Book Launch: Broken but Beautiful
People have been pointing out church-hurt for a long time. Over fifty years ago, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “With much of this criticism of the Church one has, of course, to agree. There is so much that is wrong with the Church—traditionalism, formality and lifelessness and so on—and it would be idle and utterly foolish to deny this” (Preaching and Preachers, 8). I suppose we could grab similar quotes from the Reformation era or any era in church history. We can even find similar sentiments in the New Testament itself. “But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together,” Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “it is not for the better but for the worse” (1 Cor. 11:17). Indeed, over two and a half thousand years ago, God told his people, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies” (Amos 5:21).
Certainly, there is a lot of junk that happens in the local church. But please also remember that God still uses the church to bless the world in beautiful ways. He may discipline his church to make her more holy, but he loves his church. His sons and daughters are always his sons and daughters. God even calls the church his bride, dying to purchase her and make her radiant. And one day we will see her in all her splendor.
I worked with Gospel-Centered Discipleship to bundle some of our favorite essays about the beauty of the bride of Christ and put them into a book called Broken but Beautiful. The book launches today!
We adapted the book’s title from the first article by Glenna Marshall. She learned in deeper ways the beauty of the church during the unexpected death of a church member and the way her church served together in the days that followed.
As I think back to my own life, I think of a time sixteen years ago when my oldest son was born. The birth did not go well. There was an evening and morning of hard labor, after which the umbilical cord wrapped around my son’s neck, and they did an emergency c-section. Mom and baby, in the end, were fine—praise God. But recovery from the trauma induced by a night of labor and the emergency surgery lasted weeks. Then postpartum depression bit like a rabid dog that wouldn’t let go. But before postpartum, right when we got home from the hospital, everyone got the flu, including everyone who came to stay with us and help. Yet this is the time, my wife and I often say, that we learned when the church was the church. So many people helped and cooked and cleaned and cared. They sat with my wife when I eventually had to go back to work. We no longer live in that same city, but we saw God’s blessings in that local church so strongly that a dozen years later we named our youngest son after that church.
In the providence of God, somehow you’re reading this email. If your heart is in a season of disappointment with the local church—maybe you’d even use the word hate to describe how you currently feel about the church—we hope these stories will minister to you.
I put the table of contents for the book down below, so you can see all the authors and the entries.
You can buy the book on Amazon’s website, here. If your church would like to purchase books at a significant bulk discount, when you buy twenty on the publisher’s website, they are only $5 each! You can do that here.
As an author with a small platform, it would mean a lot to me if you’d buy a copy and consider leaving a short Amazon review. Those reviews help a ton. Seriously. And the review only needs to be a sentence or two.
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Table of Contents
Preface | Benjamin Vrbicek vii
She Is Broken, and She Is Beautiful | Glenna Marshall 1
Missing Church Is Missing Out | Timothy M. Shorey 7
How God Humbled Me through a Church I Didn’t Agree With | Lara d’Entremont 11
The Dearest Place on Earth | James Williams 17
The Unexpected Blessing of a Rural Church | Stephanie O’Donnell 21
The Local Church Helps Rid Me of Morbid Introspection | Chrys Jones 27
The Church Is Not a Meritocracy | Jessica Miskelly 33
A Family of Redemption for Children of Divorce | Chase Johnson 39
The Warmth of the Local Church for the Suffering | Brianna Lambert 45
The Singles Among Us Deserve a Better Church Culture | Denise Hardy 51
Love Your Church Anyway | Heidi Kellogg 57
For the Love of Liturgy | Erin Jones 63
God’s Good Design of the Local Church | James Williams 69
Finding Beauty in the Local Church in Our Age of Social Media | Cassie Pattillo 75
The Hands of Grace | Amber Thiessen 79
How the Church Shapes Us on Our Faith Journey | Rob Bentz 83
On the Other Side of the Church Split | Abigail Rehmert 89
Dear New Mother, Embrace the Body of Christ | Lara d’Entremont 95
The Gold Mine in the Local Church | Chrys Jones 101
The Local Church Is a Sandbox | Timarie Friesen 105
Unless the Seed Dies | Tom Sugimura 111
Redeeming Love Has Been My Theme and Shall Be Until I Die | Timothy M. Shorey 115
Epilogue | Jeremy Writebol 119
Notes 121
Author Bios 123
About Gospel-Centered Discipleship 127
Resources from Gospel-Centered Discipleship 129