I recently received a copy of Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear, by Max Lucado for review. As the title suggests, Lucado employs his warm narrative approach to encourage readers to break free from their fears and live faith-filled lives in Christ.
In order to do this, though, we must first recognize and identify how great a hold fear has on many of our lives. As Lucado writes in the first chapter:
I was deeply disappointed to learn (via Eugene Cho’s blog) that Zondervan will no longer continue to publish the TNIV translation of the Bible. I have been using the TNIV in my personal Bible reading and in preaching & teaching in our church community – I am sad both to see the TNIV discontinued and the way in which Zondervan is handling it.
Hey friends, must be a busy week here in the home office because we’ve got two — yes, count them, two — Friday Freebies in one week!
Some of our friends here in SD who run a great business called Christian Audio are offering a free download of Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love during the month of July.
Francis has been a featured speaker at many Passion events and is the teaching pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Southern California. Francis is an engaging, challenging, passionate speaker — in the written version of Crazy Love, I keep hearing his preaching voice. In that sense, I think the audiobook version might communicate the message of his book more clearly.
The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity by Soong-Chan Rah, opens the door to hard conversations that we, as followers of Jesus, must no longer avoid. Talking about race, reconciliation and idolatrous captivity of the church is uncomfortable but, if we are serious about redemption (both within and through the church) we must engage these sensitive issues.
I am increasingly exasperated by those who write off Soong-Chan as an “angry Asian man,” and nothing more. In the introduction, Soong-Chan explains:
There are portions of the book that are intended to provoke. There may be times when the reader may react with anger, derision, defensiveness and so forth. But as you read through the major arguments of this book, I hope you will find my deepest concern for the church, the body of Christ… The true intention of the book is to bring reconciliation and renewal to the church in America.
I’ve heard Charles Lee say that, while Erwin McManus is the face of Mosaic, Eric Bryant is the behind-the-scenes guy who makes it happen there.
In the audiobook version of his book, Peppermint-Filled Pinatas, Eric shares from his life, family and ministry experience with humor and grace. A quick aside: Eric narrates his own audiobook, which is a nice touch given the number of personal anecdotes and stories he shares.
headsparks* 