Our goal at PastorBookshelf is to build a resource that pastors and those in the ministry (or training for it!) would find helpful–particularly in regard to books. In pursuit of this goal, we create or compile content in three different veins:
Overviews—Links, in about ten categories, for specific books.
Reviews—Written by members of our Review Program or links to reviews elsewhere.
Excerpts—Brief passages to familiarize with the author’s style, the goal of the book, etc.
It’s our hope that these three tools can help to better equip our readers to make informed decisions in what to read or what to buy.
Nick, we’ll ship your copy of Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels to you as soon as you email your shipping address to matt (at) jcacompany.com. We hope you enjoy the book and find it helpful in your ministry!
Remember, this isn’t the end of Free Book Friday—we’ll have another book up for grabs beginning next Monday. Be watching for the post so that you can get your link up and your name in the hat to win.
There’s no reason not to try it!
Have suggestions for how to improve the giveaway? Tell us about it!
Fabricating Jesus, this week’s Free Book Friday feature, is almost gone! This week’s winner will be chosen before long, so don’t wait to get your name in the drawing!
Congratulations, Peter! Don’t forget to send your shipping information to matt at jcacompany.com so that we can get your book in the mail as soon as possible!
Look for next week’s book announcement on Monday—you won’t want to miss it.
Be sure to let your friends in on this little secret, too!
Today is the deadline to get your name into the drawing for this week’s Free Book Friday feature: Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? by Wayne Grudem. There are two easy ways to enter—either post a link to the post on your blog and leave a comment on our post, or send an email to ten of your friends (include matt at jcacompany.com for verification).
It’s completely free, and everybody has the same chance to win!
People naturally look to others for cues on fashion, speech, opinions, and whole life full of choices. Whatever decision we have to make, it seems easier when someone else has made it before us. We learn from these people. They teach us how to live life. Many of us come to respect and admire these models.
Christians often struggle with viewing their leaders as superhuman, almost beyond sin. The plain fact is that whoever your role model is, regardless of his position or intelligence, he still struggles with indwelling sin.
We’ve all had to deal with the trauma unleashed when one of these models fails. We’ve all felt hurt, deceived, or angry. If a leader falls that we didn’t particularly favor, maybe we even feel validated.
Christian leaders seem to fall the hardest. Their job is to preach and teach against sin, yet they inevitably give way to temptation. When that sin finally becomes public, particularly when it’s hidden or has been improperly dealt with, the world around them seems to implode. Their ministry is questioned, their accomplishments, even their religion. The problems in personal life casts a shadow across every context they live in.
Then the media digs in. Journalists spread the news, and the blogging aftermath lasts for weeks. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has a soapbox. The leader typically becomes either a martyr or a criminal. When the shine wears off the story, however, the man is soon forgotten.
Suzanne Hadley, writing for the Boundless Line, touches on the same topic. Her article highlighted an unusual thought that is too often absent from coverage of public failure. It’s an evidence of grace, thinking in this direction. Humanly speaking, this thought is not default.
Her mind does not tear into the villain, she looks instead toward herself:
. . . probably it hurts the most because it makes you more keenly aware of your own sin and propensity to fail. You think, If that person failed, what is the hope for me?
This attitude is nothing but the dramatic work of God. I’ve been the devastated pupil, I’ve been hurt by failure. I can attest, this thought was not controlling my mind.
If this perspective is so divine, so unnatural, what can we do about it? If this is how we’re programmed, what’s the point in complaining about it?
Suzanne points it out precisely:
The hope is Jesus Christ and the victory He promises. Living under Christ’s control and not becoming entangled in sin is possible. Still, in this world, we all experience moments of failure—some more devastating than others.
and,
It [hope] comes in the form of the truth God tells us about our sinful tendencies and the grace He offers through the all-sufficient sacrifice of His Son.
This thought, the Gospel, should be ruling our minds, dictating our thoughts, our speech, our actions. When we are aware of our own depravity and God’s view of it, we’ll be less tempted to condemn and more amazed by His grace at work in our lives.
Don’t forget to get your chance to win a free book from PastorBookshelf! This week’s book is Preaching God’s Word by Carter, Duvall, and Hays. It’s completely free, and all you have to do to qualify is spread the word!
There is nothing between the person of the Lord Jesus and the person of the believer as that union and communion develops and grows. . . . The union with Christ we have is not that we somehow or another share His grace. Because—follow me carefully—there actually is no ‘thing’ as grace.
That actually is a Medieval Roman Catholic teaching. There is a ‘thing’ called grace that can be separated from the person of Jesus Christ. It is something Jesus Christ won on the Cross and He can bestow it on you. And there are at least seven ways it can be bestowed on you and they all, as it happens, turn out to be in the hands of the church. And you can have this kind of grace, and this kind of grace, and this kind of grace . . .
There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to His being. Nor is it some substance that flows from us: ‘Let me give you grace.’ All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself. And so when Jesus speaks about us abiding in Him and He abiding in us—however mysterious it may be, mystical in that sense—it is a personal union.
Do not let us fail because of the abuse of expressions. Do not let us fail to understand that, at the end of the day, actually Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.
Grace is something we often misunderstand. We ask for more grace to fight sin. We sing that “He giveth more” as our burdens grow. This phraseology can lead to an awkward concept of grace.
Like Ferguson so emphatically stated, grace is not a thing that we get, like money or new clothes. Grace is a person, a person who gave Himself to redeem us, buying for us victory over death and hell.
Being in Christ, then, we’re assured that we have more grace than we’ll ever need. Our acceptance before God does not hinge on our performance. By the blood of Christ, our standing is completely objective fact.
We can rest assured in the knowledge that He has given us everything we need—for life, and for godliness. Our goal is not to receive more grace, but to live in the fullness of our union with Christ.
Imagine having this woman in your church: 71 years old, a member since 1959. Struggling with knee and hip replacements, she winters in Florida.
According to the Hillsdale (MI) Daily News, however, that same woman, Karolyn Caskey, was handcuffed and escorted from Allen Baptist Church on Sunday, June 17th.
The paper reports that while in Florida, Caskey had received a letter from the church, informing her that “the congregation no longer wanted her to be a member.”
When she returned home to Michigan, she attended her church on Sunday, just as she had for the past 48 years. This Sunday was different. The Daily News gives few details regarding what exactly went on within the church, only that the woman had allegedly “interrupted services” that Sunday and previously. The police arrived and attempted to escort Caskey willingly from the building. She refused, and the officer was forced to handcuff her for trespassing. She was booked and fingerprinted, and released after paying 10% ($62) of her bail.
Without a few more details, it’s difficult to evaluate the situation; still, there are questions that arise from such a story.
Why was her membership suspended? How much effort was put forth to resolve the situation, in terms of discipleship?
With the information provided, this incident does not seem appropriate. Attempts to clear the membership registries should not generally end in trespassing arrests.
Whatever the motivation or reasoning, it is up to us to learn what we can from the situation.
Evaluating the procedures we’re given in Scripture leaves us with quite the box of tools for approaching wayward members. The story doesn’t tell, but I’m curious to hear how those tools were used.
Almost more interesting would be seeing whether or how the relationship between Karolyn and Allen Baptist is restored.
According to the Christian Post, the American Baptists are seeking to jumpstart their struggling association with a call to a “‘radical new form’ of ministry.”
The American BaptistAssociation has been through hard times lately, wrestling with doctrinal, practical, and spiritual issues. The whole southwestern constituency split from the Association a year ago.
A. Roy Medley, the general secretary of the Association, declared the need for a “righteous reboot” within the Association, beginning with the launch of New Life 2010. New Life 2010 is a missions project, seeking to produce 1,000,010 new Christians and 1,010 new churches by 2010.
We must re-imagine the church as ever-multiplying clusters of believers, each one shaped by its mission context, coming together with an intense sense of call to mission in worship style, in elements of ministry, and in the call to ministry in the community.
It seems that behind all the dramatic speech lies not a call to “reimagining” or “radical new forms of ministry,” but a call to renewed dedication to the pursuit of Christ and the furthering of His gospel.
Truthfully, Christianity does not need an exterior makeover. It needs internal, spiritual revival.
Our goal at PastorBookshelf is to build a resource that pastors and those in the ministry (or training for it!) would find helpful–particularly in regard to books. In pursuit of this goal, we create or compile content in three different veins:
.
Our third 
Today is the deadline to get your name into the drawing for this week’s 
People naturally look to others for cues on fashion, speech, opinions, and whole life full of choices. Whatever decision we have to make, it seems easier when someone else has made it before us. We learn from these people. They teach us how to live life. Many of us come to respect and admire these models.
A portion of Sinclair Ferguson’s discussion of John 15 at the 
Imagine having this woman in your church: 71 years old, a member since 1959. Struggling with knee and hip replacements, she winters in Florida.
According to the 
