A Voice in the Wilderness is a collection of essays gathered in honour of Michael and Libby Weed, a recently-deceased husband-wife scholarly duo connected to the Austin Graduate School of Theology. The school’s faculty authored these essays across a 36-year period, covering a great variety of topics in culture and Christian ethics, including the rise of secularism, steps in spiritual formation, principles of the Restoration Movement, and the issue of worship as entertainment. This book was intended to be both ‘academic and ecclesial,’ but I’ll focus my attention on whether it achieves the goal of helping church leaders.

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While I mostly enjoyed A Voice in the Wilderness, I have to admit reading it felt like getting whiplash. Several of the essays felt inaccessible at first, giving the impression of a niche topic in a scholarly debate rather than material for church leaders. Then suddenly they would turn a corner and become relevant to anyone with a heart for God’s people. To give an example, Michael Weed’s essay Ressentiment opens with a deep introduction to a psychological theory about supressed negative feelings by the 20th century German philosopher Max Scheler. Just by reading that sentence, you can probably imagine how much of a slog that was to get through. But Weed follows that up with an application of ressentiment to people in Christian leadership. Suddenly he opens a door for people to be ‘seen’ and to develop better tools for dealing with negative self-talk. He suggests that having unresolved negative thoughts about your own congregation or ministry can lead to depression or even self-sabotage, but if you can develop better self-awareness through knowing about the possibility of ressentiment within you, you have a much better chance of resisting it. This is genuinely useful information that many of us would benefit from hearing.

 

This pattern of a rocky start followed by a more accessible interior repeated itself several times throughout the book. It would be easy to imagine someone opening one of these essays and getting discouraged, thinking it’s not for them. But this would be a shame because there’s some good content here. To counteract this, my recommendation would be to 1) be aware that first impressions don’t always last, and 2) to work through this book in community with other Christians. A group of elders, ministry members, or a small group could come together to treat this like a book club, starting their meeting by discussing one of the chapters in A Voice in the Wilderness. This would help iron out some of the rougher edges and find applications.

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That said, there are several other essays here that are much easier to understand. Being mindful of time, I’ll mention just one: Keith Stanglin’s ‘Restorationism and Church History: Strange Bedfellows?’ This was a confronting but tactfully written piece about the bad reputation that church history has in Christian circles, most especially our fellowship. We can be deeply suspicious (or even outright dismissive) of anything past the New Testament, as if no one has anything to teach us but ourselves. But Stanglin questions the wisdom of ignoring 1900 years of church history and acting as if we were the first people to ever actually read their Bibles: ‘just as none of us would seek to interpret and apply Scripture on our own...let us remember that the community of Christians includes those who are now dead.’ He recommends holding fast to your convictions about prioritising the Bible over church traditions and authorities, but to also recognise that for millennia Christians have been grappling with the same questions we have today. It may pay to give them a chance rather than to simply write them off.

 

A Voice in the Wilderness isn’t perfect, but it is rewarding. Some of its audience will be academics looking for stimulation, and they won’t need much convincing to give it a try. But some of its audience should also be eager Christian leaders interested in broadening their horizons and thinking through issues from another perspective. If you survive the initial whiplash, this book will help you grow in Christian knowledge and maturity.