Coming on Tov Unleashed

A review of next week

Substack

On Monday we begin the official subscriber posts for those who have taken the paid option, and the posts mentioned below will be available only for paid subscribers. We will have Meanderings and the Prayer of the Week for everyone and then one other post a week, but the others will be behind the paywall. So please register.

Here’s what is coming next week as we dive into Substack and the conversations it can create for us:

First, I want to respond to a letter about how to respond to toxic situations in a church. This letter has been edited to line up with others like it:

I was serving in a church and on the leadership team. I confronted the senior pastor about some issues in his style of leadership that touched upon character issues. He told the other leaders and they are now all on his side. Since then I've been told that I can't teach, preach or serve. As I read A Church called Tov I was overwhelmed with all the similarities that I see in the church I'm in. Very toxic. Thank you so much for being willing to write this book with your daughter. It was very validating.

We aren't sure how much to try to bring truth to the situation or to just walk away. Do you give advice on church problems like this?

What would you say? Please reserve your comments for next Monday when my own response to this letter is the post.

On Tuesday we will have another post from William Witt’s Icons of Christ, this one on women preaching, speaking and teaching.

Wednesday: Aaron Griffith has a new book called God’s Law and Order, and it takes on evangelical defense of the law and order movement, of capital punishment, of prison evangelism, and its seeming neglect of prison reform where inequality reigns. Should evangelicals believe in capital punishment? What about the old challenge of personal conversion vs. systemic transformation? Again, please don’t answer these questions here. They are for next week.

I will also be posting about John Goldingay’s fresh study of Jeremiah and Valerie Hobbs’ book about “theo-linguistics” and what it means for us to be talking about God.

I’m curious what you would like to see addressed. What books? Topics? Who would you like to see interviewed?