Book Reviews

Mustard Seed Versus McWorld: Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future

By Tom Sine
Baker Books. 1999. 249 pp. Pb. $14.99. ISBN 0-8010-9088-1

Reviewed by Elizabeth Dodson Gray

 

Watchman, tell us of the night,
What its signs of promise are.
-- Advent season hymn

It is seldom that we find a Christian preacher or writer like Tom Sine, who can stand like an Old Testament prophet on the parapet of the city and tell us of the present and the future without losing his own footing in the Christian faith.

Book Reviews

The Millennium Myth: Hope for a Postmodern World

By N. T. Wright
WJKP. 1999. 128 pp. $12.95. ISBN 0-664-25841-7

Reviewed by Michael D. Bush

 

While too much of the Christian world is coming off the rails in expectation of a divine cataclysm on Jan. 1, 2000, N. T. Wright offers us a challenge to celebrate the millennium as a Christian festival, rather than standing by passively or ex-citedly, waiting to see if the world will end. He issues the challenge in few words, with the clarity and good sense we have learned to expect from him in his New Testament scholarship.

Book Reviews

Here I Am Lord, Now What? Transition and Survival in the First Parish

TAS2TE of Ministry Inc. $24.95

Reviewed by Edward A. White

 

The big problem is that theological seminaries do not and probably cannot fully prepare people for parish ministry. Seminaries can provide theology, Bible, church history and certain skills training in homiletics. They can give attention to the spiritual and emotional development of the person.

Book Reviews

The Covenanted Self: Explorations in Law and Covenant

By Walter Brueggemann
Fortress. 1999. 148 pp. Pb. $18. ISBN 0-8006-3176-5

Reviewed by Paul K. Hooker
Executive Presbyter, St. Augustine Presbytery

 

Anyone who has read the work of Walter Brueggemann knows that he is a radical, in the true sense of the word. Impatient with worn-out ideologies (either liberal or conservative) that have lost touch with the text, Brueggemann is eager to confront his readers with the transforming power of Scripture.

Book Reviews

Creation and Reality

By Michael Welker

Fortress. 1999. 102 pp. Pb. $13.
ISBN 0-8006-2628-1

Reviewed by Walter Brueggemann

 

Michael Welker, Heidelberg University, is only now becoming known and visible in the United States, both through his publications and his extended residency at Princeton Seminary. He is emerging as a major force in Reformed theology, perhaps destined to be the dominant German figure in Reformed theology as was JŸrgen Moltmann before him.

Book Reviews

Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology

By Gordon W. Lathrop

Augsburg Fortress. 1999. 236 pp. Pb. $29. ISBN 0800631331

Reviewed by Deborah A. McKinley

 

Gordon Lathrop's book, Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology, voices fresh thoughts in the sometimes cacophonous conversations about contemporary ecclesiology. Holy People is a reflection on the meaning of "church," working from the conviction that the church's identity arises from the One the church worships -- the Triune God.

Book Reviews

The Divided Church: Moving Liberals and Conservatives from Diatribe to Dialogue

By Richard G. Hutcheson Jr. and Peggy L. Shriver

InterVarsity. 1999. 224 pp. Pb. $12.99 ISBN 0-8308-2223-2

Reviewed by Lewis S. Mudge

 

This is a rich and nuanced study of voices on both sides of the well-known right-left division of American Protestantism, with special emphasis on the PC(USA). Richard Hutcheson and Peggy Shriver personally represent the "evangelical" and "liberal" wings of the church, respectively.

Book Reviews

Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools

By Daniel O. Aleshire, Jackson W. Carroll, Penny Long Marler
and Barbara G. Wheeler.

Oxford . 1997. 299 pp. $35. ISBN 0-19-511493-0

Reviewed by David Steele

 

The book has a snappy title: Being There. I wanted to read it because one of the four authors is Barbara G. Wheeler, president of Auburn Seminary, and I think she has one of the best minds in Christendom.

Book Reviews

Preaching While the Church is Under Reconstruction: The Visionary Role of Preachers in a Fragmented World

By Thomas H. Troeger

Abingdon. 1999. Pb. 176 pp. $17. ISBN 0-687-08549-7

Reviewed by Steve Sloop

 

I approached this assignment as an academic chore and was delightfully surprised to have an enriching spiritual experience. Troeger knows what it is like to minister as a pastor, and he scratched where many of my fellow pastor/preachers and I are itching.

Book Reviews

Genes, Genesis and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History

By Holmes Rolston III

Cambridge. 1999. 400 pp. $18.95.
ISBN 0-521-64674-x

Reviewed by Donald L. Mykles

 

As a molecular biologist, I have grown to appreciate the complexity of genetic mechanisms underlying biological processes. No one doubts that molecular biology has revolutionized the biological sciences in the 20th century. We know a great deal about how genes are expressed, replicated and transmitted.

Voices

What Presbyterians Believe about the future, Part 2: How we differ from the Dispensationalists

In the previous article, we traced our Reformed theological roots concerning the future. In understanding what we believe, it is often helpful to contrast our beliefs with those of a differing view. One such view is called dispensational premillenarianism.

Voices

Together, As the Church

Through the years, I have said it before Presbyterian churches and governing bodies, I have written it in Presbyterian publications and I continue to believe that the ordained Presbyterian pastor is the front line, the cutting edge of our Presbyterian witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Voices

Prof. Mark Achtemeier responds to Johnson viewpoint and Busch interview

In the May 14 Outlook William Stacy Johnson presents a very helpful and learned reminder that the situation facing today's PC(USA) is very different from that which confronted the German church in the 1930's. Precisely because of those differences I would argue that any reasonable assessment of the contemporary confessing movement ought to have its primary focus on events taking place in 2001 rather than in 1934.

Voices

A Jezebel Sermon for Mother’s Day

So far as I can remember, no young preacher has ever asked me for advice.  This is a real shame because I have had spectacular success in the creation and implementation of bad ideas.  A whole preaching generation could be improved by learning from me what to avoid.

Book Reviews

A Children’s Guide to Worship

By Ruth L. Boling, Lauren J. Muzzy, Laurie A. Vance.
Illustrated by Tracey Dahle Carrier.

Geneva (WJKP). 1997. Pb. $6.95
ISBN 0-664-50015-3

Reviewed by Carol A. Wehrheim

 

"With parents as partners, each church is called to nurture children in their commitment to Christ and community, through Scripture study, stewardship, worship, fellowship and Christian caring." With this quote and a charming illustration of a mouse child looking up at a mouse adult, this engaging book for children and their parents begins.

Book Reviews

Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

By Bruce Bawer.
Crown. 1997. 340 pp. Pb. $26

ISBN 0-517-70682-2

Reviewed by Robert W. Bohl

 

Bruce Bawer is one of today's most perceptive and articulate cultural critics, especially in the arena of the religious cultural, political and theological climates. At the outset of Stealing Jesus, Bawer brushes aside worn-out phrases like fundamentalism and liberalism, traditional and modern, biblical and non-biblical religion and uses the terms Church of Law and Church of Love.

Voices

Complete Confidence and Godly Grief: Leadership for the Presbyterian Future

Most scholars agree that after Paul's painful second visit to the Corinthians, during which he was bitterly attacked by someone about something, he left to cool off, then decided not to pay another visit right away and wrote a letter instead, the so-called letter of tears that is either lost or preserved only in fragments in what we now call second Corinthians.

Voices

A Necessary Ingredient for Christian Education: the Congregation

The Christian faith -- certainly as we know it in the Reformed tradition -- is a faith of the community. While we make our individual professions of faith, we do so as we join the company of the faithful, the church of Jesus Christ. Parents may be the primary faith educators of their children, but it is the congregation that promises to guide and nurture the child by "word and deed, with love and prayer, encouraging the child to know and follow Christ and to be a faithful member of Christ's church."

Voices

Capitalism and the Parable of the Talents

Serious Christian education requires that we not simply teach the Bible, but that our understanding of the text always be open to refinement. For 40 years I taught my Middle Eastern students, "Keep your exegetical conclusions tentatively final." They have to be final in the sense that, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, I must live out my discipleship today. Obedience to my Lord cannot wait for me to read one more technical article in New Testament studies.

Voices

A Blessing and a Curse

That's the text.

The occasion? Last week I was kicked out of Valley Hospice. It wasn't for moral turpitude or anything like that. I doubt if I will be brought before any presbytery committee or take up the PJC's precious time. It simply was the halfway point in their six-month program and I was too healthy. I don't really need the kind of crisis care in which they specialize. So why not save the last three months for the days I need them.

Editorials

Life After Death

Easter is the great day for the church of Jesus Christ. There would be no gospel, no faith, no hope without the resurrection. Everything depends on God's raising Jesus from the dead, Jesus' ascension, his sitting at the right hand of the Father, his promised coming again. His resurrection is the guarantee of our own, and the gift of life after death to all to whom God chooses to give it.

Voices

Advice for Madonna and Guy

Before retiring I had the privilege of being the minister of Dornoch Cathedral in the far north of Scotland. Within a few miles of Dornoch and its magnificent mediaeval cathedral is Skibo Castle, which Andrew Carnegie not only built, but in which he spent the happiest years of his life. He called Skibo his "Heaven on Earth."

Editorials

On Protecting the Flock

The minister's primary duty -- and the session's -- is to feed and protect the flock over which God, through the actions of the church, has placed them. One of the sad aspects of the church's wars in recent years has been the spectacle of the people of God in the pew being drawn willy-nilly into battles that they really don't need to be a part of.

Voices

Feed My Giraffe

After only one month of preaching, my senior elder took me aside and said, "Charles, we think we are going to like you a lot, but your sermons are going right over our heads.  You should remember that the Lord said, 'Feed my sheep' not my giraffe."  I almost responded that I knew about sheep, but I had received no instructions about grubs. 

Voices

Reflections from a Sojourn in Egypt

Living for 15 months in Egypt introduced us to a different world -- Arabic and Islamic; ancient yet modern; a third world, and an industrial nation unable to give up its old ways; a gracious hospitable people who want you to like their country.