Today I’ve got another batch of books that I didn’t review. Life is such that there are lots of great books that I just cannot find the time to read and many other books I’m simply not qualified to review. These books tend to find their way into these round-ups of the ones I received and looked at but for one reason or another just couldn’t review. I list them here in the hopes that at least some of them will be of interest to at least some of you!

Safe: How to Protect Yourself, Your Family, and Your Home by Wayne LaPierre. “This year, hundreds of thousands of American families will face natural and man-made disasters including floods, fires, hurricanes, tornados and more. Millions of adults and children alike will be killed or seriously injured in preventable accidents - family crises that don't have to happen. Millions more will be victimized by criminals, burglars, child predators, identity thieves and scam artists. If you want to take the right steps to prepare and protect the things that are most important to you - your family, your home, your financial future - then you owe to yourself and your family to read this book.” It’s rather an interesting idea, I suppose. This book simply shares ways that you can prepare yourself to be safe from crisis and disaster.

Catholicism: East of Eden by Richard Bennett. “Richard Bennett was born into a devout Roman Catholic home in Dublin Ireland. His early years were spent in Belvedere Jesuit School. Eight years of theological instruction for the priesthood followed under the instruction of the Dominican Order with his formal education culminating in 1964 at the Angelicum University of Rome. As a young priest, Richard (Peter) was assigned to the West Indies. He spent the next twenty-one years in Trinidad, mostly serving as a parish priest applying Roman Catholic teaching to everyday life. After a serious accident in which he nearly lost his life, he began to seriously study the Scriptures. After fourteen years of contrasting the teachings of Rome with biblical truth, he was convicted by the Gospel message through God’s grace alone and in 1986 he formally left the Roman Catholic Church and its priesthood.” This book addresses the 21st century issues of Catholicism and does so with candor, with empathy but, most importantly, with biblical firmness. If you are grappling with Catholicism, this is a good resource to turn to.

Collected Writings on Scripture by D.A. Carson. “God's Word has always had enemies, but in recent years the inspiration and authority of Scripture have been attacked with renewed vigor. Respected scholar D. A. Carson has written widely on the nature of Scripture over the past thirty years, and here presents a timely collection of his work in two parts. In part 1, Carson selects essays written on such themes as how to interpret the Bible, recent developments in the doctrine of Scripture, unity and diversity in the New Testament, and redaction criticism. Presenting a theologically balanced and confessional perspective, Carson defines the terms of a number of debates, critiques interpretive methods and theories, and suggests positive guidelines for future action. Part 2 presents critical reviews of nine books dealing with the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Though substantial in content, Carson's detailed reviews will foster careful thought and perspective in those who are relatively new to the debates surrounding biblical inspiration and authority.”

Let’s start with a trick question. If I were to ask you what connects Lance Armstrong to Arnold Schwarzenegger, how would you respond? If you mumbled something witty about steroids,” I’m afraid you’d be wrong. According to Rhonda Byrne, what connects these two men is that they both harnessed the law of attraction in order to bring about their wildest dreams. They wanted money and fame and success, and wanted it so much that the universe delivered it to them (and not in the shape of a syringe, apparently).

In June of 2007 I wrote a review of Byrne’s The Secret and posted it at this blog. Three years later it remains one of the most-viewed pages, still racking up thousands of page views per month. The book has sold millions of copies and has been translated into 46 languages. It is a worldwide bestseller and one that has spawned many imitators.

The Secret is an introduction to the law of attraction. The law of attraction, which Byrne says is the most powerful law in the universe, states that people experience the logical manifestations of their predominant thoughts, feelings, and words. The law says that your thoughts become things so that your thoughts shape the world around you. You shape your own life and destiny through the power of your mind. The positive things in your life appear through your positive thoughts and feelings and the negative things in your life appear through your negative thoughts and feelings.

The Power is the just-released 2010 follow-up and one that immediately raced to the top of the New York Times list of bestsellers. The problems with the book are too many to catalog in a short review. It is almost mind-boggling how much unsubstantiated and blatantly contradictory nonsense Byrne manages to pack into just 250 pages, many of which contain little more than pictures and out-of-context quotes (from people as diverse as Gandhi and Jesus, Albert Einstein and Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

The book apparently began with a great discovery. Byrne’s great discovery was that in order to receive everything you want, you need to feel love for it. Hence love is the theme of this book. The power behind the law of attraction, it seems, is love. The logic here is a little bit opaque but I think Byrne means to say that the law of attraction is the most powerful law in the universe and love is the most powerful force since it is the force that motivates attraction. When you love something, you draw it to yourself through a kind of universal magnetism. Hence she can say, “Everything you want to be, do, or have comes from love … The positive force of love can create anything good, increase the good things, and change anything negative in your life.”

Did you catch that, young Skywalker? It’s pretty simple—we are all magnets and we draw to ourselves whatever matches our thoughts and feelings. The things we love most are irresistibly drawn to us through a universal law of attraction. It may sound fishy, but it’s been championed by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres before their audiences of millions. And people are lapping this stuff up.

A few months ago my friend Tim Kerr, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Toronto gave me permission to share Take Words With You, a prayer manual he has written. It is a small book that contains over 1600 scripture promises and prayers meant to help God’s people pray more effectively. The promises are arranged around the cross—its purposes and rewards.

Tim recently updated the book to a new edition. It includes a useful defense of why God loves it when we pray his promises back to him and it also includes a guide on how to best use the manual in prayer.

Take Words With You is ideal for printing and using during times of private or corporate prayer. In fact, you’ll see that you can easily print it in 8.5” x 6.5” format and spiral bind it if you so desire. Here is how Tim introduces this little book:

Many years ago I discovered a precious truth regarding prayer: God loves to hear his own words prayed back to him! When a small child crawls up on the lap of their father and says, "Daddy when are you going to take us to the zoo like you promised?" the father smiles and assures his child he has not forgotten and is very much looking forward to doing what he promised (when the time is right). In the same way, our heavenly Father delights to hear us remind him of his promises to us. The Bible is in fact a great big prayer manual that should fill and guide our prayers each and every day.

It is hoped that the many promises of God written here will be prayed back to God in prayer as we seek to enter into God's purposes accomplished for us through Christ's cross. Sometimes we remember the gist of a promise but cannot remember what was said or where it is found in Scripture. This manual has been written to make that process easier by organizing the promises of God by categories and themes.

Click below if you’d like to download it for your own use. Feel free to pass it around or print it as you see fit.

Summer is over and publishers are now preparing to roll out a whole new season of books. Many publishers wait until the fall to release their best books, hoping that the coming Christmas season will lead to increased sales. In the general publishing world this means that we will see new titles by Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, and even George W. Bush (who between them will outsell all Christian authors put together). Even Susan Boyle (yes, that Susan Boyle) is getting in on the act. Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars is another title that is going to be flying off store shelves.

The Christian market will also see a lot of books making noise. I have spent some time combing through publisher catalogs and am going to share with you some of the books I am most looking forward to this fall.

Before we begin, here are a few caveats: Do note that I have not yet read any of these books. I have seen manuscripts for a couple of them, but no more than that. Also, not all publishers maintain a public list of their forthcoming books (though all of them should!) so I may well have missed some exciting titles. Note as well that what I have put within quotes is description provided by the necessarily-biased publishers. Finally, these are all books set to publish between now and the end of 2010. And I think that is enough caveats. Let’s have at it.

Christ Formed in You: The Power of the Gospel for Personal Change by Brian Hedges

I have done quite a bit of thinking about the centrality of the gospel to the Christian life in general and to my life in particular. It has been tough going! I am very much looking forward to having Brian Hedges’ help as I seek to turn thoughts into action. “The central claim in Christ Formed in You is that it is God’s purpose to change us by progressively making us more like Jesus, and that this happens only as we understand and apply the gospel to our lives.” I have thought a lot about the centrality of the gospel and am looking forward to having this book guide me as I attempt to move from thought to action. At the end of the introduction to the book Hedges writes, “In each of these chapters, my aim has been to connect the dots between the gospel, the goal of Christlikeness, and the specific aspect of spirituality under discussion.” That sounds like just the thing! (October 1 | Shepherd Press | Pre-Order)

Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition by James K.A. Smith

“Letters to a Young Calvinist provides pastoral and theological counsel, encouraging converts to and participants in this tradition to find in Calvin a vision that’s even bigger than the New Calvinism might suggest. Noted Reformed philosopher James K. A. Smith contends that much of what traffics under the banner of New Calvinism reduces ‘Reformed’ to a narrow concern with Calvinistic soteriology. Smith introduces New Calvinists to the ‘world-formative’ Christianity that was unleashed with the Reformation, presenting the Reformed tradition as an Augustinian renewal movement within the church catholic. Offering wisdom at the intersection of theology and culture, he also provides pastoral caution about pride and maturity.” I may well be among those who is Reformed more in soteriology than in a well-rounded way, and I am looking forward to being challenged by what “Reformed” means in its historical context. (November 1 | Brazos Press | Pre-Order)

Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People by Calvin R. Stapert

Attending a performance of Messiah is a Christmas tradition I love and I am eagerly anticipating this book which seeks to make that tradition even more enjoyable. “George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah is a phenomenon with no parallel in music history. No other work of music has been so popular for so long. Yet familiarity can sometimes breed indifference -- and even misunderstanding.This book by music expert Calvin Stapert will greatly increase listeners' understanding and appreciation of Handel's majestic Messiah, whether readers are old friends of this remarkable work or have only just discovered its magnificence.” While we are on the subject, have you purchased your Messiah tickets yet? They are probably on sale right now. (September 15 | Eerdmans | Pre-Order)

Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God by John Piper

If you read my blog consistently, you know that I am not one who automatically reads the newest books by John Piper. But in this case I’m very intrigued as the life of the mind is an issue near and dear to me. “John Piper's newest book will help Christians think about thinking. Focusing on the life of the mind helps us to know God better, love him more, and care for the world. Along with an emphasis on emotions and the experience of God, we also need to practice careful thinking about God. Piper contends that "thinking is indispensable on the path to passion for God." So how are we to maintain a healthy balance of mind and heart, thinking and feeling? Piper urges us to think for the glory of God. He demonstrates from Scripture that glorifying God with our minds and hearts is not either-or, but both-and. Thinking carefully about God fuels passion and affections for God. Likewise, Christ-exalting emotion leads to disciplined thinking.” (September 30 | Crossway | Pre-Order)

Last year I wrote a series of articles I titled Sexual Detox (which was subsequently made available in e-book and then printed book format). It was a series that dealt with the effects of pornography and which encouraged men to go through a kind of detox that would rid their minds and hearts of all the junk left there by their exposure to pornography.

While I had expected a lot of feedback on a series that dealt with such a difficult topic, I had not anticipated how many comments and emails would come from women. I passed most of these to my wife who did her best to answer them, mostly by email. All of those emails and the questions they contained formed the starting point for a second series, one directed at women. And now I'm glad to be able to give that to you in e-book format.

False Messages is a book for women. It is written by my wife, Aileen, and seeks to help women, whether wives or wives-to-be, to understand the purpose and the power of sex and sexuality. It encourages them to put away the false messages they have believed about sex and to reorient themselves around the truth. Since God is the one who created sex, he is the one who must direct it.

False Messages is available as a 21-page e-book and is free to download. You are free to print it, email it and distribute it as you see fit.

I have received quite a few books about church planting over the past few months. Among the more interesting have been Church Planting Is for Wimps by Mike McKinley and Discovering Church Planting by J.D. Payne. Fresh off the press is Darrin Patrick’s Church Planter: The Man, The Message, The Mission. Patrick is vice president of the Acts29 Church Planting Network and the founding pastor of the Journey Church in St. Louis. From those vantage points he has seen church planting up-close and personal while also assisting and guiding many other pastors as they have sought to plant churches. He is well-qualified to write about this subject. His book comes highly recommended and is endorsed by a long list of notables.

The book’s contents are divided into three sections: The Man, The Message and The Mission (as you may have guessed). In the first part Patrick describes the kind of man God is looking for, saying that he is to be rescued, called, qualified, dependent, skilled, shepherding and determined. This gives a well-rounded understanding of the kind of character that should mark a man who seeks to step out and plant a church. He covers the biblical qualifications as laid out particularly in the pastoral epistles, but he goes further as well, looking to practical considerations along with other spiritual qualifications.

Yesterday I finished up Nancy Pearcey’s new book Saving Leonardo. Nancy doesn’t write a lot of books, but when she does, they are worth reading. She’s a unique thinker and one who puts into words what for so many of us are just ideas flitting around the edges of our minds. This new book is just like that.

When I finished it up I began to write a review but found that I was having trouble distilling my thoughts. I did something I try not to do, at least until I’ve finished writing my own review—I went looking for what others are saying about it. As I did so, I came across a really good review written by David Steele (who blogs at veritas et lux). David was kind enough to give me permission to simply re-post his review. It nicely captures my own thoughts on Saving Leonardo!

*****

It is time for another of these irregular roundups of books that I didn't review. It's not necessarily that these are bad books or ones I purposely chose not to read and review. It's just that, life being what it is, I cannot read them all. So here are a few that came in this week that I wish I could have read but that I just did not have time for. And here are a couple that I wouldn’t read if you paid me.

The God Who Is There by D.A. Carson. “It can no longer be assumed that most people—or even most Christians—have a basic understanding of the Bible. Many don’t know the difference between the Old and New Testament, and even the more well-known biblical figures are often misunderstood. It is getting harder to talk about Jesus accurately and compellingly because listeners have no proper context with which to understand God’s story of redemption. In this basic introduction to faith, D. A. Carson takes seekers, new Christians, and small groups through the big story of Scripture. He helps readers to know what they believe and why they believe it. The companion leader’s guide helps evangelistic study groups, small groups, and Sunday school classes make the best use of this book in group settings.” It looks like a very useful book. I may well go through it with a small group at some point.

Getting the Reformation Wrong by James R. Payton Jr. “Most students of history know that Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenberg Church door and that John Calvin penned the Institutes of the Christian Religion. However, the Reformation did not unfold in the straightforward, monolithic fashion some may think. It was, in fact, quite a messy affair.” This one looks quite interesting, though I suspect it’s best left to those who have at least some background in church history in general and Reformation history in particular. So I would not recommend making this book your introduction to this period of history. I believe we’ll have a review of this at Discerning Reader before wrong (but someone else called dibs on it!).

The Faithful Parent: A Biblical Guide to Raising a Family by Martha Peace & Stuart W. Scott. “A compelling read, this book offers practical advice and biblical hope to parents of children of all ages. Most parenting books, outright or indirectly, promise a good outcome if you only follow their suggestions. The Faithful Parent contains a wealth of practical, biblically-based suggestions, but it maintains that the most important relationship in any family is vertical--between parents and God. It is the Christian parent, in being faithful, who glorifies God. Look inside to discover how the faithful parent has the biggest impact on his or her children.” It’s not like we are hurting for more books on parenting, but this one comes from two good authors and comes highly recommended by Ted Tripp, Wayne Mack, Lance Quinn and Al Mohler. I appreciate that this book’s emphasis is particularly on drawing your children into a relationship with the Lord.

The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven by Kevin & Alex Malarkey. Don Piper’s 90 Minutes from Heaven has spawned all kinds of imitators and this is the latest and greatest. It’s another book that seems to clash with Scripture but which we are all supposed to just accept because the authors say it’s true. “In 2004, Kevin Malarkey and his six-year-old son, Alex, suffered an horrific car accident. The impact from the crash paralyzed Alex--and medically speaking, it was unlikely that he could survive. "I think Alex has gone to be with Jesus," a friend told the stricken dad. But two months later, Alex awoke from a coma with an incredible story to share. Of events at the accident scene and in the hospital while he was unconscious. Of the angels that took him through the gates of heaven itself. Of the unearthly music that sounded just terrible to a six-year-old. And, most amazing of all … Of meeting and talking to Jesus. The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven is the true story of an ordinary boy's most extraordinary journey. As you see heaven and earth through Alex's eyes, you'll come away with new insights on miracles, life beyond this world, and the power of a father's love.”

A few quick hits:

• Ministry Shall Not Destroy My Marriage by Bishop Ernest and Apostle Laequinla Hunter. Words fail.
• Better for Life: Turning Financial Hardship into Your Finest Hour by Daniel J. Jones. I haven’t looked over it carefully, but there isn’t a whole lot of book here for $22.
• Afterwards I Knew and The Merciful Eye by Christine Farenhorst. These are two collections of fictional stories targeted at teens and tweens and they look quite good.

The Trellis and the Vine was 2009’s surprise hit (read my review). Written by Collin Marshall and Tony Payne, the book described a ministry mind-shift that the authors assured the reader could change everything—everything related to ministry, that is. The book stood upon its simple metaphor of a trellis, an apparatus used to support something, and of a vine, the object that is supported by that trellis. The trellis referred to the administrative work within a church, those tasks that, though important, are not actually directly related to discipling people. Vine work, on the other hand, is those tasks of working with the vine, drawing people into the kingdom through evangelism and then training them to grow in their knowledge of God and their obedience to him. Though the book may not have been groundbreaking, it somehow managed to pull together a lot of ideas and collect them all within this simple metaphor. It was a powerful and effective combination and it sold very well. Even better, it impacted pastors and those engaged in gospel work, helping them better understand the task the Lord has given them.

The follow-up to The Trellis and the Vine is called The Archer and the Arrow. While it comes from Matthias Media, the same publisher, it is written by different authors: Phillip Jensen and Paul Grimmond. Though the volume is co-authored, its purpose is primarily to make Jensen’s “wisdom about preaching available to a wider audience--wisdom acquired over almost four decades of faithful biblical ministry.” I do not know if the book was conceived as a follow-up to The Trellis and the Vine or not, but regardless, it works as a sequel. Where the first book focused on ministry through a wide lens, the second focuses on the essential heart of ministry—the preaching of the gospel.

The book is framed around what the authors describe as the preacher’s mission statement: “My aim is to preach the gospel by prayerfully expounding the Bible to the people God has given me to love.” They break this statement into its component parts and expound it over the course of several chapters. This takes them from the theoretical to the practical, from the purpose of preaching a sermon to the actual delivery of it.

Let me say a word about the book’s title. The metaphor speaks of the archer (the preacher) and the arrow, which is the sermon. Firing the arrow corresponds to the act of preaching. The arrow itself is formed by three parts—the head, the shaft and the feathers. “At the point of the arrowhead is the gospel, the declaration that Jesus is the Lord and Saviour. The cutting edges of the arrowhead are the implications of that reality. This can include things like ethics, philosophy, apologetics, personal godliness and kategoria.” The shaft corresponds to the exegesis of the passage around which a sermon is formed. And the feathers “correspond to issues like systematic theology, biblical theology, church history, philosophy and the like. The feathers are like the big categories of thought that tie the whole message of the Bible together.”

On Tuesday I offered you 5 Reasons Books are Better Than E-Books and on Wednesday 5 Reasons E-Books Are Better Than Books. Today I want to tie up those two posts with a few thoughts on why we need to be very, very careful about moving from the book to the e-book.

Media and Messages

Anyone who studies media or technology must run into Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. These two men were leaders in the field with McLuhan being the teacher and Postman the disciple. If there is anything we have learned from these men it is summed up in McLuhan’s little phrase, “the medium is the message.” What McLuhan sought to show people is that every medium, whether book or television or computer, carries within it some kind of ideology, some kind of idea. He wanted people to see that this, this ideology, is often as important or perhaps even more important than the message the media conveys. Such ideologies predispose us to see and understand the world in one way rather than another. So the content of a news program may be less important than the subtle messages fed to us by the medium of television (which might be that pictures convey truth better than words or that immediacy is virtuous or that information itself, without context or analysis, is inherently good).

While I do not fully follow either McLuhan or Postman, I do think they were correct in this point. There is more to a book than the words it contains; the medium itself is important since it coveys certain truths, certain messages of its own. There is more to a television, more to a computer than the content it carries; the device itself is important. One device or one technology may not be better than another, but certainly they are different because they convey different messages to us.

So the first thing we need to understand is that we cannot neatly separate the medium and the message. In many ways the medium is the message or, at the very least, it contributes to the message.

Goodbye to the Book

For centuries now people have prophesied about the end of the book but such prophets have always proven wrong. They have seen that one media or another would displace the book and have wrongly assumed that these media would replace it. The television drew society away from the book, but it could never carry content like a book and thus never stood a chance of replacing it. It displaced it so that in many cases people gave up books in order to watch television, but it couldn’t ever replace it. Today, though, we have digital devices that can carry text in a digital format and do so with some degree of excellence. Amazon's Kindle, first released in 2007, very quickly rose to prominence and it has been followed by a host of similar devices, selling in the millions. Though the printed book will remain with us for some time, it seems likely that its days are now, finally, numbered.