American culture is me-centered to the nth degree. Browse the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble, and you’ll find a football field’s length of books about becoming a better you—a happier, healthier, wealthier you. Even the “Christian” book section is filled with books of this kind, some of them little more than secular self-help books with a patina of Bible verses.

God does want to bless people, of course. Psalm 1 says that. So does Jesus in the Beatitudes. But the biblical road to blessedness runs through God-centeredness and self-surrender, not me-centeredness and self-help. It requires that we both trust and obey God. 

Becoming useful to God because of deep trust and heartfelt obedience is a deeply countercultural message, but a spiritually fruitful one. 

That is the thesis of Dan Betzer’s new book, Why Some Churches Are Blessed. Betzer is a veteran Pentecostal minister and pastor of First Assembly of God in Fort Myers, Florida. He argues that blessedness is not a matter of “leadership, location, music program, media coverage” or the like. It’s not a matter of church size or ministry methodology. Rather, blessedness is based on two “scriptural principles”: “biblical faith and strict obedience to the commands of Jesus.” 

Specifically, Betzer argues for faith and obedience tied to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20). God sent Jesus Christ into the world “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Christ in turn sends us into the world to “make disciple all nations” (Matthew 28:19). A blessed church is a church whose heartbeat syncs with the saving heartbeat of God.

Betzer is a gifted and humorous storyteller. You’ll find yourself eagerly moving from one chapter to another. But this book is more than a book of personal testimony. It’s a personal testimony shaped and disciplined by Scripture. If I had to summarize its message in my own words, I’d put it this way: A blessed church—a blessed Christian—is one that is less interested in what God can do for it than in what God can do through it.

Becoming useful to God because of deep trust and heartfelt obedience is a deeply countercultural message, but a spiritually fruitful one.