Ryan Althaus, co-illustrated by Noah Habib sweatysheep.com, 43 pages Reviewed by Eva Stimson This book is further evidence that its author, Ryan Althaus, is not your typical Presbyterian minister. A lanky young man with blond dreadlocks and an impish grin, Althaus doesn’t spend much time behind a desk or pulpit. You are more likely to find him frolicking in the surf with a group of homeless people or organizing a camping trip for folks struggling with addictions. In Louisville, Kentucky, Althaus created Sweaty Sheep, a ministry for athletes, and took it across the country to Santa Cruz, California, where he was ordained by the Presbytery of San Jose. Known as the “Pastor of Play,” he recently embarked on a new creative quest focused on overcoming divisions and building community. “Wally the Wave,” a children’s story with an introduction for grown-ups, is one step toward meeting those goals. The story follows a wave as it rises from the depths of the sea, then cruises along … [Read more...]

Jemar Tisby Zondervan, 256 pages Reviewed by Robert Melone Jr. It is humbling to be a Christian pastor these days, for in addition to pastoring a faith community, ministers are also providing sustaining leadership to a religious institution. And that institution has a very marred and checkered past — a past filled both with healing and with hypocrisy, compassion and complacency, peacemaking and prejudice. In his new book, “The Color of Compromise,” pastor and prophet Jemar Tisby tackles the lesser-known and often hidden side of the American church, providing his readers with a broad overview of the hypocrisy, complacency and prejudice that both stains and heretically denies the gospel we have sought to proclaim. American Christianity’s tragic complicity with centuries of racism is powerfully exposed — beginning in colonial times and during the turbulent years of the American Revolution, through the era of the Antebellum South and the Civil War, right on up to the days of Jim … [Read more...]

L. Roger Owens Church Publishing, 200 pages Reviewed by Teri McDowell Ott With his 40th birthday just two months away, L. Roger Owens wondered aloud with his spiritual director, Sister Anna, if he might be entering a dark night of the soul. Sister Anna responded, “It sounds less to me to like a dark night, and more like a threshold of discovery.” Sister Anna’s words struck Owens, leading him to search for God in a new, intentional way. He decides to take 40 walks the year after he turns 40. Suspecting that staying close to home would be key to discovering a spirituality for midlife, Owens’ walks don’t take him anywhere new or exotic, but rather to his local nature preserve three miles from his home outside of Pittsburgh. Likewise, I too sought out a spiritual director in my 40s, seeking to feel God’s presence like I had in my younger years. Owens’ journey, then, feels familiar and his Merton-esque style of writing led me to contemplate my own life and faith. Owens, who … [Read more...]

Brian S. Powers Eerdmans, 200 pages Reviewed by Martha Moore-Keish This “present project is my argument against the comfortable and simplistic understandings of morality that died to me in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan.” So writes Brian Powers in the opening pages of “Full Darkness,” a compelling work of theology by a young scholar whose experience of war drove him to reexamine his Christian faith to make sense of the trauma he witnessed. It is a book worthy of attention of anyone who seeks honest acknowledgment of human violence in our world and who cares about the redemption of real, wounded human beings. Throughout, Powers offers fresh appreciation of the ancient doctrine of original sin, as developed by Augustine and interpreted recently by Alistair McFadyen (in “Bound to Sin”) for its “explanatory power” of the human condition. Original sin, as Powers shows, offers a compelling description of the way our wills are distorted by external forces, so … [Read more...]

J. Dana Trent Upper Room Books, 112 pages Thomas Merton once said all Christians should be content with being beginners. Life is beginning again and again. Those in the Reformed tradition might call this sanctification: the life-long process of growing in Christ that is only complete in our death. The author of this very practical manual begins with her own experience coming to the practice of meditation as a skeptic, wary of gimmicks. She describes how she moved through reluctance to acceptance that led her to regular discipline. Few of us can escape the rattle of a noisy culture and only the wisest know the perils of a noisy world. In such noise it is nearly impossible to hear the still, small voice of God — let alone the voice of our own longing for peace and participation in God. Dana Trent has developed this manual to help Christians distinguish between prayer and meditation. She skillfully guides readers through 40 days of experimentation with five forms of meditation: lectio … [Read more...]