To love Christ is to love his church.

So say the authors of this fresh look at four defining characteristics of the church. Though many people see the church as unimportant-even a hindrance to spirituality-this book reminds us that the church is God’s gift to his children for provision, protection, and growth. The church is the vessel for the display of God’s glory throughout the earth.

What do we mean when we say that the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic ? Three emerging Reformed leaders, two Presbyterian and one Baptist, examine the church through the lens of that confession from the Nicene Creed. Their desire is that we may love Christ more by loving his church, serve him better by serving his body, and realize more fully our union with him through fellowship with his people.

Here is a book by three pastor-theologians, all honest-to-God evangelicals, about the four Nicene attributes of the church-its unity, purity, catholicity, and apostolic identity. I hope this book will signal a new turn away from the kind of low, functionalist ‘how-to’ ecclesiology that so damages the church’s witness and dishonors her Lord.

-Timothy George