Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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I love Bible commentaries and must own a couple hundred of them by now. This may be a bit of an irrational love since I am not a preacher and am only rarely asked to preach. Still, while growing a collection has involved some effort and some expense, there have been many occasions when I’ve been grateful to have them available to me whether that’s in preparing a conference talk or in writing a book or even in preparing the …
One of the happier musical developments in the Christian world over the past few years has been the resurgence of hymns. Though there are many contemporary worship songs that have excellent content and are ideal for congregational worship, we just can’t afford to lose the hymn. There are two different kinds of contemporary hymn. In the first place, we have artists writing new hymns that come complete with new tunes. Alongside that we have artists who are finding old hymns …
I have a soft spot for series of short books that address issues in a straightforward, condensed way (see Little Black Books and Living in a Fallen World for others). There are times to read a 500-page tome on a subject and there are times when it is great to read something much shorter and much more to-the-point. R.C. Sproul’s Crucial Questions series is just this kind of a resource. There are currently 8 titles in the series, each of …
Moms in Touch is a ministry I’m very, very excited about. And I want you to be excited about it too. In fact, I want to encourage you to read to the end of this post and then to take action. I first encountered Moms in Touch at the 2008 True Woman conference. I did not have a lot of time to investigate it, but was really impressed with the little I did see. Last weekend as I was in …
Little Black Books is a new series of short volumes written by Scott Petty and published by Matthias Media. This is “a new series of books that get straight to the point on the topics that Christians always have questions about. Not too big, not too fancy, and not at all boring. LBBs are ideal for young Christians (ages 14-20+), but speak biblical truths applicable to any age range.” Scott is a youth minister at Christ Church St Ives in …
Ministering the Master’s Way is a unique little series published by DayOne. It is a series that knows exactly the audience it is trying to reach–the pastor or elder of the local church. Each of the books looks to a different practical aspect of the Christian ministry. Many of the titles deal with very niche topics, but ones that are largely untouched by any other author–visiting the sick, accepting a call to minister at a local church, offering pastoral comfort …
In the past couple of weeks we’ve seen two new festschrifts (books honoring a respected individual) presented to well-known Reformed leaders–one of them a new Calvinist (perhaps even the new Calvinist) and the other part of the old guard. For the Fame of God’s Name For the Fame of God’s Name is a collection of essays in honor of John Piper. The contributions come from a wide number of respected friends and theologians. Here is the table of contents: A …
Over the past few weeks (since I submitted the first draft of my book and got that elephant off my back!) I have been trying to spend a little bit more time with the blog. One of the ways this has manifested itself is with articles that draw attention to outside resources–book series, resources dealing with a particular topic, and news related to this site. In other words, posts like these ones: Journibles Becoming a Better Listener Living in a …
What happens when you smash a Bible together with a journal? You get a Journible (get it?). What’s a Journible? Well, essentially it’s a Bible study tool. It’s a book, rather like a journal, with a place to write a Scripture text on the right leaf and a place to write notes and observations on the left. It’s rather difficult to describe, so let me turn to the official description to see if they can do better. The Journible™ series …
As Christians we sit through a lot of sermons. The preaching ministry is one of God’s greatest means of grace to us, the means by which he teaches us truth, by which he calls us to pursue truth and to live out of it. And yet many of us are passive listeners, people who expect great preaching skill from the pastor but demand no listening skill from ourselves. Lately I have come across a few resources dedicated to helping Christians …