ISBN 1-56101-167-3 When I first met Barbara Brown Taylor more than 20 years ago, she was becoming a writer. We were both at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where Barbara worked in administration during her postulancy for the Episcopal priesthood.
ISBN 0-664-25841-7 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.
ISBN 0-8272-0626-7 Out of his "25 years of pastoral work, 16 years of teaching ministry in a theological institution and more than 200 seminars with churches and judicatories," Robert Ramey offers congregations the distilled essence of his considerable wisdom.
ISBN 0-664-22150-5 Pay attention, lay people, ministers and Christian educators! Putting the Amazing Back in Grace is another Ann Weems collection of poems to use in reflection, preaching and teaching!
ISBN 0-8010-9088-1
Watchman, tell us of the night,What its signs of promise are. -- Advent season hymn
$24.95 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.
ISBN 0800631331 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.
ISBN 0-687-08549-7 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.
The third edition of Presbyterian Polity for Church Officers by Joan Gray and Joyce Tucker is an improvement of a resource that has been essential for Presbyterian leaders since it first appeared in 1986.
ISBN 0-8298-1322-5 If you are looking for a book to use this fall with your adult education class, look no further! This is a wonderful resource that lends itself to an eight-week class on "How a Church Can Engage the World."
Tex Sample's volume on electronic culture and Christian worship is popular in the best sense: it is clear, concrete, accessible and not too long. Believe Leonard Sweet's book cover blurb: "It's the next best thing to Tex Sample live!"
John S. McClure and Nancy J. Ramsay, eds.
Cleveland. United Church Press.1998. 162 pp. Pb. $15.95
ISBN 0-8298-1282-2
Reviewed by Gail A. Ricciuti
Lewis Mudge, professor of systematic theology at San Francisco Seminary, is one of the greatest gifts the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) shares with the ecumenical movement. His vision and insights, matched by his gracious and generous spirit, have decisively shaped all of the major ecumenical movements in which our church has been engaged for more than a generation.
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.
ISBN 0-19-511493-0 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.
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.
If you are a feminist, female or male, you will find convictions and new insights resonating deep in your being. You will also be challenged to think through again the broader and deeper dimensions of life lived on the basis of feminism rather than the patriarchy that has so long dominated the culture of much of the world.
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.
It is no wonder that few Presbyterians know exactly what our church believes about the end of the world. The issue is complicated and there is no clear consensus within our denomination. It has also been 20 years since our denomination has spoken about these matters.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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