Title – What Is a Healthy Church Member?

Author – Thabiti M. Anyabwile (twitter, gospel coalition)

Publisher – Wheaton: Crossway, 2008

I really like this guy.  He has a passion for church planting.  He is a part of the pastoral team for the start-up of Anocostia River Church.

His books are a blessing to the body of Christ.

I have been circulating this book among members in our church fellowship.  Anyabwile challenges the brothers and sisters of the local church to be the following: (1) expositional listener, (2) biblical theologian, (3) gospel saturated, (4) genuinely converted, (5) biblical evangelist, (6) committed member, (7) seeks discipline, (8) growing disciple, (9) humble follower, and a (10) prayer warrior.

There is a lot involved in being a healthy church member.  We need a revival in church members, and this little book can be one of those sparks.

But less you think that fulfilling responsibilities as a member of the church is all about your self-effort, take note of this final word from Thabiti:

It is entirely possible to read this book and assess yourself while completely losing sight of Jesus Christ and the cross.  That is, you may read this book and go away thinking “work, work, work” instead of “grace, grace, grace” or “trust, trust, trust.”  Each of the chapters may have become for you a roadmap for self-improvement and self-effort, duty and perhaps drudgery.  The counsel of this book is offered not as a prescription to be taken independent of God’s grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Neither condemnation and judgment nor practical atheism are the hoped-for results of this book.  Rather, I pray that you’ve been able to read What Is a Healthy Church Member? with a pleading heart, desiring that the Lord of the church might supernaturally awaken each of his saints to serve in extraordinary ways.  I pray that a deep dependence upon the True Vine–apart from whom we can do nothing–grows in each of our hearts as we long more and more to be what Christ is making us to be.

Amen.  Amen.