Hope for Nations review

We in the church are concerned about the changes we see happening around us as an older generation fades away, and the younger generations seem less and less involved or interested in Christianity as we know it. Some studies show that the number of Christians in the U.S. and the West is dropping. Others suggest that the percentages are staying the same. Still others say yes, we’re seeing a decline in numbers, but the people who are leaving churches were never really engaged anyway, so the people who are staying are truly committed Christians.

                But all too often the ‘truly committed’ who are staying have reached a point in their lives where they are physically unable to do much of the work that needs to be done, and since they are living on fixed incomes, the financial support isn’t always there either.

                So what does the future of the church look like? We’ve gone through the age of enlightenment, post-modernity, post-truth, and even post-Christian.  Declining numbers, declining percentages, increases in other faith groups that just a couple of generations ago were just a fraction of a percent as far as our population goes. And the many members of the youngest generations are not at all interested in spending an hour in church every Sunday, even if all they have to do is sit there and be entertained. Forget about evangelism, discipleship, missions, and the work of the church.

Add in the attacks against the church. Make them pay taxes. Don’t allow the pastor to use his pulpit to speak about anything political, and apparently we’re not teaching history because so many young people think socialism would be a good alternative to the society we now have. They forget, Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, and a host of others whose socialistic societies failed, and led to not-so-minor skirmishes.

John S. Dickerson, in his book Hope of Nations: Standing Strong in a Post-Truth, Post-Christian World (Zondervan, 2018) points out so many things that are rising up against the church. And we need to be aware of them; however, I felt that at times there was a little too much scare tactics involved in his writing.

Even before the Introduction, there is a quote from A.W. Tozer: “A scared world needs a fearless church.” I was hoping for more about the fearless church and less of the scared world. I live in that scared world, and I want my church to fearless in the face of the world.

Obviously the Hope of Nations is Jesus, and in the last section of the book, he does point that out. There are things that churches can do, ways that churches can act and react in the face of fear. And I especially like the ‘manifestos’ found on pages 278 and 279.

Unfortunately the ‘scared world’ reporting almost caused me to put the book down before I got to the part about the ‘fearless church’, so I can only rate this book a ‘C’

I received a copy of this book for ‘Handlebar’ in exchange for my review

3/5