Bring 'Em Back Alive:
A Healing Plan For Those Wounded By The Church

A Review by Ryan Richardson

Dave Burchett
www.daveburchett.com
WaterBrook Press

"Jesus I love you
But I don't understand your wife
She wears such funny make up
And she always wants to fight."

Dead Artist Syndrome, Bride's Song, written by Brian Healy

Whenever faith and God are brought up at the water cooler on Monday, the floodgate tends to open up. "How can God allow… All preachers are after… Christians are the biggest hypocrites…" We do not need to look far to find someone who has been hurt by the church/Christians at some point in their lives.

"Go to a search engine and type in something like 'ex-Christians'. You will be amazed and heartbroken by what you find. Hundreds of angry and wounded lambs are pouring out their anguish to an audience that generally reinforces what they feel. Instead they need to hear from their former flock that we care, we miss them, we need them, and we want them to come back." p. 91

Dave Burchett wants to know, "how do we productively address those who have been wounded by the church, and help to restore them back into community?"

Only a director who has worked with the Fox Network could have gotten away with writing a book called When Bad Christians Happen To Good People, since Fox has given us When Animals Attack, When Animals Attack II and When Animals Attack And Then Apologize Profusely (check your local listings). Burchett's sense of humor and irony permeates Bring 'Em Back, which is the follow-up to Bad Christians. The encouraging thing is that he realizes that there is no room for any of us to point fingers, as we all frequently exhibit Bad Christian-ness when dealing with other people. The beauty is that we can be forgiven.

How do we keep from being offended by the church? Burchett's simple answer is that we can't. We are human, and it's going to happen. This book is concerned with the question, "what are we going to do about it when it happens?"

The book can be summed up well with this passage:

"In the Christian walk, hurts are inevitable. Feeling like a victim and deciding to stay there really is optional." p. 153

The author wants to encourage us to be mature in our responses when we are hurt by either well-meaning or purposely vicious believers.

I highly recommend reading the two books in conjunction with each other, as the first serves to define the dilemma and the second seeks to find God's way of dealing with it, with a view of restoring ALL of His people back to His community.

Bring 'Em Back Alive:A Healing Plan For Those Wounded By The Church

A Review by Ryan Richardson

Bring 'Em Back Alive:
A Healing Plan For Those Wounded By The Church