Category: Tyndale Momentum

You Don’t Have To Be A Bad Evangelist! a book review

If you are like me, you have a lot of mixed feelings about evangelism. I mean, there is Jesus’ Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), So I guess I believe evangelism is really great, right?  But there is so much bad evangelism. I know, I’ve done my share of it. I’m really good at bad evangelism.

978-1-63146-856-8There are lots of things that make evangelism bad. Some evangelism is bad because people don’t hear good news from the evangelist. I remember once listening as an open-air-evangelist berated a passerby for wearing his baseball caps backwards, “Your hat’s on backward! You must have your head on backward, or you wouldn’t be sinning!” Needless to say, that guy didn’t hear the good news in that evangelist’s message. Other attempts at evangelization miss their mark because the message is irrelevant to the listeners or too full of religious-insider-jargon to make any sort of impact.

Matt Mikalatos wrote Good News For a Change to help those of us who struggle with evangelism talk to others about Jesus. The double entendre title speaks of both the way the good news has been complicated by bad evangelism and the good news of transformation available to those who come to faith in Jesus (sometimes in spite of our bad evangelism). Mikalatos is experienced at sharing his faith, whether it is by leading atheist Bible studies, or leading student outreaches with Cru (the artist formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ), or through his imaginative writing. I first became aware of Mikalatos through his brilliantly funny Night of the Living Dead Christian and My Imaginary Jesus, and his modern retelling of Jesus’ parables in The First Time We Saw Him. He is an engaging and insightful author. In Good News, he turns his attention to helping the rest of us share the good news of Jesus, with imagination, verve, and whimsy.

This book is helpful in several ways. First, Mikalatos reminds us that the gospel is good news:

With the gospel, we need to get past the sales tactics and high-pressure techniques because we don’t need them. A well honed sales pitch reveals that we’ve forgotten the gospel is, at its core, good news. It was good news for us, and it’s good
news for the people with whom we’re sharing (xvii).

Because we have good news, we don’t need to rely on sales pitches and scripts. Instead, we can share with people the unchanging good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as well as our own personal good news— the ways that a relationship with Jesus has transformed our lives and given us hope.

But Mikalatos doesn’t stop there. Much of Good News For a Change is dedicated to dedicating to listening to others, even as we share our faith with them. This helps us describe how Jesus is good news for them. Mikalatos translates the gospel into Brony (the language of My Little Pony enthusiasts) and shares stories of conversations he’s had with Buddhists and door-to-door salespeople. But he also challenges us to craft messages that speak to people (communicate well, avoid jargon and live lives cognizant of the good news of God’s welcome in Christ and gives us some tips on how to engage in conversation those who are antagonistic to our faith. One of the greatest things about Mikalatos’s approach to evangelism is how attentive he is to the people he’s talking to. Bad evangelism is often bad because of how tone-deaf it is. Mikalatos helps us to speak in ways that are responsive and engaging.

This book is both entertaining and helpful. In the end, talking to others about Jesus is just bearing witness to the ways we’ve experienced life in Him. Mikalatos encourages us to share our experience of Christ, and listen for and connect with ways that the Spirit is already at work in their lives. This is helpful, and like Mikalatos other books, a fun read. I give it four stars. ★★★★

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

Imagine True Religion: a book review

Most of us don’t like religion. Instead of having religious vocations like monks and nuns, we are the nones-and-dones. The ranks of exvangelicals swell as people leave churches marked too often by unhealthy power structures, patriarchy, prejudice, and a near lack of inclusion. But even among those of us still in the Evangelical Christian sub-culture, there is little enthusiasm about religion, as such. Evangelicals decry “Religion” as a human attempt to please God which had very-little-to-do with the Jesus revealed in the Bible. Religion, we say, is spelled D-O; Christianity was spelled D-O-N-E. Religion is a set of rules. We have a relationship. But for all our religious handwringing and bad spoken word poetry about how we aren’t in any way whatsoever religious, we had just as many rites, rituals, and dogma as everyone else.

978-1-63146-666-3Greg Paul doesn’t buy this evangelical antireligious rhetoric.  In his introduction to Resurrecting Religion, he recounts listening to a speaker at a large missional Christian conference rage against religion and thinking, “What is it we’re doing here? Isn’t all this, umm, religion? Wouldn’t anybody else say this is religious activity? Simply saying that we’re not religious doesn’t make it so. Are we fooling ourselves?” (xiii).  Rather than rail against religion, Greg Paul sees bad religion as our real problem: combative, legalistic, hierarchical, soul-numbing and functionally irrelevant, bad religion.

In the book, Greg probes how true religion calls us to care for the widows and orphans and keep ourselves from corruption(James 1:27). In retooling religion, he makes use of the book of James to show us how true religion compels us to care for those on the margins (not the center and the status quo). As a pastor, and therefore career ‘religious guy,’ he has plentiful examples of how he has tried to live this out within the context of the urban church he pastors in Toronto, Sanctuary.

I first became aware of Greg Paul’s work through his book God in the Alley (Shaw, 2004). That book described Paul’s seeing Christ’s presence among Toronto’s inner-city homeless population. Simply Open (Thomas Nelson, 2015) and Close Enough to Hear God Breathe (Thomas Nelson 2011) were about the cultivating our awareness of God in pray and in all of life. These all point to a contemplative awareness. In this sense, Greg Paul is kind of what I would call an evangelical mystic. The religious spirituality he describes in Resurrecting Religion is a spirituality of the Beatitudes—one that makes space for the oppressed and the vulnerable in the life the faith community, a spirituality of listening and a spirituality of submission to God in the face of life’s trials.

Greg Paul calls us not to throw off our religious chains, but toward a new reformation where our ideas of religion are overhauled and renewed as we seek to care for the vulnerable, show equal regard for all people regardless of their socioeconomic status, and follow Jesus. Because the epistle of James is G. Paul’s guide, he doesn’t focus on liturgy and ritual like other pro-religion books might (such as James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom). His focus, and in large part people’s problem with religion, is how we are to relate to one another. His closing chapter, “a twenty-first-century reformation” sets the trajectory he thinks our religiosity ought to take:

  •  Following Jesus away from the place of power, privilege, and security to the margins and the vulnerable.
  • An integrative approach to the gospel that holds up both a comprehensive theology of the Kingdom of God and pursues a vibrant, living relationship with Jesus.
  • The pursuit of justice and speaking up on behalf of the oppressed.
  • Directing our energies and resources outward not on our own church building and culture.
  • Commitment to community and to the values of the Kingdom of Heaven beyond our own economic interests, political affiliations.

Greg argues for a recovery of a religious, prophetic witness:

We would not keep silent when people who are poor are blamed for their poverty; when another young black man is unjustly shot and killed by police; when another First Nations woman goes missing and no investigation is begun; when supports for people who are addicted, mentally ill, or homeless are slashed again,; when unjust laws that target the poor are passed .We would claim those people as our brothers and sisters and raise our voices in support. We would abandon political-party allegiances and vote according to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those of us who are politicians or police officers or social workers or employees of banks and large corporations or military personnel or church workers would stand and speak loudly, if necessary as ones crying in the wilderness, about the injustice that infects the cultures within which we work and spreads to the world around us. (200).

When I picked up this book I expected it to be a sort of apologia for religion for our spiritual-but-not-religious age. Instead, this book is more of a manifesto for Christians to pursue True Religion in the way of Jesus. There are lots of stories from Greg’s ministry and the community of Sanctuary. I give this four stars and recommend it for pastors and ordinary readers who are tired of the same old bad religion and long for something more life-giving. -★★★★

Notice of material connection: I received a copy of this book from NavPress and the TyndaleBlogNetwork in exchange for my honest review.

Praying on the Hill: a book review.

The Reverend Barry C. Black has served as the 62nd Chaplain of the U.S. Senate since 2003. Prior to that, he spent 27 years in the Navy, achieving the rank of Rear Admiral (OF-7). In February 2017, he provided the address for the National Prayer Breakfast, Donald Trump’s inaugural prayer breakfast as president. His message was inspiring. Go ahead, google it. It is about 27 minutes long and worth your time. It is an inspiring message, powerfully delivered.

978-1-4964-2949-0Make Your Voice Heard in Heaven: How to Pray in Power is an expansion of the themes he explored in his 2017 National Prayer Breakfast address. Black commends a lifestyle of prayer—trusting in God and praying through every circumstance. He asserts that prayer changes things and as we pray, ‘we make our voice heard in heaven.’

Black opens his book with an appeal to pray with assistance, that is, noting that as we gather to pray, Jesus is in our midst (Matthew 18:18-20) and the Spirit of God intercedes for us (Romans 8:26-27). Next, Black points to the Lord’s prayer as our model prayer we should pray. In the remaining chapters of the book, Black exhorts us pray with the right spiritual posture and to pray in every circumstance (e.g. Pray with purity, and fearlessly, pray with effectiveness, pray to escape temptation, pray even when God is silent, when we don’t feel like being good, when we need patience, in times of celebration, pray with intimacy, fervency, perseverance, submission, and pray with a partner).

Black occasionally illustrates his chapters with his experiences praying on Capitol Hill, and sometimes from his daily life Occasionally he throws in a pop cultural reference or something from history. However, for the most part, this pretty straight teaching from the Bible. Black has helpful and encouraging words for us as we each seek to develop our own private prayer practice. Despite the self help-y, title (“Make Your Voice Heard!) and the exhortation to pray effectively, and with power, what Black says is solid, God-honoring and down to earth. He is no prosperity preacher but is confident that prayers do have an impact on our life and nation.

Black speaks against the partisan divide in Washington, and he holds regular bipartisan prayer and Bible study meetings with members from both sides of the political aisle. However, his privileged place in the Senate puts limits on the sort of prophetic witness he is allowed to have.  Chaplains are the custodians of civil religion and as a career naval officer, Black does not challenge the status quo. So, for example, when he recommends the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Galilean hill country—a region full of would-be-revolutionaries—Black depoliticizes the prayer. Praying for God’s coming kingdom by necessity challenges the established order. But Black writes:

Because I’m a member of God’s family, his promises become mine. I want my life to advance his Kingdom—not mine—and his Kingdom is not of this world. When my behavior  doesn’t adequately represent his Kingdom, I should desire to change what I’m doing. I make my decisions based on which choices better advances the priorities of my heavenly Father’s Kingdom (22-23, emphasis mine).

So while the Kingdom represents God’s priorities in the world, for Black, praying this prayer is fundamentally about challenging our own personal behavior and self-centeredness. For the first-century disciple praying this prayer, it meant the emperor was not the true king and that the political order was called into question. But Black is surrounded by powerful men and women. So Jesus’ most political prayer becomes primarily a tool for private devotion. Of course, because he exhorts political leaders to pray this prayer in this way, there are political implications. But this offers no systemic challenge.

On that score, this book is similar to a lot of other books on prayer. I am grateful for Black’s presence in the Senate, and the way he mediates God’s presence to our leaders, but I wish this book was more storied and offered a more prophetic challenge. I give this two stars. ★★

Notice of Material Connection: I received a copy of this book from Tyndale in exchange for my honest  review

Parabolic Professions: a book review

Each career has something to teach us. When people do the type of things, they were made to do, they image God for the rest of us.
978-1-63146-548-2So says John Van Sloten, Calgary pastor and preacher teacher at Ambrose Seminary in Calgary, Alberta. Van Sloten previously wrote The Day Metallica Came to Church: Searching for the Everywhere God in Everything, a book that explored God’s presence in pop-culture. In Every Job a Parable, Van Sloten trains his eye on careers around him, and how God is revealed in our vocation.

In Part I, describes how people in their job, image God. Van Sloten talks with a Walmart Greeter, a flyer delivery person in his neighbourhood, a forensic psychologist, tradespeople and auto mechanics, doctors and florists, and scientists, exploring how our work puts us in touch with the character of God, and his imprint on our world and work.  He continues to probe various vocations throughout the book.

In Part II, Van Sloten explores what parables are and how our work is a parable. He explores the ways workers image God’s presence and how someone’s vocation(calling) is an icon of God. In Part III, he explores what our work reveals about God. Different jobs reveal God’s ongoing creation (e.g., Geophysicists), crooked lawyers and immoral politicians show how sin distorts things, how first responders and medical professionals reveal ways God works to redeem all things, and how activists point us to God’s work of new creation.

Part IV forms an invitation for us to live more effectively and consistently the image of God we are called to through our work. Van Solten suggests learning discernment, gratitude, rhythms of rest, a mystical full-sense-engagement in our vocational life, and trust that God will use our work.

Van Sloten’s perspective on vocation helps us see the sacredness of work. Too often, our work feels small and mundane, and seems the chunk of our day that takes us away from our life. Van Sloten argues, instead that what we do at work is formational and iconic, allowing our work to call us to Christlikeness and imaging God.

While the book assumes the sacredness of every vocation, Van Sloten does address where sin distorts our sense of call. Lawyers may lie, federal politicians may be immoral, accountants may be . . . creative. But Van Sloten’s negative examples all assume that each of these are a peculiar vocation gone amiss. He does not treat, in this volume, jobs that are illegal (mob boss, pimp, prostitute), immoral (pornographer) or  ambiguous (a card dealer at a Casino, bar tender, etc). Presumably, these can fit the ‘Every job a parable’ motif, even if these jobs don’t ‘image God.’ They still may have things to teach us.

Van Sloten, is Reformed, and many of the theological voices he draws on are within the Christian Reformed Stream: Cornelius Plantinga, Richard Mouw, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavnick. Though CS Lewis, Eastern Orthodox theology through the lens of Rublev’s Trinity and Gabriel Bunge are also significant.

This was a pretty enjoyable read and I like the way Van Sloten valued the professions he highlighted here.  On a personal note, feeling somewhat vocationally muddled as of late, I appreciate Van Sloten’s call to examine where God is revealed in my day job. I give this four stars – ★★★★

Notice of material connection: I received a copy of this book from the Tyndale Blog Network, in exchange for my honest review.

 

Where’s Mikey? a kids book review.

I have heard the stats that only two in ten millennials attend church regularly. Why? I blame Martin Handford, creator of the Where’s Waldo series (Where’s Wally in the UK). Because of him, a generation of kids, in the late 80’s and 90’s, stopped looking for Jesus and instead asked ‘Where’s Waldo?’ It was more detrimental to childhood faith development than Bill Nye the Science Guy explaining away theism.

978-1-4964-2243-9Thankfully, we now have Bible Sleuth: New Testament. Mike, an adventure-loving little boy, sporting an orange and red painter’s cap, a red and white striped t-shirt and yellow overall shorts (an outfit which was last seen in 1991 worn by R&B sensations TLC) explores the New Testament. Unlike Waldo, who trekked across the globe, urban centers, and visited other cultures, Mike restricts his exploration to Bible Stories alone. So when you hunt for Mike and other figures in each scene, you are sure to only learn the Bible and not any new, subversive ideas. Doesn’t that sound much safer?

I’m kidding. There are tons of kids’ search books of a wide variety, and Bible Sleuth stands in a long tradition of Christian children’s books making use of the same idea. Bible Sleuth illustrator, José Pérez Montero has previously illustrated Seek & Find Bible Stories (Zonderkids, 2008, with author Carl Anker Mortensen) and I have reviewed similar kids books here before (see here or here).

Here is the thing though, when it comes to kids book reviews, my critical faculties pretty much go out the window and I end up saying things like, “My kids like it, so I like it.” And this is true again. My oldest, who is nearing ten, my seven-year-old, my six-year-old all enjoy it. My two-year-old likes the pictures though hasn’t demonstrated the patience required to find everything (though he is really great at Where’s Elmo).  All of us get annoyed that invariably one of the people we are looking for in the picture is barely cresting out from the center crease. But such is life.

But one of the things I always try to pay attention to in Children’s Bible books, “How white is everybody?” I remember a friend observing that Jesus’ family once hid in Egpyt, so you know he must have had some color. And yet Little Mike and his pasty legs blend in pretty well to these pages, because of how white all the middle Eastern Palestinians seem to be. At least Jesus has brown hair and not blonde locks, that is until he is surrounded by a crowd of ONLY white people in John’s Revelation 19 vision (and the final scene in the book). Hair color throughout ranges from red, to brown and blonde.[The Tyndale site identifies the author of this book, as Scandinavia Publishing House, which may explain some this].

My kids like it and that means something, but on cultural accuracy and sensitivity, I find this book wanting. I give it a middle of the road review. -3 stars.

Notice of material connection:  I received this book from Tyndale in exchange for my honest review

The Hairy Choose Balloons : a kids’ book review

I’m a fan of John Ortberg. I’ve listened to his sermons on the Menlo Park Church podcast and read several of his books. He is called, with affection, Dallas-for-Dummies for his ability to translate the writings of his late mentor Dallas Willard into the language of the people. Your Magnificent Chooser is a short children’s book designed to help kids understand how to make good choices.

978-1-4964-1742-8This is not a children’s story but a poem designed to teach kids. He explores the things we choose, what bad choices look like, and how God wants us to choose for ourselves. Illustrations by Robert Dunn personify (or creaturefy?) our Choosers as a furry balloon following us everywhere and into every situation. We learn, “a Chooser is a thing/ That is not just for you,/ Because everyone else/ Has their own Chooser too” (17). Ortberg helps children use their Choosers to love others, use  Chooser often and use it to make good choices (just like Jesus would).

Three of my kids are at an age where they appreciate this book (ages 6, 7.5, and nine). We’ve had several discussions since I first read it, on our Choosers and the importance of choosing wisely. They enjoyed it and got them talking. That strikes me as a good book.

I’ve tried to instill in my own kids the importance of good choices. I let them choose things (and sometimes suffer the consequences of poor choices) because I want them to learn to choose and choose wisely. Ultimately, I want them to choose Jesus. We talk often about what good choices are and the options available to them. Ortberg’s book provides a means to deepen and extend the conversation, towards the mundane and the sacred.

This book didn’t grab me the way some of our picture books do, but the kids really liked it.  As a parent concerned that our kids learn to make good choices, a book like this provides language to help kids think about, visualize and understand what good choices are. Therefore, I give this book four stars.

Note: I received this book from Tyndale Books in exchange for my honest review.

Dying to Be Right: a book review

Efrem Smith was a sought after voice in the denomination I’ve served as pastor in (Evangelical Covenant Church). He planted Sanctuary, a multicultural/multiethnic church in Minnesota. Later he was a conference superintendent for the Pacific Southwest. These days he’s the teaching pastor at Bayside Midtown Church in Sacramento, California,  and the president of World Impact, an urban-missions program which trains the urban poor in mission and helps them to launch indigenous church plants. He is also the author of several books

efremsoftlySmith’s new book, Killing Us Softly describes what it means to die to ourselves and live for God’s kingdom. How are we killed? God kills us (our egos and selfish desires) softly with his steadfast love and grace. In his introduction Smith opens up about his own experience of this sort of spiritual death, “I am allowing God to do surgery on my soul—to kill me, certainly, but to do it softly, lovingly—so that I might die to the upside-down world we find ourselves in, and be empowered to live as a right-side-up child of God. I am living in the messiness of God removing things in me that are not of him so that I might reflect him more each day” (xiv).

The first chapter of the book describe our upside-down-ness of our bizarro world. Things in our culture are not the way God intended because of the reality of sin. Smith observes that sin is both an individual and systemic reality (8). We live the upside-down life of idolatry—”our hearts and worship turned away from God toward other things” (10) The result is fragmentation. We are broken in our relationships to others (i.e. racism, tribalism, sexism) and our institutions are also broken (government systems, schools, economic systems, corporations, etc).

In the chapters that follow, Smith describes the church as the right-side-up remnant(chapter 2);  Christ as  the ‘right side up way, truth and life'(chapter 3); what in us needs to die to set our hearts right (chapter 4); the paradox of Christian maturity (or what it means to have a child like faith, chapter 5); how we advance God’s kingdom through love (chapter six) and what it means to join in God’s mission to set the world right side up (chapter seven).

In this short book Smith gives us a broad overview of the life of discipleship—what it means to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus. He discusses the upside-down-ness of our world, and because he includes a category for systemic sin, he is able to speak directly to fallen institutions and systemic problems (like the incarceration and wrongly death of black people at the hands of police, and deaths of police officers). He challenges Christians to share the love of Jesus with the world, and  to see justice as part of our mission to welcome the kingdom and set the world to rights.

Smith tells stories from ministry, initiatives he’s been a part of to love neighbors and restore communities. He offers an inspiring and pastoral vision of what it means to join our life with Christ and become part of his mission. It is compelling.  I also appreciate that Smith places ‘dying to yourself’ motif under the rubric of God’s gracious work in us. This helps me understand it as something healthier and more fruitful than mere self-loathing. It is about submitting to God’s work in our heart. I give this book four stars.

Note: I received this book from Tyndale in exchange for my honest review