THE LOVELIEST PLACE:
The beauty and glory of the church
By Dustin Benge
Crossway. 183 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978 1 433 574 948
How does God see the church? That’s the question Dustin Benge aims to answer in The Loveliest Place.
The answer he finds from Scripture and church leaders of previous generations is that when God looks at the church, He delights in it. ‘The church is beautiful’, Benge tells us, and he goes on to show that it is beautiful because Christ considers it beautiful. Benge doesn’t tell us about whether you should run courses or how to organise home groups. Rather he fixes our eyes on the fundamentals of who the church is and how God Himself cares for us, rescues us and even beautifies us. The look, feel and even tone of the book is similar to Dane Ortlund’s book, Gentle and Lowly, and Benge often draws on the Puritans for inspiration. A weakness of the book is that it is somewhat lacking in examples from experience. The Loveliest Place will enlarge our love for the church and in particular increase our delight in the God who calls the church His own. That is enough of a reason to read the book, but if church life is hard, discouraging and frustrating, seeing the church as God sees it will be a blessing. Benge never pretends that the church is better than it is, but he does show us how God loves the church whatever its discouragements or failures.
