In the second part of his ongoing review of Austin Fischer’s Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed: Black Holes, Love, and a Journey In and Out of Calvinism John Frye tells this story:

Some years ago the senior pastor of a large Assembly of God Church told me this story. He met with the denominational leaders of the Christian Reformed Church to discuss church growth in West Michigan. The Assembly’s pastor thanked the Reformed leaders for filling his church and many other Assemblies churches. The Reformed leaders were a little taken back, asking, “How did we do that?” The pastor said, “By preaching your view of God so faithfully. Thank you. People from your churches flock to ours to escape a wrathful, unpleasable God and they find in our churches a God who so ravishingly loves them that he chases them down with passionate desire.” We can argue Pelagianism, Arminianism, semi-Pelagianism, Open theism, and Calvinism ad infinitum. Yet, people, ordinary people, just want to know “What kind of God is at the center of the universe?” At the center of reality is there a meticulously determined decree or a “Lamb, looking as it if had been slain”?

The post is at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog here: Young Restless and No Longer Reformed (2) (John Frye). The first part of the review is here: Young, Restless and No Longer Reformed (by John Frye).

Tags: Calvinism | John Frye | pentecostal | Scot McKnight