A Pastor’s View
Human efforts to bridge our racial divide cannot succeed on their own. Instead, we need a spiritual solution. That’s the message of Dr. Tony Evans’ book Kingdom Race Theology: God’s Answer to Our Racial Crisis. “We have far too many people running to sociology books before searching the Scripture,” Evans writes. He examines Black Lives […]
John Stott never became as famous as his friend Billy Graham, yet he was so beloved and influential that one observer joked that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would probably be Stott. Tim Chester’s book Stott on the Christian Life: Between Two Worlds is a worthy introduction to this giant of the faith, with […]
D. A. Carson, a distinguished theologian and author, got the idea for his book The Intolerance of Tolerance on the college lecture circuit. Whenever he spoke on the subject, the crowds were large and the discussion lively. Eventually, as he continued to mull over the topic, he realized he had to put his thoughts into […]
Dr. Matthew Sleeth’s book Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide is timely around the holidays, but not for the reason you might think. Suicides don’t increase at Christmas—that’s a myth—but they do spike on New Year’s Day, a warning of things to come. “In the coming year, […]
The late Mark McCormack, author of The 110% Solution, believed that many people coast without giving complete effort. “It has long been my conviction, however, that 50% or 75% simply isn’t good enough,” he wrote. “I’m not even talking about ‘success’ right now. I’m talking about happiness. “Having lived for sixty years, having run my […]
Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism” isn’t a Christian book, but it could be just what you need to simplify your life. Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown, has become something of authority on establishing healthy limits in the use of technology. His latest book, subtitled “Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World,” is a […]
N.T. Wright, one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars, has written a most timely book, God and the Pandemic: A Christian Reflection on the Coronavirus and Its Aftermath. Scholarly yet accessible, the book will appeal to pastors and laypeople alike as it grapples with one of life’s most fundamental questions: Why do catastrophic events like the pandemic […]
Ever had people in your congregation, perhaps elders or deacons, who think they know more about your job than you do? It may be more than the normal second-guessing a pastor faces, according to The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols. Recent polls show that respect for the clergy […]