Archive for the '2005' Category
Ray Comfort. What Did Jesus Do?: A Call to Return to the Biblical Gospel. Genesis, 2005. 176 pp.
The Diagnosis and the Cure
A television documentary showed a Tibetan peasant woman making her pilgrimage around a sacred mountain. She stopped every few steps to prostrate herself on the rocky soil. She stood to her dust-covered feet, walked a few more paces, and repeated the arduous and painful ritual. She had completed the thirty-two-mile pilgrimage twenty-nine times. Asked why she did it, she smiled sweetly and answered, “We want to be reborn in heaven.”
Continue reading ‘What Did Jesus Do? | Ray Comfort’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed 
.
Al Fasol, Roy Fish, Steve Gaines, Ralph Douglas West. Preaching Evangelistically: Proclaiming the Saving Message of Jesus. B&H, 2005. 148 pp.
Characteristics of an Effective Evangelistic Service
Know Your Listeners
Some preachers study the Bible. Others study people and culture. Effective preachers analyze both. Why? Because the effective evangelistic preacher will preach differently to a group of senior adults than he preaches to a group of high school seniors. Likewise, he will preach differently to a group of unchurched, white-collar, upper-class people in suburban Los Angeles than he preaches to a group of church-oriented, blue-collar, middle-class people living in a rural area in the southeastern United States. Although the message of the gospel never changes, how it is presented should connect with the cultural persuasions and unique personalities of the people addressed.
Continue reading ‘Preaching Evangelistically | Roy Fish, Al Fasol, Steve Gaines, & Ralph West’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
Michael D. Williams. Far As the Curse Is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption. P&R, 2005. 319 pp.
Most people—believers as well as non-Christians—cannot give a credible answer to the question “What is Christianity about?”
How do we account for this state of affairs? Given the life-and-death urgency of Christianity, we stand desperately in need of a reversal of the damning disparity between the eternal importance of the Christian faith and the apprehension of it by its advocates. Christianity is a revelatory religion. This means that God has revealed himself, his ways, and his will most clearly and fully in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Christianity is, therefore, a religion of the book. Thus, if believers do not understand the core issues of the Christian religion, it is because they fail to grasp or appreciate the Bible in some fundamental way.
Continue reading ‘Far As the Curse Is Found | Michael Williams’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
Charles H. Dunahoo. Making Kingdom Disciples: A New Framework. P&R, 2005. 249 pp.
An Overview of the Kingdom Model
Before Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave his final command to his church about their assignment during the interim between his ascension and his return at the end of the age. He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).
Continue reading ‘Making Kingdom Disciples | Charles Dunahoo’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
John Piper. God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself. Crossway, 2005. 192 pp.
What the World Needs Most: The Gospel’s Greatest Gift—God
Today, as in every generation, it is stunning to watch the shift away from God as the all-satisfying gift of God’s love. It is stunning how seldom God himself is proclaimed as the greatest gift of the gospel. But the Bible teaches that the best and final gift of God’s love is the enjoyment of God’s beauty. “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4).
Continue reading ‘God Is the Gospel | John Piper’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
Bryan Chapell. Praying Backwards: Transform Your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus’ Name. Baker, 2005. 208 pp.
Praying for Change
How would your prayer change if you began where you normally end? We habitually end our prayers with the phrase “In Jesus’ name, amen.” The amen means “truly” or even “I really mean this.” But what are we actually saying? We are supposed to be saying that everything we prayed for was offered “in Jesus’ name”—for his honor and purposes. When we pray “in Jesus’ name,” we pray for his sake more than our own. We still present our desires and concerns to God, but we do so in the context of yielding our priorities to Christ’s priorities. The final phrase of our prayer reminds us, as well as commits us, to submit all our requests to the glory of Jesus.
Continue reading ‘Praying Backwards | Bryan Chapell’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
Blaine Allen. When People Throw Stones: A Leader’s Guide to Fielding Personal Criticism. Kregel, 2005. 176 pp.
A Terrorist?
No, not really. But in your less-than-better moments, you have thought that, have you not? They were so nice. So unassuming. So service oriented. And then boom! With words strapped to bombs, those whom you serve let it rip. Innuendo. Gossip. Criticized before others. An outright frontal attack. When the smoke clears, it feels as if your life, your family, and for sure your ministry, lie in a bloody ruin. You expect it from those who make no claim to know the Lord, but from those who say they are His followers?
Continue reading ‘When People Throw Stones | Blaine Allen’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
Philip Graham Ryken. Galatians. P&R, 2005. 290 pp.
Galatians is a letter for recovering Pharisees. The Pharisees who lived during and after the time of Christ were very religious. They were regular in their worship, orthodox in their theology, and moral in their conduct. Yet something was missing. Although God was in their minds and in their actions, he was not in their hearts. Therefore, their religion was little more than hypocrisy.
The Pharisees were hypocrites because they thought that what God would do for them depended on what they did for God. So they read their Bibles, prayed, tithed, and kept the Sabbath as if their salvation depended on it. What they failed to understand is that God’s grace cannot be earned; it only comes free.
Continue reading ‘Galatians | Philip Graham Ryken’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
Phil A. Newton. Elders in Congregational Life: Rediscovering the Biblical Model for Church Leadership. Kregel, 2005. 176 pp.
“Why elders?” The question was posed to me as our congregation journeyed through the transition to elder leadership. My home church did not have elders; neither did the three churches where I had previously served as pastor. Although elders could be found among Presbyterian and Church of Christ congregations in the community, Baptists just did not have elders. So why should I spend the energy and time, not to mention stir up potential trouble, to move to a leadership structure of plural eldership?
Three primary elements moved me into the direction of a plurality of elders: Scripture, Baptist history, and practical issues of church life.
Continue reading ‘Elders in Congregational Life | Phil A. Newton’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
R. Scott Smith. Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church. Crossway, 2005. 208 pp.
CHRISTIAN RELATIVISTS
It is obvious in Western society that many people think moral and religious truths are relative. Not only is this idea clearly taught in secular universities, our media also trumpet it. But it has not been the position of historic, orthodox Christianity. In that light, it is surprising how many Christians now think that way as well. For example, a Barna poll showed that, even after the terrorist attacks on September 11, only 32 percent of born-again Christian adults, and a mere 9 percent of born-again Christian teens, think that ethics are not relative. Christians are increasingly accepting of ethical relativism, and in a climate that promotes pluralism, we are losing our understanding of Christian ethical and religious truths as being objectively true.
Continue reading ‘Truth and the New Kind of Christian | R. Scott Smith’
Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .
