One of our hopes for Enhearten Healing is to provide great resources to help those impacted by leadership abuse or spiritual abuse. This week, we share one such resource.
In this season, we believe the church is being called back to goodness, to humility, to generosity.
I believe that many of us are weary and thirsty for this.
Overwhelmingly weary and thirsty.
In A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture that Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing, Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer introduce us to the beautiful Hebrew word “tov.”
“Tov” is a Hebrew word for good.
It is the word used over and over again in the beautiful biblical account of creation.
In the book A Church Called Tov, Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer lead us through warning signs and characteristics of a toxic church culture, a culture that is not “tov.”
But they do not stop there.
They spend the rest of the book painting a beautiful picture of what they call a “circle of tov,” a culture that nurtures empathy, grace, people-first, truth, justice, service, and Christlikeness.
“A life designed for death, a death designed for life, and the virtues of utter goodness in what he taught and how he lived. That’s Jesus, the one truly tov and beautiful one.”
If you have experienced leadership abuse or spiritual abuse, you have experienced something that is not good... something that cannot be called “tov.”
Often it is hard to find words to describe what you have experienced.
In the middle of abuse, it is difficult to remember what healthy spiritual leadership looks like.
I think that, in these times, we long for sincere, simple goodness.
In A Church Called Tov, we experience language that paints a picture for us of a church characterized by “tov.”
A church called “tov” is not a perfect church, but it is a place of sincerity and goodness… a church that God calls “tov.”
I find myself captivated by the word picture of a church called “tov.”
About: Jenny Switkes is a professor of mathematics at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where she has the joy of mentoring many first-generation college students from diverse backgrounds. She also serves as a volunteer pastor at Rise OC Church in Costa Mesa, California.