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Church: Why Bother?
 
 
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Church: Why Bother? [Hardcover]

Philip Yancey (Author), Eugene H. Peterson (Foreword)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)


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Book Description

Growing Deeper January 1, 1998
Philip Yancey offers an honest and insightful book to help readers explore their need to find spiritual connection and community.


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Philip Yancey asks the question that haunts many believers: Why should I bother with the church? From growing up in rural Georgia in a fundamentalist church to his experience at LaSalle Street Church in inner city Chicago, Philip reflects on the church, his own perceptions of it, and the various metaphors the Bible uses to describe it. Yancey's own early church experience set his faith back by many years. In Church: Why Bother? he offers us a glimpse of his pilgrimage back to faith and to the church as a place of real community and spiritual vitality. This honest and insightful book will help you explore your questions about the place of the church in the life of faith and how to find spiritual connection and community.

From the Author

Philip Yancey serves as editor at Large for Christianity Today magazine. His books The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace? were national best-sellers appearing on both the Publisher's Weekly and ECPA lists. Both books also won the Gold Medallion Book of the Year Award. Yancey has written eight Gold Medallion Award-winning books, including Where Is God When it Hurts? Disappointment with God, and The Gift of Pain. He co-edited The Student Bible, which also won a Gold Medallion Award. He and his wife live in Colorado.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 112 pages
  • Publisher: Zondervan Publishing Company (January 1, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0310202000
  • ISBN-13: 978-0310202004
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #850,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I worked for 10 years as an Editor and then Publisher for Campus Life magazine. There I learned journalistic skills (there's no tougher audience than teenagers), but every year it seemed I wrote fewer and fewer words. In 1980 my wife Janet and I moved to downtown Chicago where I began a career as a freelance writer. (She has worked as a social worker and hospice chaplain--which gives me plenty of material to write about!) We lived there until 1992, when we moved to the foothills of Colorado. I've written around 20 books, most of them still in print, thankfully. Three of them I coauthored with Dr. Paul Brand, who influenced me more than any single person. My own favorites are "Soul Survivor" and "Reaching for the Invisible God" because both of them forced me to dig deep and get personal. I'm a pilgrim, still "in recovery" from a bad church upbringing, searching for a faith that makes its followers larger and not smaller. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living writing about the questions that interest me.

Please visit my website at www.philipyancey.com for more information, essays, events, travel notes, and a blog.

There is also an official Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/PhilipYancey?v=wall

 

Customer Reviews

25 Reviews
5 star:
 (16)
4 star:
 (5)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars How to worship despite being in church, July 4, 1998
By 
This review is from: Church: Why Bother? (Hardcover)
Everyone who has attended church with regularity can understand boredom and indifference among the congregants. Services are often not conducive to worship. Avoiding an abstract, depersonalized discussion of the matter, Philip Yancey relates his own reflections and experiences during his Christian pilgrimage. Rather than going to church services wondering how they will minister to US, we should go to church services to worship GOD. Our attention should be directed outward ("How did God view my worship?") rather than inward ("I got nothing out of that church service.") Sometimes, perhaps most times, we have to conduct our worship of God DESPITE being in church. But that is what we should do.

I liked this personalized and down-to-earth approach of one layman talking to another. (One is reminded of C.S. Lewis's REFLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS where Lewis says he is not presuming to instruct, he is merely comparing notes, like two school boys talking shop and helping each other over difficulties their schoolmaster has long forgotten about.) I enjoyed Eugene Peterson's Foreword too. This easily readable book (only 100 pages long) is good for personal reading as well as group discussion.

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Two out of three chapters isn't bad., March 11, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Church: Why Bother? (Hardcover)
This had to be Yancey's quickest "read." In his three chapters he gives all those who are cynical about the church a view of the church that is refreshing. He reminds the reader of what the church CAN be and what difference it can make. The second chapter had to be the most innovative (as Yancey always is) with his contemporary images of the church, describing the church the way the apostle Paul might if he were writing in the late 20th century. After reading the chapter I am no longer ashamed to admit that I too have a "crutch" faith. In his 3rd chapter, Yancey meanders and doesn't conclude with a bang. The climax is found right in the middle of this short book. If you have a friend who lives by the motto: "Jesus, Yes...Church, No." please get them this book.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Answers the perennial question: "Why belong to a church?", April 15, 1998
This review is from: Church: Why Bother? (Hardcover)
For those on the inside who wonder what the church is doing, and those on the outside who criticize the church for not doing better, this book is highly recommended. In his musings, Yancey is insightfully aware of the foibles and and foibles of the church in all of it's humanness, yet he also declares that the church is the means God has chosen to be in the world today. As he wrote in "What's So Amazing About Grace," "I left the church because I found so little grace there. I came back because I found grace nowhere else." I'm buying a copy for each member of the session.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
As I grew up in Georgia, church defined my life. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Street Church, New Testament, Driver's License Bureau, Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Leslie, Henri Nouwen, Lake Michigan, North Avenue Beach, Soren Kierkegaard
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