Saturday, April 14, 2018

Book Review of Faithful by Adam Hamilton


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Faithful: Christmas through the Eyes of Joseph
by Adam Hamilton
ISBN 978-1-5018-1408-2
Abingdon Press
Reviewed by Clint Walker

Abingdon Press puts out a handful of Advent studies every year for their Methodist constituency and other folks who want to have a special study during the Advent season. Each year, Adam Hamilton is contracted to do one of these studies. In 2018, the study that they came up with has to do with looking at the events of Advent through the eyes of Joseph.

Much of this study has what you would expect from such a study: reflections on raising a child that is not biologically yours, the leadership Joseph provided as a husband and a father and more. But Hamilton does a good job at throwing some other things in such as the importance of fathers in faith development, and the correlation between absent fathers and the rise of the "nones", among other things.

Book Review of Short-Term Mission by Brian M. Howell




Short-Term Mission: An Ethnography of Christian Travel Narrative and Experience
by Brian M. Howell
ISBN 978-0-8308-3973
IVP Academic
Reviewed by Clint Walker

Short-term missions is a fairly recent phenomenon in the history of the church. A number of factors play into the development of this phenomenon, most notably, the proliferation and relative affordability of persons in more affluent countries to travel to more and more distant and culturally diverse places. At the beginning of the modern missions movement, people left to the mission field, and they were lucky to return to their sending churches once or twice in a lifetime. Today, people can fly across the world in less than 24 hours.

Brian Howell is an anthropologist by trade, and has put his knowledge to work studying short-term mission trips, their effects, and the narratives that they create among those that participate. He concludes that short-term missions are "not exactly tourism, pilgrimage, or mission, but a hybrid of all three" (p.229). Through his study, he uncovers narratives that emerge from these short term mission trips. While a few narratives that come out of these experiences are healthy, there are many others that are not.

The book exposes the narratives that are often created by short-term missions, and seeks to find ways to modify or tweak the short-term mission, training, and debriefing so that people can have an experience that is meaningful, and brings HEALTHY transformation for participants and is also a positive experience for those served.

When this book was released several years ago, it created quite a splash in Christian evangelical circles. Half a decade later, this text needs to be considered and reconsidered by churches and missions organizations, and integrated not only into how we do short term missions, but how we engage our local communities.



Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Book Review of Political Church: The Local Assembly as Embassy of Christ's Rule


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Political Church: The Local Assembly as Embassy of Christ's Rule
by Jonathan Leeman
IVP Academic
978-0-8308-4880-5
Reviewed by Clint Walker

As soon as I received Political Church, I knew two things. First, with endorsements as diverse as Hauerwas and Albert Moeller, I knew that this was a book full of powerful ideas worthy of thinking deeply about.
Second, after beginning to read through this book, I realized that it was rightly classified in the academic line of IVP. This book is dense, thought-provoking, and intellectually weighty.

Many people want to separate the church from the public sphere of life, or to define it "organically", and in doing so, they seek redefine the church as apolitical. Jonathan Leeman confronts this view of the church. As much as the church tries to get away from being an "institution", it is by nature institutional. And, because it has a role in the public life of society and communities, it is by definition political.

Leeman puts it this way: The church is to "represent the king's name before the nations and their governors as an ambassador" (p. 24) of Christ and his kingdom. This may call the church to be separate from the political concerns of the day in that it is not beholden to a national political party. However, because we are an outpost of the kingdom of God, our actions, positions, and beliefs should have a political impact in whatever nation or culture we are a part of.

There is much more to read, be debated, and discuss with Leeman's wonderfully well-considered work. Today, it is sufficed to say that I am challenged as a person that waivers between Anabaptist and Reformed sentiments and convictions.

Book Review of Little Prayers for Ordinary Days by Katy Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oaks, and Tish Harrison Warren and illustrated by Liita Forsyth

Little Prayers for Ordinary Days by Katie Bowser Hutson, Flo Paris Oakes, and Tish Harrison Warren IVP Kids ISBN 978-1-5140-0039-8 Reviewed ...