Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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I am amazingly (and perhaps blessedly) naive when it comes to certain aspects of the spiritual battle that wages all around us. We know from Scripture that there is a constant spiritual battle being fought in this world, with human beings the bounty. We know that there is more to the world than what we can see – that angels and demons are real and are present. We do not clearly understand how they operate or even where they are, …
Famine in the Land opens with a quote from the great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones. “The most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is the greatest need of the world also.” Author Steven Lawson continues, “If the doctor’s diagnosis is correct, and this writer believes it is, then a return to preaching – true preaching, biblical preaching, expository preaching – is the greatest …
I can’t deny that was a little apprehensive about this book before I began it, even though I had not read any detailed reviews and had little idea of the content. Just a few days before I began reading I had seem an interview with the author, Donald Miller, in “The Door Magazine” in which he had been terribly sarcastic and quite crude (judging by the number of words that had to be “blanked” out). It left me with an …
Have you ever noticed that when someone says, “Don’t look at that!” you immediately look at it? I remember as a kid I used to delight in finding something gross and rotten and disgusting and showing it off to my friends, seeing who would flinch first as we dug around with sticks inside some rotten carcass. Perhaps I was a disturbed child but I don’t think my experiences were unusual. After all, there are any number of web sites that …
I did not know what to expect from Stealing Sheep. The book was recommended to me and I purchased it sight-unseen. All I knew of its content was the subtitle: “The Church’s Hidden Problems with Transfer Growth.” I assumed this was a book written by an author opposed to the church growth movement who would be offering one more proof as to why this movement was unbiblical. William Chadwick is no opponent of the church growth movement. Instead, he is …
Too often, when Christians discuss worship, they go little further than arguments about styles of music. The “worship wars” that have plagued the modern church are a prime example of this. Many churches have fallen apart and many Christians have been deeply hurt over styles of music. Churches that have sought to be progressive and contemporary have often done away with hymns, throwing away hundreds of years of Christian tradition in the process. Other churches have refused to sing any …
When I read and review a book I attempt to do so as objectively as possible. After all, each book should be taken on its own merits. It is not entirely fair to cast presuppositions gained from previous books onto an author’s later works. It is not unusual for an author to come to better or worse understandings as his life progresses. A person whose theology once seemed rock-solid, could, unfortunately, write a book later in life that seemed to …
The Passion of Jesus Christ was rushed to press in time to be available for the release of Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. The book sold some two million copies, though many of these were through a promotion that provided the book at cost when purchased in bulk. Many churches gave the book to those who expressed interest in learning more about Jesus in the aftermath of the movie. Those who are familiar with my book reviews …
I have never much enjoyed art galleries. This may be a little-known fact, but I am color-blind, and I’m sure this explains why art has never had much appeal to me. After all, if I see reds, greens and browns all as shades of brown, surely art is far less appealing to me than to those whose eyes work as they were meant to. But I remember one time when I was a teenager, my family travelled to Washington, D.C. …
Reformed: What it Means, Why it Matters is a concise, entry-level introduction to the distinctives of Reformed Christianity. It is intended to be a guide for inquirers who are seeking direction for which church to attend, for new Christians who are surveying the different traditions within Christianity and anyone else who has questions about the Reformed faith. In just four chapters and 71 pages, Robert De Moor seeks to introduce these Reformed distinctives. Unfortunately, the book takes a misstep right …