The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church

Weight .04 lbs
Dimensions 7.25 × 4.8 × 0.2 in
ISBN 9781800400146
Page Count

16

Binding

Booklet, eBook (ePub & Kindle), Booklet & eBook (ePub & Kindle)

Series

Booklets

Banner Pub Date

Mar 11, 2021

Topic

Church Life

Format

Booklet

ISBN

9781800400146

Book Description

David F. Wells of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Massachusetts, here challenges evangelicalism with a disturbing analysis of its present condition. He believes that we have allowed ourselves to be shaped by the popular culture whose ethos is alien to God-consciousness, to ‘other-worldliness’, and to passion for biblical truth. In putting ‘success’ before theology we have produced a plague of nominal evangelicalism which, unless reversed, leaves us ‘headed towards the oblivion of irrelevance before God’.

This material was first delivered at a Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals who have kindly assisted in the publication. Much fuller treatment of the same themes will be found in the author’s influential books, No Place for Truth and God in the Wasteland. While referring especially to the North American scene, the wider relevance of Dr Wells’ message is indicated by the fact that these two titles have joint publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, W.B. Eerdmans and IVP.

‘What is most lost is what most needs to be recovered. It is the unsettling, disconcerting, moral presence of God in our midst. He can no longer be the junior partner in our religious enterprises and he can never be just an ornamental decoration upon our Church life. It is because God now rests so inconsequentially upon the Church that the Church is free to plot and to devise its success in its own way. That is why so many of our forebears in the faith would scarcely even recognize us as their children today.’

3 testimonials for The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church

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  1. Chris Anderson

    It was 1994 when I first read “No Place for Truth” and it resonated within my heart and mind. Recently I re-perused my marginal annotations and David Wells is yet trenchant, and so it is that I look forward to reading his essay on the Evangelical Church. It is indeed bleeding. My suggestion is to couple this essay with Banner’s D. Martin Lloyd-Jones’ “What is an Evangelical?” from his 1971 address to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. It was prescient then and foresaw the plight in today’s evangelical church. A good couplet.

  2. Sherrie L.

    What we have done in America is allowed the Roman Catholic Jesuits to infiltrate our White House, seats of political power and our churches. There was once a time in America not so long ago that our greatest fear was not an invasion by any other country but by an invasion of our ultimate spiritual enemy on Earth; Roman Catholicism.

  3. Benjamin Hegan

    Stirring. Pertinent for all of us who call ourselves evangelical. Here is a very clear diagnosis of the issues as well as the proposed solution. Despite being first published well before I was born (1965), it is very relevant today. I will be recommending this short booklet to my friends and speaking about these things within my denomination because these are critical matters if we want a sound Evangelical or even Reformed Church to exist in say 50 years from now. Highly recommended.

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