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Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World
As Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, Gashmu and the enemies of Israel mocked “It is reported among the heathen, and Gashmu saith it, that thou and the Jews think to rebel...” (Neh. 6:6).
Too many Christians building communities today take the taunts of every modern-day Gashmu seriously. Community is a buzzword, and it turns out there’s a lot of bad advice about how to build one. In Gashmu Saith It, Douglas Wilson includes forty years of experience for Christians wanting to build robust communities without retreat or compromise on the foundation of the Gospel. This book is full of Get calluses. Be loyal. Fight sin. Build walls on the outside and a church in the middle.This book is published by Canon Press. At Canon Press, we’re gospel no matter who you are or what you do, you’re called to be increasing in Biblical faithfulness. That’s because Jesus’s death and resurrection changed All of Christ, for all of life, for all the world.
As the wisest man said, “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works” (Eccl. 9:7).We believe reformation and revival start from faith in the Lord with joyful obedience to the Bible, and that is what makes everyday tasks significant and transforms culture. Because of these beliefs, we offer books on Christian living, encouragement, contentment, raising kids, healthy marriages, educational choices, classical education, homeschooling, politics, government, feminism, identity, manhood, womanhood, singleness, virtue, and so much more.
Too many Christians building communities today take the taunts of every modern-day Gashmu seriously. Community is a buzzword, and it turns out there’s a lot of bad advice about how to build one. In Gashmu Saith It, Douglas Wilson includes forty years of experience for Christians wanting to build robust communities without retreat or compromise on the foundation of the Gospel. This book is full of Get calluses. Be loyal. Fight sin. Build walls on the outside and a church in the middle.This book is published by Canon Press. At Canon Press, we’re gospel no matter who you are or what you do, you’re called to be increasing in Biblical faithfulness. That’s because Jesus’s death and resurrection changed All of Christ, for all of life, for all the world.
As the wisest man said, “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works” (Eccl. 9:7).We believe reformation and revival start from faith in the Lord with joyful obedience to the Bible, and that is what makes everyday tasks significant and transforms culture. Because of these beliefs, we offer books on Christian living, encouragement, contentment, raising kids, healthy marriages, educational choices, classical education, homeschooling, politics, government, feminism, identity, manhood, womanhood, singleness, virtue, and so much more.
65 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 14, 2021
108 people are currently reading
397 people want to read
About the author
Douglas Wilson
319 books4,565 followersI write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
January 27, 2022
The reason I LOVE this little book is because I LOVE the community we are part of, a church community built on these principles (Christ Church in Moscow, ID,. where the pastor is Douglas Wilson) . It a great joy to see what faithful obedience with the blessing of the Lord accomplishes and how far it advances the Kingdom of God.
February 28, 2022
I don't think there was anything here that I haven't heard Doug say in one place or another, but it was fun to see it collected here as a sort of apologia for what we are doing here in Moscow. I hesitated over that we, but it would have missed the point to omit it. I'm by no means leading the charge, but even the lowliest private third class needs to remember that she is part of the army and that her obedient participation is something God desires to use to win the war.
February 4, 2022
This is an oddly named, short book on how Christians can build communities that will transform the world for Christ. The chapters are all very short and full of the typical Wilson style.
This serves as a kind of good introduction into Wilson and his project in Moscow, Idaho. There's a lot of good in it, but on the whole, his other books cover the same material in more depth.
This serves as a kind of good introduction into Wilson and his project in Moscow, Idaho. There's a lot of good in it, but on the whole, his other books cover the same material in more depth.
February 19, 2022
Excellent little book. I love our church community culture here in Moscow, Idaho.
April 15, 2022
This book was written for the congregation at Christ Church, Moscow, ID, but there’s a lot to be learned about building a robust Christian culture. Doug has excellent insights into the scriptures and how that intersects with culture. That makes for good pastoral theology.
March 2, 2022
4.3! Very good. A great introductory work to a lot of the principles Doug’s worked to explain over the years. His last chapter on the church was phenomenal! A must read for everyone.
January 15, 2022
Summary:
- Chapter 1: We need to conserve what is worth conserving and progress past the main idols of our culture - secularism, Darwinism, egalitarianism, value/fact distinction, relativism, and admiration of the cool kids.
- Chapter 2: Be unapologetically counter cultural (Biblically defined)
- Chapter 3: Be a close-knit, likeminded community. This is community not conformity (general doctrinal statement to be a member in the church, specific for church teaching).
- Chapter 4: Obey and teach God’s standard, not the world’s standard. Hard teaching creates soft hearts.
- Chapter 5: Create “little platoons” with Christian hospitality. This is hospitality that gives with no regard to getting.
- Chapter 6: Seek Christian education. There is no Christian community without Christian education. Create ways to educate your kids in the Lord.
- Chapter 7: Rediscover vocation. Create businesses, and bless (don’t use) brothers in business dealings.
- Chapter 8: Have homes where husbands lead and wives submit so the word of God will not be reviled. God knows what households are attractive to a lost world (we don’t). To degrade marriage is to degrade the gospel.
- Chapter 9: Seek the kingdom of God through sphere sovereignty where the church, family, and the government seek to glorify God.
- Epilogue: Have courage.
- Chapter 1: We need to conserve what is worth conserving and progress past the main idols of our culture - secularism, Darwinism, egalitarianism, value/fact distinction, relativism, and admiration of the cool kids.
- Chapter 2: Be unapologetically counter cultural (Biblically defined)
- Chapter 3: Be a close-knit, likeminded community. This is community not conformity (general doctrinal statement to be a member in the church, specific for church teaching).
- Chapter 4: Obey and teach God’s standard, not the world’s standard. Hard teaching creates soft hearts.
- Chapter 5: Create “little platoons” with Christian hospitality. This is hospitality that gives with no regard to getting.
- Chapter 6: Seek Christian education. There is no Christian community without Christian education. Create ways to educate your kids in the Lord.
- Chapter 7: Rediscover vocation. Create businesses, and bless (don’t use) brothers in business dealings.
- Chapter 8: Have homes where husbands lead and wives submit so the word of God will not be reviled. God knows what households are attractive to a lost world (we don’t). To degrade marriage is to degrade the gospel.
- Chapter 9: Seek the kingdom of God through sphere sovereignty where the church, family, and the government seek to glorify God.
- Epilogue: Have courage.
April 23, 2022
An excellent introduction to what has been done and is being done to create a Christian community in Moscow, ID. The principles Doug lays out can applied in any Christian situation to slowly being creating a Christian community. Perhaps most striking to me was that the chapter on "Sexual Sanity" was primarily about wives submitting and obeying their husbands. Husbands are mentioned, but only briefly. This is different than some of his previous books which have focused primarily on men and their responsibility. I think this shift in emphasis, at least for this book, was good.
March 30, 2022
A very encouraging and clarifying little read for troubled times. A blueprint for kingdom building.
March 26, 2024
Wilson’s way with words is unmatched. Plenty of nuggets to satisfy. But because of the overly brief nature and it’s societal sized target, it lands more as an assorted catch-all drawer in the kitchen: Fine, even helpful at times, but goodness is there actually anything in here that wouldn’t be better found somewhere else?
Want to read
February 28, 2022
December 7, 2022
This book is really too slim to merit any more than 4 stars, but there is plenty of pastoral wisdom packed into this short 100 pages, and there are some nuggets of gold here worth highlighting.
“Christians must be conservative when it comes to everything that the Spirit has accomplished in the history of our civilization. And we must be progressive with regard to all the things He has yet to do.”
“Jesus pointed out that after prophets are dead and gone, their reputations start to improve. This is because the only manageable prophet is a dead prophet.”
“You really should give up preaching. And blogging. And publishing. And declaring. And challenging. And prophetically denouncing. And why? Gashmu saith it. And who is Gashmu? We are not sure exactly, but it distresses us that he is displeased.”
“When it comes to life in our modern congregations, we think we have to guard against mindless conformity when what really threatens our spiritual health is our radical individualism. The Scriptures tell us what we should be laboring for, striving for, and praying for. We are not told to work at maintaining independence of thought, although real independence of thought is a good thing. We are not told to build some ecclesiastical variant of academic freedom. We are commanded to strive for like-mindedness, to be of one mind. Our task is assigned, and that is what we should focus on.”
“An alternative culture must begin as a sub-culture, but that subculture must have a robust inmune system. And if that growing alternative culture is to be Christian, there must be a dogged commitment to the centrality of true Christian education. Education is one of the central instruments given to us by God for the establishment and perpetuation of a culture. And if we want the culture to be believing, then the education that feeds into it must be believing.”
“Unfortunately, this medieval mistake is creeping back in, having made great inroads in the evangelical world. What do people who are "sold out for Jesus" do now? We now call it "full time Christian work." But what other kind is there? Part time Christians are not the converted ones. According to this unhappy assumption, if you don't enlist in the Navy Seals for Jesus (NSJ), then you can always go into architecture, where you try to pay down some of the guilt for being such a partial Christian by giving donations to the real Christians.
But the doctrine of God's sovereignty and Christ's universal lordship over all things means that we need to put down this idea for good. If you are a faithful Christian, walking in the will of God, then God is advancing the kingdom of His Son through your film-editing, back hoe-operating, diaper-changing, book-writing, music-composing, lawn-mowing, classroom-teaching, study-group organizing, and sermon-preparing. All of it is in the palm of God's hand. Remember all of Christ for all of life. When we say all of life, we mean all of life. “
“Christians must be conservative when it comes to everything that the Spirit has accomplished in the history of our civilization. And we must be progressive with regard to all the things He has yet to do.”
“Jesus pointed out that after prophets are dead and gone, their reputations start to improve. This is because the only manageable prophet is a dead prophet.”
“You really should give up preaching. And blogging. And publishing. And declaring. And challenging. And prophetically denouncing. And why? Gashmu saith it. And who is Gashmu? We are not sure exactly, but it distresses us that he is displeased.”
“When it comes to life in our modern congregations, we think we have to guard against mindless conformity when what really threatens our spiritual health is our radical individualism. The Scriptures tell us what we should be laboring for, striving for, and praying for. We are not told to work at maintaining independence of thought, although real independence of thought is a good thing. We are not told to build some ecclesiastical variant of academic freedom. We are commanded to strive for like-mindedness, to be of one mind. Our task is assigned, and that is what we should focus on.”
“An alternative culture must begin as a sub-culture, but that subculture must have a robust inmune system. And if that growing alternative culture is to be Christian, there must be a dogged commitment to the centrality of true Christian education. Education is one of the central instruments given to us by God for the establishment and perpetuation of a culture. And if we want the culture to be believing, then the education that feeds into it must be believing.”
“Unfortunately, this medieval mistake is creeping back in, having made great inroads in the evangelical world. What do people who are "sold out for Jesus" do now? We now call it "full time Christian work." But what other kind is there? Part time Christians are not the converted ones. According to this unhappy assumption, if you don't enlist in the Navy Seals for Jesus (NSJ), then you can always go into architecture, where you try to pay down some of the guilt for being such a partial Christian by giving donations to the real Christians.
But the doctrine of God's sovereignty and Christ's universal lordship over all things means that we need to put down this idea for good. If you are a faithful Christian, walking in the will of God, then God is advancing the kingdom of His Son through your film-editing, back hoe-operating, diaper-changing, book-writing, music-composing, lawn-mowing, classroom-teaching, study-group organizing, and sermon-preparing. All of it is in the palm of God's hand. Remember all of Christ for all of life. When we say all of life, we mean all of life. “
August 28, 2022
Surprising how many of the situations, conflicts, etc. that Wilson uses as illustrations have actually happened in my own experience in the last few years. This is really a nifty little manual for thick Christian community.
December 1, 2022
Easily one of the most practical books on how to live as holy members of the church body in a chaotic age. Short, practical and theologically sound. Highly recommended.
December 26, 2022
Short and sweet - would be a good book for a newcomer to the Moscow CREC community.
February 5, 2022
Crystallizes a lot of essential biblical instruction about true Christian community. A lot was written down in this one that I have been wrestling with over the last 3 years with regard to ecclesiology during postmodern and relativistic times.
October 15, 2022
Listened to audiobook on CanonPlus while driving, but would like to do a careful read through some day. Highly recommend.
January 19, 2023
“Why is the world not streaming to the rod of Jesse? Why are the nations not turning away from their folly? Is it because the gospel the Church is presenting to them is a gospel that looks too much like our marriages?”
Good and simple. Simple, not easy. I recommend giving it a read. It’s a quick one!
Good and simple. Simple, not easy. I recommend giving it a read. It’s a quick one!
December 21, 2021
If you read Doug regularly there isn’t much new but it’s still great.
January 31, 2023
All of scripture for all of life.
On sending our children to Caesar and getting back Romans:
“We may infer that it is also not possible to gather pink grapefruit from your juniper bushes, or pine nuts from your tomato plants, or lemons trom your box hedge. Pursuing the analogy relentlessly, we may also surmise that you cannot send your child to a culinary school and expect to get back a mechanical engineer. You cannot send them to art school, and wonder why your son never became a doctor like you wanted. You can't pay for law school, and then be surprised when an attorney eventually shows up. We often act astonished when we have no right whatsoever to be surprised in any way. We say, wide-eyed with Aaron, that all we did was put in a bunch of gold, and "out came this calf" (Exod. 32:24). That has to rank as one of the lamest excuses in the Bible, and here we are, still using it. All we did was put in hundreds of billions of dollars, and out came this misbegotten culture. How could this have happened? We are frankly at a loss.
And lest I be accused of being too oblique in the point I am seeking to make, you cannot send all the Christian kids off to be educated in a school system that is riddled with rank unbelief, shot through with relativism, and diseased with perverse sexual fantasies, and then wonder at the results you get.”
On Godly business ethics and practices:
“Too many Christian’s think that regeneration or good intentions or having a nice personality will somehow make your memory perfect or will prevent you from getting hit by a truck. Suppose you get hit by that truck and your heirs and your partners heirs are all trying to figure out what that handshake 15 years ago meant? So write it down. This does not make you suspicious and unloving. God loves us perfectly, and he still wrote it down.”
On government tyranny over businesses:
“But God did not give us the right to $15 an hour. For if he did, that means that somebody else has the obligation to pay you that amount and when the state steps in to enforce that kind of obligation, the result is always tyrannical.”
On the duties of each realm of government: Family, Church, & State
“In God’s order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others. Each has its assigned task and each one needs to tend to its own knitting. The church does not declare war; collect the trash. The family does not administer the sacraments. The State does not review cases of church discipline. And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.“
On Christian perspective for the chaos and moral cesspools around us:
“We are living in a time when all the wheels appear to be coming off Pharaoh’s chariots but this should not distress us, because we are Israelites and we are already standing on the opposite shore.”
On sending our children to Caesar and getting back Romans:
“We may infer that it is also not possible to gather pink grapefruit from your juniper bushes, or pine nuts from your tomato plants, or lemons trom your box hedge. Pursuing the analogy relentlessly, we may also surmise that you cannot send your child to a culinary school and expect to get back a mechanical engineer. You cannot send them to art school, and wonder why your son never became a doctor like you wanted. You can't pay for law school, and then be surprised when an attorney eventually shows up. We often act astonished when we have no right whatsoever to be surprised in any way. We say, wide-eyed with Aaron, that all we did was put in a bunch of gold, and "out came this calf" (Exod. 32:24). That has to rank as one of the lamest excuses in the Bible, and here we are, still using it. All we did was put in hundreds of billions of dollars, and out came this misbegotten culture. How could this have happened? We are frankly at a loss.
And lest I be accused of being too oblique in the point I am seeking to make, you cannot send all the Christian kids off to be educated in a school system that is riddled with rank unbelief, shot through with relativism, and diseased with perverse sexual fantasies, and then wonder at the results you get.”
On Godly business ethics and practices:
“Too many Christian’s think that regeneration or good intentions or having a nice personality will somehow make your memory perfect or will prevent you from getting hit by a truck. Suppose you get hit by that truck and your heirs and your partners heirs are all trying to figure out what that handshake 15 years ago meant? So write it down. This does not make you suspicious and unloving. God loves us perfectly, and he still wrote it down.”
On government tyranny over businesses:
“But God did not give us the right to $15 an hour. For if he did, that means that somebody else has the obligation to pay you that amount and when the state steps in to enforce that kind of obligation, the result is always tyrannical.”
On the duties of each realm of government: Family, Church, & State
“In God’s order, not one of the three is permitted to domineer over the others. Each has its assigned task and each one needs to tend to its own knitting. The church does not declare war; collect the trash. The family does not administer the sacraments. The State does not review cases of church discipline. And not one of these spheres is dependent on any of the others for its existence.“
On Christian perspective for the chaos and moral cesspools around us:
“We are living in a time when all the wheels appear to be coming off Pharaoh’s chariots but this should not distress us, because we are Israelites and we are already standing on the opposite shore.”
June 22, 2025
Wilson has some good thoughts about creating a healthy culture in a church community including thoughts about loyalty to a local church, separation from secular culture, marriage, education, parenting, and hospitality.
He makes an interesting observation about how individualism makes our society “squishy”. We need a more “molecular” structure where individuals are bound into small collectivities that together form a cohesive society. Collectivism without molecules becomes the idolatry of Statism. No collectivism at all is lawless and selfish.
Wilson is a post millennialist (I am not) and that definitely infects the final chapter of this book. I think it also affects his view of Christian participation in politics in the book which I don’t totally agree with.
Overall it’s an interesting book and an easy and quick read that made me think.
He makes an interesting observation about how individualism makes our society “squishy”. We need a more “molecular” structure where individuals are bound into small collectivities that together form a cohesive society. Collectivism without molecules becomes the idolatry of Statism. No collectivism at all is lawless and selfish.
Wilson is a post millennialist (I am not) and that definitely infects the final chapter of this book. I think it also affects his view of Christian participation in politics in the book which I don’t totally agree with.
Overall it’s an interesting book and an easy and quick read that made me think.
July 23, 2022
Great read on Christian community for churches today. As typical, Wilson writes in a style that leaves no prisoners. You will be forced to ride along with him or vehemently disagree with him, he leaves no room on the sidelines. Lots of valuable takeaways here for such a short book. Some of my favorite points were the duty of churches and members to seek likemindedness, the failure of Christian marriages to capture the imagination of the unchurched, the radical call to hospitality for churches and leaders, and the necessity of Christian education as the solution to our current cultural wars. Highly Recommended.
January 21, 2025
Regardless of what you think of Moscow or Wilson and friends, there is a lot of good and practical wisdom here. Even though we are sojourners on this earth, we are not stagnant. We build and create our communities, even if that begins with just our immediate families. If God blesses this and allows it to grow, there are some necessary steps in that building process we ought to be aware of.
If our nation were to be attacked on Sunday, it would be terrifically beneficial to have a plan of response to attacks by that prior Saturday. Coming up with those plans the next day would be too late and purely reactionary. So too is it good to have a plan in place for communities that grow by the grace of God. I would have renamed the subtitle to something like “How to build, and sustain, Christian communities that save the world” because that is a key part of this book. Anyone can build but few can make them last.
If our nation were to be attacked on Sunday, it would be terrifically beneficial to have a plan of response to attacks by that prior Saturday. Coming up with those plans the next day would be too late and purely reactionary. So too is it good to have a plan in place for communities that grow by the grace of God. I would have renamed the subtitle to something like “How to build, and sustain, Christian communities that save the world” because that is a key part of this book. Anyone can build but few can make them last.
February 26, 2022
A wonderfully written and practical little book about building community. I’ve been thinking about Christian community a lot over the past few months and, all of a sudden, a Doug Wilson book pops up about this very important and relevant subject. Great book.
March 3, 2022
Having lived in the community for 23 years so far, it is such a blessing seeing the fruit of this teaching from pulpit and magazines to conferences and Parish Discipleship groups and books and blogs. God has been so kind. (Listened to the audio via Canon+)
November 23, 2022
Listened to this on the day the documentary How to Save the World by Doug Wilson and this book was a more in-depth look at the topics found in that documentary. Quick easy read with huge implications if we as Christians could do it. Recommended
March 23, 2023
Nothing wrong with it, just nothing new presented. As a kindly, pastoral little book seemingly written to his own congregation, it is short and sweet, an easy read. Encouraging as well! It just seems like it belongs more in a Christ Church Membership welcome packet rather than a bookstore. 🤷♀️
December 9, 2021
Great little book on Christian communities with a plethora of practical tips and a compelling overarching vision of Christian culture.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews