Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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I didn’t actually intend to review this book. It showed up at my door and a brief glance turned into a quick skim turned into a full read turned into a review. As a committed reader always looking for something new and interesting, I just love it when that happens. There is a new religious movement alive today that is gaining momentum and claiming followers. Like so many movements before it, it began in the United States and has since …
You may love him, you may hate him, but you’ve definitely heard of him and you’ve undoubtedly got an opinion about him. Mark Driscoll is pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, co-founder of the Acts 29 Network, and the author of several bestselling books. The newest of these books may well prove the most controversial. A Call to Resurgence poses this question: Will Christianity have a funeral or a future? This is a book about the past, the present …
Pressure can be an amazingly destructive force. When pressure builds up inside the earth’s crust, it can result in a devastating earthquake. But pressure can also be beneficial. We would not have running water with it; neither would be able to enjoy the beauty of diamonds. Pressure, with its possibilities of benefit or destruction, is the metaphor at the heart of a new book by J.D. Payne. Pressure Points lays out twelve of the global issues shaping the face of …
I enjoy reading thematically–following a certain theme through a variety of books. Recently I noticed that some of today’s most popular Christian mega-pastor authors had released new books and I thought I’d work my way through that list. The list includes new titles by Francis Chan, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald and David Platt. Not surprisingly, the books and their authors are all tightly connected. Driscoll and MacDonald endorse Chandler’s book; Chandler and Driscoll return the favor in MacDonald’s …
Here is another roundup of 30 Minute Reviews. These are books that I did not have time or opportunity to read from beginning to end. Instead, I tried to spend at least 30 minutes with each–enough to get a bit of a sense of what the book is all about. The Mighty Weakness of John Knox by Douglas Bond – This book marks the third volume in The Long Line of Godly Men Prolifes–a series that accompanies Steven Lawson’s A Long Line …
There are some books that find their strength in saying new things–the original thoughts or perspectives we’ve simply never heard before. There are other books that find their strength in saying old things–things we’ve heard before but just need to hear again, whether that’s because of lack of faith or lack of memory or just because every time something is said it’s said in a different way. Jonathan Leeman’s new book Reverberation: How God’s Word Brings Light, Freedom, and Action …
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 …
As Christians we (rightly!) have high expectations of our pastors as they preach the Word of God. We expect that that they will dedicate themselves to studying and understanding the Bible, that they will live lives marked by their commitment to holiness, that they will expend the effort necessary to craft Gospel-centered, Spirit-empowered sermons. In short, we expect that they will come to the pulpit prepared, having dedicated themselves to the task they’ve been called to. How odd it is, …
When was the last time you read a book about reading? Maybe you have read Adler’s How to Read a Book or another like it. When was the last time you read a book about reading Scripture? Maybe you have read a book about how to do better personal devotions and have found there some ideas about reading Scripture in a more effective way. But when was the last time you read a book about the public reading of Scripture …
Those of us who are Western Christians continue to hear reports that the church is migrating to the south and to the east–that as our nations increasingly turn their collective backs on God, God begins fresh work in other parts of the world. Says Mark Noll in his new book The New Shape of World Christianity, “It is as if the globe had been turned upside down and sideways. A few short decades ago, Christian believers were concentrated in the …