Product Description

Philip Yancey offers an honest and insightful book to help readers explore their need to find spiritual connection and community.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94105 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From the Back Cover
Insights from Philip Yancey’s personal pilgrimage away from and back to the church

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, and weighs the church’s human failings against its compelling worth as the body of Christ. Yancey does not whitewash the church’s faults, rather 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.

About the Author
Philip Yancey serves as editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine. He has written twelve Gold Medallion Award-winning books, including "Where is God when it Hurts", "Disappointment with God", and "The Gift of Pain. His books "The Jesus I Never Knew" and "What’s So Amazing About Grace?" were also awarded the Christian Book of the Year. He is also the author of "The Bible Jesus Read".

Customer Reviews

How to worship despite being in church
Everyone who has attended church with regularity can understand boredom and indifference among the congregants. Services are often not conducive to worship. Avoiding an abstract, depersonalized discussion of the matter, Philip Yancey relates his own reflections and experiences during his Christian pilgrimage. Rather than going to church services wondering how they will minister to US, we should go to church services to worship GOD. Our attention should be directed outward ("How did God view my worship?") rather than inward ("I got nothing out of that church service.") Sometimes, perhaps most times, we have to conduct our worship of God DESPITE being in church. But that is what we should do.

I liked this personalized and down-to-earth approach of one layman talking to another. (One is reminded of C.S. Lewis's REFLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS where Lewis says he is not presuming to instruct, he is merely comparing notes, like two school boys talking shop and helping each other over difficulties their schoolmaster has long forgotten about.) I enjoyed Eugene Peterson's Foreword too. This easily readable book (only 100 pages long) is good for personal reading as well as group discussion.

Two out of three chapters isn't bad.
This had to be Yancey's quickest "read." In his three chapters he gives all those who are cynical about the church a view of the church that is refreshing. He reminds the reader of what the church CAN be and what difference it can make. The second chapter had to be the most innovative (as Yancey always is) with his contemporary images of the church, describing the church the way the apostle Paul might if he were writing in the late 20th century. After reading the chapter I am no longer ashamed to admit that I too have a "crutch" faith. In his 3rd chapter, Yancey meanders and doesn't conclude with a bang. The climax is found right in the middle of this short book. If you have a friend who lives by the motto: "Jesus, Yes...Church, No." please get them this book.

Answers the perennial question: "Why belong to a church?"
For those on the inside who wonder what the church is doing, and those on the outside who criticize the church for not doing better, this book is highly recommended. In his musings, Yancey is insightfully aware of the foibles and and foibles of the church in all of it's humanness, yet he also declares that the church is the means God has chosen to be in the world today. As he wrote in "What's So Amazing About Grace," "I left the church because I found so little grace there. I came back because I found grace nowhere else." I'm buying a copy for each member of the session.