Purpose Driven Life

[kayre]

Summary: “It is your job to protect the unity of your church.” How to do this: Focus on what we have in common, not our differences (“God wants unity, not uniformity”); be realistic in your expectations (“Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of immaturity.... settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension.); choose to encourage rather than criticize; refuse to listen to gossip; practice ‘God’s method’ for conflict resolution (yesterday’s chapter); support your pastor and leaders

My thoughts: Starts right off with a very fuzzy paraphrase. Am I surprised? Then later he quotes the same verse from a different translation, as if it’s a new reference. Wow, he quotes Bonhoeffer!

Once again, I am reluctantly impressed, as may be obvious from my summary. How can the same person who wrote 18 or so chapters of garbage turn around and write this? Yesterday’s chapter and today, expanded to about 5 chapters each, would be a real gift to the church (especially if someone forced Warren to be more honest in how he uses Scripture). As it is, those first chapters of horror stand-- and then wonderful stuff is compressed into a few pages that folk are supposed to somehow come to grips with overnight.