This is the book in the series most likely to make somebody uncomfortable, and I'd rather say that up front than have it come as a surprise.
The first three books are about a man and the fight he's in. This one turns to the body he's supposed to be fighting alongside. Because a man can get serious about all of it — the enemy, the thread, the armor — walk into a church on Sunday, and find a room that has quietly made peace with the thing he just declared war on.
The Battle and the Church is not an attack on the church. I love the church. It's a book about what a congregation looks like when it remembers what it was formed to do, and what it looks like when it forgets — and how a man in the pew can tell the difference.
What this book covers
- What the New Testament church was actually organized around, and how far the drift has gone
- Why so many men show up once, feel nothing, and never come back
- Comfort as a strategy — the enemy's most effective and least discussed move
- What a church at war looks like on a normal Tuesday, not just Sunday morning
- Serving faithfully in a congregation that isn't where you wish it was
- When to stay and fight for a church, and the narrow set of reasons to leave one
An army that forgets there's a war doesn't disband. It just stops posting guards.
Who it's for
Men who've come back to faith and can't figure out why Sunday feels flat. Pastors and elders willing to hear it from a guy in the pew. Men's ministry leaders trying to get a group off the ground. Anyone who's been hurt by a church and hasn't decided yet whether to write the whole thing off.
Read it after Book One if you can. The argument here assumes you already believe there's something to fight.