Book Reviews
Recommended Books (Spring 2018)
The information revolution has cheapened words. We are awash in a sea of verbs and nouns hastily typed into digital existence. To avoid drowning under the crashing waves, we have learned to scan documents for keywords or, worse still, hashtags. Even in the world of print, we can find thousands of books in community libraries anywhere in the nation. Such a wealth of material was unimaginable to the vast majority of premodern men. But, of course, words are not cheap. All words find their meaning and foundation in the Word Who became flesh. In...
read moreThe Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: A Review
When people think of Thomas Helwys, they often think of religious liberty, and rightfully so. Yet Helwys’s writings address far more than religious liberty. Marvin Jones seeks to demonstrate this in his recent monograph The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: The Foundational Contributions of Thomas Helwys.[1] Jones contends that while many scholars have considered Helwys’s Mystery of Iniquity to be a work focused primarily on religious freedom, he believes the work focuses heavily, if not primarily, on Baptist ecclesiology.[2] Therefore,...
read moreRecommended Books (Winter 2018)
The cold grey days of winter are here again. This year has been particularly frigid, driving even the hardiest indoors for unusually long spells. In such weather, there are few pass times more profitable than spending the day in a reading chair with a good book. Below we have provided some of our favorite reads from recent weeks that may be beneficial to you as we slog through the last half of the season. Be sure to leave us some of your favorite suggestions in the comment box. ____________________ Jane Austen, Emma (Mineola, NY: Dover...
read moreBook Review: Faith Formation in a Secular Age
In early 2015, I remember picking up a then recent copy of Youthworker Journal with the headline article reading, “Why Theology Isn’t Enough for Youth Ministry.”[1] The author’s name was familiar: Andrew Root, who had also published youth ministry titles such as The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry and The Relational Pastor.[2] While I had strong reservations about the author’s thesis in the article, I have grown to appreciate Root’s desire to think more theologically and philosophically about ministry among youth. Root’s works are a...
read moreForum Contributors Share Their Favorite Books
Each year Forum contributors read, review, or survey hundreds of books. We try to share the best of our reading with Forum readers in the form of quarterly book recommendations. However, as 2017 draws to a close, each of us look back over the year and consider what book rises to the top of our lists—the ones that stimulated our thinking, challenged our thinking, or in some cases, brought great delight. Below each contributor shares their “favorite book read” in 2017. Some titles are somewhat dated, while others are more recent publications....
read moreRecommended Books (Fall 2017)
“Words are the progeny of the soul,” states Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215).[1] As our bodies produce children for posterity, so do our souls. Just as we all wish to produce good children to build up the coming generation, Clement argues we should be careful to leave only the best words to those who come after us. In this way of thinking, “wisdom is a communicative and philanthropic thing.”[2] For this reason, Clement cautions us to test ourselves to see if we are qualified to “leave behind . . . written records” or to read them.[3] To...
read moreBook Review: Remodeling Youth Ministry
by Ben Campbell “For too long, YFM (Youth and Family Ministry) has suffered from pragmatic solutions to eternal problems,” concludes Talbot.[1] For the past forty years, the goal of youth ministry has been to gain students through entertainment. The time has come for a reformation and a remodeling of youth ministry. In Remodeling Youth Ministry, Christopher Talbot does an exceptional job of communicating the need to return to a Biblical model for youth ministry. About the Author Talbot teaches Youth and Family Ministry and serves as campus...
read moreBook Review: Old Testament Exegesis
Douglas Stuart, Old Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009). Within the Christian academic community, there are many resources for the aspiring Bible student. A cursory glance at the resource section of a Christian bookstore will show myriad concordances, Bible handbooks, commentaries, Bible translations, and more. Even with these resources, bridging Bible reading and Biblical interpretation can be difficult for all involved. For this reason, some of the most beneficial resources...
read moreBook Review: Sexuality, Gender, and the Church
“We’re living and ministering in an era of swift and unprecedented change, especially regarding the definition of sexuality, gender, and marriage,” writes J. Matthew Pinson in Sexuality, Gender, and the Church.[1] Though these issues are not unique to our day, many changes concerning sexuality and gender have arisen in recent years that have forced the church to reaffirm and strengthen its historical positions. While numerous books are being written on this very subject, few are as comprehensive as Sexuality, Gender, and the Church. Most of...
read moreRecommended Books (Summer 2017)
Reading is a sacred act of creation and memory. Our ability to use words to call worlds historic and fantastical into existence is a part of God’s image in us. When we write, we create new worlds on the page that are fully realized only when our words are incarnated in the mind of a reader. Sometimes those worlds are florid products of our imaginations that are only tangentially tethered to the real world. These creations recall and echo the creation of Genesis 1. We are mimicking our Father as only a small child can. Yet reading also allows...
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