Book Review: A Church Called Tov

Believers – especially American Evangelical believers – often have an odd sense of division. We blame the one leaving for being divisive without ever asking what forced their departure.

We blame the one pursuing a divorce for breaking up the marriage without ever asking what actually broke the covenant long ago. We blame the one asking the hard questions, for needing some clarity, some distinctions, for creating division, without taking the time to consider the essential nature of their longed-for clarity and where we may need to pay the same attention to these details ourselves.

We have decided: All leavers are bad. All stayers are good. And thus it shall always be.

And in so doing, we bat at the fruit of the situation and smack around the one asking questions about the quality of the fruit. We ignore the root of the issue buried deep underground that leads to this bad fruit. We ignore the soil in which such a root is welcomed and nurtured and allowed to thrive.

Even as we are instructed to discern good from evil, so we are able to choose good, choose life, choose Him, we condemn those who have sought to discern, then have acted on those discernments, as if they were wrong to do so.

But the Word says, 

‘I put before you life and death. Choose life.’

Those who leave – most often – are just doing as they are told to do in the Word. They are choosing life.

In A Church Called Tov, by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer, it’s all about the root and the soil. It’s all about character and culture and what is allowed to thrive and what is tamped down into compliance and told to hush because ‘we don’t talk about such things,’ ‘that’s gossip,’ ‘you need to trust that we as leadership have this in hand.’

This book may not be for everyone, but it’s pretty darn close.

If you have left a church and feel half crazy, if you are leaving because you know in your gut something is off but you can’t quite put your finger on it, if you are asking questions that you know may require you to leave when you finally get answers and that’s if they ever honor you with real answers, if you know people who have left and you don’t understand what happened and no one is talking but there is some sense of wrongness about the whole thing, and if people keep leaving your church, this book is for you. 

McKnight and Barringer discuss at gorgeous, gracious, informative but never dry length the character and culture that leads to division, that leads to the leaving. Instead of labeling the fruit, the leavers, as bad, they look carefully, even lovingly, at the things that caused the leaver to leave. They look at the root and they look at the soil that nurtures such a root.

They then move from what is bad to describe in the same detail what is good, to what is tov — the Hebrew word for good–bringing in all the dynamics of that word. 

Many of those reading this have been told that the Hebrew word ‘shalom’ means more than just peace: it means rest, at ease, all is in perfect order and as it should be. Can you sense the depth and breadth of the peace ‘shalom’ speaks of? It is not just an absence of noise. 

It is the same for the word tov.

Tov is not just a place on the scale of good, better, best. It is not simply a counter to bad. Tov has the same depth and breadth as shalom does. In Genesis 1, in the creation story, God would work until things were exactly as He wanted them and only then He would decree its goodness: He called it tov. He didn’t call it pretty, attractive on the surface. He didn’t call it nice, which is goodness without weight or heart or beneficence. He called it tov.  

It is a goodness that fits, that is ready, that is appropriate to the situation, that brings benefit. It is a goodness that stretches out, that has ramifications and impact. Like the difference between good food tasting delicious on the tongue for a moment, versus good food that is nourishing and even healing to the body. 

In A Church Called Tov, who do we as a church need to be in order to receive His decree of such goodness?

Stolen directly from the chapter headings, A Church Called Tov nurtures 

empathy, 

grace, 

a people-first culture, 

truth, 

justice, 

service 

and Christ-likeness.

With each characteristic, McKnight and Barringer share real-life examples of a church that lives it out poorly and another that lives it out well, a church that produces bad fruit and another that produces an abundance of good fruit. And while they are never harsh or condemning, they tell these stories with such honesty that we, as His church, are equipped to know bad when we see it and resist the badness as is required of His followers, and to know goodness when we see it, then pursue it, nurture it, and live it.

Until our churches are just the way He wants them. Tov.

McKnight and Barringer refer to us as wounded resisters. You’re not bad for leaving. We get it. You’re safe here.

You’re tov.