Book Review: Famine in the Land

In my on-going quest for good solid reading material as it relates to Christian ministry, I go to a number of the BLOGS that I have bookmarked just to see what is being recommended to pastors. A few months ago I came across a title that really intrigued me given the paucity of solid expositional preaching in the pulpit today. The book is entitled, “Famine in the Land” by Dr. Steven Lawson. I went to Amazon and read the three reviews that had been given and was much impressed; so much so in fact that I ordered the book. It arrived and I read it within a couple of days. At first I thought that I had ordered the wrong book, but no it was the correct one. I was somewhat disappointed in what I found, and when asked by Amazon to do a review, I rather agonized over it for a couple of days since I knew what I had to say would not be in keeping with the other reviewers. Still, I proceeded and what you will find below is my first ever review of a book of any kind. If someone else comes across this small volume, reads it and finds my review too harsh, please let me know.

Some time ago I preached a message based on the prophet Micaiah’s experience with King Jehoshaphat in I Kings 22 wherein this monarch, in attempting to bring the King of Israel into a military alliance against a common enemy, held a great banquet wherein the false prophets (all 400 of them) were summoned to give their “advice” in going to war. In one accord they all agreed that such a venture could not help but know success. The king of Israel however, insisted on having the prophecy of one more prophet, and so Micaiah was summoned though Jehoshaphat was against it knowing that this man would prophecy only the truth.

On a number of occasions over the past few years I have been placed in Micaiah’s position though never to bring forth truth against error, but simply as one that takes a different point of view. I do that not for controversy’s sake, but because I sense that something in the very able opinion of others is perhaps lacking.

As a pastor seeking our Sovereign Lord’s direction back into full time pastoral ministry, I am ever on the outlook for books that will bring me encouragement in the essential matter of expository preaching. This is a discipline that is sorely lacking in the pulpit of our present day. Hence when I came across our brother Lawson’s book and read the reviews here on Amazon, I very much looked forward to having it as a valuable contribution to my modest library. I received the book within a few days of ordering it.

My first thought, given that it was a hard back, was that it was quite short. In fact it was even shorter than I had first imagined. It’s listed at 128 pages but when the blank pages are eliminated, and the mountainous footnotes are taken away, there are but 89 pages of script left. Further, the font size is unusually large for a book that measures barely six by eight inches.

Brother Challies (a fellow Canuck whom I respect very much) mentioned in his review that there are a great many quotes in the book. Indeed true, in fact, there are so many quotes that the author’s actual contribution is greatly minimized. Hardly a page goes by that there are one and sometimes more quotes of a great many authors. Of course what all these are saying is very true, but one is left from time to time wondering what the author of this book actually has to say for his original material is actually at a bare minimum.

The one area that did rather bother me, however, was his use of Jonah as an example of a compelling preacher of the Word. Like many preachers, I have preached through the book of Jonah on more than one occasion, and I hardly find him a heightened sample of, in our author’s words, a “courageous, compelling, confrontational, compassionate” preacher. In the first place he did everything in his power to avoid following the divine directive that he was given. That cost him. Then when he did make it to Ninevah, the message he delivered was as brief as he could make it, and somehow I’ve always gotten the feeling from the text that he delivered it as quickly as possible to get the whole thing behind him. I see very little courage in the man; his compelling message was that of Almighty God; his confrontation was as brief as possible; and as for compassionate, well I’m certain that chapter four, verse one tells it better than anything else, for when at the message the city repented of its evil and God turned from destroying them, we read: “…it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry”. This is compassion??

What Jonah best teaches is the absolutely sovereignty of God, not the effective preaching of a reluctant servant.

Now, please do not think that I am attempting to put our brother down for his attempt to bring forth a much needed book on a subject that we as preachers need to hear more about. I would say rather that I am just disappointed in having very little to read of what this dear brother is saying, for he, on a personal level really has very little to say.

PHILOSOPHY OF MINISTRY

Over many months of contacting churches quite literally around the world and receiving replies from a great many of them, I have at last succumbed to the need of putting together what for me is a “philosophy of ministry”, though it may not be regarded as such by those to whom I send it. Still it does set down a mode of approaching the whole matter of pastoral ministry as I believe that it is set out in the Word of God. Today’s church has such a wide variety of methodologies in “doing ministry”, most of which I not only disagree with, but many I find quite reprehensible in their approach to building up the body of Christ and seeking to extend the Kingdom of God. The following then is my latest “document” to churches that are looking to provide preachers for the “sacred desk”.


“Dear brethren, given the present day climate that is rather pervasive in the church of our present day I do find it behooves me as a pastor of the gospel of Jesus Christ to provide a church in which I would dearly love to candidate, a summary of what I believe with very strong conviction to be the course of ministry which needs to be followed. Now of course I realize that most men entering the ministry, and even many who have been pastors over many years would concur with what I am about to say; yet the problem has become that a great percentage of them will not, alas, follow through in their every day ministries preferring rather to move along the more contemporary lines that many churches are pursuing right now.

“When I was ordained by the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada [FEBC] I received a rather handsome certificate on that very special day which in addition to the factual data with respect to place of ordination, messengers in attendance and who did what, there were but three very important words across the top which is the plain admonition to young pastor Timothy from his mentor Paul, and is simply, “preach the word …”.

“That’s a great job description, and of course if you need further elucidation to this, Paul does another very nice job in his letter to the Ephesian church as he describes the outworking of certain vital spiritual gifts that our Sovereign God gives to the church. With respect to these gifts Paul explains:

‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.’ (emphasis added)

“Now I do not know whether you folk have noted it or not, but as you look out across North America, indeed, around the world in general, this vital rôle is not being carried out by the majority of men occupying evangelical pulpits. I have been a Christian for a good number of years; I have been a part of the church for my whole life, and over the course of at least the last ten to twelve years having preached in quite a number of churches in both Canada and the U.S., and been extremely involved in several, I can tell you without equivocation, this is not happening. What has taken over, and I say this with a great deal of sadness in my own heart for I have seen it firsthand, is the corporate mindset that has said, “If it works, we’ll do it!”. That’s pragmatism at its worst. If it’s fine out there in the corporate world wherein dollar signs are the bottom line, so be it. It is not, nor has it ever been God’s way of ministry for it in no way accords with His Word.

“The truth seems to have gotten by many of our brethren who are of the opinion that the church today needs our finite input in order to make it what we think it should be. What is being forgotten, perhaps because it is so infrequently preached, is the fact that the church is the body of Christ. It is His … and His alone! Remember what Jesus said to Peter on that day when asked, “…but who do you say that I am?” The answer came from Peter, “… you are the Christ, the Son of the living God”. Jesus was very pleased with this response and replied (I’m sure there was a smile on the Master’s face):

‘…Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ (emphasis added)

“These words of Christ are overlooked in man’s quest to “get the job done”; and what is forgotten is that the body is His … not ours. You see the “rock” is this truth that Peter has just sounded out, and this is the rock upon which we are to build and nothing else.

“So then, what is my approach to ministry? Simple – preach the Word; teach the Word; disciple the Word; counsel the Word, and live the Word by His grace. That’s a pastor’s job description. He must know the Word, and then he must feed it in love to those sheep of his flock that have been entrusted to his care.

“In this regard this is one other matter that was first brought to my attention by some fellow FEBC pastors many years ago at a pastors conference at Mary Lake here in Muskoka, Ontario. And that has to do with a ministry of the body of Christ that is being little practiced in the church of just about any stripe. Once again, it is something that the Lord Jesus left for His disciples to see to, and of course by extension believers in the church through all succeeding generations. These are our Lord’s words, indeed His admonition:

‘…Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…’

“God’s people are to be discipled. Why? Because Jesus said so. I have had the very distinct privilege on a number of occasions to disciple young people, but the last time that I was afforded this wondrous opportunity was some years back in a large FEB church here in Sarnia. I began working with a young couple, married not too long, and while she had been a professing believer for some years, he was a new convert. When asked if they would like to “be discipled” they accepted with an alacrity that surprised me. So, over the next two and a half years I met with them both weekly for two to three hour sessions. It was a magnificent experience. It was like watching a blotter soak up a liquid as they both came to see the truths of the Word of God; and see it for what it was and is – the Living Word. About a year after we started they both sensed God’s direction in ways that none of us ever anticipated – to the mission field. Today, they serve the Lord with a joy that is hard to describe as they work together with their growing family with New Tribes Mission in Venezuela.

“As I have looked out on the church today; as I have studied all of the various aberrations that have and are taking place (e.g. church growth movement; seeker sensitive services; emerging church et al), it’s hard to see what is being accomplished. To be sure in many areas the churches are growing at tremendous rates (physically!); but spiritually, and I know this to be fact, spiritually most of the folk involved are still extremely immature and again sadly, many, many are not saved at all. We must come to the hard, cold realization that God has promised to bless but one thing: the true, unvarnished ministry of His Word. Nothing else. Programs can be useful; music has its place as long as it is bringing glory to our Heavenly Father, but they are not there to see men saved. They are simply adjuncts, and nothing more and if people are coming into the fold simply because their “felt needs” are being addressed; or they like the sound of your worship team, then they are coming for all the wrong reasons. If sound doctrine is not being preached; if the “s” word [i.e. sin] is no where to be found, then it is not a church, it is place of worldly goings on, and nothing more. We as evangelicals must get back to the kind of ministry that Paul laid out for the churches in his care – twice to the Corinthians, he made these statements:

‘For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified..’

‘..but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,..’

“There’s the job of the church, we must preach Christ, and Him crucified. Men will not be saved in any other way, and if we spend our time getting involved with anything else then we are living in disobedience to that which our Lord … our Master… our prophet … our Priest…, indeed, our King has set for us to be about. It’s just as simple as that.

“I feel certain that you dear folk have a very fine “job description” for the man that you are looking to call, and I know equally well that you will hear from many men who are well gifted to fill the rôle that you [D.V.] are trying to fill. To be sure I have held a large number of leadership rôles in my life time and have been fairly successful in what I have, by God’s grace, put my hand to. But this one thing I do know and that is that God has “gifted” Nancy and I with a myriad of life experiences within the context of our lives in Christ and has taught us some things that it takes a whole life time to learn. This is a very large part of why we are seeking to pastor once again, that we might be useful instruments in our Savior’s hand to help and enrich the lives of others of His family.

“You undoubtedly are desirous of seeing your next pastor “grow your church”, and that is good. But grow it, how? I suppose we just need to go back to the Acts text above, and of course the Lord’s words to Peter. The fact of the matter is, and I sincerely trust that I have been able to lay this out for you from a strictly Scriptural point of view, if … and only if the Word, by your pastor and other faithful men, is well preached; if it is given the expositional preaching/teaching that is demanded of it, then God will in Christ and through the love of His people, build the church as He sees fit so to do. When we are faithful to the Word that He has given, His blessings are greater than ever we can imagine. We might well put up all manner of beautiful edifices, but if the Word is neglected or takes second place to “all that we’re doing”, then we had better be aware – they will be edifices built on sand. And we know what happened to those when the rains came.

“Finally, brethren, as I have noted in the cover letter that you will have already read, my wife and I are very much looking forward to ministering once again (though we are yet given many opportunities apart from the pastorate), in the place of His appointment.”

We do look forward to hearing from you.

In Christ, by His Grace Alone,
J.D.