The Circle Maker: an early read

I just started reading The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. The book was prominently displayed in a group of bestsellers at our local LifeWay store and, needing another entry for a book review series, I decided to pick up a copy.

No need to get into specifics but let’s just say that this quote from J. C. Ryle’s Holiness was running through my head as I read:

It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity nowadays which you cannot declare positively unsound, but which, nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably ‘something about Christ and something about grace and something about faith and something about repentance and something about holiness’, but it is not the real ‘thing as it is’ in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion.

I’m only four chapters in but at this point I’d place the book securely between “out of proportion” and “unsound.”

Author: Jonathan P. Merritt

Happily married father of six. Lead pastor at Edgewood Baptist Church (Columbus, GA). Good-natured contrarian, theological Luddite, and long-suffering Atlanta Falcons fan. A student of one book. View all posts by Jonathan P. Merritt