Hansen and Leeman make crystal clear what they mean by church: “A church is a group of Christians who assemble as an earthly embassy of Christ’s heavenly kingdom to proclaim the good news and commands of Christ the King; to affirm one another as his citizens through the ordinances; and to display God’s own holiness and love through a unified and diverse people in all the world, following the teaching and example of elders” (26). After offering this rich, multilayered definition, Hansen and Leeman analyze it phrase by phrase over the course of eight chapters. 

I still find it hard to believe. A flu virus succeeded in doing what centuries of persecution by Roman pagans, Ottoman Muslims, Hindu nationalists, Eastern European atheists, and Chinese communists could not: stop Christians from gathering together for fellowship, prayer, participation in the sacraments, and the proper discerning of the Word of God.
While our persecuted brethren from the past met together secretly in homes or caves, strengthening each other in the face of possible martyrdom, we who live in the freest nation on earth huddled in our homes, more afraid of facing public scorn than of forsaking the assembly of the saints. Yes, many people with compromised immune systems had legitimate COVID-19 fears, but most of us, myself included, allowed social and political pressure and media-fed anxiety to keep us from congregating together.
Of course, it was easy for most of us to justify the breach in fellowship since we could livestream sermons, listen to worship music on YouTube, and give to charity through PayPal. Were we not getting all the spiritual nourishment we needed in the comfort and safety of our own homes? Maybe all that business of going to a church building and meeting people face to face was old-fashioned and out-of-date. How much is really lost when we conduct our Christian walk apart from the physical church with its institutionalized programs, messy relationships, and inevitable egos and hypocrisies?
Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman assure us that a great deal is lost, that we are, in fact, forsaking the very commission that Christ gave us. In Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential, Hansen, editor in chief of the Gospel Coalition, and Leeman, editorial director of 9Marks, provide a compact, powerful, highly accessible defense of the assembling of the saints that all people who find themselves questioning the efficacy and necessity of church should wrestle with.
Lest we try to wiggle out of that necessity by playing semantical games, Hansen and Leeman make crystal clear what they mean by church: “A church is a group of Christians who assemble as an earthly embassy of Christ’s heavenly kingdom to proclaim the good news and commands of Christ the King; to affirm one another as his citizens through the ordinances; and to display God’s own holiness and love through a unified and diverse people in all the world, following the teaching and example of elders” (26).
After offering this rich, multilayered definition, Hansen and Leeman analyze it phrase by phrase over the course of eight chapters. All the facets of the definition are insightful, but I will focus here on three facets that I found particularly illuminating and challenging and which, I believe, offer much-needed clarity as to the precise mission of the church and why we need to be there in person for that mission to be accomplished effectively.
God’s Earthly Embassy
While most Christians are aware that the Bible calls upon us to be ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), few of us make the connection that if we are ambassadors, then the church is the embassy where we work. “An embassy,” Leeman explains, “is an officially sanctioned outpost of one nation inside the borders of another nation.” In that sense, it is no exaggeration to say that “[g]athered churches are embassies of heaven” (54). The church represents Christ’s kingdom the way the American embassy in France represents the political leadership, economic goals, and diverse but unified culture of America.
In keeping with his analogy, Leeman describes what we should find when we enter one of these embassies of heaven: “A whole different nation—sojourners, exiles, citizens of Christ’s kingdom. Inside such churches, you’ll hear the King of heaven’s words declared. You’ll hear heaven’s language of faith, hope, and love. You’ll get a taste of the end-time heavenly banquet through the Lord’s Supper. And you’ll be charged with its diplomatic business as you’re called to bring the gospel to your nation and every other nation” (54).
It is not enough for there to be random Americans walking around individually in Paris, embodying American values. There needs to be a physical place in that foreign land were the distinctive language and beliefs and behaviors of Christ followers can be heard and studied and seen. Apart from the physical embassy and the gathering of people within that embassy, that language and those beliefs and behaviors will remain abstractions. The witness of America, and all that she stands for, will be lessened. Parisians will be robbed of the chance to stand on American soil without ever leaving France.
Recalling a time when he had to go to the American embassy in Brussels, Belgium to have his passport renewed, Leeman muses that the “embassy didn’t make me a citizen.
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Written by Matthew H. Lee |
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Communities in which members profess faith in God should affirm human dignity in part by prioritizing Sabbath rest. Along with our churches, Christian schools should be among the communities in which the freedom of Sabbath rest is proclaimed.

Sundays are my favorite holidays.
New Year’s Day, Easter, even Christmas pale in comparison. Unlike other holidays, particularly those of the man-made variety, the Sabbath is a tradition divinely consecrated and nearly as old as creation itself (Exodus 20:11).
When we remember the Sabbath, we celebrate our freedom from bondage (Deuteronomy 5:15). By contrast, it’s no surprise that throughout human history, ignoring the Sabbath has been the practice of oppressive societies. Sohrab Ahmari recently wrote for The Wall Street Journal, “While restless, Sabbath-less societies could easily descend into tyranny and barbarism,” Sabbatarianism was seen “as an essential bulwark against the depravities that had marked the French Revolution.” In an effort to abolish all religious influences, the French government adopted Auguste Comte’s Religion of Humanity and implemented a ten-day workweek. The practice was repeated in the Paris Commune of the 19th century.
The French weren’t the only culture who tried to dispense with Sabbath-keeping. Ancient Egypt used a nine-day workweek, with one day of rest reserved exclusively for the ruling class. In 20th-century Maoist China, during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, peasants were expected to follow a 48-hour workday, with a mere six hours for rest.
Ignoring the Sabbath was catastrophic in all cases.
In each of these societies, we see the same threefold rejection: of rights and liberties, of God, and of the Sabbath. In contrast, to love the Sabbath is to love neighbor, acknowledging each person’s dignity as an image bearer and inviting them to share in rest. To love the Sabbath is to enjoy rest, both from our work and from our works-righteousness (Hebrews 4:9-10).
And yet, how often do we subject ourselves to the oppression of Sabbath rejection?
Communities in which members profess faith in God should affirm human dignity in part by prioritizing Sabbath rest. Along with our churches, Christian schools should be among the communities in which the freedom of Sabbath rest is proclaimed.
Sabbath-Keeping in Christian Schools
To explore the topic of Sabbath-keeping in Christian education, Albert Cheng, Rian Djita (both at the University of Arkansas), and I analyzed data from the Sabbath Study, a survey fielded by the Association of Christian Schools International in early 2021. Altogether, 5,634 individuals responded to our survey, including administrators, teachers, students, and parents. As part of the survey, respondents indicated whether or not they keep the Sabbath, their beliefs about the Sabbath, their teaching practices as they relate to the Sabbath, and common practices they follow on the Sabbath. They also completed the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory, a validated six-item scale that measures psychosocial well-being.

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Better than the awkward desperation of “cool Christianity” is the quiet confidence of faithful Christianity. More compelling than any celebrity pastor or bespoke packaging is a church’s steady, committed, hand-to-the-plow presence that creates lasting change for the better in lives and communities.
At the beginning of the 21st century, “relevance” became the prevailing buzzword in Western evangelical Christianity. Sensing new urgency to make the gospel more appealing to the next generation—which polls showed were leaving faith in greater numbers—pastors, church leaders, and Christian influencers tried to rebrand faith. This was the era of Relevant magazine’s launch, Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, and Rob Bell’s ascent as a sort of evangelical Steve Jobs. It was the moment when plaid, skinny jeans, beards, and tattoos became the pastor’s unofficial uniform. It was a public-relations effort to pitch a less legalistic, friendlier-to-culture, “emergent” faith that was far from the dusty religion of your grandparents.
I chronicled this awkward era in painstaking detail in Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide, which released 10 years ago this month. In many ways the book is a quaint relic by now—a time capsule of a certain segment of evangelicalism at the turn of the millennium. But the book’s dated nature proves the point I was trying to make—that “cool Christianity” is, if not an oxymoron, at least an exercise in futility. A relevance-focused Christianity sows the seeds of its own obsolescence. Rather than rescuing or reviving Christianity, hipster faith shrinks it to the level of consumer commodity, as fickle and fleeting as the latest runway fashion. To locate Christianity’s relevance in its ability to find favor among the “cool kids”—just the latest in a long history of evangelical obsession with image—is seriously misguided.
Here are a few reasons why.
Chasing ‘Relevance’ Is Exhausting and Unsustainable
As I write in the final chapter, it’s problematic to assume that true relevance means constantly keeping up with the trends and “meeting the culture where it’s at”:
This mindset assumes no one will listen to us if we aren’t loud and edgy; no one will take us seriously if we aren’t conversant with culture; and no one will find Jesus interesting unless he is made to fit the particularities of the zeitgeist. But this sort of “relevance” is defined chiefly and inextricably by the one thing Christianity resolutely defeats: impermanence. Things that are permanent are not faddish or fickle or trendy. They are solid. . . . True relevance lasts.
My argument centered around the inherent transience of “cool” that makes “cool Christianity” unsustainable by definition. Today’s hip, cover-boy pastor is tomorrow’s has-been. This year’s fast-growing, bustling-with-20-somethings cool church is next year’s “I used to go there” old news. Near instant obsolescence is baked into the system of hipster Christianity (or hipster anything). It’s telling that the majority of the “hip Christian figureheads” I profiled in the book are now far off the radar of evangelical influence. Donald Miller is a marketing consultant. Mark Driscoll’s Seattle megahurch dissolved. Rob Bell is a new-age guru endorsed by Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert. And so forth. That many of the names and trends highlighted in Hipster Christianity a mere decade ago are now nearly forgotten (and would be replaced with a whole new set of personalities and trends today) proves the book’s point.
I know a few people who have stayed in hip churches for most of the last decade, but many more have moved on to another (usually liturgical and refreshingly boring) church. Others have left Christianity entirely. Turns out a church that seemed super cool to your 23-year-old self may not be appealing to your 33-year-old, professional-with-kids self. Turns out a church preaching sermons about “God in the movies!” more than the doctrine of the atonement doesn’t serve you well in the long run. Turns out a pastor you can drink with, smoke with, and watch Breaking Bad with is not as important as a pastor whose uncool holiness might—just might—push you to grow in Christlikeness yourself.
David Wells has it right, in The Courage to Be Protestant, when he says: