It is during common everyday activities that Christian families are encouraged to talk about God and His Word and to consider how doctrine applies to various circumstances that arise. Therefore, let us seize those opportunities to explain and apply the wisdom of God’s Word in our families. Dear believer, just as a plant flourishes in the fertile soil of the earth, so a Christian family flourishes in the sound doctrine of the Scriptures.

Every Christian home is meant to be a school of Christ—a place of spiritual nurture, loving discipline, sound doctrine, and biblical piety. This is not a reference to Victorian-era portraits of the Christian family; it is the clear teaching of Scripture and the Reformed tradition. Even so, our hectic schedules, ubiquitous gadgets, and misplaced priorities often make our homes similar to those of our unbelieving neighbors. God becomes an afterthought. Here are three things to remember as we seek to build God-centered homes where sound doctrine is the foundation and our Lord Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.
1. We must be committed to the ministry of the local church.
Every Christian family needs God’s appointed means of grace and the shepherding care of godly elders (Acts 20:28; Heb. 13:17; 1 Tim. 3:1–7). The ministry of the visible church is a nonnegotiable for believers and their children. The first Christian families were “devoted to the apostles’ teaching [doctrine] and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). They were under the loving spiritual oversight of elders—men who were called to “shepherd the flock of God” and “give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9, emphasis added; see 1 Peter 5:2; Titus 2:1). The church was central to their Christian identity. It is inside, not outside, the divinely ordained structure of a biblical church that Christian families are grounded in the gospel. A faithful church is where families mature in their knowledge, understanding, and practice of sound doctrine. Therefore, Christian households are encouraged to submit joyfully to the ministry of a local church body and to learn from pastors who labor “to present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28–29; see Eph. 4:11–16).
2. We must be dedicated to regular times of family worship.
Family worship is a time in which the entire household gathers for singing, prayer, the reading of scripture, and catechesis. A Christian home is a worshiping home.
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In his understandable zeal to honor his wife, Mr. Young’s speech in opposition to the overture was the final impetus for my decision to vote in favor. The reason is because, in his speech, Mr. Young extolled what he believed are the virtues of ‘Jesus Calling’, repeatedly calling attention to the worldwide impact of the book. He was right, of course, in terms of the book’s massive popularity and impact. For that reason alone, the PCA should ask how one of our missionaries could write a book that presents so many important theological problems.

During the week of June 10, 2024 the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) held its 51st Annual General Assembly in Richmond, VA. Present were 2,160 commissioners, making it the third highest attended General Assembly in PCA history. The week was marked by times of reverent worship and faithful preaching. As always it was a blessing to be with so many fellow elders from around the country all united to further God’s glory in our beloved denomination.
Among the matters under consideration was Overture 33 which requests reports from the permanent committees of Mission to the World (MTW) and the PCA’s discipleship ministry (CDM) concerning their history, if any, with the book ‘Jesus Calling’ by long-time PCA missionary Sarah Young.
There have been many accusations flying around social and print media accusing the PCA of appointing a committee to trash the book of a recently deceased author. However, what the Assembly actually approved is far from that.
Overture 33 reads as follows:
Therefore be it resolved that the General Assembly request reports to be returned to the 52nd General Assembly from the permanent committees of the two agencies most connected with the Jesus Calling book.
From the permanent committee for the Committee on Discipleship Ministries, a brief report that will:
1. Examine the history of the CDM’s relationship with the book and outline its reasons for withdrawing the book from its inventory previously and not offering it for sale since.
2. Assess the book’s appropriateness for Christians in general and PCA members and congregations in particular with special regard for its doctrine and method.
3. Provide recommendations (if needed) for remedial materials, advisory statements, or General Assembly actions concerning Jesus Calling.
And from Mission to the World, a brief report that will:
1. Examine MTW’s relationship with the book, knowledge of its content, and any counsel given to the author.
2. Consider actions that MTW and the General Assembly should take in light of this study of the book and of the agency’s relationship to it.
Given the timing, so near the death of the author, many wondered why such an overture was even being considered. Some believed it was entirely unnecessary based on an assumption that ‘Jesus Calling’ has had no influence among churches in the PCA. Others expressed the opinion that such an overture, less than a year after the author’s death, was bad form and perhaps cruel to Mrs. Young’s family. I understand the confusion and some of the objections. Indeed, as the PCA’s General Assembly convened I was on the fence, not sure how I would vote on the overture. A week prior to the Assembly I told another PCA Teaching Elder that I was likely to vote against it as I considered it a waste of time. But three factors worked to change my mind to vote in favor of the overture.
The first factor that swayed me was Steve and Sarah Young’s longtime service as PCA missionaries. This relationship had been recently highlighted in many different journals and news releases. In an obituary for Sarah Young written for our denominational magazine, By Faith this connection was highlighted:
Sarah Young, author of the popular “Jesus Calling” devotional book series and longtime Mission to the World (MTW) missionary to Japan and Australia with her husband Steve, died yesterday, Aug. 31, at the age of 77.
Young’s “Jesus Calling” books sold more than 45 million copies in 35 languages, making her the bestselling Christian author of all time.
I had known for some time that Mrs. Young and her husband were PCA missionaries. That had been a source of dismay for me considering the profoundly errant foundation of the book which undermines the sufficiency of Scripture. Not only that, Jesus Calling offers up a disturbingly truncated, largely therapeutic view of Jesus and his ministry. As various obituaries for Mrs. Young began appearing in such publications as Christianity Today, many PCA church members were surprised to learn that she was an MTW missionary. Many wondered how one of our own could write such an errant book.
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Discussing the “saccharin-like” preaching of Joel Osteen, Wells says this of the kind of God he presents: “The dominant view, even among evangelical teenagers, is that God made everything and established a moral order, but he does not intervene. Actually, for most he is not even Trinitarian, and the incarnation and resurrection of Christ play little part in church teenage thinking—even in evangelical teenage thinking. They see God as not demanding much from them because he is chiefly engaged in solving their problems and making them feel good. Religion is about experiencing happiness, contentedness, having God solve one’s problems and provide stuff like homes, the Internet, iPods, iPads, and iPhones. This is a widespread view of God within modern culture, not only among adolescents but among many adults as well.”

In the old days, most people knew they were sinful beings in need of salvation and rescue. Today they see themselves as gods who need affirmation and self-realisation. We have moved from a view of the good life through self-denial and rejection of self to one of self-actualisation and self-affirmation.
This is a massive shift in the way we see ourselves, how we understand our troubles, and how we view the way out – the way of salvation. Instead of lost sinners needing saving, we are good people simply needing some therapy and affirmation.
Awareness of this major shift in thinking about who we are, what our condition is, and what is the way forward, have long been with us. Criticism of theological liberalism from a century and more ago can be mentioned, including the critique of J. Gresham Machen that I just again discussed in a new piece: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/04/03/the-gentle-regrets-of-roger-scruton/
Secular voices also noted this and wrote extensively about it. Most notable was the 1966 volume The Triumph of the Therapeutic by Philip Rieff (Harper & Row). In it the American sociologist said this: “Christian man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased. The difference was established long ago, when ‘I believe!,’ the cry of the ascetic, lost precedence to ‘one feels,’ the caveat of the therapeutic.”
Another crucial discussion of this appeared in the 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press) by another American sociologist, Christian Smith. In it he made use of the term “moralistic therapeutic deism.”
Deism is the view that God made the world but has no real direct involvement in it. So in his study of US teens, by MTD he meant that most of them feel that God wants us to be good and nice, and the main goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. When we get in a jam we call upon God, but otherwise he has no real role in our lives. Sadly, it is not just non-Christian youth that think this way, but Christian youth as well.
A number of important Christian thinkers and cultural observers have made much use of the insights provided by Rieff and Smith. For example, in his 2008 book Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Baker), Michael Horton referred to this in various places. It is Christianity Lite, not biblical Christianity:
It was secular psychologist Karl Menninger who pointed out (in a book titled Whatever Became of Sin?) that the growing suppression of the reality of guilt in churches was actually contributing to neuroses rather than avoiding them….

If we feel guilty, maybe it is because we really are guilty. To change the subject or downplay the seriousness of this condition actually keeps people from the liberating news that the gospel brings. If our real problem is bad feelings, then the solution is good feelings. The cure can only be as radical as the disease. Like any recreational drug, Christianity Lite can make people feel better for the moment, but it does not reconcile sinners to God. Ironically, secular psychologists like Menninger are writing books about sin, while many Christian leaders are converting sin – a condition from which we cannot liberate ourselves – into dysfunction and salvation into recovery. pp. 35-36
David Wells
But one evangelical intellectual and theologian who wrote copiously about such matters is David Wells. He has taught theology for many years at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. (If I can add a personal note here, some students thought him to be a hard grader, so sought to avoid his classes. I quite enjoyed his classes, and only got As in them.)
A number of his many books have dealt with this shift in thinking about the human person and what he needs. Let me only feature four of them, with a quote or two from each:
No Place for Truth (Eerdmans, 1993)
We are therefore accomplishing in our culture what only such dystopian writers as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell ever imagined. We are replacing the categories of good and evil with the pale absolutes that arise from the media world —
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