Book Reviews

When I was originally asked by the publisher to read this manuscript, the timing was not great for me. It was a thick manuscript and I was facing several other deadlines, but I followed through and had no regrets. On this particular topic, it may be most inclusive thing I have read on the subject, and what a timely one at that. The family!

The family is not doing all that well in our society today. This is especially critical because increasing numbers of studies are revealing that more than anything else children want a good relationship with their parents and want to be part of a family support system that enables them to develop a right worldview.

If you are a pastor or a counselor, or a Christian wanting to understand what the Bible says about family and marriage, you will want to read this book and keep it as a reference. I recommend it as the best single source on the topic. It is clear, comprehensive, and consistent with my understanding of Scripture.

It is exhaustive on the topic of the family and seeks to look at the whole of Scripture as the foundation. I would recommend it as a guide and source for sermon material, Sunday school class study, or small group use, as well as personal reading and study. There is both a personal and group study guide at the end of the book that helps make it teachable.

The one thing I would like to have seen expanded, though chapter four deals with marriage as sacrament, marriage as a contract, and marriage as a covenant, is a fuller explanation and application of the covenantal aspect of marriage. God clearly describes marriage as a covenant. There is a good pr

Here is a book that is well worth reading. Brad Bright is the youngest son of the late Bill Bright. In 1989, after a variety of work experiences, Brad joined the Campus Crusade for Christ staff and resides in Orlando, FL. For a brief overview of today’s culture, this book will be appreciated. Bright’s thesis is that the issue today is God and everything else is symptomatic. He joins a host of others who are critical of the church for failing to communicate how to know God and who he is; however, he does not advocate abandoning the church. Rather, he challenges the church to equip the members to know the Word and to understand the world. He says, “When a person desires to become a member of a local church, we should seek to ensure a biblical understanding of who God really is.” He makes an observation that happens all too often. In preparing people for membership in the church, giving them a good emphasis on doctrine, it is easy for God and his character to be shortchanged.

With all the good things that evangelicals and the church are doing, Bright contends that our impact on the world around us will only come as we focus on the real issue–God. Everything else takes a back seat to that one issue. Two good examples of the heart of the book follow:

1. “If we want our children to behave as if there is a God, we must as a culture teach them that there actually is a God. If we do not teach it, they will not believe it. And, if they do not believe it, they most certainly will not act like it.”

2. “We must take every opportunity to educate them, as well as reeducate those who have been marginalized by a system that portrays God as irrelevant to real life.” (page 128)

I appreciate Bright’s emphasis on discipling God’s children with an intentional understanding of who God is which he maintains is the only way to “inoculate them from the messages with which culture is going to bombard them.”

Another emphasis that is on target is his challenge for Christians who are growing in their understanding of God and his character to come together and develop a means of impacting the culture around them. For Bright, God is the environment in which we live and “if we continue to solely debate ‘behavior’ in the current cultural vacuum of moral relativism, we cannot win the war.”

This book will appeal to church leaders, family leaders, and individuals, especially the rising generation. He echoes the idea that our focus should be on a behavior that grows out of knowing God because that is the issue.

I regret allowing this book to get pushed aside for too long. I try to read everything John R. W. Stott writes. His unusual ability to expound upon the Scriptures, blending an understanding of the original and the contemporary, plus knowing how to bring God’s Word to us in a fresh and applicable manner, makes him one that embodies the very topic of this volume, Christian leadership.

One thing I appreciate about Stott is his balance, clarity, and his ability to apply God’s Word. He believes that one of the problems among those who are “Christian leaders” is that the world’s model seems to be favored at the expense of biblical teaching. More often, Christian leaders have bought into the “secular” models at the expense of not considering what the Scripture says about leadership. Of course we can, by God’s common grace, learn many things from the world, but not at the expense of ignoring his special revelation in the Scriptures.

Basic Christian Leadership approaches the topic from the perspective of the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians. As Stott points out early on, both Christians and non-Christians share the concept of leadership but they do not necessarily mean the same thing. In Corinth, a strategic city of Paul’s day, a religious center, a trade center, and a manufacturing city, Paul both taught and demonstrated the kind of leadership that we need today. The church itself was fragmented, not so much by a diversity of doctrines or principles, but by personalities. Some were saying, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and others “I follow Christ.”

In five chapters plus a conclusion, Stott opens up this epistle to us who are living in a world that worships power and control in so many ways. He examines the tendency and temptations to lead like the Gentiles do, lusting for power and control. Christian leaders must have another focus and objective. For example: Paul underscores the importance of humility in the life of a Christian leader. Humility and power are antithetical. For the Christian, the antinomy is that power comes through weakness. As he deals with both the message and the method of communicating the truth, Stott underscores how that applies to leadership as well.

This statement summarizes what Stott believes to be Paul’s focus:

“The Christian leaders needed in the world and the church today are those who have seen the Lamb on the throne and are determined to follow him wherever he goes (Rev. 4:4); they know that God’s power will be exhibited not in displays of power but in their weakness.”

Therefore he concludes our leadership must not be conditioned by the culture but by Christ whom we represent and serve.

He ends with a great quote from the Scottish minister James Stalker who talked about “falling in love with his congregation.” The reference was to the difference loving his people made in his leadership. Stalker said, “loving my people made it easy to do anything for my people.”

This would be a good study for a group of leaders in the church to bring into focus the biblical essentials relating to leadership. Stott has produced another valuable book for us that will be a blessing, especially if you are or are contemplating a leadership role today.

This is a book that needs a different title. Your First Two Years in Youth Ministry by Doug Fields should be entitled, How to Start Right and Thrive in Youth Ministry for Decades or something to that affect. If Matt Brinkley’s book Stay The Course Of Youth Ministry goes into the biblical and practical principles of longevity as a youth worker, then Doug Fields’ work delves more into the “how-to” aspects of starting right and continuing strong in youth ministry for many years. Fields does a fine job stressing the importance of a solid spiritual life in Christ. This book will truly help either a novice or veteran in the high calling of ministry to youth and their families.

The book is set around Fields having a meal with a relatively new youth minister and discussing ways to be used by the Lord to establish Christ-honoring youth ministry. His “advice over a meal” approach works well. Interspersed throughout each chapter are brief essays by experienced youth workers who support and complement Fields’ ideas. Also helpful are comments “from the trenches,” where people share practical applications to real church situations.

This book covers the essentials for youth ministry; how to make positive changes that people can live with, working with a youth ministry team, being a family friendly youth ministry, the importance of being with students, dealing with discouragement and handling conflict in a godly manner, among other areas of discussion. Probably the most important chapter in the whole book is the last chapter on “What do I do now?” It shows the importance of consensus in terms of expectations and having a workable job description that all involved can live with. Even the final appendix is really useful.

I recommend this book to anyone involved in youth ministry, whether paid or volunteer. Doug Fields answers a lot of common questions about youth ministry. The Lord can also work through these concepts and suggestions to assist any youth worker to the great glory, honor and praise of Jesus Christ. Buy the book-it will help your church and its youth ministry reap blessings for years to come.

The second paragraph of the first chapter grabbed my heart. “Maybe God didn’t call me to the ministry. Maybe I should just quit. I could never take my own life, but right now I’d rather be dead than dying this slow death. I know Jesus wants me to pay the price, but this is too much for me and my family to bear” (p. 13). I had to keep reading. This book had something to say and I wanted to find out what counsel it offered. How great it was to know that I was not struggling alone with difficulties, doubts and stress.

If you are a pastor, you need something in your life beyond your family and church to help you face the pressures, stresses, and difficulties of ministry. Before you piously say, “I have the Lord, my calling and prayer – what else do I need?” let me appeal to you for honesty and humility. How lonely are you? Are you part of the eighty percent of pastors who are discouraged?

We pastors preach the importance of fellowship, discipleship, friendship and accountability in the Body of Christ. In sermons and in Bible study, we proclaim the “one anothers” – love one another, forgive one another, pray for one another, accept one another, encourage one another. Yet, we lack significant “anothers” in our lives to enable us to practice what we preach. Who do you fellowship with closely? Who challenges you to be faithful to the Word? Who are your close friends who can encourage you? Who holds you accountable? These are good questions for Christian leaders to ask themselves.

The entire focus of Kinnaman and Ells’ book is to present the need for “covenant friendships” to Christian leaders. This is that is taught in the “words of wisdom” in the Old Testament. Let me refresh your memory:

Attention all parents, teachers, youth workers, pastors, and even grandparents! This book is for you. You cannot afford to miss the thesis of this book. We have been focusing our ministry on the rising generation for years in CEP, yet I read this book with a fresh challenge that makes me pray David’s prayer, “So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come,” Ps 71:18. I have prayed that prayer daily for years and now after reading Chap Clark’s book Hurt, I pray it with a renewed fervency that has given birth to an even deeper passion to minister to the rising generation.

Buy a copy, read it carefully and listen to the plea of the rising generation as you read through it. Have you heard them? Are you listening? They are asking for help and what they are getting is not the help they are begging for.

Chap Clark teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary and has specialized in youth ministry for some time. His book is full of credible research on how the younger generations have been and are being abandoned by the adult generations. They are not abandoned geographically or materially. Yet the older generations are not helping them develop a biblical worldview to help them live this incredibly complex and difficult life.

It is amazing how young people are telling us they feel threatened, insecure, and unable to face daily issues. While parents are giving their children material things, even sacrificing their own resources to provide the best education and resources to create “superkids,” they are leaving them alone to design their own systems for life and it hurts.

While the younger generation seems to be normal and stable on the surface, underneath their feeling of abandonment is causing great upheaval. Clark includes many testimonials from high school students: “I have many friends and acquaintances, and my home life is more than I could ask for. I just wish sometimes I could find somewhere to belong.” Or, “I therefore suffer in silence, longing to be understood but refusing to share such a nightmare with the unknowing. It is a lonely place in the mind of an unwilling actor.” Or, “People think I have the ‘perfect’ life…They never see the real me. I have to put on a mask. I deal with struggles of beer and alcohol. They don’t know.” Are we listening?

Clark writes, “Adults who care for the young, however, can make a long-term difference in the lives of students when we allow ourselves to be involved, to engage their ethical and moral belief systems and behaviors. If adults commit to train the young to care for others instead of just themselves and reinforce this view with commitment to integrity and honesty, then we have the best chance of influencing their moral development in a positive way.”

The truth is that adults will influence the younger generations for good or for ill. We have the choice to influence them for good but it takes commitment, time, and energy to serve God’s purpose to this generation. Clark reminds us that the church has a calling to care for the young. I would like to be able to proclaim loudly and repeatedly to our youth, “help is on the way. There are adults, including parents, who really do care and are willing to listen and interact with you.”