Series: Reviews

April 19, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Personal Faith and Church Function

By LeRoy Lawson David J. Wolpe, Why Faith Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2008). Kevin G. Ford, Transforming Church: Bringing Out the Good to Get to the Great (Carol Stream: Tyndale House, 2007). While armies duke it out in the Middle East and intellectuals debate it out on college campuses and ordinary blokes like you and me duck for cover and wonder whom to believe, the calm, understated reassurance Rabbi David Wolpe offers is like the balm in Gilead we used to sing about in church. The noted leader of the conservative Sinai Temple in Los Angeles has earned a respectful

March 15, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: For Presiders, Preachers, Prayers, and Other Leaders

By LeRoy Lawson Clinton J. Holloway, Lest We Forget: Meditations at the Meal of Remembrance (Cold Tree Press, 2008). August 2008 featured selections in Christian Standard from this collection by Clinton Holloway of meditations on the Lord”s Supper. This helpful book responds to a need many a presider feels when trying to offer a fresh thought before the worshipers partake. Some of Holloway”s offerings are refreshingly original, others more predictable, and yet others will spark your own imagination. Each focuses our attention on the reason for our worship. And, to one who has sat through””and even been guilty of presenting””sometimes

February 15, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Wisdom from a Hayseed”s Hayseed

By LeRoy Lawson Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays (Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005). Sometimes when life gets too complicated you just need to sit a spell with somebody who doesn”t need to keep up, who looks askance at modern society”s frenetic pace and, drawing a grateful breath of unpolluted air, simply can”t be bothered trying to be cool. That someone is Wendell Berry. This Kentucky gentleman farmer/poet/philosopher and author of more than 30 books is a hayseed”s hayseed. His fictional Port William, Kentucky, like William Faulkner”s fictional Yoknapatawpha County and Garrison Keillor”s fictional Lake Wobegon, reminds me

January 11, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Economic Dangers and Dirty Hands

By LeRoy Lawson David M. Smick, The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy (New York: Portfolio/Penguin Group, 2008). Timing is everything, says the old saw, and David Smick has proof of it. Urged on by his prescient agent, Smick had his book on the stands by September 2008, just in time to explain the impending financial disaster to noneconomists like me. His ruling metaphor is simplicity itself: Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) may think the globalized economy has flattened the world (and it has), but we forget at our own peril that it is also curved.

December 7, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: In God”s Defense

By LeRoy Lawson “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,” the very obviously alive Mark Twain loved to quip. Reporting on God”s death has also been exaggerated. In1966, for example, Time blackened its April 8 cover to feature the death of God. Theologians like William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer had gravely delivered the eulogy in learned disquisitions. God would be missed, but we could manage without him, they assured us. Now in the 21st century along come Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Daniel Dennett (A Natural Phenomenon), and Christopher Hitchens

November 9, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Returning from the Dark Side

By LeRoy Lawson Both of these books are written by pastors who have been to the dark side””and came back to tell their stories. Gordon MacDonald, The Life God Blesses (Thomas Nelson, 1994). Gordon MacDonald is one of evangelicalism”s most respected leaders. Chairman of this and editor of that, he frequently speaks for conferences around the globe and, when he has nothing else to do, keeps on cranking out his helpful columns and books. The Life God Blesses is not his latest and may not be rated as his best (Ordering Your Private World usually is), but when Ben Cachiaras

October 12, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: China: Refreshing, Intriguing, Confusing, Unsettling

By LeRoy Lawson Rob Gifford, China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power (New York: Random House, 2007). Rob Gifford, National Public Radio”s China correspondent, closed out his six-year tour of duty there by sending his family off to London ahead of him, stuffing his backpack, and setting out to explore Route 312 (the old Silk Road, treasured today like America”s Route 66) from Shanghai in the east to Korgaz at the Kazakhstan border in the west, a trek of more than 3,000 miles. Along the way he took in the contrasts and conundrums that define contemporary

September 14, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Five by Oliver Sacks, MD

By LeRoy Lawson Awakenings (New York: Vintage Books, 1990 [originally published in 1973]). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York: Touchstone, 1998). Seeing Voices (New York: Vintage Books, 2000). An Anthropologist on Mars (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). I first met Dr. Oliver Sacks in his book of essays, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Who could resist such a title? Especially a lover of Dr. Seuss”s The Cat in the Hat. You don”t turn to Dr. Sacks to learn

August 10, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Defending Our Faith, Holding Our Attention

By LeRoy Lawson C. S. Lewis left some big shoes to fill. When I was a young man struggling to define my faith, Lewis”s rational, commonsensical explanations of Christian doctrine gave me tools I have used ever since. Like so many others, I am his debtor. To this day Surprised by Joy, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, A Grief Observed, Miracles, The Four Loves, and of course Mere Christianity (to say nothing of his classic children”s works) resonate with thinking Christians everywhere. As a child of the Christian church, I especially appreciated and benefited

July 13, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Insights Into the Middle East

By LeRoy Lawson In 2007 I made my first journey to post-monarchy, post-Russian occupation, post-mujahadeen civil war, post-Taliban atrocities, post-American-occupied Afghanistan. I haven”t fully recovered yet. It reminded me of an earlier visit to civil-war-torn Eastern Congo. My traveling group was told then that seven identifiable groups in Congo were shooting at each other. Whether they were hitting their ostensible targets was questionable; what was beyond question was their devastating success in wiping out any effective government, any viable economy, any visible hope for the people. I usually return from a developing country discouraged; from Congo I came away angry.

June 8, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Beyond Normal

By LeRoy Lawson Today”s preacher has to be able to do much more than talk. He is not unlike an orchestra conductor creating beautiful sermonic music, pointing now to the lighting technicians, waving at the sound man, calling in the computer operator, relying on the prep work of the graphics personnel and creative artists, and weaving in TV and movie clips to present a harmonious worship experience that inspires the congregation and, it is hoped, pleases God. It is not now as it was in days of yore. We had then, instead, to rely on words: uttered, quoted, organized, explained,

May 4, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Looking for God

By Leroy Lawson The Best American Spiritual Writing 2007, ed. Philip Zaleski (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). The title raises several questions, doesn”t it? What exactly is “spiritual” writing? How do you decide what”s the best? And who is qualified to say? Philip Zaleski”s anthology doesn”t answer. The literary range is wide: essays, poetry, meditations, biographies. The sources are varied: Buddhism, Christianity, atheism, New Age, Islam, and to be determined. The quality is, as you would expect, uneven. But the reader who perseveres to the end will be rewarded, for there, in the penultimate selection, is Garry Wills objecting

April 13, 2008

Christian Standard

Mega Myth Busters: A review of “Beyond Megachurch Myths”

By Dick Alexander Before we get started, could I ask a favor? Could we check our egos at the door? It”s hard to discuss the subject of megachurches without egos getting in the way. Whether it”s a megachurch pastor who is tired of criticism for the church being big, or a minister of a smaller church or a college or seminary president or professor who is at some level jealous of the attention the megachurch receives, defensiveness is not a fruit of the Spirit. In Beyond Megachurch Myths (Jossey-Bass, 2007), Scott Thumma and Dave Travis help all of us see

April 13, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Little Things Mean a Lot

By LeRoy Lawson In his book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow”s Big Changes (Twelve, 2007), Mark Penn argues that if you”re serious about trying to figure out where in the world we”re going, you have to look at the little things. Specifically, you need to check out 75 trends still too small to capture the headlines but big enough to reach the front page before long. I can”t list all of them here, but let me give you some samples. But before I do, here”s a pretty good motive for paying attention. “If Islamic terrorists were to convince even

March 16, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Taking Film Seriously

By LeRoy Lawson ________ Five Books About Film Written by Christians Finding God in the Movies, by Catherine M. Barsotti and Robert K. Johnston (Baker Books, 2004) ReViewing the Movies, by Peter Fraser and Vernon Edwin Neal (Crossway Books, 2000) Reel Spirituality, second edition, by Robert K. Johnston (Baker Academic, 2006) Faith and Film, by Edward N. McNulty (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) Through a Screen Darkly, by Jeffrey Overstreet (Regal, 2007)     When television was new and commercial films were viewed with deep suspicion by all right-thinking, Bible-believing Christians, the young idealist I was then would never have

February 17, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Connecting Our World, Reaching Our World

By LeRoy Lawson A good book can have quite unintended consequences. Thomas Friedman”s The World Is Flat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) is not a book on missions. It is, flatly stated, a stimulating, prejudice-shattering study of global economics. America”s reign as the sole superpower, defining “business as usual” as whatever advances American interests at whatever cost to other nations, is over. The revolution now underway is as mind-boggling as the Copernican discovery that the world is not flat. Only this time, we round-earthers must accept the fact that economically, it is. It”s no longer “business as usual” time for

January 13, 2008

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Not Your High School”s History

By LeRoy Lawson The problem with history is that it doesn”t sit still. The older I grow the more it changes. Many of my public school history lessons have flunked the tests of time. If you want to retain confidence in your high school grasp of the past, this one thing you must do: Stop reading. Or at least stop reading history. The Rest of the Story Here is the first book to put on your list of books not to read: James W. Loewen”s Lies My Teacher Told Me (Touchstone, 1996). As you can tell from the date, I

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