In a recent article, Matt Smethurst of the Gospel Coalition asked 20 church planters for their list of 3 books every church planter should read. It provides a very instructive insight into the character of the modern western evangelical church.
Looking at the combined list, I have to say I’m dismayed, though not as surprised as I might have been a few years ago.
There are over 60 books on the list (some of the contributors took the phrase “3 books” slightly loosely). A quick glance reveals that almost all of them were written in the last 15 years. Yes, seriously. Unbelievable, right? But true.
There are a few exceptions – a shout-out to Lloyd-Jones; a couple of texts from the 20th (Leon Morris, Ronald Allen) and 19th (Spurgeon, Charles Bridges) centuries. And you need to look carefully at the lists, because in one or two cases the dates given are the dates of reprints, not the dates of first publication. But once you’ve worked through this, you discover that just four of the works hail from earlier eras: Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, and Thomas Brooks.
While it’s encouraging to see this nod to the Puritans, there’s little cause for excitement about their overall contribution of around 7% to the total. What’s astonishing is that none of the books come even from the early Reformers, never mind the Medieval or Patristic eras.
You might say that I’m being a little unfair. After all, the article (and presumably the briefing to the contributors) places emphasis on the particular challenges of church planting. Perhaps the contributors interpreted their brief within this framework – the top three books directed towards this particular ministry.
But even if we grant this point, I’m not sure the defence really holds water. After all, the article itself points out that church planting has been going on “ever since the book of Acts”. One suspects that the same mindset is at work here as is so often found in contemporary theological reflection: we grant that the apostolic era is relevant, and we gesture feebly towards our Reformation and post-Reformation heroes, but we blithely (and insultingly) ignore the rest of church history, as though nothing of relevance to the modern church was done, believed, or written during those centuries. And even when the Reformers insisted sharply on matters of church life with which some today happen to disagree (Calvin’s insistence on weekly communion springs immediately to mind, though the list could be extended almost indefinitely, especially in relational to liturgical matters), we discover that there are all kinds of modern “contextual” reasons why it doesn’t apply in the modern Western world. We’re cripplingly disconnected with the theological and ecclesial riches of the past.
Maybe it’s time to recover C. S. Lewis’s advice on the subject of reading: “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” And by “old,” you can be sure Lewis doesn’t mean, “Given away at the Gospel Coalition conference three years ago.”
I don’t mean to bash the Gospel Coalition. Far from it. I love those guys, and I certainly have the highest admiration for a number of the contributors to Matt Smethurst’s article. And the books that they recommend (OK, some of the books that they recommend) are pretty good (though frankly I do wonder whether we’ll still be making such a fuss about them all in 20 years time). But I can’t avoid seeing in this list a troubling indictment of the extraordinarily small-mindedness of the church tradition in which I serve, the western Reformed evangelical tradition.
My personal wish after reading this and the list from the gospel coalition, and one that I think might try to help my generation is for the ‘old boys’ of the faith to teach us young un’s the works of the reformers and to not merely point us away from contemporary fluff (It does feel like that at times and I’m certainly not the only 20-something who feels this way..), but rather to show us something better by teaching us and helping us to understand the reformers and the solid thinking that has built the church over the century’s.
After discussing this with my peers, I feel that the issue is not that elders don’t have the young people to teach (I could fill a room overnight of young adults wanting to learn!!), but the lack of elder’s willing and courageous enough to spend the time, working through and teaching the next generation, including myself, as awkward and laborious as that may be.
From my own experience and what I can read in the bible, the church thrives when elder’s and those to whom theology is not merely head knowledge, integrate and connect spiritually with the youths of the faith. When I hear preaching/teaching from a man that’s walked the road, the words fall with a weight that can only be obtained through many years of wrestling and walking with the Lord. We need all the old grey haired slow pokes! Without the elders, your love and your wisdom, we may be lost and spend an unnecessary amount of time fumbling around, when all we need is a good stern word of encouragement and solid spiritual food.
I would love to see more fellowship across ages and for ‘youth nights’ to be filled with white haired old farts, taking young people by the arm and injecting solid truths into their souls. We can dream can’t we? We’ll keep going. “It ain’t over until it’s over” – Yogi Bear.
James, 23