The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline by Jonathan LeemanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
As a student of theology that leans more toward biblical theology, no wonder I felt that I did not like this book as much as I thought I would - Leeman states he is attempting to lay out a systematic theology! So perhaps the more systematic scholars would find this a more enjoyable read.
Brevity is not one of Leeman's strength. This book makes Dever's original 9marks book look pint sized! As I read through the pages, often I would be wondering to myself, why couldn't he just write more concisely; how I wish I did not have to wade through so much murky water just to find that gem or two? This is a pity because there were plenty of nuggets of wisdom for reflection between the pages, but you'd need to get through quite a fair bit to find them.
I've yet to encounter a book that exceeded 300 pages that I found still managed to capture my attention, and this was no different (the sole book that did was Stott's The Incomparable Christ - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324690). But alas! Leeman mercifully includes a summary of the main substantives of the book in the Appendix. Perhaps one could start from there, see which topic interests you and then dive into deep depths of the chapter.
If he, like Dever, would shrink this immense amount of research into a shorter book, that would probably make for a 5 star masterpiece (Dever shrank his 300+ page long book into a 130 page book titled "What Is a Healthy Church? - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/966587)" While the sister volumes in the 9marks series titled Church Discipline and Church Membership may fit the bill, I cannot really tell much from the amazon previews what they really are like. Ideally it would be great if they were merged into shorter one combined title given the numerous overlaps between the two topics.
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