u/Writer8010

Since I have been hearing about the Puritans for years from such prominent Christians as John Piper, John, MacArthur, Kevin DeYoung, etc., I recently took advantage of a Truth for Life offer and acquired three Puritan Treasures for Today titles. Then I stumbled across a Room for Nuance podcast featuring Stephen Yuille, in which he recommended two PTT titles specifically:

William Perkins's "Perfect Redeemer"

George Swinnock's "Blesses and Boundless God."

I've started reading "Perfect Redeemer," and I'm thinking he's committing eisegesis? He's expounding on Phil 3:7-11 and is arguing that Paul is counting as loss things that, in my opinion, don't line up with a natural reading of the text--his Apostleship, the fruit of the Spirit in his life, etc. this led me to understand that, even though the Puritans were spiritual Giants, they were also just men who are also capable of reading their own biases into the text.

This being the case, are they still really worth the time and money I could potentially invest in them, or does this experience serve to confirm that, in some ways, they will be no better than reading, say, John Piper or Sinclair Ferguson?

Hi everyone:

My wife and I are currently wrestling through whether we should leave our current church, where we have been for well over 10 years. Up until this last year, we both have been involved in in our church in one way or another: small group, participants, small group leaders, and my wife served our church's AWANA program for a few years and also has participated in the women's ministry in various ways.

While there are other reasons factoring into our consideration, I think I would argue that the biggest reason we are considering leaving currently is because of our churches size. I remember some years back when one of our pastors preached a sermon in which he indicated that the elders of a Church are supposed to know their flock. More recently, had a membership meeting, our senior pastor acknowledged that he could now look around the auditorium and see entire pockets of people he did not recognize.

For my wife and me, this is becoming painfully apparent in the fact that, even after being at our church for a number of years and participating in various ministries, we have only a few close family friends. Because of our churches size, it is entirely possible to be involved in a small group, start getting to know a few people better, and then never see them again because of how big the church is and because the church offers multiple services. In fact, I ran into one lady in the hall the other day, who, even though we have been in a couple small groups together, didn't appear to remember me.

We would like to be a part of a smaller church where, as with another church we left several years ago, we might have a chance to get to know more people in the body and have that process unfold more organically because of the churches, smaller size. So my question: are we being consumer to Christians with our desire, or is this a legitimate desire?

Thanks in advance!

PS: for what it's worth, I plan to have the same conversation with my church's leadership. Just haven't gotten there yet. But I am determined to leave the church correctly rather than just vanishing.