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Book Review: Ordinary

Book Review: Ordinary

Last updated on: June 26, 2015 at 2:09 am by Michael F. Bird

Book Review: Ordinary 2015-06-24T02:21:46-04:00 Michael F. Bird

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Michael Horton

Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Available at Amazon.com

Review by Kara Martin

This morning my family went to church in a different suburb, a different state, to our usual church. We were inspired by the service. It was not the awesome worship: there were just three singers with a CD back-up track. It wasn’t the Bible reading: there was no specific passage chosen. It was not the powerful prayer: there was a stumbling prayer by the guy leading the service. It was, in fact, simply the stories, by two congregation members, of their latest trips.

Keiran had gone to China, to bear witness to the solemn yet joyful handing out of thousands of Bibles to Chinese Christians. He had been an invited by an organisation whose promise it was that Bibles would be delivered directly into the hands of the Chinese, and the organisation honoured that commitment by inviting people from around the world to join in the process.

Sue had left a comfortable job in the Air Force to work as a nurse in Papua New Guinea. She spoke honestly about the trials and challenges, admitting she had cried more in the last two years than in the previous 44! She also had stories of the ways God had changed her and used her and worked through her.

My husband remarked that this is what it must have been like in the early church: people gathering to hear the stories of what God had been doing in the ordinary lives of Jesus’ followers.

It was a reminder that church can seem very ordinary in the eyes of the world, but that is okay. I have been reading a lot about church lately. Michael Horton’s Ordinary is a critique of the church in America as it seeks to become more spectacular and entertaining to win an audience. He says that church should not be about the ‘radical’ or ‘transformative’ or ‘extreme’. It should be about the ordinary way that God’s people have gathered and nurtured the faith through the centuries.

Horton says church should be about the simple patterns of Bible reading, prayer, worship, reciting catechisms, practising baptism and confirmation of faith, and sharing communion to remember what Jesus has done.

It is not an exciting premise for a book: “how to be ordinary”! However, that is precisely the point Horton is making, that Christians have been sucked into the desire for the spectacular. He is also concerned that we are falling into traps that Paul warned the early church about: ambitious church leaders and Jesus followers seeking super-apostles.

His antidote is contentment, faithful obedience, loving your neighbour and being content to live ordinary lives in the light of the extraordinary events to come with Jesus’ return.

By coincidence, I have been reading Eugene Peterson’s Practising Resurrection and I think he nails the issue when he says that we are in danger of seeing church as “a human activity to be measured by human expectations” rather than as the gift of God to be received: Christ’s body, his people gathered, then scattered.

Horton’s book is as much about growing up into spiritual maturity as it is about the church, because the two are inextricably linked. God always seeks to work through relationship, his relationship with us, and the building of his community, the church. Horton points out that to grow together, we need to know each other deeply, and practise life together, and this cannot be done with frenetic programs, constant conference-going, and chasing after the latest spiritual fad.

More than once I felt chastened by this book, for my temptation to follow certain church leaders, to critique my own church, to prick up my ears at what the latest movement through the church might be…

There is lots to value in this book, especially at a time when social media brings us the latest sermons, alerts us to the best worship songs, and leaves us grasping for more than our humble local gathering. The reality is that all the latest teaching and tools cannot replace the simple disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, meeting together, and understanding what we believe well enough so that we can tell others why we believe.

There is some criticism that I believe is overdone, such as the chastisement of youth groups and activities that Horton believes take the youth out of the church and help to create the desire for spiritual entertainment, rather than fostering the disciplines of imparting truth. It may be that US churches are more extreme in their youth programs, but certainly the churches I have seen in Australia connect in with the youth and emphasise good teaching.

Horton admits he speaks from a Presbyterian perspective, and the danger would be to criticise some other worship traditions without understanding the depth of what occurs in the practises of those churches in discipling their followers.

I found most helpful his list under “Ordinary callings: cultural transformation or loving service?”

A call to radical transformation of society can distract faith’s gaze from Christ and focus it on ourselves
Radical views of cultural transformation undermine ordinary vocations that keep God’s gifts circulating
We can end up with a spiritualised version of upward mobility, adopting an elitism that places a premium on high-profile callings
Radical transformation can devalue creative gifts and the aesthetic.

Horton’s reliance on quotes from Calvin, Lewis and Augustine demonstrates the value of reading the greats, learning from the wise, while not treating them like super-apostles, and always weighing up their words against God’s Word.

Ordinary made me think of a character in another book I have been reading, Lila, by Marilynne Robinson. John Ames spent his whole life in the same town, preaching to the same congregation, faithfully carrying out his duties: “He had looked into those faces in the pews for so many years, and couldn’t look at any one of them without remembering the day he buried a mother, christened a child soothed a parting as well as he could.”

Maybe we all need a reminder to see our church as the place where we ‘do life’ with other saints that God has brought us into relationship with, seeking to serve and use our gifts, and welcome, and encourage, and rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who mourn.

KARA MARTIN is the Associate Dean of the Marketplace Institute, Ridley College, Melbourne, and is an avid reader and book group attendee. Kara does book reviews for Eternity Magazine.

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