Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World

Michael Horton’s new book, Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World, is on sale at Westminster Bookstore at 37% off!

Here is the book’s description:

Radical. Crazy. Transformative and restless. Every word we read these days seems to suggest there s a next-best-thing, if only we would change our comfortable, compromising lives. In fact, the greatest fear most Christians have is boredom the sense that they are missing out on the radical life Jesus promised. One thing is certain. No one wants to be ordinary.

Yet pastor and author Michael Horton believes that our attempts to measure our spiritual growth by our experiences, constantly seeking after the next big breakthrough, have left many Christians disillusioned and disappointed. There s nothing wrong with an energetic faith; the danger is that we can burn ourselves out on restless anxieties and unrealistic expectations. What s needed is not another program or a fresh approach to spiritual growth; it s a renewed appreciation for the commonplace.

Far from a call to low expectations and passivity, Horton invites readers to recover their sense of joy in the ordinary. He provides a guide to a sustainable discipleship that happens over the long haul not a quick fix that leaves readers empty with unfulfilled promises. Convicting and ultimately empowering, Ordinary is not a call to do less; it s an invitation to experience the elusive joy of the ordinary Christian life.”

And here is what Trueman and Carson have to say:

“In Ordinary, Michael Horton addresses the current penchant for the extraordinary and the spectacular in evangelical Christianity. If you are tired of hearing the rhetoric of ‘radical’ attached to everything, this is the book for you. In the first part, he analyzes the sociology and the psychology of this current fetish. Then in the second he offers a series of proposals for how church life should be lived. Along the way, the reader receives lessons in history, a concise statement of the gospel, a plea for the importance of ecclesiology, a mini master-class in why trendy transformationalism is both condescending to ordinary Christians and potentially damaging to the gospel, and a theological homage to the role of faithful, regular, unspectacular, godly believers in their daily callings. I like this book. I like it a lot. I like the way Horton punctures the pomposity of the evangelical corporations that try to bestride our world like so many modern day Colossi. I like the way he sets the ordinary and the everyday at the heart of the Christian’s earthly calling. I like the way he points away from the conference stage to the local church and the pew as the place where real Christianity is to be found. I like the way he shows that the drive for radicalism is just another burdensome law. And I like the way he presents the gospel, as always, as the answer to it all.”
— Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia PA

“I am tempted to say that this is no ordinary book. In a culture that rhapsodizes over every achievement and idolizes many of those who stand out, it is easy for the church to drink from the same intoxicating elixir and swoon over gifted exceptions. How refreshing to read a book that tries to locate spiritual and theological maturity in ordinary faith and obedience, in ordinary relationships, in ordinary service, in ordinary pastors. Michael Horton does not mean to depreciate believers with exceptional gifts, but he rightly warns us against erecting shrines to them — shrines that blind us to the glory of the gospel worked out in the faithful discipleship of ‘ordinary’ Christian living, shrines that make us forget we serve a God who will not give his glory to another. That we need a book like this is more than a little sad; the book that addresses the problem wisely and well is, frankly, extraordinary.”
— D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.