Review: “Stop dating the church – fall in love with the family of God” (Joshua Harris, 2004)
This is another classic Josh Harris book, easy to read, challenging and engaging with serious issues. It is also great to see the way the author has grown further in wisdom since his first book “I kissed dating goodbye”. It shares a similar theme – dating is silly, it is all about commitment.
I picked it up at Departure (the Eden Baptist Church student weekend away) where 10 of those were doing some good offers. We had some great teaching from 1 Corinthians 12-14 on the Church there and I thought I would read a little more about it.
It is quite short with only 129 pages using a large print so can be read in a couple of hours.
The first few chapters are most applicable for people who are ‘dating’ the church which essentially means not totally committed to your local church. It has been a while since that was me – the church is the best thing God ever made. However it is good to be reminded again of the things that we know to be true and to think again of how we can apply that.
Chapter 5 “Choosing Your Church” is a good review of the fundamental things that a church has to have and of the attitudes etc. that are important to have while choosing.
However my favourite chapters were 6 and 7 “Rescuing Sunday” and “The Dearest Place on Earth”. Sunday has been the best day of the week by far for me for at least 3 years now but “Rescuing Sunday” contains lots of practical steps for making it even better. “The Dearest Place on Earth” is a great conclusion by exposition from the end of John and really calls us to go out and live this.
In summary, a good book well worth reading on the heart theology and application end of the spectrum – “you know this is true, now go live like that, you know you want to”.
Tags: book review, church, commitment, Josh Harris, love