A Review
of

ST. PATRICK
(Christian Encounters Series)
Jonathan Rogers.
Paperback: Thomas Nelson, 2010.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Over the centuries, there have been a multitude of biographies of Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  And now as part of the first installment of their biography series “Christian Encounters,” Thomas Nelson has released a new biography of St. Patrick by Jonathan Rogers.  Although this is not the most extensive biography of Patrick’s life and work, Rogers does a good job of introducing Ireland’s saint.  Relying heavily on the two extant works that can most reliably be attributed to Patrick (The Confession and The Letter Sent to the Soldiers of Coroticus – both of which are included as appendices in this volume), Rogers focuses on sorting out the reality of the historical Patrick from the many Irish legends that have surrounded his life over the centuries.  The book’s first chapter does a fine job of describing the historical context in which Patrick’s life unfolded, i.e., the close of the Roman Empire. The final chapter of the book explores the theological significance of St. Patrick for the Church today as “A Witness to All Nations,” and the chapters between explore the unfolding of Patrick’s life in chronological order.  One of Roger’s recurring themes throughout the book is the parallels between the apostolic ministry of St. Paul and that of St. Patrick.  Most of Rogers’ work sticks pretty close to the realm of the factual, and one wishes at times he would have gone deeper in his historical and especially in his theological reflections.  However, this volume excels at what it is intended to be, an introductory biography, and Rogers writes with language that is clear and accessible for most readers.  If your knowledge of St. Patrick is limited to shamrocks, leprechauns and green beer, then I highly recommend that you take a few hours in this holiday season to enjoy Jonathan Rogers’ retelling of the story of St. Patrick’s life and works.

“Getting us Back to the Basics
in a Generative, Transformational Way”

A Review of

Missional Map-Making:
Skills For Leading In Times Of Transition.
Alan J. Roxburgh.
Hardback: Jossey-Bass, 2010.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Chris Enstad.

“The times they are a-changin’,”  goes the old song.  Societies experience periods of great displacement and uncertainty all the time.  It is easy to fall into the trap that the current economic distress being felt by nearly everyone in this country is a unique thing but that would not be the case.  When times like these do happen it is always good to have people like Alan Roxburgh on hand to put some kind of frame around it and then help lead the leaders into new territory.

Roxburgh’s new book, Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition, is just such a book.  Using the image of a map, Roxburgh sets the stage for building an apparatus for leadership in the church when it seems that things are happening much too fast and one’s sense of hope can easily be discouraged.

The maps that we were used to in this country are no longer valid and what is required are new map-makers.  Leaders are required who can lead in this “in-between” time to a new way of being the church.  Those who insist that the old maps will work again aren’t going to find a lot for them in this book but those who are thirsty for some traction will read it and share it among their own congregational leadership and other church leaders as well.

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Brief Reviews of

Thin Places: A Memoir.
Mary DeMuth.
Paperback: Zondervan, 2010.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

and

We Get to Carry Each Other:
The Gospel According to U2.
Greg Garrett.
Paperback: WJK Books, 2009.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

What is the purpose of pain? Why does God allow His beloved creatures to endure such intense suffering? How can our lives’ greatest tragedies produce anything of value? Reading Mary DeMuth’s captivating survivor memoir, answers to these questions emerge, bringing to life the truth of Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (NASB).

The premise of DeMuth’s memoirs is simple: to trace the fingerprints of God in the scars of her life, revealing for readers those “thin places” where she most tangibly experiences His presence. “The Celts define a thin place as a place where heaven and the physical world collide, one of those serendipitous territories where eternity and the mundane meet . . . snatches of holy ground, tucked into the corners of our world, where, if we pay very close attention, we might just catch a glimpse of eternity.”

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A Brief Review of

Hear No Evil:
My Story of Innocence, Music, and the Holy Ghost.
Matthew Paul Turner.
Paperback: WaterBrook, 2010.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler.

Hear No Evil chronicles former CCM editor Matthew Paul Turner’s life following the common thread of music. Raised in an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist family, Turner tells stories that are by turns laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, and scarier than a Jack Chick tract. Turner’s honest memoir does not offer easy answers or canned take-aways, but his winsome writing, sharp wit, and keen observations provide enough material to laugh and think about for days after the book is closed.

Hear No Evil is comprised of fifteen memoir-essays on faith and music. While they are all variations on the same theme and are in roughly chronological order, each essay serves as a snapshot rather than a continuation. There is little connection between one essay and another. (This is not a David Copperfield kind of memoir. Its closer kin is David Sedaris’s books.) Because of this, “the point” may be hard to find, and at times the essays close without resolution. This lack of closure may be a turn-off for some readers, but I found the open-endedness refreshing. Like Jesus’ parables, we are told what happened up to a point; the rest is left for the reader to decide how he or she will live.

I mentioned that “the point” may be hard to find—but I certainly am not referring to the sharpness of the writing. Turner uses humor to examine his life in music so far. He relates the crush he had on Sandi Patty (which he had to hide from the members of his church), the excitement at hearing George Michael’s “Faith” on the radio and wondering if it was a Christian song, the purchase/guilt cycle he experienced when he bought/threw away Amy Grant’s album Heart in Motion several times, and God’s calling on his life to be the Christian Michael Jackson.

Humor is double-edged, and the line between surgery and stabbing is sometimes hard to discern, but Turner does a surprisingly good job walking the fine line between destructive and constructive uses. Turner’s first essay of the book, “Overture,” is probably the most cynical and made me unsure of the contents of the rest of the book. (In the essay he describes what could be an almost typical occurrence at a Nashville coffee shop: He sees someone come in, ill at ease in his rock-star regalia, and immediately pegs him as a “Christian rocker.”) This essay caused unease at the beginning of the book, but by the end, I could understand much better where Turner was coming from.

Turner’s essays are laced with vivid nostalgia. There were several times while reading this book that I was taken back to my own childhood in the church, and while the names of the congregants are different, I could picture these people in my own life. And Turner treats them like people. They are not stark images or abstract ideas to make a point (“Jim is Greed, Sandy is Fame, Bill is Hypocrisy,” and so on); they are paradoxes wrapped in flesh, as all humans are. His sensitive treatment of his “subjects” is what makes Hear No Evil work. Instead of a rant (which a book like this could have easily become), it is a rehabilitation.

Turner clearly loves the church—spots, wrinkles, blemishes, and all—and while he laughs at its foibles, it’s the kind of laughter that comes from the inside, not the outside—laughing with, not laughing at. Hear No Evil may not resonate with everyone (it seems to be aimed at twenty/thirty-somethings), but I thoroughly enjoyed it for its honesty and wit and reveled through the therapy of all 225 pages.

A Brief Review of

When You Reach Me.
Rebecca Stead.
2010 Newbery Award Winner.
Hardback: Random House, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Jeni Newswanger Smith.

In Rebecca Stead’s 2010 Newbery Award winning novel, When You Reach Me, Miranda is a twelve year old navigating sixth grade alone after the confusing and sudden end to her longtime friendship with Sal.  Making new friends comes fairly easily, but Miranda’s new stability is thrown off when mysterious notes begin appearing (”I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own…The trip is a difficult one. I will not be myself when I reach you.”)  They frighten her, of course, but she finds herself unable to share them with her mother after the first, bewildering one.  Thus begins Miranda’s introduction into the confusing world of time-bending adventure.  An adventure she’s not excited to be part of, despite her love of Madeleine L’Engle’s Newbery Award-winning classic A Wrinkle in Time.

Miranda’s voice is smart, well-educated, clear, but she’s not very exciting.  I find her refreshing. The larger story, fantastical though it is, is surpassed by the  heart of the story, which is simple: a young girl making sense of a world that keeps growing bigger and more confusing.  In other words–she grows up. Miranda becomes aware of her mother as a real person with failed dreams, and her own responsibilities in regard to meeting the needs of those around her–including friends, enemies and the crazy man on her street corner.

Jumbling together time travel, the $20,000 Pyramid, and pre-teenhood, Stead could have easily fallen into writing the typical quirky-charactered young adult novel (a formula the Newbery Award committee likes to reward).  But despite unusual, frightening, and, yes, quirky circumstances, Stead’s characters are flawed, sometimes unusual, but completely believable–a trait fans of A Wrinkle in Time might recognize.

Stead makes numerous references to A Wrinkle in Time throughout her book and L’Engle fans have been understandably drawn to it, with mixed responses.  While When you Reach Me is a pleasant, easy read, and even a little thought provoking and mind-bending, it lacks the richness and insight that has kept A Wrinkle in Time on teachers’ must-read lists for nearly 50 years.

A Brief Review of

Embodying Our Faith:
Becoming a Living, Sharing, Practicing Church.
Tim Morey.
Paperback: IVP Books, 2010.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Laretta Benjamin.

“My prayer is that God will use my words, humbly and fearfully offered, to help us live more authentically as apprentices of Jesus, deeply loved by the Father, and sent by and with him into the world.  To God be the glory”.(17) .

I have a feeling that this prayer, which the author lifts up in the preface, will be answered as this book is read, discussed and digested among the people of God in the days to come.

I, for one, am very thankful for those in our day and time who  have a gift of discernment in looking critically at our culture and the church’s life within that culture.  Tim Morey appears be one of those voices, calling the church to be the church – to engage and challenge our culture with all the wisdom and power God has made available to us.  Even though this book grew out of a dissertation, it is not stuck in the highways and byways of academia.  It is written out of experience and observation, and it is easy to be caught up in the writer’s passion and longing to see the church become all she was called to be.

Critical thinking does not come naturally to many of us.  If you are included in that group, I would say that you will find Mr. Morey’s introduction very helpful in taking a hard look at our culture and assessing where it was and where it is now, and even more importantly, taking a hard and honest look at the life of God’s people, the church, as she thinks and acts within this culture.   After reading the author’s explanations and insights, words like modernism, post-modernism, pluralism, deconstruction and other such descriptions of our time and culture don’t seem so scary and beyond our realm of understanding.  They actually begin to make sense.  He reminds us that just as missionaries sent beyond our borders need to have an understanding of the culture they are entering into in order to be effective, we need to have an understanding of our culture in order to engage and challenge.  In what ways has the church allowed herself to be formed and shaped over the past years by the culture rather than Scripture?  For those of us who have been thinking about these issues over the past few years (and many within the Christian community have) there isn’t too much new here in the author’s opening pages; but for those among us who haven’t really taken the time to consider the importance of thinking about these things, this book is a good place to begin.   Whereas many look at our culture and feel hopeless, despairing, and unhappy at what seems to be the church’s new place in our post-modern times, the author looks around and sees opportunity.  “I believe this is a great moment for the church.  The church, now relegated to a marginalized role in society, has the opportunity to recover its vocation as God’s missionary people.”  ( 38)

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A Brief Review of

Baptism: Three Views.
David F. Wright, editor.
with contributions by Sinclair Ferguson,
Anthony Lane and Bruce Ware.
Paperback: IVP Academic, 2009.
Buy Now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Nick Gill.

A Brief Review of

That Distant Land.
Wendell Berry.
Read by Michael Kramer.
AudioBook: ChristianAudio, 2010.
Buy now: [ ChristianAudio ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Wendell Berry’s stories have always had the feel of being told by a storyteller in the ancient oral tradition of storytelling.  Berry has crafted, in Port William, Kentucky, a believable world in which characters share life and death together.  And now, in ChristianAudio’s new audiobook release of Berry’s That Distant Land, narrator Michael Kramer tells Berry’s stories with a fabulous Kentucky drawl that makes one feel as if he is a visitor hearing the local storyteller recounting events in his own town.  That Distant Land is a complex work, a compilation of three of Berry’s earlier volumes of Port William short stories (The Wild Birds, Fidelity and Watch With Me), the stories of which are rearranged into the chronological order of Port William and interspersed with four additional stories that had not previously appeared in Berry’s short story collections.  The tales here, although written as discrete short stories, when taken together in the order of That Distant Land, have the effect of a novel that sweepingly covers over a century of Port William’s history.  For readers who want to enter into the world of Berry’s Port William, That Distant Land is a wonderful place to begin as it provides a context in which the other Port William novels can be understood, and for those who are not in a hurry and want immerse themselves in the rich experience of oral storytelling, ChristianAudio’s recording of That Distant Land is ideal.  Although the characters are imaginations of Berry’s sympathetic mind (see the above review of Imagination in Place), this is a compelling portrait of his agrarian Kentucky, a real place that has given form and meaning to Berry’s own life.  One can hear a hint of autobiography, as Andy Catlett recalls in the story that lends its title to the book:

I had lived away, working in the city, for several years, and had returned home only that spring.  I was thirty years old, I had a wife and children, and my return had given a sudden sharp clarity to my understanding of my home country.  Every fold of the land, every blade of grass and leaf of it gave me joy, for I saw how my own place in it had been prepared, along with its failures and its losses.  Though I knew that I had returned to difficulties… I was joyful.

This joy of finding fulfillment in a place is an important message for churches as we seek to be faithful to the redemptive mission of God in an age marked by transience.  There is much that we can learn from Berry’s imagination, deeply rooted in place, and its outworking in the world of Port William, Kentucky.  That Distant Land, and particularly Michael Kramer’s audio rendering of it, serves as a wonderful introduction to this poignant imagination.

A Brief Review of

Clutching Dust and Stars: A Novel.
Laryn Kragt Bakker.
Paperback: CINO Press, 2009.
Buy now:  [ CINO ]

Reviewed by Jeni Newswanger Smith.

In the vein of the recent movie (500) Days of Summer, Laryn Kragt Bakker’s Clutching Dust and Stars deals with the baggage, connection to and memories of the proverbial “one that got away.”  Since their relationship misfired 2 years ago, Natalie and Rob have become a little stuck.  Poised on the precipice of “real” adulthood, Natalie sees people growing up and changing around her, but wishes for things to stay the same.  Rob is unsatisfied with his life, drawn toward anarchism and more than a little suspicious of Natalie’s renewed faith.

Perhaps subconsciously, the two are drawn together, needing to go back and resolve before they can go forward–either together or apart.  Despite (or perhaps because of) characters who are overly self-aware and rarely sympathetic, Bakker’s debut novel provides a realistic glimpse into the lives two very different idealists.

A Brief Review of

Ostriches, Dung Beetles, and Other Spiritual Masters:
A Book of Wisdom from the Wild.
Janice McLaughlin.
Paperback: Orbis Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Marilyn Matevia.

Maryknoll Sister Janice McLaughlin has written a delightful devotional, the modern equivalent of a medieval bestiary – but without the zoological flights of fancy.  Drawing on knowledge gained in years of missionary and humanitarian work in Africa, and friendships with park rangers and guides, Sister McLaughlin profiles 26 representatives of the continent’s indigenous animals and plants.   She highlights the unique adaptations, characteristics and virtues of each, and then – through rich, thoughtful, and personal vignettes – shows how these same virtues enhance human lives and communities.  Each chapter concludes with a few short readings from Scripture, and suggestions for further reflection and action.  Illustrations by Charles Chazike or Justin Gope accompany each profile.

The book is charming, and yet not at all “fluffy.”  Her vignettes are often poignant and sensitive.  While the connections to the animal profiles and virtues could be strained and simplistic, in Sister McLaughlin’s hands, they are perceptive and thoughtful.  Reminiscent of the poet’s tactic in Job 38-41, Sister McLaughlin celebrates some of God’s less alluring but no less remarkable creatures – the Dung Beetle illustrates perseverance, the Hammerkop (a 1-pound bird that constructs 100-pound nests!) exemplifies ambition, the Porcupine illustrates justice, and Warthog resourcefulness – along with the more charismatic representatives, such as the Cheetah (solitude), Elephant (communication and community), Hippopotamus (humility and self-acceptance), Lion (playfulness and leisure), and Rhinoceros (stability).  Her suggestions for reflection are, at times, probing, and the suggested actions can be challenging.  These make the book useful both for personal meditation and for small group (adult or young adult) discussion.