For All It's Worth

Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity by Matthew Paul Turner Loading our ice cream cones with such flavors as politics, race, hope, hell, and revival , the way people speak about God varies depending on their perspective.  Matthew Paul Turner, in his new book Our Great Big American God, develops this theme as he traces the way ‘God’s American people,’ including the big players of the faith, portray God in light of their own aims.  Turner writes in the prologue, “Because most of us believe, regardless of what we’ve piled atop our two scoops of God, that he – our American God – is good… This is not only a book about God, it is also about God’s people, more specifically, God’s American people” (9).  With witty portrayals of such people as Phoebe Palmer and George Whitefield, sarcasm, and leaning on some excellent scholarship by such people as George Marsden, Turner makes his case that God doesn’t stagnate with the old...

Finishing the Task: How Indigenous Missionaries Are Reaching the Unreached in the 21 st Century by Christian Aid Mission There are many unreached people groups in the world that need to hear and see the love of Jesus Christ poured out to them.  Yet, often the best and most effective way of reaching these people groups is through indigenous missionaries reaching out.  In other words, indigenous missionaries are those that live in the area in which the unreached people group exists.  The people group is their people, they know the culture, customs, and thinking of the group.  In this excellent book entitled Finishing the Task, Christian Aid Mission has gathered up stories of these indigenous missionaries that bear witness to God’s work among unreached people groups. The first chapter focuses on a man named Prem, who served in the Indian army, began to read the Scriptures in the army and converted to the Christian faith.  After being rejected ...

The People, The Land, and the Future of Israel Edited by Darrell Bock and Mitch Glaser This book, edited by Bock and Glaser, includes 17 chapters divided into 4 sections relating the Hebrew Scriptures, New Testament, Hermeneutics, and Practical Theology all centered around the future of Israel.  The authors take various aspects of the future of Israel into account as they ride over the terrain of exegesis, theology, and practical application.  You won’t find a lot of new material here, but there are some good chapters. In particular, Robert Chisholm Jr.’s chapter on Israel According to the Prophets was very good.  In the chapter, Chisholm upholds a view of prophecy of Israel’s future that focuses on fulfillment and contingency.  He writes, “When a prophecy is fulfilled essentially, the main point of the prophecy (its primary intention) is realized with a degree of literality, but some of the accompanying details may not materialize (59).”...

Unquiet Vigil: New and Selected Poems by Paul Quenon, OCSO This new collection of new and selected poems called Unquiet Vigil by Paul Quenon is remarkable in their clarity and vision.  Included in the book are poems from 1996 all the up to new ones.  The What-not poems are Paul’s wrestling with writer’s block and coming out to describe the process on the other end.  Paul writes in the opening lines of the book that “These poems are a circling around silence to see and watch what is heard, a use of words to fin in hearing what is not quite seen.  Writing has been for me, in a broad sense, a way of vigil-keeping, of making the watch something more of my own (5).”  Yet, as the title indicates, there is profound sense of restlessness involved with vigil-keeping. In the second part of the first poem, Gone Missing, Paul brings us to the time when writer’s block hit him in the gut.  He writes,         ...