If the measure of a book that means a lot to me is the amount of topics it provides for writing then Rediscovering God’s Love by Frank Allred must be a very good one. As I read this book I was continually challenged and found myself constantly scribbling down notes about future topics I would like to discuss on my web site.

Frank Allred is a retired Anglican minister and author of How Can I Be Sure and Fix Your Eyes on Jesus. Beyond that I know little about him, except for what he reveals in this, his most recent book.

Twelve Ordinary Men, John MacArthur’s book on the apostles, was a surprise hit. After the book stayed on the bestseller lists for over a year, Thomas Nelson suggested publishing a second volume, this one dealing with some of the best-known women of the Bible. MacArthur accepted the challenge and drew up a long list of possible subjects. “I admit that I chose the twelve women featured here by a completely unscientific process: I weighed their relative importance in biblical history alongside the amount of material I had already developed on each of them as I have taught through various passages of Scripture. Then I chose the twelve women who were most familiar to me.” Twelve Extraordinary Women is not exactly a sequel to MacArthur’s Twelve Ordinary Men, yet it bears many similarities. Like its predecessor (and unlike the majority of MacArthur’s books), Twelve Extraordinary Women is not primarily expository. Instead, it is a series of brief character studies.

As I closed the cover on this book, having read it over the course of several days, I felt a strange disappointment. This book has no 10-step path to success! It has no baseball diamond model for ministry and no acronym-driven program planning guidebook. Nope. It’s just old-fashioned Bible-driven, Spirit-led Christianity. And somehow I let myself feel disappointed by that. I guess I’ve just read too many market-driven, church growth books that make church into a program, defining it in sexy terms and slick marketing. I should have paid more attention to the final page where the authors summarize the book. “The message of this book isn’t about flow charts and outlines. It’s not about fresh metaphors or new growth graphs. It’s about a vision of a whole church deliberately ordered and led so as to facilitate its own edication and ministry…The Deliberate Church is designed to help liberate both leaders and members from the tyranny of popular growth models and church fads” (page 202).

Having written The Cross Centered Life, in which he exhorted believers to keep the gospel the main thing - the central focus of the Christian life - C.J. Mahaney now stops to reflect on Christ’s sacrifice. Christ Our Mediator follows hard on the heels of many similar books timed to coincide with the popularity of The Passion of the Christ. Mahaney begins the book by asserting (correctly, it seems) that a visual presentation of Christ’s crucifixion simply is not enough - we must also be told about the content of the story of the gospel. “The gospel message isn’t visual; it’s truth. It is truth to be believed, not simply a collection of images to be viewed” (page 10). Knowing that many people have seen the how of Christ’s death, Mahaney sets out to bring sense to the why of it.

Most Christians have heard of Reformed theology. Most think they have a good handle on it. But experience has shown me that few really know it as well as they think they do. And that goes for people who claim to be Reformed as much as those who do not. This cannot be said of R.C. Sproul. Not only does Sproul have an amazingly broad but detailed grasp of Reformed theology, but he has also been gifted with the ability to explain complex theology in a way that is both interesting and understandable. That is no common gift.

In this day and age we are presented with book after book telling Christians to embrace the mystery of God, and to emphasize narrative while downplaying exposition. Apparently John Stott never received the memo. Why I Am A Christian is not Blue Like Jazz or a story the Emergent crowd would support. Instead it is a logical, biblical examination of the claims of Christ and the reasons John Stott is a Christian.

The book was inspired by a public address delivered by Bertrand Russell’s in 1927 entitled “Why I Am Not A Christian.” While the book does not directly interact with Russell’s arguments, it does provide the opposite perspective. Through seven chapters Stott provides seven reasons that he is a Christian and an invitation for the reader to join him in the kingdom. Here are the six reasons Stott is a Christian:

Much has been written in recent years about marketing the church. Of all the books I’ve read, both for and against marketing the church, few have been as helpful or as biblical as Selling Out the Church. The authors set out to answer the question of whether the market-drive church can remain Christ’s church. While many proponents of church marketing consider this debate to be over, the authors of this book consider it wide open. “We hope to enable a more robust debate about the wisdom of employing church marketing by articulating as clearly as we can what we take to be its dangers” (page 16). They ask the reader to consider this book “a contribution to what we hope is a churchwide conversation about the identity, character, and mission of the church, and more specifically about the wisdom of employing marketing thinking and practices in the service of that church” (page 17).

Church marketers believe that marketing is a neutral force, in that it shapes only the form of the church while leaving the function alone. Kenneson and Street disagree, for they believe that the convictions that shape marketing are at cross purposes with the convictions of Christians.

Let me be honest up-front. I did not finish this book. I believe it is only the second book, of the 100+ I have reviewed, that I did not complete. I read the first several chapters and was so disgusted by what I was reading that I elected to merely skim the remainder of the book. After all, I’m a busy guy and have an entire shelf of unread books awaiting my attention. Why would I want to waste my time on what is, unfortunately, complete trash?

Escaping The Matrix by Gregory Boyd and Al Larson is, according to the cover, a guide to “setting your mind free to experience real life in Christ.” The reality is that unless Christ requires that we use the latest in pseudo-occult psychological techniques to free our minds, this book will do nothing of the sort. Indeed it cannot, because much of the teaching of this book directly contradicts the Scripture.

“More than at any time in the past, Roman Catholics and evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils. They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements. And many evangelicals are finding the history, tradition and grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church appealing.” While these words, taken from the back cover of The Roman Catholic Controversy were written nearly ten years ago, they are as true today as a decade ago. In the past couple of weeks, following the death of pope John Paul 2, we have seen new evidence of the softening of Protestant attitudes towards Rome. And while it once seemed that anyone who “crossed the Tiber” was turning his back on Rome, this is no longer the case, as many Protestants are turning (or returning, depending on perspective) to the Roman Church. Yet despite those who would downplay the differences between Catholic and Protestant doctrine, and who would seek to join on the common ground, there remain deep and troubling doctrinal divides.

Pursuing God - A Seeker’s Guide is a book for those who are drawn to God and yearn to understand more about Him. Intended as a tool for evangelism, it is written in a warn and conversational style. Over sixty pages, author Jim Elliff, president of Christian Communicators Worldwide, leads the reader through the all-important questions and answers in what is a clear and biblical presentation of the gospel.