This summer the Husted’s will be moving. Therefore, the necessary purging that accompanies packing has begun. And, as my wife reminded me, this task must also include my bookshelves.  However, the task was small and quickly done, as years ago, on a previous move, I had disposed of a number of books for a variety of reasons.

I commend to you two great resources that I reflected on while packing away my library.

First, this article entitled Old Books, New Books, and Trends That Fade Away: Lessons Learned from a Book Sale by Luke Holmes, where he offers the following book-buying recommendations:

– Beware of writing a man’s legacy before his ministry is over.
– Beware of books that promise a quick fix.
– Beware the crashing waves of trends.

Second, a recent sermon by Pastor John MacArthur entitled Leaving the World to Reach the World from Colossians 3:1-4 resonated with me, as I reflected on all the pragmatic ministry books that had I purged in recent years.

The church has been taken captive by a kind of pragmatism that it seems it cannot shake, and I think that pragmatism is dealt with in the simple statements that I just pointed out to you in verses 1 and 2: “Keep seeking the things above, and set your mind on things above.” Rather than doing that, rather than setting its mind on heaven, rather than seeking what is above, believers today, and even church leaders today, seem to be preoccupied with seeking things that are below. The actual purpose seems to be to best assess the world around us and do the most we can to make some kind of superficial alterations in our economics or in our social structure or in our cultural definitions. The church seems to be earthbound. And, of course, that would be satanic strategy, wouldn’t it. If we’re called to heavenly things, then Satan would want to make sure we got trapped in earthly things. And that has been the death of churches throughout church history. But it seems to be that even today, a kind of evangelical pragmatism where we understand the mission, we even understand the message, but we really are confused about the method…

Pragmatism basically says we do what works, we do what attracts people, we give people what they want, we talk the way they like to talk, we play the way they like to play, we act the way they like to act, we like the things that they like. And the more common ground we can find with the world, the more effectively we build a bridge to them to give them the gospel. That’s essentially what pragmatism is. It seems to work, it draws a crowd, they like it; this has to be right. That’s what pragmatism says…

Are we supposed to find as many things as possible that are exactly what unconverted people want in a given culture and make sure we give them all of those? And that is what builds the bridge. Well, in reality that is the opposite of what the Bible says. That is absolutely opposite what God has called us to by way of methodology.

According to God’s Word, we have to leave the world to reach the world. We have to leave the world to reach the world.