Book Review: Workship

Kara Martin
Workship: How to Use Your Work to Worship God
Graceworks: Singapore, 2017

According to one estimation, if you live the average Australian life, you’re likely to spend 94,000 hours in your workplace. That’s almost 4000 days, or close to 11 years of uninterrupted time spent in one place. Time spent relating to many different people. Time spent to support ourselves and others. A whole lot of time.

It’s little wonder then that we’re witnessing a renaissance of Christian books, conferences, and courses on work. What are we to make of all that time spent at work? And perhaps more importantly, what does God make of it all?

It’s into this space that Kara Martin offers Workship: How To Use Your Work To Worship God. Although work can be hard, tedious, and broken, Martin offers a simple affirmation that God is interested in your everyday work. It’s that affirmation which explains the portmanteau title, Workship:

The Hebrew root for work (avad) is also the root for service, particularly serving God in worship. I believe the two activities are meant to be integrated. Our work should be done in a way that honours God, which serves God and others, that worships God. By combining the two English words: work and worship, I hope to challenge people to integrate their faith and work.

Workship goes about this in three sections. Firstly, in less than 50 pages, it paints a picture of work in the full sweep of redemptive history. Secondly, Martin provides six spiritual disciplines for the integration of faith and work in the workplace; disciplines like prayer, evangelism, and social justice. And thirdly, Workship draws on a wealth of experience to offer practical insights on how to navigate work, such as how to manage relationships, and how to think about yourself and your identity at work.

To be honest, I’m not sure that Workship is written for someone like me, someone prone to biblical and theological pedantry. There are a few times were Martin assumes a position rather than arguing for it, such as the extent of continuity of our work between this creation and the next (she’s quite positive if you’re wondering). So I found myself at points reading Martin’s prose with a wry smile imagining the conversations Workship might spark among st the theological guild.

But that’s because Workship is written for those in the trenches. Whilst Martin does offer advice to churches on how they equip their saints to live out their faith at work, this is a book written for those engaged in paid work, voluntary work, housework, schoolwork, caring for children or parents, or study. Devoid of technical theological jargon, Martin is warm and compassionate in dealing with real workers and real people. Martin often draws upon her own, hard-earned experience and wisdom of the realities of work. In doing so, she is concise and crisp, judiciously drawing upon the other recent Christian reflections on work (though this runs close at times to feeling like a highlight package of the work of others on faith and work).

One particular highlight of Workship is the way Martin strives to include prayer in the book. Each chapter concludes with a prayer written to surmise the chapter. But more than that, Martin offers significant insights on how to integrate spiritual disciplines with your work place. And this points us to another strength of the book. Whereas some books on work would rest content with more or less just giving a biblical account of work, Workship points the way forward into how to work today by providing the habits and disciplines that will shape the Christian worker such as prayer, justice, and evangelism.

If you’re someone who wants to live out Colossians 3.17 in your work (‘whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him’), if you want to grow in your worship of God in and through the successes and drudgery of work, Martin’s Workship may well be the book you need.

A Clear and Present Faith

The old man looked the missionary in the eye: “You keep telling us about how sinful we are and how we need to change, but no one ever says this to the white people who steal our land, our wives and our daughters. No one says this to the men who are killing us..."

I’ve been on holidays for the past fortnight, which has given me the opportunity to read One Blood: John Harris’ seminal work on the history between Indigenous Australians and Christianity. Even twenty years after publication, this is still a magnificent book. I’m not finished yet, but already there has already been a lot to give thanks for, as well as a lot of stories that have made me want to weep and pray for Jesus’ return.

Here is Harris’ assessment of the first 100 years of Christian witness in Australia:

1. The missionaries often confused conversion to European civilisation with conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They attempted to conform Indigenous Australians to a life of European-style peasant farming and other symbols of European civilisation. This made them slow to recognise signs of genuine regeneration and maturity.
2. The rhetoric of the Europeans and the Colonial Government made it difficult to distinguish Christianity from the culture around it. It was hard for Indigenous Australians to discern the Christianity preached by the missionaries in the lives of the Europeans who brought death, disease, dispossession, prostitution and alcoholism to their land.
3. The church forgot to preach the whole gospel. They were very strong on preaching sin and judgment to a people seen by the wider colonial society to be savage and barbaric. But it was rarely accompanied by the hope the gospel of Jesus Christ brings. After the shock being disposed from the land and seeing their culture break down under the European invasion, this message of hope and justice may have been what they needed to hear. It was actually when missionaries in Victoria started to preach the whole gospel that they saw fruit from their labour.
4. These were accompanied with a lack of interest for Christian work amongst Indigenous Australians that swept through the wider church in Australia and Europe.
   

The church also played a positive role during this time. Harris points out that it was almost exclusively only the Christians in colonial society who saw Indigenous Australians as humans. Harris recounts some moving testimonies from some Aboriginals in eastern Victoria who said that without the church missions, their people wouldn’t exist today. But overall this all contributes to tragedy of Australia since 1788.

Reading One Blood has reminded me of the need for the church to stand out from its culture and be distinguished and shaped by the gospel of Jesus. Harris writes:

“It is one of the tragedies of the recent history of Australia that true Christianity was for so long so very difficult to discern in the life of this outpost of a distant nation which called itself Christian.”

This reminded me of a quote from Tim Foster that I’ve used before on hebel. I heard it again a few days before I started reading One Blood. Reflecting on the challenge of the Sermon on the Mount for the church, Foster argues:

"The expression of these values (the Sermon on the Mount) by the church is essential to its successful engagement in mission. Just as Torah-obedience was essential for the success of Israel’s mission to the nations, ‘the church’s oddness is essential to its faithfulness.’ The logic of the Sermon on the Mount is that the disciples serve the world by demonstrating that a new society is breaking-in which offers an alternative communal existence shaped by the character and purposes of God.

Because the world is so deeply immerse in the prevailing order "the only way for the world to know it is being redeemed is for the church to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people." The anticipated outcome is that others will ‘See your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven’ (Matt.5.16). Just as apostasy destroyed Israel’s capacity to mission, accommodation to the values of them world poses the greatest of dangers to the church, diluting its capacity to bear witness to radical nature of the new order." - Tim Foster, A Vision for the Mission and the Message of the Australian Church After Christendom.

The challenge, now as always, is for the church to be the church. I hope to post again soon with some stories from One Blood.

History is Precedent and Permission

"...[L]acking curiosity and the habit of study and any general grasp of history, we have entered a period of nostalgia and reaction. We want the past back, though we have no idea what it was. Things do not go so well for us as they once did. We feel we have lost our way. Most of us know that religion was once very important to our national life, and believe, whether we ourselves are religious or not, that we were much the better for its influence. Many of us know that Calvinism was a very important tradition among us. Yet all we know about John Calvin was that he was an eighteenth-century Scotsman, a prude and obscurantist with a buckle on his hat, possibly a burner of witches, certainly the very spirit of capitalism. Our ignorant parody of history affirms our ignorant parody of religious or 'traditional' values. This matters, because history is precedent and permission, and in this important instance, as in many others, we have lost plain accuracy, not to speak of complexity, substance, and human inflection. We want to return to the past, and we have made our past a demonology and not a human narrative." - Marilynne Robinson, Marguerite de Navarre, The Death of Adam, p. 206.

Why Karl Barth?

So my box set of Church Dogmatics arrived this week - appropriately on my birthday.

There is a lot to admire about Karl Barth and his massive, unfinished project. I recently had the joyful experience of explaining who Barth was to someone in Manning Bar who had never heard of him. He was a theologian who called his readers to focus on Jesus. His opposition to liberalism, Nazism, and Cold War's partianship was because of what Barth knew God had done in and through Jesus Christ. When asked by a reporter how he would summarise his work after all his years of study, Barth replied "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Maybe I should have shown them this video:

The impact of Barth's scholarship during and after his life time has been far reaching. Yet far more influential than the volumes of his writing was his commitment to the gospel. After Barth died in 1968, the translators of Church Dogmatics into English - TF Torrance and GW Bromiley - made reference to this in their preface to CD IV.4:

"When the proofs of this book were still in our hands, new came in that Karl Barth was dead. God took him to his rest in the early hours of December 10, 1968, the great Church Father of Evangelical Christendom, the one genuine Doctor of the universal Church the modern era has known. It is in the Church Dogmatics above all that we must look for the grandeur of this humble servant of Jesus Christ, for the work he was given to accomplish in it will endure to bless the word for many centuries to come. Only Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin have performed comparable service in the past, in the search for a unified and comprehensive basis for all theology in the grace of God.

The Church Dogmatics represents an immense struggle for the understanding of the eternal Word of God and its rational articulation in the modern world in which the thought-forms of man are obediently and pliantly yielded to the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ according to the Holy Scriptures."

If this has whet your appetite, you might like to check out the highlight package of Church Dogmatics at Faith and Theology: Church Dogmatics in a Week. And remember to love God and keep your pipe lit.

Book Review: Worldviews

CMS-NSW recently released the second edition of their e-journal, Landscape. This edition includes some fascinating articles, including this video that I've mentioned earlier. There's also a review that I've written of Paul Hiebert's Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. You'll find it here.

Christian Academia: Books

Working alongside the eu postgrads this year, I've read a couple of books to help me understand the challenges and opportunities of Christian academia. What I've found is that they has been several books published in the last 20 years about the place of Christian academics. But for the most past they seem to be largely isolated from each other. Furthermore, most of the books are American and are written for the American context (i.e. having secular and faith-based universities). Here are some of the books I've found helpful:

• The Two Tasks of The Christian Scholar, ed. William Lane Craig & Paul M. Gould, 2007. Published as a festschrift to Charles Malik, The Two Tasks has some interesting papers by Lane Craig and others. But the cash value in this book is Malik's The Two Tasks, an address he gave in 1980. It was this address which reignited a vision for university in the American evangelical scene.

• Finding God at Harvard, ed. Kelly Monroe Kullberg, 2007. A celebration of the ministry of the Veritas Forum at Harvard, FG@H is a collection of short essays and testimonies from Christians in the Harvard community. Contributors include Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Charles Malik and others. A great insight into one of the most interesting ministries to post grads and staff in the US.

• The State of the University, Stanley Hauerwas, 2006. A collection of Hauerwas' thoughts on the university and Christianity. Although the essay's become repetitive in the middle, Hauerwas has some gold in this book, and I appreciate the way he pushes back against the usual American angst about the university. There are also some beautiful chapters about tradition and institutions, and Rowan Williams.

• Shining Like Stars, Lindsay Brown, 2006. Although not specifically about Christian academics, Brown has some inspiring stories about the Christians working in the university.

• Until Justice & Peace Embrace, Nicholas Wolterstorff, 1983. This book is also not specifically about academia. However Wolterstorff has some insightful things to say to Christian post grads and scholars, and I know some people who have found him helpful.

• Christian Academia? Matheson Russell, 2010. Originally a talk given at the Post Grad day at AnCon this year, it was later republished in VERITAS. This article lays out what the university is and how it fits into the Christian worldview.

• 10 Things We Wish Someone Had Told Us When We Started Graduate School, Anna Blanch, Goanna Tree, updated 2010. Helpful advice from a Christian academic.

There is also several American and British websites with some resources on them. And Kelly Monroe Kullberg has another book, Finding God Beyond Harvard, which I'd like to read at some point. Oh, there are also some theologians like O'Donovan and McGrath who have things to say about academia in several places.

Know of any other books which have something to say about the university? I'd love to know. And at some point I should share some ideas I've had about university and the doctrine of creation...

Philosophy Readings?

My friend Tim Smartt is running a seminar at AnCon on Christianity and Philosophy.

He's looking for recommendations on what to read for the seminar.

I think you should head over to his impressive blog - insane angels - and make a recommendation.

NT Historicity Readings

Here are the books I'm recommending in my AnCon seminar (Ancon, if you're interested, currently has over 630 registrations). Are there books any that you would add, or subtract?

Short and easy to give away
Andrew Errington, Can We Trust What the Gospels say about Jesus? Matthias Media, Sydney, 2009. Andrew has a MA in early Christian and Jewish Studies and is a former EU president.

Murray Smith, Jesus: All About Life, The Bible Society, Sydney, 2009. Murray is currently completing a PhD on Jesus and Early Christianity. He’s also a former EU president. Reviewed here and here.


If you want to know more
Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament History?, revised edition, Aquila Press, Sydney, 2003.

John Dickson, The Christ Files: How historians know what they know about Jesus, Blue Bottle Books, Sydney, 2006.

John Dickson, Jesus: A Short Life, Lion Books, Oxford, 2008.

John Dickson, A Spectator’s Guide to Jesus, Blue Bottle Books, Sydney, 2005.

John Dickson, Life of Jesus course guidebook, Centre for Public Christianity, Sydney, 2009.

Audio
John Dickson, Jesus: Reconsider? SUEU re:Jesus festival 2008, www.sueu.org.au/resources/eu_media/, accessed 17 June 2010.

Chris Forbers, Does the Historical Jesus Have a Leg to Stand On? SUEU Think Weeks 2006, www.sueu.org.au/resources/eu_media/, accessed 17 June 2010.

More serious books
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Erdmans, Grand Rapids, 2008.

Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, second edition, IVP, Leicester, 2008.

The Crusades: God's Battalions

Long term readers of hebel might remember that one of my earliest post's was on the real history of the Crusades. American sociologist Rodney Stark has just released a new book on the crusades that I read over the October long weekend.

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades is Stark's attempt to redress the imbalance in Crusader history. Stark not only reviews the several major Crusades from 1095 to 1291, he also explores the history of the Muslim occupation of formerly Christian lands in the Middle East since the seventh century. The status quo in Crusader historiography is to explain the Crusades as the beginning of European colonialism. Barbarian Christians from the 'dark ages' victimized the cultivated and tolerant Muslims of the Middle East in the European quest for land (especially all those un-landed second sons), treasure and converts.

In contrast, Stark argues that the Crusades arouse out of a deep devotion from the Christians in response to centuries of Muslim aggression towards Christian nations and pilgrims. His central thesis is:

"The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot or converts. The Crusaders sincerely believed that they served in God's battalions."

Stark also wants to argue that the 'Dark Ages' were much more technologically and culturally advanced than we often recognize. He also contends with the idea that ancient wisdom and philosophy was passed down to the West from Islam. It is both convincing and balanced. Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity (reviewed by me here) writes:

"Through his many books, Rodney Stark has made us rethink so much of what we had assumed about the history of Christianity and its relations with other faiths, and now God's Battalions launches a frontal assault on the comfortable myths that scholars have popularized about the Crusades. The results are startling. His greatest achievement is to make us see the Crusaders on their own terms."

With so much Islamic and atheist propaganda directed towards the Crusades, where Christians are portrayed as brutal colonizers, this 248 page book is worth picking up and engaging with our history.

Disciples and Citizens

A Guest Post by Alison Moffitt

I just read a fantastic book. It's called Disciples and Citizens (by Graham Cray) and it presented a vision for Christian living that incorporates both genuine Christian worship and radical community involvement.

I once did a geography subject called "Cities and Citizenship" and I think it was one of the best subjects I have ever taken. Our lecturer Kurt took us through a range of issues linked with citizenship in urban areas - social capital, social norms, everyday life - and applied them to different communities - the homeless, children, queer people. It was everything I wanted in a course, and ever since, it has got me thinking about how I should respond to all these issues as a Christian. Disciples and Citizens summed it all up in 190 pages - a fantastic fusion of Kurt's geography courses, second year sociology, every teaching I've ever received from 1 Corinthians and Philippians and a beautiful argument for the Christian hope as a bodily resurrection rather than an escape to an immaterial 'heaven'.

I wanted to share the following quote that was quoted in the book. It's long but so so good. It's a translated segment of a second century Christian manuscript, the Epistle to Diogenetus.

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, no the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity... But inhabiting the Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives... To sum up all in one word - what the soul is to the body, that are Christians in the world.

My challenge after reading this is to live a life that is true to this description, and to pray that the whole church will live like this. We need to be the salt of the earth, a city on a hill, and we need to be a vibrant and change-affecting part of the community. Don't hide the light of the gospel under bushels in church buildings!!

In the late 18th Century, a group of Christians from Clapham in England got serious about praying and bible reading and giving to the church. But it wasn't just an inward looking thing to build up their personal spirituality or build up the church. They also were super actively involved in the life of the London community, in sharing with the poor and getting super politically active. How politically active? The Christians from Clapham:

• Encouraged education and supported the Sunday School movement for people with poor schooling
• Supported the Factory Act to get children out of inhumane working conditions in factories
• Founded the RSPCA
• Fought against blood sports, gambling and dueling
• Helped to establish the Church Missionary Society (Matt works for them now!)
• Encouraged better administration in India and Sierra Leone
• Led the movement to abolish the slave trade in India

So, Christians out there, ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you ever written a letter to a politician about an issue you are concerned about? Why not?
• Do you think that we don't need to look after the planet because is gets destroyed when Jesus comes back? Wake up! Jesus' resurrection has affirmed the goodness of creation, so we'd better look after the good things God made.
• Do you get overwhelmed by the needs of the socially excluded? We have a fantastic role model in Jesus, his own Spirit empowering us to work here and now, and the promise of a future where justice is completely restored.

Read this book! I will lend it to you, even if you live in Western Australia! Even if you live in the USA.

The Colony: A History Of Early Sydney

With recently renewed discussion about the history and occupation of Australia Grace Karskens' newly released "The Colony: A History Of Early Sydney" is a fresh and timely account of the origins of Sydney. Grace Karskens brings a personal touch to the book that I also found to be helpful.

Karskens, who worked as the Project Historian for the Cumberland Gloucester Street Archaeological Project, has produced a multidisciplinary book. This is one of the strengths of The Colony - besides using traditional historical and political accounts, Karskens addresses social history (including the history of women and convicts), environmental concerns, Aboriginal history and archaeology. It also sets Sydney Town in its context of being the center of surrounding settlements spread out across the Cumberland Plains. Drawing on Inga Clendinnen's earlier research, Karskens account of the indigenous experience of the British invasion and continued settlement is especially worth reading. Karskens herself is well aware that what she offers isn't the Aboriginal history of 1788, but it does go along way towards that.

The Colony also some way towards busting several myths that have arisen about the foundation of Sydney. The narrative presented by Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore is well and truly in her sights. Karskens also spends sometime dealing with the 'foundational orgy' story and also the continued presence of Eora people in Sydney for several decades after 1788. Of particular note is Karskens reconstruction of the Minto massacre in 1816 of Aboriginal, elderly men, women and children.

My main gripe with it is the absence of religion in The Colony. Neither the religious beliefs of the Eora or the British were adequately dealt with. This doesn't mean that it isn't mentioned. On one occasion Karskens point to the Evangelical motives some officers had in educating Aboriginal children. But that's about it. Religion floats across the pages, but for a multidisciplinary work religion remains ungrounded. The Church of England clergy are presented only as farmers and country squires. As Meredith Lake has pointed out elsewhere, "there are...important questions about how post-christian Australians try to make sense (or not) of our Christian past."

Overall, I found the The Colony to be an insightful and read. It left me wanting to know more about Sydney's past, and was for me an extremely useful introduction to the Eora's experience of the invasion. If you only read one historical book each year, you should strongly consider this one.

Six Principles on Reading

Here are some principles for Christians on reading:

1. Read the Bible. And pray that the Word of God would dwell richly amongst us as we "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" the scriptures.
2. Read theology. I despair sometimes at people who simply refuse to read theology. Whilst no substitute for scriptural reading, good books provide a grounding in Christian knowledge and living. And reading these books introduces to a language that you would otherwise be excluded from.
   
3. Read widely. Their is a treasure trove of wealth out there...sitting here in my lounge room I'm surrounded by some pure gold on my bookshelves. But it can be very easy to fall into a pattern of reading books only from a select few publishers or authors. I know, I've done it myself (and if I was still doing it I would never of read some of these books). It is important to read books that come from a variety of traditions and ideas. Because we don't read books so that we can tick them off as confirming to our theology. No way. We read books to grow in our love and knowledge and service of Jesus, his people and his world. Which means that we even read book by authors that we strongly disagree with, taking the ideas that are good and right whilst rejecting what's wrong.
4. Related to this, we need to make sure we read books written by dead people. Right now is an exciting time to be alive as a Christian, with such a globally vivid Christian publishing world. But there are many good books written decades, centuries and millennia ago. To not read the writing of Ryle, Wesley, Calvin, Anselm, Augustine, Athanasis, Ireneaus etc. not only drowns out the voice of the church down the centuries, it silences our brothers and sisters through time. And ultimately you're robbing yourself of the wisdom they have to offer. The advice C.S. Lewis gave was to read one contemporary book, followed by an older book written by some now dead.
5. Don't stop reading fiction. Being culturally engaged means reading great novels, because it is through fiction that society spreads an ideas and thinks through concepts. According to Kim Fabricius over at Ben Myer's blog, a great novel is a "resource for moral and spiritual formation...with its enchantment of the everyday, whether tragic or comic; its discernment of the sacred in the secular; its disinterested rather than pragmatic take on human existence; its purposive narrative structure and focus on character, virtuous and vicious. You might say that if literature without theology is empty, theology without literature is blind."
   
6. Remember, keep feeding your heart and imagination as well as your head. These are not distinct, but neither are they identical. (h/t Byron)

Is there anything I've missed? What would you add? I don't think that this is a principal, but something that I've found really helpful over the years is to read in community (i.e. book clubs, reading groups). They've been really insightful and formative for me.

Good Books: The Answers

OK, here are my answers to the Good Books Meme. In case you've forgotten, here are the rules:

i. List a helpful book you've read in this category;

ii. Describe why you found it helpful; and

iii. Tag five more friends and spread the meme love.

Here goes:

1. Theology
I was introduced to theology when I was 15 years old by reading a compendium by Alistar McGrath. And I've loved theology ever since. The book I'm placing here is Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline. These were the first theological lectures given in Germany after WWII, with the text based off notes a student took as Barth was pretty much speaking off the top of his head. Despite the brevity of DIO, it has an urgency and compassion that has a powerful impact. It also taught me the phrase toho mobohu.

2. Biblical Theology
I won't hold back here - Climax of the Covenant by N.T. Wright is awesome. Focused on some key Pauline passages, Wright really bring to life God's plan to redeem his creation from evil through Israel and Jesus. I already had a framework for this through Goldsworthy and Dumbrell, but Wright's explanation of the narrative of scripture is par excellence.

3. God
Many Christians have profited over the past 50+ years from reading T.C. Hammond's In Understanding Be Men. But I found Colin Gunton's Act and Being to be really helpful in thinking through who God is and what language we should use to describe him. It particularly awoke me to all the Greek philosophical ideas that had creeped into Christianity.

4. Jesus
I loved Bauckham's God Crucified, and I'm tremendously excited about reading Jesus and the God of Israel. But, I'll have to go with N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God. This is a book that every evangelical Christian should read. This book fits together the picture the gospels present of Jesus and help us understand him and what he was all about. I'm not sure that any other book besides holy scripture has so thoroughly changed me and shaped me. If you haven't read it already, read this book.

5. Old Testament
Besides a whole heap of commentaries, I found Dumbrell's Faith of Israel helpful reading in understanding the whole Old Testament. Like Chris, Barry Webb's Five Festal Garments was another handy little book for me. As was David Peterson's Christ and his people in the book of Isaiah.

6. New Testament
I guess I can't use N.T. Wright again, so I'll go with Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I haven't finished it yet, but Bauckham has a depth of of knowledge and wisdom, and this comes to the fore in this wonderful book. And guess what - the gospels are actually based of eyewitness accounts, not just the ramblings from this different apostolic communities.

7. Ethics
Surprise, surprise...I'm going with Oliver O'Donovan's Resurrection and Moral Order. Tremendously helpful book in understanding that the starting point for evangelical ethics is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But I'm going with this book because I found it incredibly hard. OOD is dense, and especially in Resurrection and Moral Order. But this book is filled with treasurer for those who have the patience to sift through and find it. The moral of this story is, keep reading hard books, even if you only take in half of it (or less).

8. (Church) History
I've read a bit of church history, and really appreciate the writing from people like MacCulloch, Noll, Bebbington, Norris, but I'm going to pick Rowan Williams short book Why Study the Past. Williams argument is that Christians have more reason than anyone else to do history well, because often it's a. our own history we are dealing with, and b. we're often engaging with our brothers and sisters in Christ down through the centuries. He also offers some helpful analysis of key historical moments, like the the reformation and the early church. An honourable mention goes to Philip Jenkins 'The Lost History of Christianity'.

9. Biography
I wish I read more biographies than I do. J.C. Ryle has some great little biographies on the leaders in the great awakening in England. But a biography I love and cherish is Diarmaid MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer: A Life. This is probably the definitive history on England's reformer, and offers great insight not just into this tumultuous period of history, but also into this great man of faith.

10. Evangelism
One of the best books going here is John Dickson's Promoting the Gospel. But I'm going to pick John Chapman's Know and Tell the Gospel because it really is a quite simple book to read, and for the sake of sentimentality (this was the first Christian book I owned). Chapman has been greatly gifted as an evangelist, and has some wonderful insights. The only thing is that it might be quite dated now (the book is over 20 years old and Chapman himself was born in 1930) so for something more relevant to today read Dickson's book.

11. Prayer
This might sound weird, but as a kid in church, I found An Australian Prayer Book and the whole tradition behind (i.e. the BCP) really helpful for my prayers. (Reading the preface to both of these books helped too). It's Trinitarian and Chistological depth shouldn't be underestimated. Although being full of set, formal, liturgical prayers, I know how to pray to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit because of it. It modeled prayer for me, and gave me a vocabulary to use in prayer.

Whoa, what an exercise. That took longer than I expected. I've already tagged my five, and well done to Byron, Chris, Steve, Duncan and Michael who've completed the meme (also Sam, Joe and Paul). Looking at this list makes we want to read more books by dead people. I might go do that.

Good Books: A Meme

In an effort to help further the Christian blogging community, I'm starting a meme. I'm going to give you a list of theological book categories. Here are the AMENDED rules: 

i. List a helpful book you've read in this category; 

ii. Describe why you found it helpful; and 

iii. Tag five more friends and spread the meme love.

Here are the categories (in no paricular order):

1. Theology
2. Biblical Theology
3. God
4. Jesus
5. Old Testament
6. New Testament
7. Morals
8. (Church) History
9. Biography
10. Evangelism
11. Prayer

I'm going to go and think about my answers, but in the mean time I'll tag Steve, Duncan, Chris, Byron, Michael and you.

Why Churches Die

A little while ago I 'reviewed' The Lost History of Christianity by Philip Jenkins. Jenkins has been interviewed on Christianity Today about the other of church growth - and why some churches die.

It's well worth a read, and you can find it here.

Here's an excerpt:

CT: Why does persecution sometimes strengthen a church and other times wipe it out?

PJ: The difference is how far the church establishes itself among the mass of people and doesn't just become the church of a particular segment, a class or ethnic group. In North Africa, it's basically the church of Romans and Latin-speakers, as opposed to the church of peasants, with whom the Romans don't have much connection. When the Romans go, Christianity goes with them.

But Christianity establishes itself very early as a religion of the ordinary, everyday people in Egypt as things get translated into Coptic. As a result, after almost 1,400 years under Muslim rule, there is still a thriving Coptic church that represents [perhaps] 10 percent of the Egyptian people—which I would personally put forward as the greatest example of Christian survival in history

YOU: A Review

YOU: An Introduction by Michael Jensen

Who am I? What does it mean to be human? Is there any purpose or meaning to life? My friends still grapple with these questions of identity, most notably when they ‘reinvent themselves’ every few years. It’s a question they face every day – studying Blade Runner in high school, deciding who to vote for (and which vision of the future they want), or the advertising world subtlety telling them who they should be (i.e. I drink Coke, not Pepsi) – what does it mean for me to be me? And how do I express this to everyone else. This is especially true of people in their teens and twenties. With so many direct and instantaneous ways of communicating – blogs, Facebook, YouTube, mobile phones – who I decide to be for the next 15 minutes can be conveyed to everyone on my friends list. We spend so much time trying to discover ourselves, and yet have never been more confused about who we are.

YOU: an introduction is a timely answer to these questions about who I am. Developed originally developed by Michael Jensen as a series of blog posts, YOU is engaging and a joy to read. In fact, one of the strengths of YOU is that it has retained the character of a blog. The chapters are brief and to the point, but the writing still feels like a conversation - at the end of each chapter are the comments from the YOU blog and you can read Michael respond to comments from bloggers.

I find YOU to be particularly culturally appropriate for people my age. The images and illustrations Michael draws are the ones me and my friends would be familiar with. Michael quotes a variety of contemporary sources as diverse as Russell Crowe and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Wikipedia and tattooing. This does run the risk of hastening the book’s use-by-date. However I actually think that it enhances the book, as it fits the headspace of where the reader is at.

What you get with YOU is the authenticity on the behalf of the author. YOU doesn't pretend to be the last word in anthropology. Nor does it dumb down the sometimes difficult issues. Instead, it faces the big issues head on, and invites the reader to explore what scripture has to say on the matter. The book deals with several issues of what it means to be human, such as life itself, death, gender and more. After laying down the ground work for each topic (what actually is the issue? what are some alternative answers?), Michael concludes each chapter with a snapshot of what scripture has to say on the matter.

I heartily recommend this book. YOU focuses on Jesus, the real humanity. He lived a real, en-fleshed life as the true image of what it means to be human. His death paid for the sin and evil that humanity was both involved in and enslaved to. He rose from the dead as a human and now reigns as the lord of all creation under his Father. This is the God Christians worship – the God we are introduced to in YOU.

YOU is available to purchase from Matthias Media.

Fun birthday books

Some birthday reading.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

An exciting new Richard Bauckham book is about to hit the shelves: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses - The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. It could have a big impact on New Testament academia and shcolarship, and has already received these reviews:

N. T. Wright

— Bishop of Durham
“The question of whether the Gospels are based on eyewitness accounts has long been controversial. Now Richard Bauckham, in a characteristic tour de force, draws on his unparalleled knowledge of the world of the first Christians to argue not only that the Gospels do indeed contain eyewitness testimony but that their first readers would certainly have recognized them as such. This book is a remarkable piece of detective work, resulting in a fresh and vivid approach to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of well-known problems and passages.”

Graham Stanton
— University of Cambridge
“Richard Bauckham’s latest book shakes the foundations of a century of scholarly study of the Gospels. There are surprises on every page. A wealth of new insights will provoke lively discussion for a long time to come. Readers at all levels will be grateful for detective work that uncovers clues missed by so many.”

James D. G. Dunn
— University of Durham
“Another blockbuster from the productive pen of Richard Bauckham. Stimulated particularly by Samuel Byrskog’s Story as History — History as Story, Bauckham builds an impressive case for recognition of the controlling influence of eyewitness testimony on the formulation and use of the Jesus tradition, which resulted in the Evangelists’ ‘Jesus of testimony.’ Not to be missed!”

Martin Hengel
— University of Tübingen
“A fascinating book! I have not read such a stimulating monograph about Jesus research in a long time. With its high scholarly standards and astute arguments, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses shows new insights and ways of investigation. It will therefore become a pioneer work refuting old and new errors. This book ought to be read by all theologians and historians working in the field of early Christianity. Further, Bauckham’s convincing historical method and broad learning will also help pastors and students to overcome widespread modern Jesus-fantasies.”

Chris Tilling at Chrisendom has interviewed Bauckham about the book, and you can find the first two posts here and here.