"One of the best apologetics books in years."

Michael Kruger:

This is a wonderful little book for a number of reasons. (1) Target audience. Although this book is certainly for Christians, it has a strong evangelistic thrust to it. It is designed to be given to non-Christians. (2) Methodology: Anderson has written this book from a presuppositional perspective and demonstrates that such an apologetic approach is really practical, understandable, and effective for evangelism (despite perceptions to the contrary!). (3) Creativity. This book is distinctive in terms of how it is structured. Anderson takes the reader through a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of journey, where the path is chosen by the responses of the reader. There is really nothing else like it.

Check out "What's Your Worldview?"

Risky Gospel

I am thankful for this new book from Owen Strachan.  He writes..

Risky Gospel fits in the "new radicalism" genre, but it's pretty different than kindred titles. Here are three distinguishing features from Radical, Crazy Love, Not a Fan and others (I support and recommend all three, and Kyle Idleman wrote the foreword to RG):  

1. I focus a great deal on the God-rooted goodness of the so-called "ordinary Christian life." Other books have stirred overseas-minded people up in different and helpful ways; I want to enfranchise all believers. I want them to see that they can lead a big, God-glorifying life in the suburbs, the country, the urban core. They can drive an SUV; they can buy Venti two-shot light-foam Caramel Macchiatos at Starbucks; they don't have to quit their job, but can keep working at their vocation, whether that means barista in Brooklyn, stay-at-home mom in Des Moines, financial planner in Chicago, pastor in Bangor, Maine, or most anything in between. I want to infuse "ordinary," everyday Christianity with gospel purpose.  

2. Evangelicals are sometimes indifferent to institutions--the home, the church, the public square, etc. In Risky Gospel, I make a strong case for "building" and strengthening institutions. Chapters 5-9 are all about taking dominion and building something awesome: a godly home, a God-glorifying career, a stronger local church. In an age that shows hostility to the gospel, we need institutions more than ever. Young evangelicals are especially tempted to be overly mystical, non-committal, and indifferent to larger works. I'm winsomely going after them in the book so that they'll see how satisfying and important involvement in home, church, work truly is! 

3. I ground this call in the gospel and in our identity as "more than conquerors" in Christ (Romans 8:37). I'm tired of "miserable worm" Christianity. I'm tired of hearing believers mope about how defeated and weak they are. I wrote this book for believers who want a bigger, stronger, thicker faith. They can see where they want to go, but they don't necessarily know how to get there. The best way to go from A to B is to know who we are in the power of the Spirit. Chapters 2-4 give this foundation. Jesus deals death to sin. Jesus makes us alive. Jesus makes us more than conquerors. We're all sinful. But we're fundamentally a "new creation." I celebrate and apply this reality in Risky Gospel.

Get the book here.   

Gospel-Centered Teaching

Everyone is talking about being centered on "The Gospel".  But what does that even mean?  Can you articulate what that means?  I fear many of the people in my own church love the word but couldn't connect the dots.  This book from Trevin is sure to help.

Trevin Wax:

When The Gospel Project curriculum launched last year, I started receiving emails from pastors asking for something to help their small group leaders or Sunday School teachers understand why it’s important to be gospel-centered in our teaching. Here was a common refrain I heard from church leaders: 

I encourage everyone to be “gospel-centered” and to connect the dots of the Bible or to ground application in the gospel, but I’m not sure everyone knows exactly what I mean when I tell them to do this. 

In response to these requests, I decided to write something brief and accessible for the people who do the work, every week, of opening God’s Word and directing conversation about what God is saying to us. The result is a little book called Gospel-Centered Teaching: Showing Christ in All the Scripture. 

My goal is to give small group leaders a grid or framework that helps them see the big picture of what they are trying to accomplish. By recommending they ask just three questions of every lesson, I hope leaders will begin to instinctively notice when Christ is missing from their Bible study. 

Let’s face it. As teachers, it’s easy to get wrapped up in some of the details of the Bible stories, the history, or the background. Or to get focused on immediate application for our lives, so that we’re skimming the Bible looking for practical tidbits rather than putting ourselves within this great Story that unfolds in the pages of Scripture. 

But information alone doesn’t change us. Application alone doesn’t change us. Only Jesus changes us. That’s why the information we present needs to be connected to Christ. And the application we give needs to be grounded in Christ’s work for us too. 

Some people think they are centered on the gospel because they have an evangelistic presentation at the end of their sermon or small group session. That’s a great thing, but we want to make sure that everything we present is done so in light of Christ’s finished work for us. 

The gospel isn’t the dessert at the end of the meal. It’s the salt that gives distinctive flavor to the meat and potatoes. Trying to read the Bible without Christ at the center is like trying to read a book in the dark. We read everything in light of Jesus. 

Prayer is key in this. Unless we sense our desperation for the Spirit to move in the hearts of our people, we will not pray and we will be ineffective.

Get the book here.  

They Are Selling Us Hospitality

In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putman reveals that there’s been a 33 percent decrease in families eating together over the last three decades.  And more than half of those families are watching television as they eat together. Over the same period there’s been a 45 percent decline in entertaining friends. Growing up I would ask each Sunday, “Who’s coming for dinner today?” Not whether but who, because I knew my parents always would have invited someone. “In the typical American household, the average number of dinners eaten together is three per week, with the average length of dinner being 20 minutes.”  Many homes no longer even have a dining room. We protect ourselves from outsiders, but our security systems and garden gates are our prisons, cutting us off from community. Instead we get our community vicariously through soap operas. Friends is a television program or a Facebook number, not people with whom we eat and laugh and cry. 

Instead we’ve commercialized hospitality. In his history of Starbucks, Taylor Clark argues that the secret of Starbucks’s success is not in its coffee, but “the pull of the coffeehouse as a place.” When sociologist Roy Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to describe a neutral gathering spot that’s neither home or work, “the company,” Clark writes, “now had its philanthropic rallying cry: it wasn’t a coffee company, but a third place bringing people together through the social glue of coffee.” Starbucks’s research showed that people wanted “a cozy social atmosphere above all else. . . . For those seeking a refuge from the world, the cup of coffee they bought was really just the price of admission to partake of the coffeehouse scene.” Starbucks is selling us hospitality.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, 46, 47

Boring: Finding an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life

Michael Kelley:

I wanted to take a moment today to tell you about a book that I’ve written that will be released on September 15. It’s called… wait for it… Boring: Finding an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life. 

If the catchy title didn’t get you, I’d love to tell you a bit more about why I wrote the book.
I wrote it because this is my story. It’s probably yours, too, at least in some respect. The truth is that we will all spend 90% of our time here on earth just doing life. Just being ordinary. Changing diapers, going to work, paying taxes – stuff like that. 

If this were a self-help book, I might follow that realistic, slightly demotivating statement up with something like: “Break out of the ordinary. Pursue your bliss. Go skydiving. Do something important. Carpe diem.” The same motivation, in Christian terms, might read: “God’s will is that you have a life of adventure. Get out there and make an eternal difference. Do something big for God.” 

All of those statements are true in a sense; all of them can be appropriate. What those statements communicate is that we should be focused on Jesus and expanding His kingdom. That should be our priority. Those statements challenge us to recognize that we only have a limited time here on earth, so we need to make sure we spend our time doing things that matter. However, implicit in an exhortation like “do something big for God” is the notion that we are currently not doing stuff that matters, and we have to abandon that insignificant stuff to break out of the rut … chase the dream … be the man … overcome obscurity … all that stuff. 

Chasing dreams isn’t the problem. Neither is maximizing what you have to make a difference in the world for the sake of Christ. The problem is in our definition of significance. 

People tend to believe that the pathway to significance is paved with the big, the showy, and the grand. The people who are most often lauded as influential are the ones doing the big, impressive things with their lives. 

Consequently, those same people cannot involve themselves in these mundane details of life. Indeed, the mundane details are like anchors that weigh a person down from the bigger and the better. So moving toward a life that matters involves moving past the details that don’t. 

But what if we’re wrong? What if “bigness” is not an accurate measure of significance? What if the whole idea of “ordinary” is a myth? And what if a life of great importance isn’t found by escaping the details but embracing them? What if God actually doesn’t want you to escape from the ordinary, but to find significance and meaning inside of it? 

That’s what this book is about. This book is for the stay-at-home mom and the office job dad. It’s for the regular church member and the ordinary citizen. It’s for the person who has ever looked at the seemingly mundane details of life and wondered if they are really doing anything that’s worthwhile. It’s for all of us ordinary people who are following an extraordinary God. My hope, as you read the book, is that you would be awakened to the myth of the ordinary as you see an extraordinary God who is constantly moving and working. I’m praying that you might see the greater purposes in a few specific, but often ordinary areas of life that we tend to push to the margin. And maybe, when we get to the end, we will have begun to God, and life, and a whole new way. Perhaps we will have begun to see that there really is no such thing as ordinary when you are following an extraordinary God. 

If you’re interested in pre-ordering a copy, you can do so here. Again, the book releases on September 15.

5 books I’m reading this summer

Guest post by Aaron Armstrong

Summertime is now upon us; for many of us, this means something very important: the opportunity to take time off work! One of the ways I recharge is to spend time reading. Here are five books I'm planning to read this summer:

Kingdom Come by Sam Storms

This one is probably going to be my big "plugging away a bit at a time" read:

The second coming of Christ is a matter of sharp disagreement amongst Christians. Many hold to premillennialism: that Christ's return will be followed by 1,000 years before the final judgement, a belief popularised in the popular Left Behind novels. However, premillennialism is not the only option for Christians. In this important new book, Sam Storms provides a biblical rationale for amillennialism; the belief that 1,000 years mentioned in the book of Revelation is symbolic with the emphasis being the King and his Kingdom.

Buy it at: Amazon | Westminster Books

What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur'an by James R. White

What used to be an exotic religion of people halfway around the world is now the belief system of people living across the street. Through fair, contextual use of the Qur'an as the primary source text, apologist James R. White presents Islamic beliefs about Christ, salvation, the Trinity, the afterlife, and other important topics. White shows how the sacred text of Islam differs from the teachings of the Bible in order to help Christians engage in open, honest discussions with Muslims.

Buy it at: Amazon

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

I grew up watching the film based upon this book, so I think it's high-time I actually read it:

Anyone who lived through the 1980s may find it impossible—inconceivable, even—to equate The Princess Bride with anything other than the sweet, celluloid romance of Westley and Buttercup, but the film is only a fraction of the ingenious storytelling you'll find in these pages. Rich in character and satire, the novel is set in 1941 and framed cleverly as an “abridged” retelling of a centuries-old tale set in the fabled country of Florin that's home to “Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passions.”

Buy it at: Amazon

The Doctrine of Sin by Iain D. Campbell 

This is one of the last books I need to complete for my systematic theology certificate:

Modern theology reveres the names of Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann and Emil Brunner, hailed as the heroes of a new, modern and re-stated Reformation theology - a new orthodoxy for a new age.

In this book, Iain D. Campbell focuses on one doctrine - the doctrine of sin - and views it first in its biblical perspective, and then considers the perspective of the Reformers and Puritans. He compares and contrasts their approach with that of Barth, Bultmann and Brunner. He also shows how the modern theologies have evacuated the Evangel of its power and saving influence by reducing the sin of man to little more than personal dysfunction.

The Gospel is shown to be the power of God to salvation, because there is an emphasis on sin as objective and factual, leaving people in need of the saving work of Jesus Christ. The new orthodoxy is shown to be not a re-statement of the Gospel, but, as Paul reminded his readers long ago, 'a different gospel'.

Buy it at: Amazon | Westminster Books

Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian by Bret Lott

All serious writers know that each word they write reveals something significant about their beliefs, something about their reason for creating, something about the one for whom they write. After all, writing lays bare the soul.

Yet the work of a Christian artist is often pressured to fit into a popular mold, oftentimes forgoing quality for the sake of convenience or acceptance, or even simply because of a lack of the bravery necessary to look square in the eye the world, and to do so with the unflinching eye of Christ.

In this series of intimate reflections on life and writing, critically acclaimed and best-selling novelist Bret Lott calls authors to pursue excellence in their craft through five fascinating essays and an extended memoir that explore everything from the importance of literary fiction to the pain of personal loss.

Learn here what it means to be a writer who navigates the tension inherent to being a Christian in the public square—and to being an artist made in the image of God.

Buy it at: Amazon

Those are the primary books I'm planning to read this summer (there may be others that come up). What are you hoping to read during the next couple months?

"What sort of story are you in?"

Justin Buzzard:

When strangers meet today they often ask not, "What do you do?," but "What is your story?" Everybody has a story. And everybody on the planet believes some larger story in order to make sense of the smaller story of their life. We want our lives to fit within a larger plot-complete with a sense of history, conflict resolution, forward movement, and future.  

So, the better question to ask is, "What sort of story are you in?"
Most people believe false stories that leave them disillusioned, enslaved, and hopeless. Secular stories of chasing success and religious stories of doing good works can both leave us feeling exhausted and empty. Only Christianity, only the old and ongoing story of the Bible, offers a story that's big enough to make sense of both the beauty and brokenness in our lives and in our world. At the center of this story is a God who disturbs our life in order to set us free.

Get Justin's new book here.

Noteworthy New Titles From Crossway Books

Weakness Is the Way: Life with Christ Our Strength by J. I. Packer “If you, like me, struggle with discouragement over your weaknesses, you need to read this book. We all long to be admired for our strengths, yet we all find ourselves, ‘beset with weakness’ (Heb. 5:2). Does this mean we’re stuck living with discouragement? No! There is an escape to joyful freedom. Dr. Packer knows the way. Walking us through 2 Corinthians, he shows it to us so that we, like Paul, can ‘boast all the more gladly of [our] weaknesses.’” —Jon Bloom, President, Desiring God Ministries; author, Not by Sight: A Fresh Look at Old Stories of Walking by Faith Name above All Names by Alistair Begg & Sinclair B. Ferguson “As Christians, we find it easy to talk about God’s work in our communities and around the world. It’s easy to describe our growth in Christ and what we are learning from him. But how many of us simply delight in talking about Jesus? The art of contemplating the loveliness of Christ—and infusing those admirations into everyday conversation—is a dying discipline. But in Name above All Names, my friends Alistair Begg and Sinclair Ferguson invite us to meditate afresh on our wonderful savior and all that makes him beautiful and praiseworthy. I highly recommend this remarkable volume!” —Joni Eareckson Tada, Founder and CEO, Joni and Friends International Disability Center Echoes of Eden: Reflections on Christianity, Literature, and the Arts by Jerram Barrs “Echoes of Eden is the most accessible, readable, and yet theologically robust work on Christianity and the arts that you will be able to find. It is biblical, theologically sound, filled with examples, and edifying. It anticipates and answers well all the most common questions that evangelical people ask about the arts. I highly recommend it.” —Timothy J. Keller, Pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City; author, The Reason for God

Four Suggestions for Reading Tim Keller’s The Reason for God

Chris Brauns:

Yesterday, I offered  motivation for reading Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. For anyone with questions about the Christian faith – - Christian or not- -  this is the most important work in recent years. But don’t expect to breeze through the book like it’s the latest John Grisham novel. Those not accustomed to reading theology or philosophy should begin with a strategy for interacting with the content. Here are four suggestions:

• Write all over it – If you are going to benefit from Keller’s thinking, then you need to dialogue with him. You should find yourself rewriting his thoughts in your own words on every other page. Make notes. Underline things. Reread. Outline. I don’t write neatly, so my copy looks like a kindergartner got a hold of it with a crayon. Notice the above. Maybe click on it and make it bigger. I’ve written in a source, added a post-it which summarizes his argument, and cross-referenced the post-it in the paragraphs.   

• Talk about Keller’s thought in your every day conversations. Nearly every page offers a discussion starter. Just ask the question in conversation, “Do you think it is arrogant to insist your religion is right and to convert others to it?” (page 11). Share Keller’s arguments. See if they are persuasive. The only way material like this is going to stick is if you talk about it, which leads to the next point.  

• Read the book in community. Near the end, Keller makes a very important statement: “Almost anything – - from a new language to a new skill- – is best learned in a community of others who are at various stages in their own pilgrimage.” Find three people to share the book at the same time. Email one another quotes. See if you can give the arguments. Or disagree with the arguments. Develop your own illustrations with one another.  

• Listen to Keller sermons while reading. I would especially recommend the Can I Believe  selection of sermons. Keller is Keller. So he is going to make the same points but in slightly different ways in sermons. And they’re free!

Raised? Doubting The Resurrection

Gospel Centered Discipleship:

We wrote this book out of our love for skeptics and respect for the questions they help us ask. We also write as believers who oscillate in real belief in the resurrected Christ. We hope it proves to be an insightful, stirring reflection on the resurrection.  

We are giving this book away in the hope that churches will make the eBook or hardcopy available to their people, especially to all their visitors on Easter. We are praying God would use it to spark gospel conversations, equip believers, and help people meet the risen Jesus. Download the entire book for free below (Kindle (.mobi), iBooks (.epub), & PDF).

Read the rest.  

Why Cities Matter

You may be interested in this new book from Justin Buzzard and Stephen Um.   It's also listed at a great  price.

Here is a description:

We live in a unique moment in history. Right now, more people live in urban centers than ever before. This means that we have an unprecedented opportunity to influence the majority of the world through the church in the city! Helping us to make the most of this moment, urban pastors Justin Buzzard and Stephen Um lay out a compelling vision for cultural engagement and church planting in our world’s cities. If you’re looking for motivation to maintain a commitment to the city or for guidance as you consider going all in, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of urban life that informs, instructs, inspires, and answers questions including: 

• Why cities are so important 
• What the Bible says about cities 
• How to overcome common issues and develop a plan for living missionally in the city 

Instead of retreating from or taking from our cities, here is a call to make the cities our home, to take good care of them, and to participate in God’s kingdom-building work in the urban centers of our world.

Follow Me - David Platt - Book Trailer

Get the book here.

"An old preacher . . . told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. 'They are going to put you in a box,' he said, 'and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad"

Doug Wilson reviews Al Mohler's new book on leadership, The Conviction to Lead:

Leadership is endurance. Leadership measures the time, and evaluates the days. How would it be possible for a good basketball coach not watch the clock? All leaders will die, and so all leaders should prepare their legacies in advance. My favorite line in the book spoke to this point. "An old preacher . . . told a group of younger preachers to remember that they would die. 'They are going to put you in a box,' he said, 'and put the box in the ground, and throw dirt on your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad" (p. 203). And Mohler quotes one of my favorite commonplaces from Charles De Gaulle to the effect that graveyards are full of indispensible men. 

For any one currently in a position of leadership, or anyone who aspires to a position of leadership, this book is a necessity.

Read the rest.  

"Here then is how the Spirit makes us wise..."

Here then is how the Spirit makes us wise. On the night before he died, Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Holy spirit and ‘when he, the Spirit of truth, come … he will glorify me …’ (John 16:13-14). The Spirit does not make us wise in some magical kind of way, giving us little nudges and insider tips to help us always choose the best stock to invest in. Rather, he makes Jesus Christ a living, bright reality, transforming our character, giving us new inner poise, clarity, humility, boldness, contentment, and courage. All of this leads to increasing wisdom as the years go by, and to better and better professional and personal decisions. 

- Tim Keller, Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work to God’s Plan for the World, 212.


Books by Tim Keller:

• The Prodigal God  
• King’s Cross 
• Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything 
• The Reason for God  
• Counterfeit Gods  
• Generous Justice

Fiction Feed Souls

N.D. Wilson:

Feed your children stories that will keep their eyes wide with wonder when they look out their front windows or wander their yards. Feed them stories of joy and hardship and courage and tragedy and triumph. Give them heroes, real and imagined. Give them a taste for goodness, for truth, for beauty.

Yes, I’m prejudiced. I write fiction (yay, verily, even fantasy). But I’m not trying to provide the mechanical children of a mechanical universe with a much needed (false) daydream. I work to imitate this world; I hunt through the jungles of history and mythology looking for spices; I dig through the stories of the prophets looking for meat. I hope to write the fantasy of here, for the future heroes of here. I do what I can, hoping to feed souls.

Read the rest.

My kids are currently devouring Harry Potter.  We are also reading the Lord of the Rings (we greatly love the Alan Lee version) out loud at night before bed.  Both of these would be great Christmas gifts.

We May Never Get An Explanation

We may not ever fully understand why God allows the suffering that devastates our lives. We may not ever find the right answers to how we’ll dig ourselves out. There may not be any silver lining, especially not in the ways we would like. But we don’t need answers as much as we need God’s presence in and through the suffering itself. For the life of the believer, one thing is beautifully and abundantly true: God’s chief concern in your suffering is to be with you and be Himself for you. 

 - Tullian Tchividjian, Glorious Ruin

Six Warning Signs That You Are Becoming a Pharisee

Larry Osborne has a new book called, Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith.  In this blog post, he fleshes out some of the ideas from the book that help us not become crusty cranks like the Pharisees.

1. Disdain for those at the back of the line
2. A spirit of exclusivity
3. Extra-biblical rules and expectations
4. A pattern of idolizing the past
5. A quest for clone-like uniformity
6. Gift projection

Other books by Larry that I strongly recommend:

• Sticky Church
• Sticky Teams

Keller Speaks Extensively About His New Book, Center Church

Get the book here.

Center Church - A Review

Darryl Dash:

"...this book is gold. A few of Keller's articles have had a profound influence on my life. Imagine, then, almost 400 pages of such material. If you're in pastoral ministry, or if you are interested in a theological vision of the church, or any number of related topics such as church planting and cultural engagement, then this book is a must. ​Buy the print edition if you can, and refer to it often. You won't be sorry."

Read the rest of his review here.

Get the book here.  

This Ordinary Adventure - A Review

When I think of people who have lived on the edge of adventure, a select number of people come to mind.  Add to the list my good friends, Adam and Chrissy Jeske.  They just wrote a book about some of their crazy adventures (motorcycling across Africa, enduring malaria for nine months in Nicaragua, coming to terms with the horror of HIV, etc) and how to live a more "settled" life without settling.

This Ordinary Adventure is a fun, yet challenging book.  It's a delightful read that will make you laugh, inspire you, and cause you to question some of your North American cultural assumptions.

My favorite part of This Ordinary Adventure would be seeing two people wrestle with what it means to follow Jesus amidst all the trappings of white, middle class, educated, and "ordinary" society.  If you find yourself in one or all of those categories and you don't wrestle with this, you might be simply living on auto-pilot.  This book will help you interact with that wrestling process and infuse more intentionality into your life.

I would recommend checking out This Ordinary Adventure: Settling Down without Settling.

Here is the website for the book.

Here is Adam and Chrissy's new blog on Patheos.