Against Nothingness

Shawn Lovejoy. The Measure of Our Success: An Impassioned Plea to Pastors . Baker Books, 2012. 184 pgs.  In this plea Shawn Lovejoy takes aim at the all to common problem of pastoral burnout and failure. In his own words: "Why are so many pastors and ministry leaders falling? Why are they so vulnerable? Why are they so unfulfilled? Lonely? Insecure? Discouraged? Depressed? Burned out? Why are so many not seeing the fruit they hoped to see? What is wrong with pastors?"  The answer? Many pastors are aiming at the wrong thing. Pastors seek to do great things for God instead of being a great man with God. Pastors seek numbers instead of fruit, busy-ness instead of wholeness, approval instead of holiness, and fame instead of faithfulness. Chasing the wrong things kills us.  It is a sad thing that this book needed to be written, but I do believe it did. The real message, condensed in the way I would want to say it to other pastors, is quite simple: You are no...

Gary Thomas. Every Body Matters: Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul. Zondervan, 2011. 256 pgs.  In Every Body Matters  Gary Thomas explores some of the interactions between our bodies and our soul. More specifically, he argues that treating our body well is an important part of spiritual discipline and living well. He urges us to "stop treating our bodies like ornaments... and start treating our bodies like instruments, vessels set apart to serve the God who fashioned them. Throughout the book Thomas also explores topics from the discipline of exercise, to spiritual problems like sloth and greed. As I started this book, I wasn't so sure what I was getting into. I have read, and appreciated, books by Gary Thomas before. That is, after all, why I decided to risk this book. However, any book about exercise and the Christian life starts out a few paces behind as it has many hurdles to avoid on the way. Hurdles like implying, or explicitly stating, t...

Ann Spangler, General Editor.  The Names of God Bible .  Revell, 2011. 1730 pgs.  Reviewing a bible... this is most definitely a first. What am I going to say? Recommended? Obviously, what follows is a review of the particularities of this version and this translation. What you have here is a version of the "God's Word Translation." The entire thing focuses on the names of God. The cross references, few and far between as they are, point to other uses of particular names of God. The sidebars and informational pages focus on explaining the names and usages of particular names for God. And every time one of the names for God is used, this version keeps that name in a transliterated version of the original; things like "El Chay" (Living God) and Sar Shalom (Prince of Peace). As a way for people with no Hebrew and Greek background, this version of the bible offers a great window into the various names of God and what they mean. The sidebars are qui...

Mark Galli.  Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Work of the Holy Spirit . Baker, 2011. 203 pgs. In Chaos and Grace,  Galli asserts that the church has forgotten the character of the God we serve. We have forgotten that He is beyond our control, unpredictable, untamable, and mysterious. In His place many churches have centered their life on idols of control, peace, and order. In the midst of this situation, Galli seeks to wake us up. He spends the first half of this book examining biblical passages in which we see how God works, how chaos and grace are defining factors of walking with God; the chaos of life beyond our control, and the grace that shines through in the midst of it. The second half of the book is an analysis of current church culture, decrying our loss of touch with God Almighty and calling us back.  Galli acknowledges that the first half of his book, examining scripture with the themes of Chaos and Grace in mind, will seem od...

Scotty Smith.  Everyday Prayers: 365 Days to a Gospel-Centered Faith . Baker Books, 2011. 380 pgs.  On the surface, this is a devotional prayer book which has one prayer for each day of the year. However, you do not have to read very far to find out that Scotty Smith intends to communicate far more than this. Through these prayers, Smith desired to find Jesus in every part of the bible, bring the gospel to bear on every part of his life, and help the reader to do these same things. He seeks to engage Jesus as prophet, priest, and king (a popular reformed rubric these days, and certainly not a bad one), as well as to continually return to basics of the gospel within the grand metanarrative of scripture.  As you read these prayers you will find that they truly are everyday prayers. They range from poetic to personal in style, grand to minute in scope, and topically they are all over the place. This is, in my opinion, a good reflection of everyday life....

Jeremy Kingsley.  Getting Back Up When Life Knocks You Down . Bethany House, 2011. 123 pgs.  The title of this book is very revealing. This is a book of encouragement for when 'life knocks you down.' In each chapter, Kingsley explores a crisis (set backs, rejection, pain, denial, anger, bargaining, responsibility, forgiveness, guilt, and worry) and how working through it in perseverance can lead to growth in many ways. He also fills each chapter with practical advice on how to work through that crisis or problem.  To be honest, I did not enjoy this book. There isn't anything glaringly wrong with it; no heresy, no mis-use of statistics or sources, no terrible writing. It's just that there isn't anything really right with it either. This is a Christian self help book, and while there is certainly much of the book that points to God, there is also too much of the book which points to our selves. Furthermore, it is overly simple. For example, Kingsley offe...

Tim Challies.  The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion . Zondervan, 2011. 208 pgs.  Digital technology is everywhere. We all know it; we see it (or not), experience it, live with it, use it, and are surrounded by it all the time. From cars to cell phones to shopping to reading, 'the digital explosion' is as good a phrase as any to characterize our time. However, there are many important questions to ask in the face of this explosion. Questions like: How has life and faith been changed by these technologies? How does out constant connected-ness affect us? And what does it mean that we are under surveillance most of our lives? These, and more, are the questions Challies addresses in this book as he seeks to help the reader know how to think  about technology as a Christian. Challies first spends three chapters examining how we have arrived at this place of digital explosion. He then lays out three principles to keep in mind while evaluating t...

Todd Cartmell.  Project Dad: The Complete Do-It-Yourself Guide for Becoming a Great Father . Revell, 2011. 221 pgs.  Every father wants to be a great dad. We want to do what is best for our children, and be the kind of father they need so that they can flourish in life. But how do you do that? In this book Todd Cartmell, a father and child psychologist, offers his advice on how to be a great father. The subtitle, 'do-it-yourself' and all that, is designed to appeal to the part of a father that wants to build things and do it themselves. In order to do this, Cartmell urges fathers to pay attention to five areas of interaction with our children: our eyes (how we look at our children), our mouths (how we talk to our children), our hearts (how we connect with our children), our hands (how we act towards our children), and our feet (how we lead our children). He reminds us that a great father is a father who helps his children to develop their God-given gifts and pote...

Wayne Cordeiro .  Irresistible Church, The: 12 Traits of a Church Heaven Applauds . Bethany House Publishers, 2011. 176 pgs.  "Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.  Available at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group".   Wayne Cordeiro is a mega-church pastor in Hawaii. This book contains his advice on 12 traits of a church that heaven applauds. And that is the first thing you need to know about this book; it is not about making your church irresistible to other people, rather it is about making your church irresistible to God (though Cordeiro insists that if you have the latter, you will have the former as well). As you should expect, each chapter (other than the introduction) outlines one of these 12 traits. According to Cordeiro an irresistible church: Hungers for the presence of God, remembers who she is, lives he...

Chris Price and John Morrison. Questions You're Probably Already Asking Yes, a book by John Morrison... or is it Jon Morrison ? Is there a type-o on the cover of your book Jo(h?)n? Jon and Chris have written a brief introductory apologetics book for teens. It takes on nine traditional apologetics areas (Creation, Sexuality, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Suffering, Bible, Hell, Science, and Good), most with more than one question embedded in each section, and then answers them in a style designed with students in mind. Jon and Chris alternate authorship of the chapters, though they maintain a fairly consistent style and writing voice throughout. Each chapter begins by introducing the questions, then explores the answers Jon and Chris are offering, and concludes with a list of additional resources and a small group study guide.  Questions is a fairly good apologetics book for teens. Jon and Chris are very honest about what is, and is not, in this book. They do not claim to have come...

Tony Campolo, Stories That Feed Your Soul . Regal, 2010. 224 pgs.  Yes, this books is exactly what the title claims: a collection of stories meant to 'feed your soul' (what a strange image once you think about it). 117 stories from Tony Campolo; funny, interesting, inspiring, boring, very short, short, and shorter these stories cover a huge gamut.  Campolo divides these stories according to eight themes he finds in Romans 8: Freedom from Condemnation, The New Life in Christ, Intimacy with God, The Call to Rescue Creation, Living with Hope, Praying in the Spirit, God's Plan for Us, and The Assurance We Need.  Campolo choose to organize them this way because he has found Romans 8 to be a rich and fruitful chapter in his own life, and reflecting on the themes therein is something he wants others to do as well.  As a whole, this book was enjoyable. Campolo has done a decent job selecting stories and he is not bad at drawing lessons from them. Of course, some of the...

Michael Horton . The Gospel Commission: Recovering God's Strategy for Making Disciples . Baker Books, 2011. 320 pgs.  Michael Horton is concerned. He is concerned that evangelical Christians are suffering from 'Mission Creep.' That is, that we are giving up our focus on the mission God has given us, becoming distracted by other activities, and losing our clear and biblically founded grasp on the truths which God has given us with regards to the gospel commission (Matthew 28:18-20).  One might justly sum up this entire book as an extended theological commentary on the great commission. Horton divides his book into three sections: The Great Announcement, The Mission Statement, and The Strategic Plan. In the first of these, Horton seeks to help us understand the gospel message, especially by placing it in it's full biblical context. "The Great Announcement" is, in fact, an excellent summary of the work of scholars such as N.T. Wright, Christopher Wright, and ...

Karen E. Dill.  How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence . Oxford University Press, 2009. 320 pgs.  This is a book about the massive impact that TV, Movies, Video Games, and Music has on all of us, whether we know it or not.  Karen Dill begins by explaining the psychology of media. Most importantly, she shows that it does affect us, despite the fact that most people believe they are immune. This is called the "third person effect."  The 'third person effect' is the phenomenon that almost all people believe that other people  are influenced and affected by media exposure, but they personally are not. Clearly, this is logically impossible and nonsense, but we convince ourselves anyway.  With this established, Dill spends a chapter each exploring the following issues, relating serious scholarly studies in each instance: media violence, race and gender, social learning (focused on beauty and domestic violence), advertising a...

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy . Thomas Nelson, 2010. 608 pages.  Bonhoeffer  is a book that has, apparently, met with stunning laudations.  I didn't read the article myself, but have it on good authority that First Things  recommended in a review that people go out and buy six copies and give them to friends.  Trusted friends also gave this book high accolades.  With this acclaim ringing in the background, how could I fail to purchase and read it?  That's right, I couldn't. And, having read the book, I understand what all the buzz is about... mostly.  As you may have guessed, Bonhoeffer is a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  To summarize much more than that seems unnecessary.  Metaxas presents Bonhoeffer's life, from his childhood and family to his death in a Nazi prison.   As promised, Metaxas is a stupendous story-teller and a superb writer.  I learned a lot reading this biography; det...

Margaret Brownley, A Suitor For Jenny: A Rocky Creek Romance . Thomas Nelson, 2010. 311 pgs.  Thanks to booksneeze  for the book to review, and an especially HUGE thank you to Kristina for reading and reviewing this book which was sent to me by mistake! A Suitor For Jenny tells the story of Jenny and her two sisters.  When her parents die, Jenny takes her two sisters to Rocky Creek for a new beginning.  Not only, Rocky Creek is known as a place with many eligible bachelors.  Perfect for Jenny to find husbands for her two sisters.  Of course, as Jenny seeks proper matches for her sisters, nothing turns out the way she hopes or plans.  This was an enjoyable book. As a woman with two younger sisters, it did hit a chord in my own personal experience. It explores several important themes, most notably the issue of controlling our own lives versus allowing God control and resting in His peace.  The other big one was exploring grief and g...

Mark Deymaz and Harry Li , Ethnic Blends: Mixing Diversity into Your Local Church . Zondervan, 2010. 230pgs.  Another review brought to you by engagingchurchblog.com . Thanks! Ethnic Blends is a book which encourages local churches to aim for multi-ethnic (self consciously not multi-cultural, as the authors explain) and makes a beginning of explaining how to do this.  The first chapter outlines the biblical reasons that we ought to be doing this as well as the seven core commitments of a multi-ethnic church.  Chapter one, as well as the introduction, also give the reader the understanding that this task will be difficult. From there, Deymaz and Li spend seven chapters explaining how to overcome various obstacles; personal, theological, philosophical, practical, cross-cultural, relational, and spiritual. Each chapter is a mix of stories, advice, warnings, and encouragement.  They end with discussion and reflection questions.  I completely agree with De...