Book Review: Flourishing Churches and Communities: A Pentecostal Primer on Faith, Work, and Economics for Spirit-Empowered Discipleship by Charlie Self
Charlie Self, Flourishing Churches and Communities: A Pentecostal Primer on Faith, Work, and Economics for Spirit-Empowered Discipleship
(Grand Rapids, MI: Christian’s Library Press, 2013). 139 pages. $9.00
Living as a follower of Jesus Christ Sunday through Saturday is daunting; living as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ is impossible, apart from the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. One of the key challenges and enduring callings for any pastor, preacher, or church leader is to prepare and equip the people of God to discern the ongoing work of the triune God in and through their own spheres—arenas of work. It becomes an easy temptation to fall prey to sequestering the “Christian life” to Sunday worship, or whenever and wherever fellow believers come together for worship and fellowship. Such an approach can quickly devolve to a judgmental separation from the rest of the world, and/or an apathy and indifference to regard worship and fellowship as one among several activities that occupy time and attention.
Pentecostal theologian and pastor Charlie Self calls for a holistic theology of vocation, or more accurately a theology of life, firmly grounded in the triune God. His theological framework is practical and robust, seeking to integrate the claims we confess, pray, and sing in our worship with the work and service we render in the daily rhythm and vicissitudes of our lives: attending to business appointments, waiting on tables, raising kids, paying our taxes, visiting a loved one in a hospital, sitting with a mug of coffee and a good book, answering our e-mails.
C. Self’s volume is an easy read, user-friendly, combined with depth, as every chapter articulates the Gospel of Jesus Christ at several angles. Each chapter has theological insight, then offers “Profiles for Courage” of real-life examples of persons who are living out their God-given calling, and closes with study questions and suggestions for further reading.
C. Self sees that churches, communities, and our nation flourish when we live into the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. This involves the witnessing of believers in their daily lives of God’s promises in Christ, seeing in their work the calling of God, and working for justice to alleviate human suffering and caring for the earth, what he called being “God’s contractors,” i.e. stewards.
The book is premised on five biblical-theological principles:
• Work is good (p. xxviii)
• Sin has pervaded creation but has not prevented good from being expressed in our nature and work (p. xxix)
• God’s reconciliation in Christ therefore calls the Church to express kingdom ethics (p. xxix)
• The Holy Spirit enables compassion to address poverty and to enable community flourishing (pp. xxx)
• “Cultural, economic and social institutions are built on transcendent moral foundations” (pp. xxx)
These are then fleshed out in subsequent chapters, put to practical terms in a quartet: (p. 70)
• Loving God
• Loving Self
• Loving our purpose
• Loving others
C. Self then organized these four to correspond to what he calls a “Transformational Quartet” involving: (p. 73)
• Spiritual Formation
• Personal Wholeness
• Vocational Clarity
• Relational Integrity
These quartets are grounded in the triune God, which C. Self frames in a corresponding quadrant: (p. 70)
• “Enjoying fellowship with the Trinity”
• “Appreciating the person God made us to be”
• “Giving Jesus a great return on investment”
• “Cultivating healthy relationships”
Flourishing Churches and Communities is a welcome addition to recent books in my own Reformed tradition on an integrated and holistic theology of work, from the likes of Tim Keller (Every Good Endeavor) and Mark Labberton (Dangerous Act of Worship). C. Self beautifully brings together evangelism and justice, where, far too often in the church, persons or groups are labeled as emphasizing or specializing in one or the other; the Great Commission and Great Commandment call for evangelism and justice to work as glove and hand.
But C. Self goes a step further. He challenges pastors and local churches to equip and encourage believers to see their entire lives, everything that is done under the son, as arenas for God’s work, canvasses in which God is painting a wonderful tapestry. Caring for the wideness of human relationships means not merely writing a check and putting it in the offering plate or supporting a philanthropic cause; C. Self exhorts us to see that everything that we do necessarily has impact on other persons, and therefore, we need to do our work with excellence, integrity, and compassion. His theological framework brings the work and the conversation to the broader space of our globalized economy, the sacred responsibilities of Christ’s followers to live, move, and have our being within and from the life and heart of God. This is putting people over profit. It is being prophets in the workplace, in our communities, in our homes. It’s the Gospel over goods; it’s the Savior over services.
I commend this book to pastors, teachers, preachers, and anyone who cares deeply and seriously about living out the Great Commission and Great Commandment everyday for the sake and life of the world.
