom, but it’s hard to argue with his desire to challenge nominalism. And without a doubt, it’s encouraging to read a book that is so positive. Chandler believes the Church can thrive.

How do we get to courage?

Chandler is not trying to whip us into some paper-thin triumphalism. He quotes the author James Neil Hollingworth, who observed that, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than one’s fear.” And so courage comes from re-discovering a big God:

“We’ve spent years telling each other, You can do it. You’re so great. Be yourself. Find yourself, Believe in yourself. Our teaching and advice has been based more on the false wisdom of our world than the true wisdom of the word. And that means we’ve ended up trying to run a marathon on cotton candy. We’ve tried to be bold in the day of war while eating Twinkies.”

In particular, Chandler argues we need to rediscover the biblical portrayal of God as a warrior, citing Exodus 15:3.

The Fight of Your Life

I have to admit, at first Chandler’s choice here surprised me. If I was going to write a book about how Christians are to live amidst a culture that – at the best of times – is confused about the Christian faith, and – at worst – is hostile to the Christian faith, then my instinct would be to avoid describing God as a warrior! Isn’t this just the Religious Right on steroids, a return to the crusades and Christian jihad?!

But here Chandler is careful to say that the way God ‘wars’ is by fighting for the good of his people. Building on the work of theologians Tremper Longman III and Daniel Reid, Chandler gives us a Bible overview of God as warrior, showing that God is fighting a cosmic war, not against people but against his great enemy, Satan, and winning the victory – through the cross – to give his people a relationship with him in a perfect world of shalom.

In other words, as we live amidst increasing marginalisation, the Church can trust we’re on the right side of of history, because God is the History-Maker. He’s in control of where things are going. This isn’t a call to violence, but to compassion and proclaiming the cross. Thriving doesn’t mean having unrivalled popularity or holding great cultural power, but rather having a sense of confidence in the face of opposition and side-lining, because we know that life is playing itself out on God’s backdrop.

How Courage Plays Out

In the last few chapters Chandler seeks to ground courage in the practical. He covers holiness, devotion and evangelism, and spends the most time making the case that the latter needs to be done in the context of hospitality. Rather than the fear-driven responses that Christians are sometimes known by (“marching, debating, writing”), the extent of our courage will be shown “by who sits round your table”.

It’s a compelling picture of Christians committed to loving people and opening up their lives and homes. He acknowledges that though the marginalisation of Christians may be happening at the level of public policy and media narratives, the reality is that individuals are still spiritually intrigued by the Christian faith. Showcasing the gospel through generous and winsome lives is always going to be powerful.

How do you like your eggs, Benedict?

Despite Chandler’s denial that he’s trying to present some “fresh strategy”, it’s hard not to read Take Courage without thinking it’s in part a response to the likes of Rod Dreher’s much-discussed Benedict Option. Dreher’s approach, inspired by the founding of the Benedictine Order, can come across as one of fearful retreat from the culture, rather than the positive, outward-facing approach of Take Heart. I suspect there’d be much that Dreher and Chandler would agree on: the cultural analysis of where we stand for starters, as well as the need to guard the gospel and the importance of creating Christian communities (church!) and families where we ‘learn the gospel’ and grow in gospel confidence. But as David Robertson commented in his review of Dreher’s book:

“I need to be in the world, but not of it. I need to live with people who are dead in sins and trespasses. I need to live, eat, work and share with those who are the enemies of God. The only thing I must not do is worship with them, ignore them or hate them.”

Courage, Dear Heart

Admittedly in the UK we don’t have the same political ‘Religious Right’ – complete with its increasingly depressing loyal association to Trump. In that sense, the pressures are different. But in the Church of England, we do have an established Church, which brings its own pressures. For example, after the C of E’s General Synod voted against the motion to have female bishops back in 2012, there was outrage in the House of Commons and the then PM David Cameron infamously urged the Church to ‘get with the programme’. Whatever you think about the roles of men and women in ministry, should it really be the government’s opinion that drives our decision-making as a Church? Whose ‘programme’ is the Church signed up to? But of course it’s hard to resist that if you’re the official church of the land, with Bishops seated in the House of Lords.

And so we need books like Take Heart that give us a big view of God and call us to be bold and to be strong – even amidst our weakness – for the LORD, our God, is with us. A minor quibble was that each chapter seems to take its launching point from a different Bible passage, whilst still trying to build up a fairly chapter-by-chapter connected argument: Romans takes us to God’s bigness; Exodus – and a Bible overview – shows us God as warrior; 1 Peter becomes lesson about standing on grace, etc. Occasionally this felt slightly disorientating; sometimes I felt I was only just settling down before we were moving on.

Writing with his colleague David Roark, Chandler has given us a handy and compelling tonic to revitalise drooping heads and sapped hearts. And because Take Heart is an easy read, a fairly slim paperback with seven punchy chapters, I’d be happy to commend it to folk who aren’t big readers. And of course I’d be delighted if Chandler’s positivity and courage rubbed off. As he says, “marginalization is the space where we find out where our lives and our allegiances really lie … we’re now back in the place where we have always flourished best.”

If you want to get more of a flavour of the book, then here’s 25 quotes from Take Heart.

You can also watch Matt talking about the vision behind the book below:

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, but I hope this is still a fair review. You can pick up a copy of Take Heart from the publisher using my affiliate link here.