The Little Friar

David and Jason Bentham's Miracle in Shreveport:  A Memoir of Baseball, Fatherhood, and the Stadium that Launched a Dream is a page-turner that brings together a story about life in baseball (about which I know nothing) with a story about the small and large miracles God works in ordinary lives in extraordinary ways. If you've ever had a dream, and all the deck in life seems stacked against it, this is a book for you. Hard work, dedication, commitment and love -- they come together to tell a story about two brothers, but more importantly it's a story about God.  Because this book is a testament to all the big things God does in our world. ____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Mary Machowski's Listen Up:  10-Minute Family Devotions on the Parables offers a brilliant lesson plan book for parents and grandparents to explore Jesus' parables with children.  There is scripture reading, a small object lesson, stories, and discussion questions, all in a short ten-minutes-a-day, six-days-a-week format.  Machowski recommends preparing for the week by reading "Get ready" and "Get set" on Sunday, but if your Sundays are as busy as mine then it could easily be done on Saturday instead.  Listen Up , in fact, could easily be transformed into a weekly curriculum for church school classes, too. In the end, Listen Up is a beautiful resource for anyone who cares for our children.  I'm particularly excited that it has us, with children, exploring Jesus' parables -- often neglected resources for daily life. I love this book! _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest revi...

I was reading Matthew’s parable of the sower this morning. Let’s make some connections first. At the beginning of Matthew 5, there is Jesus and there is a crowd; so too here at the beginning of Matthew 13, there is Jesus and there is a crowd. It’s time to teach. The crowds are big, so in Matthew 5 Jesus sits on a hill to teach, while here in Matthew 13 he gets into a boat. In Matthew 5 he gives instructions, while in Matthew 13 he deploys a different didactic strategy: Parables, stories. Stories? Well, yes, parables are stories, very short stories. But don’t think you can relax and take it easy-peasy. It’s not as if the Sermon on the Mount is a lecture, while Matthew 13 is a children’s talk. Not a bit of it. Kids can listen in on these stories, but parables are seriously adult. They’re artful and arch, they tease and twist, they mess with your mind. The materials on which Jesus draws are commonplace — nature, agriculture, village life — but the punch lines to which they lea...

Abner Chou's The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers:  Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles is an engaging and dynamic orientation toward reading and interpreting Scripture from the perspective of the biblical writers themselves.  Drawing upon the old hermeneutical imperative of "authorial intent", Chou demands that we listen to the voices of the biblical writers themselves. That makes this book a demanding reading for theologians, biblical scholars, pastors and even church school teachers.  The prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New both possessed a clear voice about the nature of God and the world, and offered, in their radical orientations toward reading ancient texts and contexts, a way of engaging in the task of reading theologically. But lest readers assume what they'll find here is another guide, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers is much less than a hermeneutical method.  This is a hermeneutical prac...

Jill Briscoe's Here I Am, Lord ... Send Somebody Else is a witty and insightful exploration of those times when God calls us to something that we feel like we don't want to do or that we feel ill equipped to do.  Briscoe shows us that obedience brings its own spiritual rewards, even when we're doing those things we don't feel like doing. The book is part memoir, part spiritual guidance, filled with discussion questions and spiritual exercises that makes Here I Am, Lord to be a vast gift to the Church in exploring what obedience looks like in everyday living. ________________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Karl Barth, supposedly, on his 1962 lecture tour throughout the United States, was asked how he would summarize the essence of the millions of words he had published, he replied, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so". That has come again to my mind over the past few days as a good summary of the Gospel.  So here I offer the song, in German:

This is the day that the Lord has made;         let us rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118.24). I consider that the sufferings of this present time      are not worth comparing with the glory      about to be revealed to us (Romans 8.18).

A friend and I have been tossing around the old theological hot potato of "fearing" God. He grew up with fear being the primary means by which God motivates human behavior.  Fear hell.  Fear the world.  Even fear God. It is, after all, one of the primary ways preachers tend to preach -- fire and brimstone results in so much fear. There was so much fear that first Easter, too.  Right there, in the text, in the "shorter" ending of Mark.  Fear: When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.  Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?" But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.  As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on t...

Come Sunday is one of the newest additions to Netflix's streaming service.  The movie chronicles the story of Bishop Carlton's struggle as a famous, beloved pastor in the Evangelical, charismatic church, a struggle that brings him to accept God's universal reconciliation of the entire world.  A pupil of Oral Roberts, Pearson is a family man struggling between the pull of fame and his own beliefs.  After watching a program focusing on the genocide of Rwanda, whose citizens are not Christian, hence going to Hell according to his doctrine, he believes he's spoken to by God and renounces Hell altogether.  He begins to preach "the gospel of inclusion", that all souls will be forgiven by God, drawing the ire of Roberts and eventually being labeled a heretic by the church. What this summary misses, though, is the real dynamic at view in the movie.  What happens when one's faith and social belonging collide -- in much the way trains on the same track c...

Darrell Bock & Mitch Glaser's Messiah in the Passover is a collection of essays that deal with the Passover, and its richer with Jesus' Last Supper and the Church's Holy Meal in Communion.  It's a reference work that addresses biblical and theological issues, Jewish and church history, and rabbinic tradition -- but its real gift is a messianic family Haggadah (Passover guidebook) as well as Passover recipes and lessons for children. Messiah in the Passover places the messianic traditions of ancient Judaism within the historical context, while being faithful to the Passover tradition in the first-century in Palestine.   Understanding Jewish life, culture, and history across the millennia is layered and multi-faceted.  Like a tapestry, each individual thread connects, and the reader can't tug on one without pulling on the other.  Messiah in the Passover is an important text for seeing those interconnections. Messiah in the Passover is a must-read for ...

The Minister's Bible from Thomas Nelson provides a handy edition that ministers of all sorts can carry to events, use for ceremonies, preach from, have examples to follow, etc.  It includes the complete Nelson's Minister’s Manual between the Old and New Testaments. This edition is a tan leathersoft cover, that has all the feel of cowhide.  The cover is a simple, unassuming cover with only print on the spine to indicate it is a "Holy Bible".  This edition does lay flat, and contains three ribbon markers for easy use.  The paper for the inside text is a fine, durable quality.  The text is a double-column, but easy for reading.  Even though the text is broken by verse divisions rather than paragraphs, the section headings helps to develop the text into thought-blocks that make it easy for preaching and teaching. While there are no references in the text, I only wish this printing contained a concordance, at least.  But still, overall, this is a si...

Ed Young's The 10 Commandments of Marriage:  Practical Principles to Make Your Marriage Great brings both humor and insight into one of the most difficult topics pastors encounter in counseling in the Church:  Marriage.  Every commandment here will make you chuckle while simultaneously grab your pen to mark notes and passages.  It is a richly rewarding read that makes Christian marriages solid when we learn to listen to a pastor who knows what he's saying. Some of the commandments are easier to follow than others.  I predict his "fifth commandment" will be the one that most couples struggle to keep. _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Gary Chapman's Loving Your Spouse When You Feel Like Walking Away:  Real Help for Desperate Hearts in Difficult Marriages offers real, practical wisdom -- from one who has thought deep and long about marriage -- for those who feel at the end of their rope.  Martial dangers lurk around nearly every corner, and some of them go unnoticed even when encountered in the clear light of day.  Chapman helps couples name those shadows and reject their lies.  His is a pastoral wisdom that helps us reject the myths our culture might teach us to believe, in order to create the lasting marriages for which we long. But that's precisely what makes Loving Your Spouse so difficult to read.  Each chapter will cover topics that we'd rather not talk about -- from workaholic lives to depressed, controlling, abusive, uncommunicative, unfaithful, and addicted spouses.  Reading about martial struggle is never easy reading. But it is necessary reading. And none more necessa...

The NIV Journal the Word Reference Bible is a single-column reference Bible that brings the accessible New International Version together with a space on each page for journaling notes.  While it does not try to break new ground or introduce some new gimmick, this Bible does what it is meant to do, and it does it amazingly well:  Offer the reader a quality paper for writing notes in a formatted cover (complete with a journaling band to keep it closed) that lays flat for both reading and writing. This reference Bible makes an ideal keepsake for generations to come -- and works well for preachers who want to keep their notes for reading and preaching under the same cover as the text! ____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Randy Clark & Mary Healy's The Spiritual Gifts Handbook:  Using Your Gifts to Build the Kingdom brings together a noted Catholic theologian with an international healing preacher to give the Church a gift, the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time:  A deep -- and deeply accessible -- account of God's activity in the lives of real people.  Of the difference real people make in the real world as a witness to the Spirit.  And all for the glory of the Kingdom of God that is coming on the earth. With rich pastoral insight and theological integrity, The Spiritual Gifts Handbook demonstrates how God works in the lives of ordinary people, and helps to open eyes of those who wouldn't otherwise see that work.  In a hurting world, this book is more than a message:  It is a mission.  A mission for those who follow Christ into the hurting places.  For the healing of all creation. This is not a book to be missed! _____________________ ...

Make no doubt about it: The kindness to which we Christians are called is difficult. It’s never easy to go about the work of reconciliation in the world. We Christian talk about love, but I oftentimes think that’s just a warm fuzzy word to make us sound good. It’s simply too amorphous and too abstract. We’ve pretty much lost the biblical sense of love a long time ago. So I don’t focus there. Because, while we’re being honest, I know too many brothers and sisters in the Faith who use the word love to justify being harsh and exclusive. Love becomes doing what is “best” for you and, by the way, you don’t get to decide what is best for you. (In full disclosure, I’ve done this all-too-often in the past. But I try to catch myself from doing it.) This is why I think the Bible so much stress on God’s loving-kindness. We’re supposed to start small. Work on kindness first, then worry about love. If we’re thoroughgoing kind people, love will follow. But if we get kind wrong, it’s re...

In praying the Daily Office recently I noticed the Psalm was printed like this:  "Psalm 68: 1-20(21-23)24-36". Those of us familiar with the Book of Common Prayer  know what those parentheses mean.  In essence, feel free to read from verses 1-20, skip that bit between 21-23, pick back up at verse 24, and finish reading at verse 36. Verses 21-23 are optional.  But why? Generally, when you see those parentheses in the lectionary you're being warned that you are about to encounter one of those dark and difficult texts in the Bible and that you might, depending upon the situation (kids, you know, might be listening in), want to read around those passages.   I hate it when they skip over bits like that.   Make no doubt about it:  Psalm 68 has some rough bits in it.  Right where the BCP said it would, in fact.  But in the midst of the darkest spots, there's Light. That is, when I read this psalm Christologically , it...

Charles Ryrie's Acts  from Moody's Everyday Bible Commentary Series is a solid theological exposition of Acts. Ryrie takes the approach that the narrative of the early Christian church in Acts is not a closed tale, but one that is open-ended and plays out in the contemporary church each and every day.  As a result, though the commentary has been around for a while, its message is as relevant as the church's life here and now, in the twenty-first century.  The lessons are sometimes obvious, but sometimes shocking.  To quote Ryrie:  "(Acts) furnishes us the principles for revival and missionary work; it shows the divine pattern for church government; and it exhibits not only steadfastness but expansion under persecution. It is a book for the church in any century" (p. 9). Through and through, Ryrie provides us with a consistent analysis of the text without reverting into technical matters.  Teachers and preachers should read this book, and dedicated ...

Alexander Shaia's Heart and Mind:  The Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation is a rich reorientation toward the gospels -- those stories about Jesus at the heart of the Christian faith -- that blends prayer and action, "heart and mind", into a transformation experience instead of a dead text. Heart and Mind is a deeply textured respect for the New Testament and its original audiences that connects its message with the real lives of real people in the real world.  There is a mystery and magnitude to those texts that Shaia is able to respect, even as he simultaneously moves beyond traditional modern exegesis to embrace the early Christian transformative experience of spiritual reading. It is a wonderful spiritual gift to the modern Church! _____________________ I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's Living Revision:  A Writer's Craft as Spiritual Practice explores writing as a spiritual discipline.  She uses the language of faith to explore what writing offers to its practitioners.  Essentially a "writer's bible", this book is full of rich wisdom about the nature of writing itself, but she is most like a writer's prophet -- one who helps the writer-disciple follow the story and make it the best it can be.  The book is a spiritual challenge to engage in the writing craft as a spiritual exercise. Drawing on various examples of different writers and their work, Andrew helps the writer-disciple develop their faith-craft.  She uses various lists, illustrations, and exercises to guide the writer-disciple.  The book is comprehensive.  It can really help a writer-disciple grow in their faith-craft. In fact, I think it would be most helpful for pastors -- those who draft, week-in and week-out, sermons and articles ...