1. Texts – The baseline requirement for a Bible app is that it have all the texts that I need. I don’t need ten different English translations on a mobile app. It would be impractical to access them even if I did. What I need is access to the Greek New Testament, the Hebrew Old Testament, and one or two good English translations. You can get all of those and more from Olive Tree. I have on my iPhone the 27th edition of Nestle-Aland, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Rahlf’s LXX, the NASB and the ESV Study Bible. Other resources are listed on the website, and they include study bibles, study tools, academic resources, eBooks, and more. One of the items on my wish list is Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology. You can buy it in the Olive Tree store for $39.96, and it comes bundled with the ESV. You can download the free Olive Tree BibleReader now on OliveTree.com and iTunes, and you can try it out with the assortment of texts that are available for free (e.g., KJV, NET Bible, HCSB, Calvin’s Institutes, Augustine’s Confessions, and many more).

2. Speed – One of the best features of the Olive Tree reader is that it stores all of your texts on your mobile device. Other Bible apps store the resources on their servers, and then you retrieve the data via the 3G network every time you open a new book. Not so with Olive Tree. I have all my texts available on my device whether or not I am online. Because of this, the browsing is much quicker than other apps that make you download content one page at a time.

3. Tagged Morphology – Olive Tree now sells morphologically tagged texts of NA27, BHS, and Rahlf’s LXX. Every word of both the Greek and Hebrew texts is hyperlinked to its own parsing and definition. All you have to do is touch the word. This is a wonderful feature for when you get stuck puzzling over a form.

4. Searching – With the morphologically tagged texts, there comes the possibility of morphologically complex searches. You can look up not only certain words, but certain forms of words. For instance, I can look up every use of the word logos in the New Testament. Or if I needed to, I could look up every instance of logos that is genitive, masculine, plural. It’s really unbelievable what kind of search capability you hold in the palm of your hand with Olive Tree. For a demonstration of Olive Tree’s search capabilities, see the first video below.

5. Interface – The app is really easy to use. Whether toggling between translations or doing searches, it’s a clean user-friendly interface. One of the best features is the split screen, which allows you to have two texts open at once (see second video below). I use the split screen feature every time I use the app. For me, I will have the Greek or Hebrew text open in the top window and an English translation open in the bottom window. When scrolling through one text, the text on the other side of the split screen scrolls along to the same verse.

6. Platforms – You don’t have to have an iPhone to use the Olive Tree BibleReader. It is available on numerous platforms, and the website has a section listing which devices are compatible with this app. You can view the list here.

The Olive Tree Reader is a top-of-the-line product, and I don’t know any other like it. If you love the Bible and are using a smartphone, I highly recommend that you buy the Olive Tree BibleReader. You will be glad that you did.

Disclosure: I purchased the Greek and Hebrew texts, the ESV Study Bible, and the NASB. When I decided to write a review of the Olive Tree software, I received free review copies of the morphology texts. I was not required to write a positive review, and the opinions I have expressed are my own.

“The book documents the recent history of porn, including the technological shifts that have made it accessible on mobile phones, videogames and laptops. According to Dines’s research the prevalence of porn means that men are becoming desensitised to it, and are therefore seeking out ever harsher, more violent and degrading images.”

On every other issue, Gail Dines and I would probably be on opposite sides, but not on this one. She argues that pornography is not an expression of sexual liberation but an instrument of degradation. Pornography corrupts everyone it touches. She writes:

“We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn, and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behaviour and attitudes towards women.”

She’s right about that. But there is one area in which I would respectfully disagree with Ms. Dines. She says that pornography is “the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy.” In other words, she links the degradation of women in pornography to patriarchy. I believe Ms. Dines and other feminists err by making patriarchy (=rule of the father or male leadership) a synonym for abuse. In truth, I would argue that it is the failure of men to lead that makes women vulnerable to this kind of abuse.

Biblical patriarchy is not abusive but strives toward the protection of women and children. The biblical word for it is not patriarchy, but headship. The paradigm for this is Christ himself. The apostle Paul writes,

“³ For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body… ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her… ²⁸ So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; ²⁹ for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of His body.” -Ephesians 5:23-30

The example for how a husband should treat his wife (and thus for how men should treat women in general) is Christ. Christ is head of his bride, the church. He loves her, suffers for her, and even dies for her. He cares for and protects her as he cares for and protects himself. In other words, biblical headship involves male leadership, but it also involves a self-sacrificial giving of oneself for the good of women. It protects them from exploitation and degradation because it cherishes women as fellow heirs of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7).

Biblically speaking, this kind of selfless leadership is the special responsibility of men, and feminism calls men away from this responsibility. When you couple this abdication with feminism’s emphasis on sexual liberation, you can see how feminism as an ideology can be turned into a basis for the sexual exploitation of women. Ironically, this sad consequence is exactly what Dines chronicles in her book, even though she probably wouldn’t concede that points about feminism that I’ve made here.

In any case, the prevalence of pornography in our culture is yet another sad symptom of the spiritual destitution of men in our culture. In particular, it represents the failure of men to be the men that God has called them to be. So pray for the Lord’s mercy and the progress of the gospel in the hearts of men. And, men, let’s be the blessing that God intends for us to be to our wives, daughters, and sisters.

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Julie Bindel, “The Truth About the Porn Industry,” The Guardian (July 2, 2010)

Don’t let the title fool you though. This is not a book of 40 random questions thrown together haphazardly. The book has four parts treating the following topics: (1) text, canon, and translation, (2) interpretation and meaning, (3) biblical genres, and (4) issues in recent discussion. The 40 questions are arranged systematically under these headings. So the questions range from “What is the Bible?” to “Who determines the meaning of a text?” to “How do we interpret poetry” to “What is ‘Speech Act Theory’?” (and a host of others).

There are several reasons that make this book stand-out among other introductory hermeneutics texts.

(1) Its back-to-basics approach – Vince Lombardi used to give his players a remedial lesson at the beginning of each football season: “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Plummer begins this book with that kind of a back-to-basics approach, in essence saying, “Gentlemen, this is the Bible.” In chapter one, he answers the question, “What is the Bible?” Readers find out that it is a collection of 66 books divided into two testaments (old and new). The purpose of the Bible is “to make [a person] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (p. 18). Plummer provides a basic chronology of biblical history as well as many other ground-level facts about the scriptures. Some will think this approach is too basic. But given the great biblical illiteracy of the current day, I would argue that it is not. Most introductory students will need this info—including many who have grown-up in church.

(2) Its Accessibility – Plummer says that his book would serve ideally as a textbook for an introductory Bible course at a college or seminary, but I would argue that this book would be useful to a much broader audience. A person with little or no knowledge of the Bible could read this book and profit, and so could someone who’s been reading the Bible for years. The book contains very readable, non-technical prose that any lay reader could follow. Moreover, the book is organized such that particular topics may be accessed without knowledge of prior chapters (p. 11). So it serves as a valuable FAQ on all things hermeneutical.

(3) Its Christocentric Focus – Plummer adopts a Christological approach to interpreting the Bible. In other words, he believes both Old and New Testaments are about Jesus. He writes, “If we study or teach any part of the Bible without reference to Jesus the Savior, we are not faithful interpreters” (pp. 96-97). Thus Plummer does not commend the divide-and-conquer method of interpretation that is so popular among many professional biblical scholars—an approach that treats the Bible as a polysemous, self-contradicting collection of ancient books. Plummer sees a unified message with Jesus Christ as the focus of divine revelation (p. 151).

(4) Its Author-oriented approach – Plummer rightly eschews text-centered (e.g., New Criticism) and reader-centered (e.g., reader-response) approaches to interpreting texts. Instead he argues that authorial intent is the ground for understanding textual meaning. In doing so, he also argues that God inspired the Bible and assured its inerrancy. He does not affirm a sensus plenior approach to understanding the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament. Instead, he argues that difficult passages such as Matthew 1:23 can be understood typologically while honoring the author’s original intent (pp. 137-139).

(5) Its View of Illumination – Plummer argues that the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential when one interprets the Bible. He rejects a definition of illumination that would make interpreting the Bible a revelatory event. He agrees with Grant Osborne that, “The Spirit enables us to free our minds to the text but does not whisper to us the correct answer” (p. 145). Plummer argues that the noetic effects of sin mar the reader’s ability to understand the Bible. He writes, “The sinful human heart manufactures evidence to justify its distorted perspective. . . the Spirit does not whisper some secret meaning inaccessible to others, but the Spirit does enable us to perceive facts and judge the plausibility of arguments with greater clarity” (p. 146). This to me is the correct way to understand how our minds are ill-suited to understand the Bible apart from the Spirit.

[I'll tweak Plummer on one minor point in this section. I think he too hastily dismisses Daniel Fuller's argument that the Holy Spirit affects only the will in illumination (p. 146). I think Fuller would agree with Plummer's view of the noetic effect of sin and of the Holy Spirit's role in counteracting that effect in interpretation. But this observation is less a substantive critique than it is a difference in our understanding of Fuller's proposal.]

(6) Its Treatment of Genre – The authors of scripture wrote using a variety of different literary types, each of which has its own set of conventions for proper interpretation. The authors of scripture assumed that their readers would be sensitive to these conventions. We cannot, therefore, properly ascertain what an author means without understanding genre. Plummer gives a helpful overview of the different genres found in the Bible and divides his treatment into three sections: shared genres, primarily OT genres, and primarily NT genres. In each chapter he gives keys to interpreting each type.

(7) Its Treatment of Current Hot Topics – Plummer closes his book with a survey of some hermeneutical items in recent discussion among biblical scholars. What does the Bible tell us about the future? What is biblical criticism? What is speech act theory? For me, the most helpful chapter in this section is chapter 39, “What is the Theological Interpretation of Scripture.” This is the best one-stop summary of TIS that I have read. From now on, whenever anyone asks me what TIS is, I will be pointing them to chapter 39 in this book.

Plummer has done a great service to the church in producing this book. It is a wonderful introduction to hermeneutics, and I will be adopting it as a required text in future hermeneutics courses that I teach at Boyce College. But this book is not just for seminary students. Almost any lay person with an interest in learning more about the Bible will benefit from this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

‘Radical is a stirring book that will help many Christians. But not everything here is helpful. Let me highlight a few concerns I have with the book and with the some elements of the larger “get radical, get crazy Christianity” that is increasingly popular with younger evangelicals. I hesitate to mention these concerns because there is so much in the book I agree with and because David does provide caveats here and there to soften the blow of his rhetoric. But people tend to hear what we are most passionate about, and I’m afraid the take-home message from Radical for many people may reinforce some common misconceptions about what it means to be sold-out for Jesus.’

The differences here are real and substantive, but the tone of each of these brothers is as irenic as they come. I found this to be very helpful. Read the rest of DeYoung’s review and Platt’s response here.

When the iPad first came out, Tim Challies gave it a scathing review, calling it “the greatest disappointment in all of human history.” Well, that was then, and this is now. In that earlier review, Challies said that the Kindle did one thing, and it did it better than the iPad. In his latest review, he compares the Kindle with the iPad and says that he will be using the iPad from now on to read books. I think his change of heart is due in no small part to the Kindle for iPad app. Watch the video above, and see if you are ready to drink the Kool-aid too. I think I am.

You’re the man, Tim!

I like this little book mainly because I like the Heidelberg Catechism. DeYoung’s commentary is highly accessible and would be beneficial to any reader interested in learning about the catechism—even the lay-reader with no theological training.

My favorite question and answer from the Catechism is the first, and I close with it.

Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

Gina Welch’s In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church is the narrative of the author’s two-year sojourn in the late Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church (TRBC) in Lynchburg, Virginia. As a life-long liberal atheist, Welch had always regarded evangelicals with an elitist contempt. Uncomfortable with her disdain, she goes undercover and joins the church in order to find out what evangelicals are really like.

At the outset of her project, Welch observes miles of ideological distance between her and the subjects of her study. With respect to Jerry Falwell, she writes, “I considered him a homophobe, a fearmonger, a manipulator, and a misogynist—an alien creature from the most extreme backwater of evangelical culture” (p. 2). Of herself, she says, “I cuss, I drink, and I am not a virgin. I have never believed in God” (p. 2). The distance between her and Falwell represented, she believed, the cultural divide afflicting American culture—the divide between liberals like herself and the evangelical heartland. Evangelicals were pro-life; she was pro-choice. Evangelicals believed in God; she did not. Evangelicals held to myths in order to explain the world, she held to science. Evangelicals were conservative; she was a liberal. Welch came to see that this antipathy formed the basis of many of the most divisive political and social issues of our time. She also saw the divide as the basis for liberal intolerance of evangelicals—a position that she believed to be fundamentally at odds with being liberal. So Welch justifies her undercover operation as an attempt to promote understanding and tolerance between evangelicals and their cultured-despisers. “The collateral damage of going undercover, I thought, was mitigated by the possibility that the enterprise would open channels of understanding writ large between Evangelicals and the rest of us” (p. 9).

Through twenty-eight chapters, Welch tells her compelling story of deceit and discovery. In part one, the author describes going into “The Rabbit Hole,” which is her initiation into the culture of TRBC. She wrestles to master evangelical jargon (e.g., “God told me,” “personal relationship with Jesus”) so that her feigned conversion might appear authentic. She realizes that she will have to walk down an aisle, pray a prayer, and get “saved” in order to get in. So that is exactly what she does. She gets baptized, she takes communion, and she joins the TRBC singles group. All the while, no one at TRBC suspects anything to be amiss with their new “sister.”

In part two, Welsh describes “The Microwave Effect” that began to take her over. Even though she despised evangelical beliefs, she found herself warming up to evangelical believers. In particular, she nurtures a growing admiration for the singles-pastor “Ray,” who becomes a sort of father-figure to her. He’s the real deal, and she knows it. She also forms a close bond with a single woman named “Alice,” who by the end of the book becomes Welch’s best friend at the church. Welch even describes her growing esteem for Falwell himself. She writes, “One look at Jerry Falwell’s life showed that he was no hypocrite: he lived precisely according to the message he preached, bilious as it often was” (p. 169). Against her better judgment, Welch’s esteem for Falwell blossoms into genuine respect and affection:

“Against logic, as a liberal secular Jew, born to a Communist father, raised in Berkeley, educated in the Ivy League—I had been charmed by Jerry Falwell. He was an entertainer. I could have listened to him read an engineering textbook. That was one of the main reasons he had such a large following, I think—he had tremendous charisma, and you had to reason your way out of liking him” (pp. 172-73).

When Falwell dies in 2007, she is astonished to find herself grieving along with the other members of TRBC: “Disturbed by my own sadness, unable to explain the odd couple of my affection for Jerry Falwell and my loathing of his ideals, I drove down to Thomas Road that evening to mourn his death” (p. 167). Throughout this middle section of the book, her affection for the church and its people ironically grows while her belief in its most cherished ideals does not.

In part three, Welch narrates her experience being “Salt and Light” on a mission trip to Alaska with other singles from TRBC. Surprisingly, she ends up preaching the gospel that she hates. She even leads one little girl to pray to receive Christ as her savior. Welch forms deep bonds on this trip with the other missionaries—but especially with Ray and Alice. As a result, the doubts about the morality of her enterprise begin to haunt her. She writes,

“The moment I admitted to myself I was having fun, bonding, I felt turbulent undercurrents of anxiety. Casting my mind forward, I tried to picture my friends’ faces when they found out who I really was. They would think back on this time, remember me laughing with them, sharing gum, developing a catalog of mildly perverted inside jokes. The smiles would drop off their faces. They were going to hate me” (p. 251).

These feelings quickly convert into a resolve to end the deception and to leave the church once and for all. And soon after returning to Lynchburg, that is exactly what she does. But she does so without any explanation to her close friends, Ray and Alice.

In the Epilogue, Welch describes coming clean with the two people she was closest to at TRBC: Ray and Alice. After leaving the church, Welch cuts off all communication with her friends and for months gives them no explanation for her departure. Ray, Alice, and other friends from the church reach out to her, but she rebuffs all their efforts even as she misses them terribly. Finally, Welch decides to reveal herself to them in advance of the release of her book. She wants to be the one to tell them. Both Ray and Alice are surprised and hurt. Nevertheless, they both respond graciously, and Welch admits a continuing friendship with Alice.

********

Welch’s target audience for this book is secularists and elites who display open disdain for evangelicals and their faith. Nevertheless, I think that Evangelicals would do well to read this book. Her journey at TRBC gives Evangelicals a chance to see themselves from an outsider’s perspective. It also gives a glimpse into the thinking of an atheist who is resistant to being evangelized.

I can’t remember the last time I felt more personally vested in reading a book than I was in reading this one. As an evangelical Christian, I am hardly a disinterested observer of her subject matter. Three themes in particular kept my attention throughout reading this book.

1. A View from the Outside

Welch’s outsider’s depiction of Evangelical Christianity is a big part of what makes this book so interesting. She has nothing vested in intra-evangelical controversies, and yet her commentary is often surprisingly insightful. Welch questions, for instance, methods of evangelism that don’t appear to result in genuine conversions.

“How can you know if you’ve saved someone if there’s never follow-up, never counseling, never a progress report?… In other words, aren’t you simply counting the people who prayed the prayer in that instant rather than counting new Christians?… If you’re a Christian you believe all it takes is that instant, as long as you’re sincere. Once you’ve prayed the sinner’s prayer, you’re good to go… It seemed evident that Evangelicals were padding their rosters” (p. 254).

Welch mistakes this “easy believism” as characteristic of all evangelicals. It certainly is not. Nevertheless, her trenchant critique of such approaches is spot-on.

Another example relates to Welch’s description of the emerging church. Welch has no dog in the fight between post-modern/emerging evangelicals and traditionalist ones. And that is what makes her assessment so interesting:

“The emerging church is actually a broad category of formulas designed for inclusiveness” (p. 107).

“The emerging church was the future for born-agains, as it acknowledged that Christians needed to mold to the shape of the world—not the other way around” (p. 118).

Here, her evolutionary view of religion comes into full view. In her mind, the emerging church represents a more secular version of Christianity—an advance over the mythologies of a bygone era. Thus it occupies a position further down the road of humanity’s graduation from religion. In her way of thinking, it’s the only kind of Christianity with a future in modern society.

2. Grapplings with Christian Community and Witness

After leaving TRBC, Welch describes what sounds to have been months of depression. She misses the church and its people terribly. She writes,

“When I started at Thomas Road I expected to go in as a sort of anthropologist. I expected to discover the sociological underpinnings for evangelical wackiness. I never imagined that I would feel a kind of belonging… I missed hearing Ray preach. I really missed my friends. I missed the warmth, the easy smiles people offered me when I walked into the room. I missed singing at the top of my lungs in church. I wanted to be able to go back” (p. 303, 312).

It is in this section of the book that Welch becomes most reflective about the Christian faith that she despises. Her longing for the church drives her to consider what it would be like for her to live as a Christian or, at the very least, what it would be like to keep up the charade for the rest of her life.

“Could I be a Christian woman to a Christian man? Could I hold his hand and my zipper-bagged Bible as we hurried into church together? Could I look at him across a basket of bottomless fries and be content knowing he considered it part of his Christian duty to treat me well? Could I consider it part of my duty to have his children? Maybe I could be like Ray, living on having prayed the prayer, but secretly not really believing it until one day the truth opened and washed over my real life, like a black-and-white movie blooming into Technicolor. And then, could I be satisfied living on the reassurance that God was on my side?

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t work back from who I was or what I believed, and in truth, I didn’t want to. I preferred analysis, reason, and the satisfying realism of hard truths. I didn’t mind leaving some corners of the universe cast in the shadow of ambiguity. Moral structure might have been the key to happiness, but maybe happiness wasn’t the only thing worth unlocking” (p. 304).

In reading this book, I found myself pulling for Welch, even as I was appalled by her deception and manipulation of the members of TRBC. She never comes around to embracing an evangelical point of view, but there are numerous points throughout this book in which shafts of light seem to break through. For instance, at the end of the book, Welch describes hearing Psalm 139 read to her for the first time:

“The beauty of this Psalm unfurled in me like great spools of ribbon. God-love—I felt I finally saw it. Human love was this awkward thing, like the most delicious fish you could ever hope to eat but you had to eat it alive. Sometimes it made you feel desperate and crazed, as though you’d have to become the person to ever have enough of them. But God-love, the love in the psalm, the love in Jesus loves you—that was Mobius strip love, love with no beginning or end, love that was both calm and complete, unflinching in the face of anything you could reveal about yourself. Who wouldn’t want that? I certainly did, especially in that moment—knowing the secrets in my own heart, knowing that they’d be revealed. But wanting it still didn’t make me believe it” (p. 309).

Welch describes other experiences like this one—including countless instances of being impressed by the community of TRBC.

“They seem to have, as I came to appreciate, a kind of bottomless spring that keeps their happiness lush. I started to believe it was perfectly authentic, and I wanted some for myself” (p. 152).

“In some ways I guess I was beginning to act like them, too. I was sunnier, gentler, friendlier to strangers. I didn’t have that infinite pasture of happiness like Evangelicals, but I had a kind of miniature golf course approximation” (p. 187).

“What I envied most about Christians was not the God thing—it was having a community gathering each week, a touchstone for people who share values, a safe place to be frank about your life struggles, a place to be reminded of your moral compass. Having a place to guard against loneliness, to feel there are others like you” (p. 187-88).

Sadly, Welch’s atheism prevents her from tracing this love back to its Source. She prefers secular reason over what she deems to be a desperately unreasonable faith. In the end, she reconciles her loathing of Evangelical belief with her love of Evangelicals in this way:

“So this—this became the basis of my love for Evangelicals: I was going to choose to see the mystical oneness. And once I started to see it that way, loving them wasn’t very hard to do. In some sense these days I’m just as I always was: godless and churchless, sure that when we die, we’re dead. There is no part of me that’s me forever” (p. 317).

3. Struggles with the Morality of Her Quest

Welch understands that her deception is morally suspect, and she tries to justify her dishonesty with an end-justifies-the-means kind of an argument. She writes:

“Are the revelations I’ve gathered about Evangelicals eclipsed by the methods I’ve used to gather them? I don’t think so… If we don’t love Evangelicals, if we don’t make an effort to understand and accept them,… we’ll always be each other’s nemeses” (p. 315).

Welch thinks her story humanizes Evangelicals in such a way that even their cultured despisers won’t have to despise them anymore. In other words, her subterfuge inaugurates new possibilities of tolerance between believers and secularists. For Welch, this possibility justifies her deception. I couldn’t disagree more with her on that point. I wonder if she could live with such a rationale if the shoe were on the other foot and she were the one being investigated by an interloper.

********

Welch paints pictures with her words. She is an outstanding writer, and her book is a delight to read. I could hardly put it down despite the ethical difficulties with her subject matter. One might expect an evangelical reader to be offended by this book. She lied to and manipulated Christians for the sake of a project from which she stood to profit. Her actions were deceptive and hurtful to her friends at TRBC, and her narrative was patronizing at times to her evangelical subjects. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to be angry with her. I’m still praying that she may yet acquiesce to a gospel perspective. The Lord’s arm is not too short to save (Isaiah 59:1), and I am holding out hope that it may yet reach her.

“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don’t agree. The wounds remain. Time—the mind, protecting its sanity—covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.”

I have never known that kind of grief. It is hard to imagine. And I would not dare gainsay her experience. Nevertheless, I am thankful today that there is more to the human story than this.

I have been listening this week to Steven Curtis Chapman’s testimony that this is indeed not the end of the story. His new album “Beauty Will Rise” is a meditation on his family’s experience since the tragic death of his little girl Maria last year. His words are anguished, yet filled with gospel-soaked hope in Christ. In the song “Beauty Will Rise,” he testifies that one day the pain will be gone.

Out of these ashes beauty will rise
And we will dance among the ruins
We will see it with our own eyes
Out of these ashes beauty will rise
For we know joy is coming in the morning
In the morning

I can hear it in the distance
And it’s not too far away
It’s the music and the laughter
Of a wedding and a feast
I can almost feel the hand of God
Reaching for my face to wipe the tears away
You say it’s time to make everything new
Make it all new

There is coming a day when God will make all things new. He will wipe every tear away and grief will be banished forever (Revelation 21:4-5). I am thankful for this gospel truth, and I am thankful to Steven Curtis Chapman for reminding me of it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

“The gospel of Jesus Christ means our families and churches ought to be at the forefront of the adoption of orphans close to home and around the world. . . Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself” (pp. 18-19).

Among other things, Moore shows that Christians bear witness to the gospel in a unique way through adoption. He writes,

“I want to ask what it would mean if our churches and families were known as the people who adopt babies—and toddlers, and children, and teenagers. What if Christians were known, once again, as the people who take orphans and make of them beloved sons and daughters?” (p. 20)

Dr. Moore answers this question by setting the doctrinal issues within the framework of his own experience of adopting two baby boys from Russia. This book is not merely a page-turner; it’s heart-wrencher. You need to read this book. Expect to be changed as you do.

—————————

Dr. Moore will be signing books at the Southern Baptist Convention next week in Louisville, Kentucky. If you are going to be in town, please drop by the booth of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 11-12pm, Monday, June 22. You can meet Dr. Moore, purchase a copy of the book, and have it signed. I hope to see you there.

Citing a Barna study, Whitney laments that many Christian parents rely upon their church almost exclusively for the discipleship of their children. Whitney writes:

“Having your family in a good, Bible-teaching local church is crucial to Christian parenting. But this is not enough for conveying to your children all you want to teach them about God and your beliefs. Moreover, it is unlikely that exposure to the church once or twice a week will impress your children enough with the greatness and glory of God that they will want to pursue Him once they leave home.

“This is why family worship is so important. But even more importantly, God deserves to be worshiped daily in or homes by our families” (pp. 8-9).

To give you an idea of what the rest of the book is about, here’s the table of contents:

Ch. 1 – Family Worship in the Bible
Ch. 2 – Family Worship in Church History
Ch. 3 – The Elements of Family Worship
Ch. 4 – But What If . . . ? [dealing with obstacles to family worship]
Ch. 5 – Start Today

Whitney’s book is not a guilt-trip for men who have failed to lead their family in worship. It’s a practical exhortation to Christians who need some encouragement to get started. It’s never too late.

If you are a pastor, I think it would be worth it to buy Family Worship for all the men of your church. You can buy them in bulk from Don Whitney’s website. For individuals who want the book, I saw a couple of used copies of Family Worship on Amazon.com, but your best bet may still be from Don Whitney’s website.