After scouting the Lifeway bookstore for a while looking for a specific title on Church growth, I came away disappointed, and moreover very frustrated as well. You see there are so many books on Church growth. I even found a couple written by Baptists (remember when Lifeway used to be called the Baptist Bookstore), but I also found books by Joyce Meyer, T.D. Jakes, and a volume by a guy called Don Piper, who thinks he went to heaven and came back! Maybe you are beginning to sense my frustration!

The book I wanted to buy was Thomas Nettles, Ready for Reformation? Bringing Authentic Reform to Southern Baptist Churches (Nashville, B&H, 2005). I couldn’t find it. Rather than stocking up this text to help the many ministers and other serious persons with bringing “authentic reform,” the bookstore is promoting a host of titles that are “Good sales material.” Lifeway’s mission appears to be making money. I shared this example with a friend of mine over lunch today, and he perceptively quoted the words of our Lord, “You Cannot Serve Two Masters.” Wow! That’s it. Lifeway is not about serving Christ or the body of Christ. They are purveying any junk that happens to sell, all for the reason of making a profit. Nettles, isn’t in the store because he is a different kind of prophet: the kind that speaks the truth. He would cause many sales of these books on junk to be rejected. This would not sit well. Would to God that someone at Lifeway would wake up and smell the coffee. I wish some wealthy Christian would underwrite the sending of Nettles’s text to every pastor in the denomination. Only then would there be any way of bringing “Life” back to our churches: Nettles urges us to Look to God and His glorious Gospel in the Holy Word. Indeed, Only God’s truth can really be called Lifeway! They went from Baptist to Lifeway, maybe they should be called “heresiesRus.”