AccueilGroupesDiscussionsPlusTendances
Site de recherche
Ce site utilise des cookies pour fournir nos services, optimiser les performances, pour les analyses, et (si vous n'êtes pas connecté) pour les publicités. En utilisant Librarything, vous reconnaissez avoir lu et compris nos conditions générales d'utilisation et de services. Votre utilisation du site et de ses services vaut acceptation de ces conditions et termes.

Résultats trouvés sur Google Books

Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.

Chargement...

The church and the surprising offense of God's love: reintroducing the doctrines of church membership and discipline

par Jonathan Leeman

MembresCritiquesPopularitéÉvaluation moyenneDiscussions
776228,987 (4.1)Aucun
An expert defense of how God's holy love is biblically, theologically, and practically represented to a watching world through the practices of church membership and discipline.
Chargement...

Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre

Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.

2 sur 2
This is an awesome book about the biblical basis for church membership and church discipline! The author explains how we have twisted and redefined God's love into something that is palatable for us, instead of truly understanding that biblically God's love marks boundaries and enforces them. ( )
  nisly | Feb 10, 2011 |
The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love by Jonathan Leeman contains a surprising thesis supported by solid argument, pictured with continuous illustration and tethered down from its theological heights by good practical considerations.

The subtitle of the book is "Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline." This may not sound like a very exciting topic, but if you're interested in the topic (and even if you're not!) I think you'll find it a very exciting book! As he describes it, it is a systematic theology of church membership. I have agreed with these concepts (and taught them!) for some time, but this book put a foundation under my feet. It changed the issue for me from something "good" to something "mandatory", from it being not unbiblical, to being biblical. Seriously, a landmark book for me.

The basic thesis of the book is that while church membership and church discipline today are argued against as unloving and counter-productive to producing true community in the church, these are the very things given to us to define God's love for the world to see. God's love is a boundary-drawing love.

The first 168 pages are really all about love. He begins with a very insightful analysis of our contemporary ideas of love and gets the root and the fruit of our individualism and explains why we despise things like boundary markers and like things like inclusiveness. Yet the solution to our individualism is not community, because deeper than individualism is that our love is idolotrous and we despise authority.

He then defines the nature of love as that he pictures as a boomerang sent out from God and drawing us back to him. True love is God-centered and not man-centered. Something truly loving is something that reveals more of God to us and lets us know him more, not simply something that makes us feel better. He then talks about authority and relates godly authority to love as the exercise of love, which acts rightfully to "create life", to draw people to God, to extend God's loving purposes to the world.

This is the foundation he builds the rest of the book upon. Chapter 4, "The Charter of Love" is really the heart of the book. Here he builds the biblical case for church membership and discipline as a charter given by the Lord Jesus to the church "to mark off who credibly speaks for him, to hold them together, to teach them, and to oversee their lives together." (183) This is exactly the content of what happens in church membership and discipline. He then says, "I believe that Christians must therefore be united to a church."

The biblical case is made of up of Matthew 16, Matthew 18 and Matthew 28. The core of it is Matthew 16:18-19, where Jesus gives to Peter "the keys of the kingdom of heaven". He gives a thorough and, to me, convincing argument that these keys are connected to permitting in or putting out of the one place on earth submitted to the King's rule: the church. These keys are passed on to the church in Matt 18. He makes another interesting connection to Matt 28 which connects this authority given by Jesus to baptizing, discipling and teaching obedience.

"The power of the keys" is the "charter" that the Lord has given to the church. It is the first place I've heard this argument, but it all flows rather nicely. He concludes this with other considerations of why membership is important and beneficial.

This radically altered my conception of membership. It is no longer something "beneficial" that can be shown by a few implications (e.g. how else can we love each other, how else can we do discipline, how else can we submit to elders, etc.), but is rather mandated by the Lord Jesus and is the way the Lord intends to build the church, through us exercising the power of the keys. His authority is in the church, and nowhere else, and therefore we must be members of local churches.

Beyond this, there was a chapter on how the relationship between the believer and the church is that of a covenant, and how this covenant relates to the New Covenant. This honestly wasn't as good as the previous chapter, which is pretty hard to follow. The book then closes with two practical chapters thinking through how to implement membership and discipline from the church's side and then individual's side.

That's the basic argument and what I learned from the book. I superbly enjoyed it. Beyond the content, it is well written and well illustrated and easy to follow. It's quite a long book though (350+ pages), and you might need some encouragement to pick it up. I hope I have whet your appetite and convinced you its worth your time to read!

[from matthauck.typepad.com] ( )
  matthauck | Feb 8, 2011 |
2 sur 2
aucune critique | ajouter une critique

Appartient à la série éditoriale

Vous devez vous identifier pour modifier le Partage des connaissances.
Pour plus d'aide, voir la page Aide sur le Partage des connaissances [en anglais].
Titre canonique
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais. Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Titre original
Titres alternatifs
Date de première publication
Personnes ou personnages
Lieux importants
Évènements importants
Films connexes
Épigraphe
Dédicace
Premiers mots
Citations
Derniers mots
Notice de désambigüisation
Directeur de publication
Courtes éloges de critiques
Langue d'origine
DDC/MDS canonique
LCC canonique

Références à cette œuvre sur des ressources externes.

Wikipédia en anglais

Aucun

An expert defense of how God's holy love is biblically, theologically, and practically represented to a watching world through the practices of church membership and discipline.

Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque

Description du livre
Résumé sous forme de haïku

Discussion en cours

Aucun

Couvertures populaires

Vos raccourcis

Évaluation

Moyenne: (4.1)
0.5
1
1.5
2 2
2.5
3 3
3.5
4 6
4.5 2
5 8

Est-ce vous ?

Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing.

 

À propos | Contact | LibraryThing.com | Respect de la vie privée et règles d'utilisation | Aide/FAQ | Blog | Boutique | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliothèques historiques | Critiques en avant-première | Partage des connaissances | 206,449,742 livres! | Barre supérieure: Toujours visible