What is the Gospel? Greg Gilbert begins his little book by asserting the fact that many Christians have assumed the gospel and have even experienced the gospel, but that they cannot clearly articulate what the gospel is.

Enter Gilbert’s book.  This little book is a fantastic primer on the gospel.  We need to constantly be reminded of the truths of the gospel, and Gilbert has done a great job of that.  Further, keeping in mind the fact that 90% of college graduates will never read another non-fiction book after graduating, the length of Gilbert’s book makes it approachable by Christians of all types.  he has clearly articulated the gospel in a way that is understandable, grace-filled, and applicable to the Christian life.

You will not find anything new in What is the Gospel?, but that is really a good thing.  The gospel is good news, but it is not “new” news.  He spells out the gospel in four issues: God. Man. Christ. Response.

We are accountable to the God who created us.  We have sinned against that God and will be judged.  But God has acted in Jesus Christ to save us, and we take hold of that salvation by repentance from sin and faith in Jesus.

Greg Gilbert reminds us all that the gospel is not second-tier in the Christian faith, that the cross is the center-piece of the gospel, and that the gospel cannot and should not be improved upon,

The pressure to find a “bigger,” more “relevant” gospel seems to have taken hold of a great many people.  Again and again, in book after book, we see descriptions of the gospel that end up relegating the cross to a secondary position.  In its place are declarations that the heart of the gospel is that God is remaking the world, or that he has promised a kingdom that will set everything right, or that he is calling us to join him in transforming our culture.  The result is that over and over again, the death of Jesus in the place of sinners is assumed, marginalized, or even (sometimes deliberately) ignored.

In What is the Gospel?, Greg Gilbert has put the gospel back front and center and has given Christians a great resource to not only proclaim the good news, but to adequately define that good news.

Is Dug Down Deep really that good? YES! It is that good, but maybe not in the way or for the reasons you might expect. Joshua Harris takes his title from Jesus’ parable of the two builders and essentially makes the argument that his faith has been bolstered by strengthening his theological convictions with a deep understanding of biblical doctrine. Harris shares:

This book is the story of how I learned to dig into truth and build my life on a real knowledge of God. I want to share how I learned that orthodoxy isn’t just for old men but for anyone who longs to behold a God who is bigger and more real and glorious than the human mind can imagine.

Each chapter of this book deals with a different doctrine (the doctrine of God, of Jesus, of the church, sanctification, The Holy Spirit, etc…), but does so in a way that remind one more of a diary or journal than a theological textbook. Harris has struggled through these doctrines, and he invites the reader into his struggles and into his unique understandings.

Harris does nothing new in this book. He writes about theology. However, what Harris does do well is to write about theology in such a way that it comes to life and that it is easily approachable by all readers. No one will pick this book up and walk away with a headache. He artistically captures deep truths and packages them nicely so that they can be digested. As the subtitle suggests, Josh shares not only what he believes, but why it matters. Far too many theology books neglect to apply the truths they teach.

Tim Challies says that he would give this book to his children if they were old enough, and that is a great endorsement. I agree with Tim, but I would also recommend this book to any believer who is anxious to grow in their faith. This book is approachable and thoroughly entertaining. You should read this book!

DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov from Covenant Life Church on Vimeo.

I ordered Sinclair Ferguson’s newest book, By Grace Alone because WTS had it on sale at a time when I was ordering some other books, so I included it in my purchase. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was the best purchase I made in that order. For book lovers, you will be immediately impacted by the aesthetic appeal of it’s cover, and in this case you can feel comfortable judging this book by the cover. It’s contents are refreshing and impacting.

This book is a quick read (only 119 pages), but the concept is very unique. Dr. Ferguson reflects on grace

from seven angles, each built around a stanza from a rich but little-known hymn, “O how the Grace of God Amazes me,” written by Emmanuel T. Sibomana (ca. 1915-1975), a pastor in the African nation of Burundi.

By the title and description, I was fully prepared to be taken on a journey that examined grace and atonement, and I was. What I did not expect was to be blown away with some of the content on Spiritual Warfare and suffering contained within the pages of this small book.

Chapter 5, for instance, opens with the fifth verse from Sibomana’s hymn:

No all my heart’s desire/is to abide/In him, my Saviour dear/In him to hide./My shield and buckler he,/Covering and protecting me;/From Satan’s darts I’ll be/Safe at his side.

From there Dr. Ferguson sets out to show the guarantee of security we have in Christ. That security, according to Dr. Ferguson, is found in God’s good pleasure to save us, not in our ability or desire to be saved or to stay saved.

We are not accounted righteous in God’s sight either by regeneration or by sanctification. The fact that we have been born again does not justify us.  It gives us a new heart, bu tin itself it does not provide the forgiveness of sins.  No, the gospel that saves us is entirely outside us.  It is Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified for our sins, raised for our justification, who saves us.

Furthering examining spiritual warfare and suffering, Dr. Ferguson looks at the life of Job and his suffering. I found his treatment of Satan’s work in Job’s life particularly helpful. Dr. Ferguson shows that Satan’s work is to “exchange the truth of God for a lie” and to convince Job that God is not good. Honestly, the book is worth the price for this one small chapter that deals with Job.

The goal of this book is to help us once again to be amazed by the grace of God.  It reminds us all that our problem is not isolated acts of sin from which God must save us and forgive us. No, those isolated acts of sin are the symptom of our real, true problem which is that we are sinners at our core. We need not be forgiven of specific acts and helped to not commit them again, we need to be completely remade. God in his grace does this, and that is amazing.

I am glad to recommend By Grace Alone to you. No doubt a more critical review would find some faults, but for the devotional way I was allowed to read this book, it had a profound impact upon me and I’m sure it will upon you as well.

I rarely pick up books that I don’t expect to enjoy, unless they are assigned. However, I received a free copy of Church is Team Sport by Jim Putman last week, and decided I would suffer through its pages. What a surprise to discover that I actually enjoyed the read and was completely convicted.

Jim is the Founding Pastor of Real Life Ministries in North Idaho and has written a book that flips the contemporary church on its ear and challenges pastors to shepherd their flocks and not just direct them from the pulpit. Jim tells of a church built on the concept of pastoral care for the flock. So great is their commitment to the membership of the church, that even with 8000 members, each person who misses on Sunday is contacted the following week. Knowing that a church of that size can accomplish that goal has really challenged me to step to the plate make certain that we do a better job of caring for our flock at Malvern Hill.

As good as that aspect was, I was disappointed with a few weaknesses.First, Putman’s downplaying of the preaching act in the church was disheartening.

Sunday is not the best time to teach deep theological truths, however. Most people have short attention spans and don’t retain knowledge through the lecture method…Don’t try to do too much, your main goal is to inspire people to go to the next step.

Certainly, preaching is foolishness to us, but it is the ordained means by which God’s word is proclaimed. Secondly, I felt that he made too much effort to make sports analogies to the church on occasion (for instance, he refers to staff meetings as team huddles). Some of the comparisions just felt made-up and stiff.

All in all, I would recommend the book and would expect that most of you will be as challenged as I was by his commitment to pastoral care.

It is probably true that nothing in American Christianity during the Twentieth Century was as important as the battles over the Bible fought in nearly every denomination.  The results of those battles seem to be clear as well. Evangelical denominations that agreed on the authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of the word of God have continued to be viable into the 21st Century.  Denominations that have married themselves to liberal theology that questions the very authority of God’s word find themselves in steep decline.

On the heels of these battles, Timothy Ward, writing from the UK, has given a book that needs to be read as a reminder that the Word of God is not merely a line in the sand to be fought for, it is indeed the living and active word of God that can transform lives and that must be obeyed.  Words of Life is a book on the doctrine of Scripture that keeps God in the forefront and as the central focus.  Ward reminds us that the Word of God is indeed the Word of God.  It is important, not primarily because someone says it is, but because God is its author.  The word is life.

Ward’s first three chapters focus on the biblical, theological, and doctrinal outlines for Scripture.  These outlines help the reader to see that God is present in his word, active in his word, and that his word is clear, sufficient, necessary and authoritative. His main premise, through these chapters and the subsequent two, however, is that God is a God who acts through his speech.

Drawing on the speech act theory, ward sets out to show that the Bible is not merely a collection of words, but that the very words of God are spoken with a purpose and that purpose is to reveal God to its readers and to align readers with the very will of God. With this in mind, Ward argues against the central place of inerrancy and infallibility in most doctrines of Scripture, because, in his mind, they are not sufficient.  He argues that if we believe God to be active in his word (literally, in his speech acts) then we have a great confidence that the inspired word of God (which he prefers) will be absolutely correct (inerrant) and that it will accomplish all of exactly what it is intended to accomplish (infallibility). Ward admits that his opinion on this issue might differ if he were in the American context where the battle for the Bible has been so intense, but his arguments still have weight for all believers. If God is the author of Scripture then it is inspired, and if it is inspired, it is necessarily infallible and inerrant.

One major problem I have with Ward’s work is that his insistence upon the speech act as the basic unit of communication, leads him to assume that the sentence and not the word is the most basic unit of language.  This naturally leads him to view proper translation of Scripture as dynamic (NIV), and not literal word for word translations (ESV, HCSB, NASB).  Sentences only have meaning because the words of which they are constructed have meanings, therefore I believe Ward is wrong on this point.

However, I still found this book to be very informative and helpful.  It is a great introduction for anyone wanting to know more about speech act theory and the Word of God, and in light of the coming celebration of Reformation Month (I am trying to make that an official holiday), this is a good read to refocus on the reformer’s claim of sola scriptura.

Do you know anyone who seems to know something about everything?  I suspect that Thomas Mann is one of those guys.  After completing The Oxford Guide To Library Research, I am compelled to ask how a person can know so much about such a wide variety of subjects and why. I may one day ask Mann himself, but until then I will leave you with a quick review of this very helpful resource.

It has been said that education is the process of learning to ask the right questions.  If that is true, then The Oxford Guide to Library Research, is an education in an of itself because it focuses on teaching its readers to ask the right questions and to consult the correct sources.  This is not a page turner, you will not pick this up to re-read regularly, but if you have research in your near future, I suspect that you will regularly pick this book up to find research tips and resources.  Mann is obviously an expert in his field, and, as a reference librarian in the Library of Congress, his experience in the field is nearly unmatched.

One of the greatest contributions, however, is not in the main body of the book, but is the appendix titled Wisdom.  Mann essentially lays out a brief philosophy of wisdom with a reminder that even academic acolades and research do not yield wisdom.  He writes:

Wisdom…entails not just intellectual apprehension of the true, but also a willed practice of the good in conduct as well.

This short essay is good reading and worthwhile, but the heart of the book is about research methods and locations.  From encyclopedias to bibliographies and Boolean combinations to personal interviews, Mann gives great advice and wisdom on where and how to research effectively. Sure, your loved ones will laugh because you are reading a book about books, but it will be worthwhile when you need to find books as resources.

Total Church was a freebie for me that I picked up at Advance O9.  My first reaction to the book in the first fifty pages was less than stellar. It wasn’t that I found the book bad, so much as ordinary.  The first few chapters do not stick out as anything different or “radical” as the book claims.

However, continuing to prod on (as I usually do even with books I don’t enjoy), my opinion of the book was changed in the remaining 75% of the pages.  It’s authors, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis are cofounders of The Crowded House, a church-planting initiative in the UK. In an age where church planting is the cool thing to do, Chester and Timmis propose radical changes that look at the value of small, intimate, gospel communities with accountable relationships as opposed to large, impersonal, megachurches that allow their members to hide easily and remain disconnected. This value has led them to plant house churches that encourage their members to not only attend church together, but to actually do life together.

This book gives an honest picture of what ministry looks like in our postmodern world.  I found many small issues with which I was inclined to disagree with the authors, but I was blown away at how much sense they made in the larger issues.  Total Church is an apt name because the book itself is something of a mini-theology course for the church that explores the theological implications of practices like church planting, world mission, social involvement, and apologetics.  The conclusion?  Theology is best, not when it is practiced in academia, but when it is lived out among the people of God as they interact with one another and the lost world.

Of course, the authors also give some shameless (and very good) plugs for church planting.

The implications of the Great Commission become apparent when we see how the first disciples worked out that Commission in the book of Acts. What we discover is that it meant church planting.   As the disciples when in response to the command to be witnesses to Jesus, they planted churches in Antioch (11:26), Derbe, Lystra, Iconium (14:1-26), Philippi (16:11-40), Thessalonica (17:1-9), Corinth (18:1-11), and Ephesus (19:1-10).

Total Church challenged me and it will challenge you.  Pastors and staff should read this book to be confronted with Chester’s and Timmis’ conviction that the shepherd is a leader among equals, and not in some special elite class of Christians. I heartily recommend it.  You may also be inclined to check out the free pdf study guide that has been created for this book.

Other Resources for Total Church:

• View video and audio from the Total Church Training at Mars Hill
• Read the Total Church blog series
• Get Total Church in the Re:Lit library

If you are looking for something to spend part of your free $50 gift certificate from WTSBOOKS on, let me suggest a new book just published in May,  Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word, by Douglas A. Sweeney.  Sweeney is himself an expert on Edwards and on The New England Theology that was founded by Edwards, but don’t let that scare you if this is your first interaction with the life of Jonathan Edwards.

Sweeney has written an introduction to the life of Edwards that is certainly a delight for experts on Edwards to read and a great beginning for the Edwards novice.  Mark Dever says this:

Doug Seeney has written a fine introduction to Jonathan Edwards’ life and theology.  Accessible and accurate, this introduction is a good place to start in trying to understand Edwards as a man, a Christian, and a theologian and pastor.

Sweeney presents Edwards as a son, a husband, and a father, but primarily as a man of God dedicated to his Savior in all that he did.  Edwards poured his life into his ministry because he believed it to be his duty under God.  This volume does a great job of focusing on Edwards as a minister of the word (as suggested by the title), though his life was one composed of so many other things. 

Edwards shows us the necessity of remaining in God’s Word…Edwards spent the bulk of his time–nearly every day of his life–reading and meditating on Scripture.  He believed his minsitry depended on this practice.  He understood the ‘importance and advantage” of theology.  He taught that “every Christian should make a business of endeavoring to grow” in divine knowledge.

Edwards was, perhaps, the last great Puritan preacher and is no doubt the most influential theologian(perhaps thinker) to ever come from North America.  His extraordinary gifts and his supreme devotion and discipline allowed him to shape, not only his world, but the world for the centuries since his death.  Sweeney points out errors in popular Edwards lore (like that he was dull and dry and insisted on reading his sermons word for word) and inspires the reader to look to Edwards as an example and mentor in history.

Sweeney has also included a very thorourgh timeline of the life of Jonathan Edwards and has written briefly in this volume about the continuing legacy of Edwards.  No doubt this book will not answer all of your questions about Jonathan Edwards, but it will whet your appetite for more study on this remarkable man of God.

As a Father of a new baby girl (Aubrey is 4 months old), I am grateful to Voddie Baucham for writing this book.  What He Must Be is a how to guide on raising boys to be men and raising daughters to look for the right kind of man in their lives.

In his pointed way, Baucham points out that some things simply are not debatable when one considers potential candidates to marry their daughters.  For instance (as chapter titles indicate), he must be a follower of Christ, he must be prepared to lead, he must lead like Christ, he must be committed to children, and he must practice the four P’s (Prophet, Priest, Provider, and Protector).  Any male without these qualities is simply not capable of leading a woman in a God-honoring marriage.

Baucham is tough, but he fills a much needed gap in ministry to husbands and fathers.  This is not simply a picture of how things could or should be, this is discipleship from the life of one father and into the lives of many others.  Pastors, pass this resource along to the men in your church who see that they should be different but don’t know where to begin.  Read it for yourself because we can all benefit from some strong words about the importance of raising our children right.

Greg Mathis’s first book, God is Able! But Am I Willing? is a must read for anyone struggling with sinful strongholds in their lives.  Writing with quick wit and a pastor’s heart, Mathis gives an autobiographical account of the power of God working in his own life to release him from bondage to gluttony and a sinful lack of exercise.

This is a book pastors should read.  Addictions to buffets and recliners will lead a pastor to an early grave and rob him of his effectiveness as a minister of the gospel.  Pastor Greg realized this in his own life and with wise counsel of friends and accountability, he has seen God work mightily in his life.  He rightly points out that healthy eating and exercise habits are a part of sanctification…giving God all we have and receiving all he has to offer:

Jesus clearly taught that our joy is linked to obedience.  I must seek and obey him in every area of my life, and only then will I experience the joy and satisfaction of all Jesus has saved me to be.  God is able, and will do his part in sanctification.  I must be willing to accept my responsibilty, and daily say not to the flesh, the devil, and the world.

Sin holds many people captive, and most of us have at least a few areas of our life where we have not allowed God to be in complete control.  A pastor friend said about this book, “I need to read this, and many people in my congregation really need to read this.”  You need to read this too, and the good news is that you can read it for free.  Pastor Greg’s staff at Mud Creek Baptist Church have made it possible for us to give away a copy. 

To register for a copy of God Is Able! But Am I Willing?

1. Subscribe to Passion For Preaching using the Feedburner box in the upper right corner of this page.
2. Email us at contest@passionforpreaching.net and let us know that you have subscribed.  Winner(s) will be selected May 20th.