Blogger Review Books – Page 14

Kneeling With Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers

October 18, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A look at 10 different forms of prayer through biographical sketches.

There are so many books on prayer. As Evangelicals have started paying more attention to historical theology, church history and church practices of other streams of Christian faith there is a need for books like Kneeling with Giants to help us understand the value of prayer practices that we may not be as familiar with.

Gary Hansen takes his experience teaching prayer practices to seminary students and melds it with good church history. In many ways the actual information is not much different from what has been presented in other books, like Richard Foster’s Prayer. But this book will appeal to those that like their history in biographical sketch. Foster can be a bit heady at times.

Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families by Douglas Wilson

October 1, 2012 by All Old Users

Bookwi.se Note: Welcome Seth Simmons, a new Bookwi.se Contributor. If you would like to contribute reviews to Bookwi.se read our brief guidelines.

Fatherhood is a holistic role and endeavor. It impacts politics and government, education, vocation, poverty and crime, religion, and more. There is no facet of culture that is not impacted by fatherhood–or its decline.

Douglas Wilson’s Father Hunger is a rousing and convicting call for men to lead their families. Theologically robust yet pastoral and practical, Wilson gets to the heart of the matter in his characteristically direct manner. Like Chesterton, he has a way of looking at an issue from a different perspective and unearthing the basic truths.

An overarching theme of the book is the idea of gratitude. “Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility” (41). “Gratitude declares the meaning of fatherhood like little else can” (59). Fathers are generous in all things. He shows how the apostle Paul compared not dirty and clean, but dirty and grateful (175).

Disability and the Gospel by Michael Beates

September 20, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: “…The world is divided into two groups after all….the line is drawn between those that are aware of their disabilities and those that are blind to them.”

Disability and the Gospel, fortunately, is not another attempt at defining the gospel as an adjective like so many books lately. It is a real, and somewhat dense, look at how Christianity understands both the people that are commonly labeled as disabled and how we as humans are labeled disabled by the gospel. (The gospel here is used as a general summary of Grace, Salvation and the Power of God. And not my preferred definition which is simply ‘Jesus is Lord, Savior and Messiah. See my review of the King Jesus Gospel for a longer discussion of this.)

The clearest summary of this book is about 3/4 of the way through the book where the author says, “…The world is divided into two groups after all. Not however, the normal and the abnormal, or the able and the disabled. Rather the line is drawn between those that are aware of their disabilities and those that are blind to them.”

So throughout the book, the author is using these two lenses to think about disability. On the one hand the traditionally understood disabled (blind, paraplegic, Down’s Syndrome, etc.) On the other hand, all of us as humans are disabled by sin and need to realize that we need God and that God works in us best though our weakness. Relatively early in the book the authors says that the body’s purpose is to show weakness and point toward a future in Heaven. Overall, I like the split focus, but I found the discussion on traditionally disabled far more challenging and helpful.

Why Holiness Matters by Tyler Braun

August 13, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: Holiness is affection for God and a way of life, not a set of rules that we have to live by.

Holiness is a difficult topic to discuss. About halfway through the book I thought of my comments in a review of a book on Christian giving. “Just because there has been so much bad teaching on the theology of giving does not mean that we should not talk about giving.” And in this context, just because there has been so much bad teaching on holiness does not mean that holiness is somehow unimportant. In fact we mostly likely need to spend more time discussing holiness. Unfortunately authors and pastors have to deal with the bad teaching in order for the good teaching to make sense.

Tyler Braun is very directly attempting to communicate the importance of holiness to the Millennial Generation (although this is a beneficial book if you are not in that generation) because holiness has been so badly taught in the past.

Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice by David Teems

July 17, 2012 by Adam Shields

Summary: A speculative biography about an important figure in English Christianity. But one that we know very little about. It is hard to write a biography on someone that history knows very little about. And we really do not know a lot about Tyndale. If this book were simply a list of things that are … Read more

The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler

May 10, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: The Gospel needs to be understood and Explicit.

I want to affirm Chandler’s desire that people really understand the Gospel. (Although we have a different definition of what is actually the meaning of the word gospel.) He was struck one day by the number of people that his church was baptizing that said the equivalent of “I grew up in a Christian home and going to church but I never heard the gospel until…” I heard and have thought the same thing. Was it that the gospel was not preached or was it that you did not understand?

But like many, his path toward defining and pushing the importance of the gospel takes a pretty standard line. God is great, God owes you nothing, we are saved by God’s grace alone, our desire for this world is really a mis-placed desire intended for God. So we must emphasize our sin, the reality of hell, and our lost-ness without Christ.

Fields of Gold (Generous Giving) by Andy Stanley

May 8, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: In spite of the fact that some Christians misuse scripture about giving, those portions of scripture are still there and we need to focus on the right meaning, not avoid them.

As I have said before, my wife and I lead a small group of newly married couples. Our next topic is finances. So when I was offered this book to review I read it with that in mind.

This book was written by my pastor. So I am not completely unbiased and I have heard much of this content before in sermons or other teaching.

But the thing that most struck me here is that in spite of the fact that Health and Wealth gospel preachers misuse scripture on giving, God still is interested in how we think about and use our money.

Andy Stanley starts with the fact that we often think about giving wrong. It is not ‘God gets this amount and everything else is ours’. It is God have given all of it to you and you are merely a steward of it all. So God wants us to invest it. That investment should be in God’s kingdom. This does not mean that we can’t use money on things we need, but that if we have the right attitude toward the money, those things that we really need are far less.

A Spirituality of Living by Henri Nouwen

April 5, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: We are created to need solitude, community and to do service.

I don’t remember when I first became acquainted with Henri Nouwen. Probably some time in college. I had read a handful of his books.

This is the one I have read most and I think is most helpful. His book Out of Solitude covers some similar material from a different perspective, so it is a good supplement to this one. Because they are both so short, someone should get rights to both and print them together.

This book is a simple explanation about the movement from solitude with God, to community with others to service for God and back to solitude again is apart of God’s created order.

Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Anglicanism

February 28, 2012 by Adam Shields

Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism Summary: Stories of conversion from Evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism and from Catholicism to Evangelical

I am a big proponent of story. I think that personal stories are often more valuable than discussion based purely on rationalism. I believe this because we are not purely rational creatures. There is something else that is important to us and story often communicates in a more well-rounded way than pure rational discussion.

The structure of this book is that an author discusses their move from one branch of Christianity to another. Then there is a response by a third party and then a response to the response by the original author.

In general, this allows for the story to be the main subject of the first section. Then the response can bring up rational/theological issues and then the original author can deal with theological objections.

Historical Theology by Gregg Allison – The Trinity

January 27, 2012 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Theology requires history and church tradition.

I already wrote a summary review on Historical Theology. But I am still using it as background. I am getting ready to start working on a series of books on the Trinity. I started reading one book with some friends and was very disappointed with the opening chapter. So I decided to go back and read the chapter on the Trinity from Historical Theology to give myself some additional historical context. That is really what this book is for, more than to read straight through from cover to cover.

The Trinity is an interesting doctrine. Essentially the vast majority of what the church believes was determined by 600 AD. The first three major creeds of the church spent a lot of time talking about the trinity and only a little has really been added over the years. The trinity is one area where there is very little difference of opinion between Protestants and Roman Catholics.