Review: Powerful Evangelism for the Powerless
Powerful Evangelism for the Powerless by C. John Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is written primarily to pastors, but they are not the only ones who can receive help from it. This brief book can be quite challenging to our complacency. And that is a good thing. Overall it is a good book. I am glad I read it and recommend it. As always, you can find things objectionable here and there. I dissented on more than one occasion when it came to some of the real practical methods, e.g. film meetings and such.
Review: The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Management Fable About Helping Employees Find Fulfillment in Their Work
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Management Fable About Helping Employees Find Fulfillment in Their Work by Patrick Lencioni
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is part narrative, part rhetoric. Lencioni uses fiction to teach his three-part prescription for fulfilling work. It is primarily written to managers and certainly provokes good thought on the subject of managing people. As far as storytelling goes, it is decent. He uses dialogue to do his exposition, which makes the dialogue a little heavy and unrealistic. Overall, I think the three signs is a little simplistic, but it does make you think about the personal dynamic in managing people. I recommend it as good seed for thought.
Review: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am delighted to have found Andrew Peterson’s books. We did this one as a family read-aloud and all of us enjoyed it. It is quite a tale with laughter and suspense and action. Peterson deals well with his characters’ flaws and the reality of evil. He is a true storyteller and this is a great read for families. I recommend it and we are looking forward to the rest of the trilogy.
Spurgeon on God’s Providence
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes. That every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens. That the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as surely as the stars in their courses. That the chirping of an aphid over a rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence, and the fall of sere leaves from the poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche. He who believes in God must believe this truth. There is no standing point between this and atheism. There is no half way between an almighty God who worketh all things according to the good pleasure of his own will and no god at all. A god who cannot do as he pleases; a god whose will is frustrated; is not a God, and cannot be a God; I could not believe in such a god as that.
- From the sermon, God’s Providence, from Ezekiel 1:15-19
Barrenness in the Ministry
Reading Words to Winners of Souls by Horatius Bonar is a good way for preachers to start the year. It is a small book that packs a big punch. It brings excellent conviction and exhortation for us to begin a new year of ministry.
Here are Bonar’s words on being satisfied with a barren ministry:
To deliver sermons on each returning Lord’s Day, to administer the Lord’s Supper statedly, to pay an occasional visit to those who request it, to attend religious meetings—this, we fear, sums up the ministerial life of multitudes who are, by profession, overseers of the flock of Christ. An incumbency of thirty, forty or fifty years often yields no more than this. So many sermons, so many baptisms, so many sacraments, so many visits, so many meetings of various kinds-these are all the pastoral annals, the parish records, the ALL of a lifetime’s ministry to many! Of souls that have been saved, such a record could make no mention.
Multitudes have perished under such a ministry; the judgment only will disclose whether so much as one has been saved. There might be learning, but there was no tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” There might be wisdom, but it certainly was not the wisdom that “winneth souls.” There might even be the sound of the gospel, but it seemed to contain no glad tidings at all; it was not sounded forth from warm lips into startled ears as the message of eternal life—”the glorious gospel of the blessed God.” Men lived, and it was never asked of them by their minister whether they were born again! Men sickened, sent for the minister and received a prayer upon their death-beds as their passport into heaven. Men died, and were buried where all their fathers had been laid; there was a prayer at their funeral and decent respects to their remains; but their souls went up to the judgment seat unthought of, uncared for; no man, not even the minister who had vowed to watch for them, having said to them, Are you ready?—or warned them to flee from the wrath to come.
Is not this description too true of many a district and many a minister? We do not speak in anger; we do not speak in scorn: we ask the question solemnly and earnestly. It needs an answer. If ever there was a time when there should be “great searching of heart” and frank acknowledgment of unfaithfulness, it is now when God is visiting us—visiting us both in judgment and mercy. We speak in brotherly kindness; surely the answer should not be of wrath and bitterness. And if this description be true, what sin must there be in ministers and people! How great must be the spiritual desolation that prevails’! Surely there is something in such a case grievously wrong; something which calls for solemn self-examination in every minister; something which requires deep repentance.
