I feel bad when I have to give a book a bad review. I don’t feel too bad if I perceive it to be harmful to the Christian community, but I do feel bad when the book is not necessarily harmful, it’s just painful. I feel bad because I know that an author somewhere spent many hours toiling away at this book and yet my review shows little appreciation for that toil. Nevertheless, just as the author spent time writing, I spent time reading and as I was once told, if you are going to write a book, you should be prepared to be criticized.
The Resurrection of Ministry by Andrew Purves opens with great intention. The author desires to deliver ministry from the sadness, loss, and misdirection of holy Saturday into the resurrection life of Easter Sunday. In fact, I believe Purves is right in saying,
God raises up our ministries on their proper ground in the ministry of the resurrected and ascended Jesus, and we minister henceforth in the joy an hope of his life.
So, the basic premise of the book, that we should minister in light of the resurrected Lord and not in our own power is right and good, but the way that the author suggests getting there perplexing.
First, it’s worth pointing out that Purves obviously comes from a much more liturgical background that me and that he envisions redeeming churches through proper and appropriate understandings and movements of liturgy through the Christian calendar. It’s not fair for me to criticize this method simply because it doesn’t appeal to me, so I won’t.
However, that’s not the greatest weakness of the book. The greatest weakness of the book is that it is convoluted. This book is not a five step, ten step, or even a twelve step program. No, this is a nineteen step program. Nineteen steps spread out over 130 pages. Let me suggest that if a book has the statement, “Nineteenth step,” the issue is not simply a loquacious author, there is the greater issue of editing that was not done well.
I suppose to glean the most from this book and its nineteen steps, one should sit down and read it in one sitting. I was not able to do that, I wanted to, but I just couldn’t.
Further, on page 79, Purves writes the following,
Our primary job is to be martyrs. Luke 24:48 tells us that we are witnesses, that is martyrs, in the Greek martyres, of these things: that the Messiah had to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations. A martyr is someone who bears witness–it can mean someone who bears witness unto death, so-called red martyrdom, but it need not carry that ultimate sacrifice.
Certainly, we know that martyr in the original Greek meant witness, but since the earliest Christian times a martyr has been understood to be one who suffered and/0r died for their faith. It is confusing to refer to believers as martyrs. This passage suffers from the same malady as the rest of the book–a shocking lack of clarity. Like the passage above, the book is convoluted. This is unfortunate because the subject matter could have been treated with much more clarity.
To be sure, this book is not all bad. I am grateful for Dr. Purves’ emphasis on serving Jesus in light of his resurrection power and not in our own power. I felt that its greatest strength was his admonition to connect people not merely to “Christ,” the title of Jesus, but to Jesus himself, the person is valid. Too often people view Christ in an ethereal sense, we need to connect them to a living Savior who really died and really rose from the grave on the third day. He also, in chapter two, gives emphasis to the role of minister as active participant in the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ. We do not merely attest to a past ministry of our Lord, we are ongoing participants in his active ministry in the present.
I’m sure that Dr. Purves is a wonderful man and a gifted scholar, but this is not a great book. There are good parts, but the book as a whole is simply not clear and is certainly not a necessity in your library.
