Tyndale’s NLT Mosaic Bible is off to a fast-start today. Those of us who like the NLT second edition should be happy for any opportunity to recommend this readable and helpful translation. An 80+ page sample of the Mosaic is available from Tyndale.

I received my copy earlier this week. I’ll share a variety of observations.

1. The Mosaic Bible is actually two books under one cover. It is a 52 week devotional resource keyed to the Christian year using art, quotations and extended selections from a broad sampling of Christian traditions on every continent, tradition and period of history. The second book is a two column NLT Bible, with center references, an excellent concordance, a Greek/Hebrew dictionary, maps and other helpful materials in most standard Bibles. These two books use different kinds of paper and are easily distinguished for one another. I was particularly glad that these materials are separated, because I do not want a Bible to look like a workbook or anything other than a text of Holy Scripture.

2. Mosaic is heavily graphical, with a generous sampling of Christian symbolism and an excellent selection of Christian art. All the artistic and literary resources are listed in an index. There is an intentional effort to capture an ecumenical, pan-traditional look that some might call “post evangelical” or “emerging.” Some may find this trendy. It is well-done and a pleasure to work through. [Continue reading]

A few weeks ago, IM reader Chris Giammona made it possible for 20 IM readers to receive a free copy of Andrew Marin’s significant and helpful book, Love Is An Orientation. As a condition for receiving the book, each reader agreed to write a brief response. Here are the first five of those responses. The name of each writer appears at the end of their review. One paragraph was moderated because of a formatting issue.

My three main responses:

Christians and non-Christian Gays:
God loves every human he has made. What he wants most is not for gays and lesbians to become heterosexual, but for them to choose a relationship with himself through Jesus.  For us as conservative Christians, this means acting in a way that encourages all people to pursue a relationship with God, rather than defending God’s moral law.  Frankly, it’s a lot easier and more comforting for me to defend moral laws.  I think this is because, deep down, I don’t think the Holy Spirit can do the defending.
 
Christians and Gay Christians:
A Christian’s spiritual journey towards a deeper relationship with God is a personal journey that requires a community to support and encourage it.  The path of that journey is different for everyone. Straight Christians tend to judge the gay Christian journey by how heterosexual the person is becoming.  But God may be more interested in another area of growth for many years.  Gays need room to attend church, be in Bible studies, and be loved and accepted while they are still gay.  They need room to be Christians while still gay. They need to have a community of fellow believers, straight and gay, that allows them to talk and think about what their same-sex attraction means in their spiritual journey.  This doesn’t mean “accepting” homosexuality.  It means accepting that we are all sinners seeking wholeness in whatever way the Holy Spirit works in us. [Continue reading]

I have purposely avoided watching Jesus Camp until this week. One of my Advanced classes is using it to write a response paper to The Screwtape Letters, so over three days we watched it, with some debriefing every day.

In this class of ten, several students could relate to various aspects of the film. One young man had been in similar churches and experiences for the first eight years of his life. One of my Ethiopian girls was from a Pentecostal church in her country. One of my American girls was homeschooled on and off for several years. Others had heard various sermons that reminded them of the rhetoric in Jesus Camp.

I have, of course, been around youth camps, youth rallies and youth events my entire life as a Christian and a minister. I grew up in a church that used high pressure evangelism tactics several times a year. I’ve been to youth events where the speakers or musicians were similar to the adults in Jesus Camp. All my life I’ve been surrounded by end-of-the-world scenarios and Satan-is-out-there-in-Harry-Potter type rhetoric. [Continue reading]

David Cowan is a Lutheran pastor with a background in journalism and the world of banking and finance. In Economic Parables he brings these life experiences together to write a series of Bible studies built off of the monetary teachings of Jesus found in his parables.

Each chapter contains the parable and an extended reflection, as well as excellent discussion questions and in-depth Biblical references for deeper study. This book is really ideal for a study in a church or small group. The topics are interesting and the materials for leader use are outstanding and suggestive of many applications. [Continue reading]

I’ve never been particularly interested in those books that line up the advocates of different views on a selected subject, give one each an essay and everyone a response. It sounds like a very good idea, but I’m the kind of person who thinks through an issue more clearly with an all out advocate or a fully committed critic. I guess I want to be the one sorting through these sort of things for myself.

I’m also fairly pessimistic that anyone ever changes their views in any kind of debate or forum. And my experience tells me that the representative chosen to present a view may, in fact, not actually represent the view, but may be somewhere else on the ranch.

So while I was grateful to be given the opportunity to read and review Gordon Smith’s compilation volume on The Lord’s Supper: Five Views, I was prepared for the book to be a mixed bag. [Continue reading]

I am very interested in hymnals as the best conservators of a broad, deep and diverse selection of worship music for the church today. A good hymnal is a post-evangelical’s friend.

The Baptist Hymnal (also called The Worship Hymnal) 2008 has been reviewed at Isaiah Six and if you are interested in worship music check this out. This hymnal project is the first to begin to use the abilities of the internet to expand both the content of the hymnal and the online resources to use along with it.

I’ve been looking at my copy for a couple of weeks, and I am thoroughly impressed.

Check out the review and acquire a copy.

Rising From The Ashes is an unusual look at the emerging church/alternative worship, church planting and church development scene, presented entirely as short articles, emails, interviews and even instant message conversations. Becky Garrison, a writer for the Wittenberg Door magazine, and author of Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church, asks the questions and arranges the material into themed chapters. The book allows the practitioners to have a larger say than the theorists, and there’s a refreshing honesty and “unedited” quality to the material. This is a book that truly drops into the “emerging conversation,” as its happening among those who are swimming in the water and not explaining concepts to the skeptical. [Continue reading]

You know a book is different when it starts with the question of whether you need to buy the book at all.

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis talks about the spiritual values of simple pleasures. There are a world of things, Screwtape says, that the “enemy” doesn’t mind humans doing at all: sleeping, eating, making love, working, going for walks, reading and so on. Allowing humans to experience these simple, but real, parts of God’s creation order will have genuine consequences that will make Wormwood’s work of temptation much more difficult. [Continue reading]

Is there a compelling reason to read Brian Sanders’ version of “Why so many of us are leaving the traditional churches for emerging churches?”

Maybe. Life After Church is a book many of my readers will appreciate.

I think Sanders gets many things right. I certainly appreciated his emphasis on scripture; a gift to all of us, by the way, from the church of the past. His helpful and pastoral advice to those leaving the church is mature and practical. [Continue reading]

This is the season of “Best of” lists, and I’m sure Pierced For Our Transgressions by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey and Andrew Sach will be on more than a few lists. In the past year, Pierced For Our Transgressions may be the best-reviewed, highest recommended book in the Reformed blogosphere.

It was also one of the most anticipated and well-recommended books of the year. Endorsements and recommendations for PFOT are a “Who’s Who” of Reformed theologians, pastors and authors. Clearly, someone felt this was going to be “the” book to toss into the simmering controversies about theories of the atonement. [Continue reading]

UPDATE: Rev. Dowd has graciously joined the comment thread.

Thank God For Evolution! is available as a free pdf download. If you haven’t read the book and don’t plan on it, please keep your comments about the book and the author appropriately humble. Don’t expect a creationist debate in the comments of this post. Also, I am not a scientist, and I don’t play one on my blog.

Michael Dowd may be the most optimistic person you’ll ever hear or read.

Dowd is an evangelist for the marriage of evolution and…..everything. Religion. Philosophy. Psychology. Politics. Human relationships. Education. Child-raising. Environmentalism. Marriage.

“What is the whole duty of man?” According to Dowd, it’s to discover and participate in the transforming power of the “Great Story” of “Creathism,” Dowd’s word for the marriage of a materialistic, evolutionary, basically pantheistic worldview with all our quests for meaning, improvement and knowledge.

When I first received Thank God for Evolution! to review, I assumed I was going to be reading an attempt to reconcile traditional Christianity with the consensus of modern science regarding the age and history of the universe. Ever since I read Conrad Hyers’ The Meaning of Creation and realized that the Bible wasn’t a science book and its inspiration wasn’t involved in the views of science in ancient cultures, I’ve not lost much sleep over the relationship of religion and science. [Continue reading]

I finally read a book by Leonard Sweet. That’s a pretty big deal for me, as this was something like the fifth one I’ve started, failing to finish -or even get three chapters done in- the other four.

Sweet is a futurist, professor of evangelism, church renewal advocate and sometimes part of the emerging conversation. His background is with the mainlines, but he’s an all purpose evangelical who is easy to read and a rich mine of sermon and teaching material.

The Gospel According to Starbucks is exactly what it says. Sweet takes what he sees as the astonishing success of Starbucks, and uses it as a launch point for looking at important aspects of the Gospel that the church needs to embrace and practice. If you don’t care for that sort of thing, this book won’t excite you. I’m normally in that camp, but this book actually surprised me by holding my interest and saying a lot of Biblically solid things in a fresh and memorable way. It was a “fun” read with plenty of benefits. [Continue reading]

When I first received Neil Livingstone’s book Picturing the Gospel, I flipped through it and said “This won’t be good.” I put it on the bottom of my book pile and didn’t read it for several weeks.

This week, I’ve read the book. Several chapters twice. Not just a good book….it’s an outstanding book. So outstanding that I am going to ask everyone on my campus ministry staff this summer to read the book and participate in a discussion. I may even make it the summer study for my house church.

Livingstone takes the reader on a tour of major Biblical themes expressed as propositional concepts, important words and, of most interest, powerful images. His goal is to equip Christians to use the imagery of the Bible in communication, matching particular aspects of the Biblical presentation of the Gospel with the existential realities in the lives and cultures of those who hear the Gospel. [Continue reading]

Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives. General Editor: Robert Webber. Contributors: Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Padgitt, Karen Ward. Zondervan, 2007.

What is it about the emerging church that makes it so difficult for Christians to talk about it?

Probably because there is no emerging church. There are a collection of pastors, writers, churches and networks that relate to some aspect of the concept of ministering to an emerging postmodern culture. Because of the broad and diverse array of those sources, no one of them can speak for all of them, and many of the most often cited icons of the emerging movement are increasingly speaking for fewer and fewer Christians who use the term emerging in some meaningful way. [Continue reading]

“Roger” is a co-worker who asked several questions about my review of Dr. John MacArthur’s “The Truth War.”

I’d like commenters to suggest good books on postmodernism and the emerging church. Thanks.

Roger asked me for complete definitions of postmodernism and the emerging church.

That’s a lot of reading, listening and work, Roger. There are no shorthand, quickie ways to get all you need to understand the terms and the movements that appropriate them. Let me try and point you in the right direction for your own reading.

The critics of the emerging church have hit the ground early and hard with their own definitions of both of these important terms. I can only ask you to remember what it would be like if Democrats offered three hours of a free seminar called “What is conservativism? and What do Republicans really believe?” Or if Muslims said “Buy our book on what Christians believe.” That’s the same kind of propaganda you will read on the net.

Some critical sources are more careful than others. I believe you can read for yourself and learn a lot. Here’s a quick list. [Continue reading]