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    Church: Why Bother?
    Church: Why Bother?
    Church: Why Bother?
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Church: Why Bother?

    By Philip Yancey and Eugene H. Peterson

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Insights from Philip Yancey's personal pilgrimage away from and back to the church—what made him walk away, and what drew him back.

    Why are there so many more professing Christians than churchgoing Christians? Is it because something is wrong with the church?

    In his candid, thought-provoking manner, award-winning author Philip Yancey reveals the reasons behind his own journey back from skepticism to wholehearted participation in the church. This book:

    • Weighs the church's human failings against its compelling worth as the body of Christ.
    • Looks into what God may have in mind for His church.
    • Discusses how the church can reach beyond its walls and into the communities and lives around it to be more than just “Sunday worship.”


    Yancey does not whitewash the church's faults. He sets them against the overwhelming balance of its strengths: its heart for God, its care for the hurting, its outreach to the lost, and its value as family and community.

    This book is for anyone who’s ever wondered: Why bother with church?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateAug 3, 2010
    ISBN9780310871774
    Author

    Philip Yancey

    Philip Yancey previously served as editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine. He has written thirteen Gold Medallion Award-winning books and won two ECPA Book of the Year awards, for What's So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew. Four of his books have sold over one million copies. He lives with his wife in Colorado. Learn more at philipyancey.com.

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      Book preview

      Church - Philip Yancey

      CHAPTER 1

      WHY BOTHER WITH CHURCH?

      This is a big old ship, Bill. She creaks, she rocks, she rolls, and at times she makes you want to throw up. But she gets where she’s going. Always has, always will, until the end of time. With or without you.

      J. F. POWERS, WHEAT THAT SPRINGETH GREEN

      As I grew up in Georgia, church defined my life. I faithfully attended services every Sunday morning and evening and also on Wednesday nights, not to mention vacation Bible school, youth group activities, revivals, missions conferences, and any other occasions when the doors might open. I looked at the world through stained-glass lenses: the church told me what to believe, who to trust or distrust, and how to behave.

      During high school I attended church in a concrete-block building located on the grounds of a former pony farm. Several of the former stable buildings were still standing, littered with hay, and one Sunday morning the largest of these buildings burst into flames. Fire trucks noisily arrived, the deacons dashed about moving lumber and uncoiling hoses, and all of us church members stood and watched as orange flames climbed the sky and heat baked our faces. Then we solemnly filed back into the sanctuary, suffused with the scent of burnt straw and charred timbers, and listened to our pastor deliver an impromptu sermon on the fires of Hell which, he assured us, were seven times hotter than what we had just witnessed.

      That image lived long in my mind because this was a hellfire and brimstone church. We saw ourselves as a huddled minority in a world fraught with danger. Any slight misstep might lead us away from safety toward the raging fires of Hell. Like the walls of a castle, church offered protection against that scary world outside.

      My ventures into that outside world, especially in public high school, brought about some awkward moments. I remember the hot shame of standing before a high school speech class giving the pious reasons why I could not accompany them to view a Hollywood version of Othello. And even now I can quote the sarcastic words used by a biology teacher explaining to the class why my 20-page term paper had failed to demolish Charles Darwin’s 592-page Origin of Species.

      Yet I also recall the satisfying feeling that came from belonging to a persecuted minority. We congratulated ourselves for living in the world without being of it. I felt like a spy, clutching some precious secret that few others knew about. This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through, we used to sing. During childhood and early adolescence, I rarely resented church: it was the lifeboat that carried me through the ocean swells of a turbulent

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