For What it’s Worth…

Worldliness; Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World,  edited by C J Mahaney,  has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks.  I decided that since it’s a collection from a number of authors,  I’d take it chapter by chapter,  rather than review the whole thing.  Chapter 1, Is This Verse In Your Bible, by C J Mahaney establishes the premise for the entire book.

“Today, the greatest challenge facing American (read “Western”) evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.”

Quoting a Charles Spurgeon sermon from 1860, Mahaney demonstrates that the greater the distinctiveness between the church and the world, the greater the church’s witness. When the church and the world are indistinguishable, the church tends to fail in its mission.

This is not a book review, as much as a notice of intended reviewing!

Voddie Baucham’s new book What He Must Be: if he wants to marry my daughter doesn’t seem to be available in Australia yet since it was only published 3 weeks ago.  With the poor state of the Australian dollar I’m reluctant to buy too many books online at the moment, so I’m keeping it to the bare necessities from Amazon, B & N, ChristianBook.com & Monergism Books!

Anyway, being that I’m a father of a daughter, the title of this book grabbed my attention instantly. (OK, so Heidi is only 3, but I like to be prepared!).  I’ve listened to a talk by Vodide Baucham about this topic (in fact, with this same title) and his assessment of what’s wrong with much of how relationships are established today is very sharp.  He doesn’t shy away from pointing out the dangers and pitfalls in common relationship patterns and behaviours, likening the exclusive intimate relationships between teenagers and young adults to going shopping without any money – “either you’re going to leave frustrated or take something that doesn’t belong to you!”  I’m pretty sure I’m going to like the book!

Hi there – I thought that again the more silent partner should speak…

I would like to recommend two books that have helped me in recent times.  

The first is Atheism Remix by Albert Mohler Jnr.  Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the US of A and is a theologian who likes to mix it with issues raised by the intersection and clash of Bible and culture.  In this little book [only a bit more than 100 pages, and small ones at that] Mohler goes head to head with the New Atheists – guys like Richard Dawkins [The God Delusion] and Christopher Hitchens.  He looks at the emergence of the New Atheists and why they are different [and more of a threat] to the older variety.  He looks at their arguments and two notable critiques of their ideas.  This is a very helpful little book as it lays out the debate in a simple, understandable manner.  Recommended for those rub shoulders with those who have read [or seen - "The Root of All Evil" showed as a documentary] Dawkin’s especially.

My copy of Ancient-Future Time was given to me by Lyndon Sulzberger, Rector of Christ Church, North Adelaide.  I think  Lyndon was politely trying to suggest my education in matters such as the ecclesiastical calendar is somewhat lacking!

Robert E. Webber (who died in 2007) was Emeritus Professor of Theology at Wheaton College and seems to have been motivated in his writing by the conviction that contemporary Evangelicalism is impoverished due to its insufficient rooting in early Christian traditions.  Indeed, it was this conviction that led him to take part in issuing “The Chicago Call” in 1977 stating that evangelicals had lost touch with church’s liturgical roots.  Here he seeks to take Christian spirituality back to its origins in Jewish spirituality which he feels will enrich the life of the modern Christian; “For the Jew to commemorate the past is not merely to recall it as a past event but to commemorate it in such a way that it gives the present new meaning.”  The book is therefore a call to what Webber calls “Christian-year” spirituality, where God’s saving action is presented to us time and time again through the practices of the Christian year celebrated by the church in its first centuries; in Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost.  The discussion of each of these historical events concludes with a prayer from one of the Church Fathers or the Book of Common Prayer.

If we are actually speaking truth … why isn’t anyone listening?

I’ve been reading Branding Faith by Phil Cooke.  To some in the church, the idea of branding is anathema,  but I suspect this is mostly due to misunderstanding the concept.  Branding is part of the reality within the church exists.  Cooke quotes a study which found that one in four babies, speaks a brand name as their first word!  This study, by British Market Research Bureau  is also quoted in a slightly alarming 2003 article in the SMH.

At the heart of the challenge laid out in the book is Cooke’s distillation of the definition of marketing: The art of surrounding a product, organisation or person with a powerful and compelling story.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is a powerful and compelling story, we don’t need to find it, or create it, just tell it!  The task seems to me to be local churches finding answers to the question, “how do we tell the powerful and compelling story of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our communities?”

It’s impossible to do justice to such a significant topic in a limited space, but we can think of God’s holiness as being both his unique ‘otherness’ in terms of power, authority and glory, and also his perfect purity. There is none like our God! Because of God’s holiness, the New Testament urges Christians also to be holy, (ie 1 Peter 1:15), that is to be ‘separate’ in the sense of distinctive, and pure.

In his letter to Titus, pastor of the church in Crete, The Apostle Paul identifies God’s desire for holiness among his people as the reason for Christ’s life, death and resurrection, “to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” Titus 2:14.