Our Friend Frank Dent has written an in depth review Of our friend Michael Spencer’s book . We think our readers will find it compelling, and we urge you to buy the book and read it for yourselves.
Mere Michael Spencer A personal review of Mere Churchianity, by Michael Spencer (Waterbrook Press, 2010)
“For many of you, leaving the church may have been the most spiritually healthy thing you ever did.”
Michael Spencerʼs new book, Mere Churchianity, is all about me. That claim may well appear presumptuous since I never met Mr. Spencer, but Iʼm certain I wonʼt be alone in that perspective. I call this a “personal review” of Mere Churchianity because the book is such an authentic recounting of my personal experience that I canʼt help but see myself on nearly every page, and Iʼm convinced that a large number of American Christians who read it will, each and every one of them, be convinced the book was modeled on their personal experience. For those readers who are perfectly happy in their church home, this book may be a revelation to you. For those who have been awakened to the flight of Christians from the church, this book is the single best perspective from both inside and outside the church available. This is such a disturbingly accurate portrayal of what is happening to people who canʼt find Jesus in church that it invites a host of corroborating evidence as well as signaling a new focus for traditional, orthodox and confessional churches that have not succumbed to the Church Growth Movementʼs glossy borchures. Ordinarily, were this book to receive the reading it deserves, we should be expecting an equally insightful follow-up from Mr. Spencer in a few years. However, the God from whom all blessings flow will allow that book, if it ever comes, to be written by someone else, for Michael Spencer died of cancer before this painfully truthful challenge to American Christianity reached bookstores. We have his keenly insightful and plain spoken assessment of the church in America today to take to heart and use as a rallying point for a church of rediscovered mission and renewed vigor, and for that we are truly blessed by Mr. Spencerʼs wit, humility, restless mind, and boundless joy in living in Christ.
Mere Churchianity lines up very neatly with a number of topics that are in the air at the moment, topics that I associate with a renewed interest in Reformation theology and the confessional church. In fact, Spencerʼs book is so on-target for those of us “broken by the church,” as Dr. Rod Rosenbladt defined the experience years ago, that it canʼt help but reach a wide audience among Christians who have observed with dread the growing shadow of “churchianity,” or the natural outcome of Church Growth Movement strategies and the unthinking emphasis on the felt needs of the seeker, that has decimated a number of main-line Protestant denominations. Dr. Rosenbladtʼs address, “The Gospel for Those Broken by the Church,” works as a perfect prologue to Spencerʼs book, introducing us to the phenomenon of the “alumni of the church.” The sad alumni first “came to believe that the cross of Christ was their salvation. For free. And forever.” And then a transformation in the understanding of the Gospel began to take place which put these sad alumni on the path to walking away from the church, namely a misapplication of what Reformation Churches refer to as the “third use of the law.” Dr. Rosenbladt tells us that, when handled properly, the third use of the law provides us with plenty to consider as we contemplate how God would have us live our daily lives. When mishandled, the third use of the law can eventually destroy faith by fanning a growing disheartenment at the unattainable perfection of Christian living.
The “mad alumni” join the flight from the church from a different experience. For the mad ones, Christianity was supposed to make their lives better, more fulfilling, while their marriage and family relations would be more joyful, their careers would experience new growth, financial security would be at hand, and their lives would be overflowing with blessings. Or something like that. And, they bought into it. But, when these benefits didnʼt begin to flow into their lives, their marriages, their careers, and their bank accounts, the misapplication of the third use of the law told them that they simply werenʼt doing Christianity right. They needed to pray more, read the Bible more, attend church services more, and be more active in church ministries. The mad ones come to realize that they are so deeply invested in church that there isnʼt anything of the Gospel left and there simply isnʼt any hope of ever getting Christianity right. Unlike the despondent sad alumni, the mad alumni will reject the church and the Gospel, as well as any and all other religions, completely and resolutely.
Mere Churchianity picks up Dr. Rosenbladtʼs warning here to chronicle the paths taken by those who eventually become “leavers” or “quitters” in Spencerʼs terminology. Whereas Dr. Rosenbladtʼs address is a cautionary one that presents a compelling and heartrending picture of the reverse flow of “broken Christians” leaving the church, Spencerʼs task is to, by personal example, draw each one of us into committing to finding ways to un-do the devastation done to church-broken Christians. These are not academic musings or intellectual baubles from either of these two men, although both would be well-equipped for such a task. But, rather, both speak from personal experience, Dr. Rosenbladt from a pietistic Lutheran background and Spencer from a life of hacking away at the extraneous distractions that cloak historic, orthodox Christianity from the American seeker. Both present to us men so moved by what they see that they donʼt simply weep over the broken Bride of Christ but actively flag down all passersby to assist in lifting the church back up. Further, both zoom in on the misapplication of the third use of the law as a major contributor, despite the wildly disproportionate growth of a few mega-churches, to the current exodus of American Christians from the church.
There is another reference that must be made here to Michael Spencerʼs book, one that is clearly signaled by its title, Mere Churchianity. Although Spencer makes no self- conscious reference to C.S. Lewisʼ towering Mere Christianity, by the bookʼs very name it claims the legacy of the earlier work. I can see some critics stumbling over this claim to Lewisʼ legacy and that would prevent them from assessing Spencerʼs book in an even-handed manner. And yet, there it is. In fact, one would be hard pressed to identify any other common English word that would so readily draw an association with a great work in the Christian idiom quite as forcefully as the word “mere.” I suggest that the use of the word is warranted, not as a direct correlation of Spencer to Lewis but, rather, as a signal of how Spencerʼs book intends to address the American church and Christians as he finds them in his day as a deliberate counterpart to how Lewisʼ book addressed the English church and the Christians he found in his.
I left the church for the first time at my earliest opportunity, which was upon leaving home for college. Only a few years later, I was intellectually exhausted from the adrenaline rush of discovering one venerable and wholly new religious tradition, spiritual discipline, or life-affirming worldview after another, from East to West and from mysticism to fundamentalism. Certainly, my experience the first time I read C.S. Lewisʼs Mere Christianity thirty-five years ago was very personal as I then would certainly have identified myself among the half-persuaded that Lewis is speaking to in such good- natured tones and with such unflinching reason.
I consider Mere Christianity and Mere Churchianity to be like mirror images of each other. They share the same desire to affirm the historic, orthodox essence of our faith. Both present their case in a manner that is straight-forward, and never takes an officious or scolding tone. Both appeal to the native common sense of their audience, Lewis originally in a collection of radio addresses to a nation at war, and Spencer in an equally inclusive but distinctly 21st Century American style perfected from years in youth ministry, Christian classroom teaching, and blogging to the great, wide world of all comers. Lewis abandons all the brilliant rhetoric of the Oxford don, his accustomed setting, in order to speak directly and simply as though over a pint at the local pub, while Spencer abandons the church-speak of the clergyman or teacher to wrap his insightful message in the plain-spoken wit and wry world-weariness of, say, Will Rogers. Being a native Oklahoman myself, it is not a comparison I make lightly.
As much as Lewis has done to get people into the church over the last couple of generations Spencer is trying to accomplish in providing a church that will bring Christians back, and this is where the mirror-backward dissimilarities of the two books come to the forefront. Lewis witnessed the attacks on the Church that became the intellectual environment in Europe following World War I, he understood the underpinnings of these movements, and knew where they were weakest and where they posed the greatest threat. The radio addresses that formed the nucleus for Mere Christianity were broadcast during the dark days of World War II, when the Nazi Luftwaffe bombed London nightly and the hope of the English people was placed on the shoulders of a greatly outnumbered and out-gunned Royal Air Force. In the intellectual whirl-wind of war and the hardscrabble years of post-war recovery, Lewis called the English people back to the well-spring of faith in the God of all Creation and in the miracle of the substitutionary death of his Son on the Cross for all the sins of the world. He defended his English church against all intellectual counterfeits of Truth and labored to present the essentials of the historic, orthodox Christian faith in a way that would prevent his apologetic from being derailed by what he might consider the minority voice of dogma or denominational differences.
Spencer witnessed all the attacks on the church during his day, many from the zeitgeist of the post-modern world, but the most alarming from within the church itself. Spencer describes a Bride of Christ that has willingly submitted itself to an extreme makeover and the result is not the liberation of the churchʼs eternal mission but, instead, the trivialization of the Gospel under layers and layers of seeker sensitive narcissism and emerging church ambiguity. Spencer is not calling more people to this impostor of the Bride of Christ but is calling all of us to figure out what to do with all the “leavers,” all the sad and mad alumni of the church, to turn us back to the cross. However, Spencer is not a revolutionary. I think he believed that the contemporary Protestant church in America was collapsing under its own weight and needs no help from us. But the leavers do need our help.
But, Iʼm not writing to church members who are happy where theyʼre at or to Christians who are heavily invested in the success and propagation of the church as an organization. Iʼm writing instead to those who may still be associated with the church but no longer buy into much of what the church says. Not because they doubt the reality of God, but because they doubt that the church is really representing Jesus.
This quote from Mere Churchianity underscores what is perhaps the biggest single difference between Lewis and Spencer, and in fact the greatest single difference between the church of C.S. Lewis and the church of Michael Spencer. Lewis would argue, in mid-20th century England, that the church was precisely the place where anyone grappling with the questions of human life should be, that it was exactly within the church that we would find the forum where we can hear the words of eternal life and we can come to trust Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life.” Spencer declares that such a church no longer exists or, if it does, it exists in small, isolated pockets or in churches who managed to stay on the sidelines during the Church Growth craze. His is not the cautionary warning of some calamity that may occur if we continue on our heedless path. No, Spencer tells us that the Evangelical church of post-World War II America has come and has gone. The church in Spencerʼs book no longer represents Jesus to American culture. Heʼs not urging us to fix it. Itʼs too late for that. What we should be about, however, is learning to walk alongside the mad/sad leavers of the church so that a renewed evangelicalism, a revitalized faith, and a reborn church can begin to thrive right beside the old, dead one.
Spencer uses, to good effect, some recurring themes, such as “Jesus-shaped spirituality,” the “lie” of Christian adjectives (“good Christian,” “successful Christian life,” “dynamic Christian living,” etc.), the promotion of a kind of “unscripted life,” the “free- range believer,” and a kind of “self-induced feelgoodism” that characterizes churchianity. At the center of Spencerʼs discontent with the Church is a deep yearning to know Jesus, along with a grave spiritual disquiet resulting from going to church to find Jesus only to discover that Jesus isnʼt there. “Here is the truth,” writes Spencer, “Far from being Jesus-shaped Christians, we were church shaped. In fact, we were deniers of Jesus. We were frighteningly close to being Judas.”
Lewisʼ greatest asset in Mere Christianity was his ability to soften the shadow cast by his towering intellect to become “one of us” that we might hear the direct, plain-spoken truth of Godʼs plan for restoring the broken relationship between the Creator and his creation, and so we might sense the great depth of Lewisʼ personal trust in what he so keenly wanted us to know about God. Spencer doesnʼt have the baggage of Oxford and the reputation of the brilliant scholar of Renaissance and Medieval literature to overcome, and is quick to establish his full association with and membership in good standing in the human race of the early 21st century American variety, and from this leads us candidly and unabashedly into a life lived humbly before God. Yet, Spencerʼs book is no less orderly or carefully constructed as that of the great scholar, but the architecture of his thought is less apparent than Lewisʼ and often concealed behind the easy presentation of a natural conversationalist. It is this natural conveyance of penetrating questions buoyed effortlessly along by the ebb and flow of conversation that engages the reader and holds oneʼs mind and heart captive as Spencer makes relentless assault on his key themes. Where Lewis is an affable uncle you enjoyed badgering with questions at family gatherings, Spencer is the cousin who got you in trouble with some fireworks at church camp and then talked excitedly with you all night after lights-out about 1 Peter 1:24-25. This is but a sample of the rigor of thought and highly accessible language that characterizes this book:
If you have left the church or are headed for the door, there is a strong possibility that you have to leave in order to hold on to your integrity. You realized you can no longer play the religion game. You may be playing other games — Iʼm not letting any of us off the hook. But you found you could no longer be party to the endless act that says you are living the victorious Christian life.
Mere Churchianity is an important book. I would encourage any Christian, regardless of current church circumstances or prior experience, to read it. Read it, give copies away to people at church, or other Christians you know, and find other people who have read it, or who have tuned into some of these same ideas that are currently in the air, and take its message to heart. More than that, do something. Subvert the vernacular of church-speak within your fellowship with some challenges to discover Jesus-shaped spirituality. As you read Mere Churchianity, I am confident that you will arrive at some of the same observations that I did about the book, about the bookʼs key themes, and about Michael Spencer.
First, you will discover that Spencer is not above being provocative. Not the cheap, controversial book-jacket claims that weʼre used to seeing emblazoned across books targeted at Christians. No, I mean the kind of provocation that comes from somebody who knows you as well as you do, refuses to see you get spiritually flabby and self- contented, is willing to shock you back into consciousness, and loves you like a brother through it all. In short, Michael Spencer will say anything. Hereʼs a sampling:
“The exhausting effort to be a good Christian denies Christ. If you insist on securing your own holiness and acceptability, you disqualify yourself from seeing anything from Jesus. He came to earth to save sinners, not good Christians.”
“I realize that my using the expression Jesus-shaped spirituality as a way to recalibrate the Christian message runs the risk of sliding into the Christian-terminology sinkhole and never coming out. As with most things in the alternate world of Christian culture, my personal sympathies are firmly planted on both sides of this divide. You have to be careful where you point that spirituality thing, because it has the potential to grant legitimacy to all kinds of people who have nothing more interesting to say than ʻworship yourself.ʼ On the other hand, if the pursuit of spirituality gets away from the problems so many people have with the church and allows us to talk about our experience of God and where it comes from, Iʼm all for it.”
“I understand that Christians need — desperately — to hear experiential testimonies of the power of the gospel. I understand as well that itʼs not pleasant to hear that we are broken and are going to stay that way. I know there will be little enthusiasm for saying sanctification consists, in large measure, in seeing our sin and acknowledging how deeply and extensively it has marred us. No triumphalist will agree that the fight of faith is not a victory party but a bloody war on a battlefield that resembles Omaha Beach. But, thatʼs the way it is. Iʼm right on this one.”
You will find yourself both outraged and gladdened. For example, “Evangelicalism has become the sworn enemy of biblical Christianity. Instead, itʼs more like a fraternal lodge with its own language, rules, requirements, rituals, and secret handshake.” I read this and thought, “Atta boy, Mike!” But, I also read a defense of William Youngʼs The Shack on the grounds that we need to be more attuned to seeing God as a “loving, tender, attentive, gracious Father,” and I couldnʼt help but respond, “Oh, please, Mr. Spencer! The Shack? Seriously?” As superb conversationalist, Spencer is a fisher of men. In conversation, he might cast a hook using some outrageous statement as bait. Once the bait is taken he can easily back-fill your outrage with a different approach, another perspective, a second analogy. The provocation is forgotten and, unaware of the process, you find yourself lying helplessly in Spencerʼs boat. In his world, and regardless of the personal tone of much his appeal, Spencer is not the center. Jesus is. Provocation can help focus the mind on that center quite nicely when used as masterfully as Spencer does.
Secondly, you will discover a fresh voice to add to the list of “most quotable authors” in the popular Christian idiom. I think G.K. Chesterton must top the list as the most maddeningly quotable of all Christian writers. One of my favorite Chesterton quotes is from The Ball and The Cross, “The police have their faults, but thank God, theyʼre inefficient.” And, of course, Tolkien lovers can recite whole pages of quote-worthy prose from The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Lewis has sprinkled epigrams and life-lessons throughout his fiction, essays, and autobiographical works. Dorothy L. Sayers places many gems on the lips of her aristocratic detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. But, Michael Spencerʼs quotable lines are of more serious purpose. He wishes to say things in a way that may convey a familiar idea but he says it in a way to shock us into paying attention. Here is a sampling of “Spencerisms” from Mere Churchianity:
“Discipleship is a call to me, but it is a journey of ʻwe.ʼ”
“[Religion] claims to have something astonishing: God on call and spirituality in the warehouse.”
“My project to clean out my God closet and start over with the essentials leads me to Jesus Christ, Godʼs ultimate and amazing self-description.”
“North American Christianity may have the distinction of having promised more of God and delivered less of God than any single act on the stage of church history.”
And there are many, many more, practically one on every page. This embarrassment of riches makes the book both a joy to discover and an enduring source of timeless Christian expression.
The third thing you are likely to discover about Michael Spencer is how very much you miss him. Not in a maudlin way, for we do not despair of death. Michaelʼs faith, our Christian faith, prepares us for death, this most unnatural and personal assault of the darkness that came with a fallen creation. No, it is the kind of emptiness we all feel when weʼve shared a portion of our life with someone whose force of personality made us look at ourselves and our relationship to others and to our Creator in a very different and boldly invigorating way, never to be repeated. If you have this experience, donʼt keep it to yourself. I think that Michael Spencer would want us to be up and about, filled with a Jesus-shaped spirituality, not paralyzed with remorse for the past, but out in the world, vibrantly aware Whose we are and what He has done for us. “For free. And forever.”
By Pat K
If you ever want to see me get passionate quickly, put me in the room with a bunch of people who are considering leaving the church – and I mean passionately defensive of them. But if you ever want to see me lose all remnants of decorum, add in people who will defend the church at all costs.
Welcome to another installment of The Weekly Word, our effort to highlight Gospel-centered preaching from Lutheran pulpits. With vacation schedules this summer, we’ve gotten behind in posting these. But we’ll catch up quickly! You can always follow the links we post to the home page where these audio files are located.
