Please Don’t Revive Us Again!: The Human Side of the Church of Christ

by Perry C Cotham

This book is truly one of a kind! Through satire and humor, author Perry C. Cotham colorfully shares a wealth of practical insight about church life in general and pulpit ministry specifically. In Please Don't Revive Us Again! he presents a unique picture of authentic Christian men and women and the joys, pains, and serendipities they experience along their faith journey. As preaching and teaching minister, Cotham offers a collection of humorous, irreverent, and sometimes sad stories and observations from his long career within one unique Christian tradition. Informative and entertaining, he discusses situations and people culled from church life, ministerial training at a Christian college, and the practical realities of a spiritual vocation. Literally hundreds of fascinating and colorful personalities are named and stories narrated. Containing a delightful mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly, Please Don't Revive Us Again! gives insight into the life of a minister and shares the advice and lessons he learned along the way. Some readers may disagree with Cotham's applications or feel discomfort with some of his stories, but most will find it difficult to put this book down.

412 pages, Paperback

Published December 23, 2019

Reviews

[John Lim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I deeply appreciate this book. As Cotham himself writes, this book was written for a very specific audience, that being members of the Churches of Christ, a particular Christian tradition. This book is a collection of stories and anecdotes that arise from the particularities of our beliefs and church practices.

For readers within this faith tradition, of which I am a part, I believe it will garner mixed reviews. We are a people who take our faith and sound doctrines very seriously. Thus the mere idea of poking fun at what we believe would surely cause some to bristle with anger. On one hand, worshiping God is serious business because it is a sacred activity. Only fools would laugh in the face of All-Consuming Fire. On the other hand, we are imperfect human beings doing this worship of God, and what we do can sometimes deviate from the sacred.

I believe Cotham has a point. I do think that we take ourselves way too seriously, and we could use a light-hearted look back on the history of our faith tradition. When we think about it, what we believe, particularly about Sunday worship practices, has yielded some quirky results. Perhaps these humorous stories will lead us to a fuller consideration and appreciation for our tradition.

Many of the issues touched on, such as preaching, Acapella singing, and Christian college, are personally relevant. While Cotham tells funny stories, the fact that these stories exist pricks my heart. As a tradition, I think we have at times tended to such extreme legalism that we have failed to realize how absurd those tendencies are. Humor helps us acknowledge that the traditions we have held so dear, traditions that have ruptured our unity, are in fact not as vital as we make them out to be.

[David Blankenship · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surprisingly long book of stories and anecdotes from the lives of a minister and his friends. While there is some good to be found in this book (as a longtime minister in Churches of Christ I can relate to many of the stories he tells), there are two main problems: 1)This book is far too long. It needed a sharp editor to go through it and pare it down by half. 2)At times as a reader I had a hard time understanding if what he was writing about was done tongue-in-cheek, or with all seriousness. There's just something off with the tone of this book, an inconsistency that left me confused. I understand that much of this book was to poke a hole in some of our self-righteousness...but a lot of times it seemed as if the writer was more in love with that tradition of the 'True Church' legalism than he would want to admit. Perhaps because this written over the course of decades and not so well-edited, this kind of two-mindedness about this topic was never fully settled in his head? I'm not entirely sure, and I don't think he is, either.

If you love preacher stories, and LOTS of them, this book may be for you.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very funny while being insightful. Many of the stories had me laughing out loud. I read this book slowly because if I read too much at once I started to rush and missed the tone and humor of the author. I would recommend this to church of Christ members. It would be less funny but still somewhat funny to others.