“On a broad scale, Pastor Curtis Heffelfinger has given the Bride of Christ a great gift with the wise and winsome book, "The Peacemaking Church." His application of biblical truth, with prayerful, humble reliance upon Christ alone, is exactly what Christians in conflicted churches need. In fact, there is so much eternal hope in these pages that I believe "The Peacemaking Church" will be of great help to Christians even before their churches descend into conflict.
I only wish that this book had been available for the first twenty years that I served as a professional Christian mediator! It definitely will be required reading for my conciliation clients going forward.
My strong recommendation goes beyond a mere professional analysis, however, because I read "The Peacemaking Church" soon after my family endured what can only be described as the worst church-based relational breech of our entire lifetime of faithful church membership. My emotional wounds were raw and I was quite guarded when I began this book. But by the end of "The Peacemaking Church," my eyes were gently lifted up and confidently fixed back on eternity. Pastor Heffelfinger not only encouraged me to recommit to a lifetime of ministry as an “ambassador of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19-20), he also refreshed in my mind a number of biblical reminders to “reject, hate, despise, deplore, and abhor strife and discord among the brethren (Prov. 6:19b).”
If you are exhausted by church conflict and tempted to give up on any efforts to pursue genuine peace, I am confident that "The Peacemaking Church" will motivate you to keep praying and striving for unity. If anger, bitterness, and wrath have gained evil footholds in your congregation, "The Peacemaking Church" will help you to slay those “giants which lurk in all our hearts.”
Thanks to Pastor Heffelfinger’s careful exegesis and relatable, real-life examples, everyone from a new Christian to an experienced mediator will be refreshed with a deep vision and passion for unity in the Body of Christ. Thanks to his biblical scholarship, we will also learn many new cultural, geographical, and lexical nuances of key peacemaking passages of Scripture. I particularly appreciated the careful analysis given of what I consider the most common and insidious way that seemingly mature Christians “thrust swords of words” (Prov. 12:18a) into their vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ: “withdrawal, cold shoulder, passive aggressive, shutdown tactics.” The young people these days call it “ghosting.” The Bible calls it graceless, loveless, faithlessness (the exact opposite of Exodus 34:6-7).
Whatever the title for such peace-faking and peace-breaking, we all know the result: disunity. Brothers and sisters, this should not be the case! Let us listen to Pastor Heffelfinger and he calls us to listen to God’s Word and pursue peace (Ps. 34:14, Heb. 12:14)!
There is much wisdom here, and many practical helps, too. Thank you, Pastor Heffelfinger, for this important contribution to the biblical peacemaking literature. You are correct that, “Unity is an exceedingly fragile thing.” But thanks to "The Peacemaking Church," all Christians will be better equipped to pursue and protect the “unity of the saints through the bonds of peace” (Eph. 4:3).”
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