Book Reviews

Here is a book written for anyone who has, is, or will experience suffering. It is a true story written by Jim Andrews, pastor of Lake Bible Church. Andrews taught for a number of years at Western Bible College in Denver, Colorado and later at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He and his wife Olsie have been married for 50 years and have two married daughters. The book is a story of their family. It is an unbelievable story of their daughter Juli and her husband Paul ” who face it all (and then some) as a baffling, mind-boggling illness hijacks their youth and shatters their dreams. It blends straightforward theology with the account of this young couple’s afflictions.”

This is a story of how this young couple, along with Jim and Olsie, have traveled through some of the stormiest seas and fieriest trials imaginable. Rather than being driven away from God, they have experienced being drawn closer to Him, which has given them incredible strength to face each day. Can you imagine having to live in a home where due to illness you could not take a bath, paint a room, talk on the telephone, or see your mother? Can you imagine when you did see your dad, you had violent reactions due to the chemicals in his clothing? Can you imagine being an accomplished musician and not able to use your talents and gifts? The only thing that keeps them from totally lining up with Job is that they are still alive.

They have had to struggle with questions such as, “If God is all powerful and all wise, why isn’t He stopping this trouble?” Andrews writes, “Moments occur when our theology blushes or bristles at the realities of our experience. We don’t know how to reconcile the two.” But he continues, “The ways and works of God never deviate from his revealed character and promises. Never.”

“Monuments are a testimony of what God will do in the present, regardless of the difficult things that are happening… A monumental faith,” writes Andrews, “is able to look forward with confidence because it looks backward to the past.” What God has done in the past serves as a monument of what he will do in the future. “Monumental faith is a faith trained to look away from the confusion of the moment to find security and confidence in the past evidences of God’s character and faithfulness.”

Juli was able to write to her parents on one occasion, “Somehow just knowing Satan’s strategy strengthened my resolve to fight the good fight, but I still needed to know that God cared about what I was going through…He cares for you! At this point the Holy Spirit turned back on my spiritual light and gave me the extra measure of grace that has lasted me until now.” On another occasion she wrote to her mother,” Paul told me a verse you were hanging onto was, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’ It is! But we also need to remember that, ‘My power is made manifest in weakness.’ It takes little perception to conclude that God wants our whole family, between my illness, Dad’s surgery, and your depression, to be in a perpetual state of weakness.” Juli also draws great comfort and hope from the Old Testament Hannah and her family’s experience.

All through the book you will find personal counsel from Andrews that will challenge you and remind you of the great blessings God has in store even for those who suffer. For example, “In the gap between God’s promise and God’s performance, always expect unforeseen difficulties and disappointments that will challenge your faith to the bone.” Or another, “As long as faith has that well-trained reflex that takes all its troubles and doubts back to the throne of grace, we will be safe.”

In order to live in God’s now, we need those monuments of faith and promise to keep us going. To suffer without those monuments of faith is sad and tragic. Andrews closes the book with the story of Admiral James Stockdale, the highest ranking American POW during the Vietnam War. It is quite a story in itself but Andrews uses Stockdale as a reminder and challenge to remember that along with building monuments of faith we also need to never lose faith in the end of the story. Whether God fixes our sufferings now or not, we know that down the road, one day, He will. Therefore, Andrews encourages us to never lose hope under the worst circumstances and never lose faith and hope in the end of the story.

As you read this book, be prepared not to put it down. It is heart and mind gripping. What a book to read personally or give to a friend experiencing suffering or hard times. Andrews writes in conclusion that he has shared this book, along with the flesh-and-blood example of the ongoing pain and testing in his family, with the hope that it will strengthen and inspire you. And I say, “Well it will.”

This is a good book to read now and to be exposed, at least by way of reminder, to the horrors of slavery. Learn how that experience influenced, and still influences, African American preachers. You will appreciate the richness of preachers in the Old South, understand the fundamentals of Black Liberation Theology, and be exposed to the views of Bishop T. D. Jakes and Creflo A. Dollar, Jr.

Many of us have never taken this tour and know little of the “black” church, its struggles and its vitality. Our guide is the senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands. His six chapters describe the decline in doctrine in several areas of major importance: the doctrines of revelation, God, anthropology, Christology, soteriology, and pneumatology.

In each chapter, Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile moves through five periods of history, from the early slavery era to the “Postmodern Era (1980-present).” The abundant quotations may cause rejoicing at the proclamation of the gospel or sorrow as the gospel is misrepresented by professors and preachers. But the author is always clear in terms of the perspective from which he writes. In the forward, Mark Noll affirms, “how Rev. Anyabwile himself interprets the theological history he narrates so well will not please all readers, since he makes that interpretation from his position as a firm theologian of the old Puritan school.”

The extended discussion of the origins and development of Black Liberation Theology in the 1960s is supported by many quotations from James H. Cone. Since the movement and his name have been prominent in newspapers and on television in recent months, this book is all the more relevant, especially among those with little background in the material. Anyabwile writes of Cone’s views in soteriology, “The fundamental problem facing humanity was not sin and broken fellowship with God in the traditional sense, but the tyrannical powers of the ruling class.”

What Anyabwile defines as decline in the African American Church is a “mirror- image” of change in the broader church. J.I. Packer in Fundamentalism and the Word of God identified three ultimate authorities in Christendom: the Bible, the church, or reason. Perhaps “experience” should be added to that list. Revelation is now thought not to be found in an objective word from God, but in our past and present experience. We should all recognize the overwhelming experience that slavery was and the validity of any continuing experience of inequity in our (or another) society. But Anyabwile maintains that “…outside the Bible there is only idolatry.”

The book’s concluding section surveys its contents and comments that ” faulty theology is not a victimless crime.” It offe rs four directions in which the African American church should move:

Re-center the Bible – ” We need to read the Bible, sing the Bible, preach the Bible, pray the Bible, think the Bible and live the Bible.”
Re-exalt God – “If ever we needed a God-sized view of God it is now.”
Recover the Gospel – ” The good news about … Jesus Christ is worth fighting for; without it, we all perish.”
Revitalize the Church – ” The church needs to be revitalized with a sound theology and praxis governed by the Word of God.”

These are appropriate suggestions for many churches. In conclusion, the extensive bibliography demonstrates that this work is only an introductory survey. Also, the development of African American theology may not be as linear as Anyabwile indicates. Today, for example, many African American pastors may be preaching the biblical gospel of grace, while feeling that God is also at work among their people as they seek adjustment of inequities in society

Every decade or so a new book will come out helping Christians understand the history of the transmission of the Bible from its original writings to today. Some have been very helpful and others simply words and little help. Arnold has given us wh at I believe is the best book ever done on the subject. This book lets pictures speak more loudly than words. Every page is filled with full color photos of everything from papyrus fragments to pictures of men like Bruce Metzger, who gave us the United Bible Societies’ most used Greek text.

The book begins with a description of early writing, alphabets, writing utensils, and writing surfaces. It goes on to explain all the different types of manuscripts and how they influenced the copies of the Bible found in different places throughout the early church world, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Greek Old Testament.

Arnold incorporates charts and outlines throughout to keep us up on the flow of history. He also gives us a breakdown of the characteristics of the major Bible versions used today. The publication year, reading grade level, approach of the translators, and distinctives are included in the breakdown.

This book can be used by an individual, but the book measures 8.5×11″and can also be held up in small classrooms. I have written to Zondervan to suggest they follow the book up with a Power Point presentation for teachers, or even a DVD going through the whole book. I will let you know what they say.

It may seem strange to you to see us review a book written for Africans, but it might help if we remember that the Bible is not a book written by Westerners, nor was it written in a Western culture. For the first time, there is a one volume commentary written by non-Westerners for Africans. Over 70 African evangelical scholars worked for more than a decade to produce this much needed work.

Now, what does it have to do with us in the US? It has a lot more than you realize for us. When you read the Gospels, do you ever wonder why things are not “logically” and chronologically laid out for us? An understanding of non-Western culture teaches us that it is not time and chronology that is important; it is the event that is important. Also keep in mind that our church ‘s early history was focused in Africa in men like Athanasius and Augustine, who said, “After all, God is closer to the people when He speaks in their language.”

The ABC [African Bible Commentary] is not a critical academic, verse-by-verse commentary. Rather, it contains section-by-section exegesis and explanation of the whole Bible as seen through the eyes of African scholars who respect the integrity of the text and use African proverbs, metaphors and stories to make it speak to African believers in the villages and cities. The application is both bold and faithful. Thus the ABC does not speak of a Black Jesus. To do so would be a travesty of the Bible story and cheap scholarship. Instead, the ABC is true to the text and honest to its context both in Bible days and in our day (p. ix).

Included in appropriate places are seventy-nine articles dealing with subjects such as angels, demons and powers; family and community; female genital mutilation; AIDS; ancestor worship; syncretism; street children; the role of women in the church; and witchcraft.

As a missionary in Africa after having dealt with Christian books for many years in the US, I soon realized that books in Africa do not cost more than in the US; but they take a great deal more of a person’s income to buy them. Books for most Africans and African pastors cost so much more than their meager salaries allow. If there is any suggestion I would make, it would be for you and your church to consider purchasing this work and sending it to either missionaries in Africa or Africans you know there. You might also help support the work of PCA organizations that work directly with African leaders, like Educating Africans for Christ, based out of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Miss., or Equipping Pastors International founded by Jack Arnold, who died in the pulpit preaching about heaven. Don’t miss this great opportunity to learn and to help others to learn God’s Word.

While this book has been available for sometime, published in 2000, we have been waiting for the right moment to bring it to our readers’ attention. Having known of Van Gelder during his days at Reformed Theological Seminary and having followed his career since graduation, I find him to be creative, stimulating, thought provoking, and a strategic thinker. He has written and edited a number of books revolving around the concept of the missional church. I appreciate his interest in the church, especially in a day when too many are ignoring, negatively criticizing, and demeaning the importance of the church.

As indicated in the first quarter Equip review of The Dictionary of Mission Theology, the time has arrived to do some rethinking about the church. We have expressed our concern that far too many Christians fail to understand the church. While we believe it is not synonymous with the kingdom, the church is the heart of the kingdom and plays the most crucial role in equipping Christians to live with a kingdom perspective.

This book, as the title indicates, deals with the essence of the church. Richard Mouw states in the foreword that at a time when pluralism and new paganism dominate the scene, we need to think more holistically and intentionally about missiology. He highlights, and we concur, that Van Gelder’s handling of the church, its nature, its ministry, and its structures challenges us to come to a better and clearer perspective on the church and its place in God’s kingdom.

Van Gelder sets out with four goals in mind:

1. To translate available scholarship and research into applied perspective for ministry, especially for pastors who will think deeply and practically about the church.

2. To integrate diverse perspectives from a variety of disciplines, including mission theology and the doctrine of church.

3. To focus on the church within the context of North America.

4. To work from an understanding of the triune God as being central to our understanding of the church.

These are good goals that the book seems to fulfill. I do wish that Van Gelder, as well as others writing in this area, would place more attention on the kingdom, its relation to the church, and how the church is God’s key training ground for kingdom living. Nevertheless, this is an important book.

Van Gelder indicates that we often do not know how to think about the church, which causes us at best to think of the church only from a structural and denominational paradigm. Often how we think about the church in North America, as the book indicates, causes us to focus on secondary issues. For example, while we believe the concept of denomination is still a vital and strategic paradigm, it can often keep us from thinking theologically about the church. This applies to our missiology as well. Hence we are in need of some course corrections in order to see the church as God would have us see it.

Van Gelder highlights how we tend to think of the church in functional terms, often hearing things like seeker-sensitive church, purpose-driven church, user-friendly church, or the church for the 21st century. This causes us to think of the church in terms of what the church does without addressing the more important issue of the nature of the church. This further leads to referring to the church with a set of “ministry functions such as worship, education, service, and witness, important as those elements are.” Therefore, the book reminds us of the importance of rethinking or reconsidering the nature of the church before proceeding to define its ministry and organization. I would say that while form follows function, Van Gelder would also encourage us to see that the nature of the church precedes its form and function and that process is vital to the understanding and study of the church, and missions as well.

This book seeks to correct several misunderstandings, such as the failure to relate missions and evangelism to the larger framework of God’s mission and the failure to relate the life and ministry of the church to God’s mission in the world. These kinds of misunderstandings tend to impact several areas. How do we set priorities? Do we focus on members or reaching out in evangelism? How much do we budget for overseas missions and how much to do we keep at home?

What is the solution? Learning to think about the missional nature of the church based on the missional triune God will keep us from thinking narrowly about missions, as well as the church’s role. This type of thinking will help us produce a “missiological ecclesiology.” It will keep us from the dilemma created by the modern western missiology where the church is thought of in a mere functional manner. It will help us see the church not as an institution started by missionaries. “We in North America need to thoroughly work this perspective into our understanding of the church’s nature, ministry, and organizational life. This view of the church, best described as missiological ecclesiology, is the focus of this book.”

I found this book to do what the author intended; to help us engage the complexity of the situation we now encounter in North America and to help us think about the very missional essence of the church in a way that will mobilize church people to see their own missional role in the world, both in the church and the kingdom. In other words, how Christians can be in but not of the world. While the church is called to represent the redemptive power of God on earth, its members need to know how to “discern how the power of God’s reign can best relate to the specific contexts.”

This book could help us avoid becoming so contextual in our understanding of missiology that we allow the context to determine the message. On the other hand, the book will help us see more clearly how the very nature of the church requires us to think contextually regarding the church’s mission and bring it to our doorstep. I would say, do not read this book if you are not willing to think. Don’t read this book if you are satisfied with the status quo regarding the church and missions. By all means, do not read this book if you are not willing to be challenged to live and think differently. But if you are….by all means read and study it.

The Old Testament saints had many ways to live and relive the great works of God, such as the Passover. The saints today have two basic ways to do the same in the sacraments. But why are there so many different positions on each of these subjects?

These two books, part of Zondervan’s Counterpoint Series, are perhaps the best way to study these issues because each position is written and defended by those who hold it. The other views then have a chance to refute the position, and finally the original author has the final rebuttal. This approach eliminates the typical “straw-man” arguments that many times are used to defend one’s own position.

The first book includes resources, such as a listing of statements on the Lord’s Supper from creeds and confessions, quotations from noted Christians, a resource listing of books on the Lord’s Supper, and discussion questions for each chapter to facilitate small group and classroom use. It covers the Roman Catholic view (transubstantiation), Lutheran view (consubstantiation), Baptist view (memorialism), and the Reformed view (spiritual presence). The defenders are Russell Moore, John Hesselink, David Scaer, and Thomas Baima.

The baptism volume covers the Baptist view by Thomas Nettles, the Lutheran view by Robert Kolb, the Christian Church/Church of Christ view by John Castelein, and Richard Pratt writes on our Reformed view.

There are many books in this format by several different publishers. To see more of these balanced approaches to many topics see the Doctrine/Multiview section of our catalog or go to our website at www.cepbookstore.com.