BOOK REVIEW
A
Rock Too Big
One true Church: Is it
an impossible dream?
By Arthur
Barry
ArtySan Publishing, 62
Beam Hill Road, Dryden, NY 13053, USA. 2012.
ISBN 978-0-6155687-7-5,
108 pages paperback, £8.95 (through Amazon)
_____________________
When a person
takes a large portion of his or her time to write a book we can
assume that it is a labour of love. When they take a course in
self-publishing so they can produce their book and therefore they
are prepared to spend their own money ensuring it is printed and its
words reach the public, you know it’s more than simply a labour of
love, it’s a consuming passion. This book, by our brother Arthur
Barry, an ex-pat Englishman now permanently domiciled in New York
State, is nothing if not passionate. It’s a tough book. It pulls no
punches and he tells it as he sees it, as they say. It is therefore
a very black-and-white book with little room for any shades of grey
in its analysis. Sometimes the reader might not like this but he
certainly can’t ignore it.
And Arthur is not too bothered whether the reader likes what he is
being told. He is concerned that truth, biblical truth of course, is
both understood and acted upon for the saving of his readers’
souls, if they are currently not following the truth in their
spiritual lives.
Essentially it covers four topics: the Lord’s church and the
rôle and purpose of baptism in salvation dominate: evangelism and
who can rightly perform baptism are sub themes. So why is this way
beyond a labour of love (though it is that, of course) and enters
the realm of a consuming passion? Because Arthur is deeply concerned
that the Lord’s Church – which he equates entirely with the
communion known as ‘The Church of Christ’ – is losing its way and is
compromising more and more with popular, modernistic
denominationalism, particularly evangelicalism as he sees it. Don’t
forget, he is working full-time for an American congregation and is
viewing things from the scenario being presented over there, and
he’s not liking what he is seeing. By publishing this book he is
hoping to help to restore our communion to its complete commitment
to the faith and practice of the Christianity we see in the New
Testament. There’s an irony in a book written by a member of the
Restoration Movement to help members of the Restoration Movement get
their thinking straight and re-restore the restored church! But from
what I can glean from my contacts with the broader communion in
America, he’s got a very valid point. Many young Christians have
little or no knowledge of the history of Churches of Christ; we are
currently losing numbers at an alarming rate (mind you this is not
just our problem – denominations are facing this too) and quite a
few of our congregations are apparently losing the plot. I don’t
believe that most of the ‘diseases’ which concern Arthur have
reached across the Atlantic and infected our shores, maybe because
the liberal wing of our communion (the Co-operation of Churches of
Christ – the British equivalent of the Disciples of Christ) were
subsumed into the URC in 1980 and have effectively disappeared as a
result. However, we need to be on our guard over here to ensure we
can filter out any such tendencies.
It is an easy book to read and is very well presented. I read
it on one day. I found it difficult to know exactly who is his
target audience: members of the church or denominational friends. I
had to ask and Arthur told me it was mainly for the former. I wished
he had printed most of the material he saved for his ‘Conclusion’
(chapter 13) as an Introduction; it needed an early definition of
the ‘True Church’ as he would define it. I would have liked some
specific discussion about ‘truth’ and the context in which this
concept is being used at many points. Indeed there are quite a few
ideas which I felt needed greater definition – but then I also know
that Arthur had to prune his text to keep it to a certain number of
pages, presumably because of the constraints of production costs.
This book will raise many questions in your minds. Each
chapter has a series of them included to assist constructive thought
at the end of the chapter. I think I can guarantee there will be
disagreements and challenges over some of the things he says –
there’s nothing wrong with being challenged. I could see that using
the book as a guide would be helpful in Bible study groups. It
certainly would provoke a good deal of discussion for it will give
us as the readers a good deal to think about and, if we are getting
sloppy with our thinking in these areas, maybe it will pull us up
short and help us re-energize our commitment to the tenets of the
biblical church.
Graham
Fisher