Posted: 6/23/06
Book reviews
Renewing the City: Reflections on Community Development and Urban Renewal by Robert D. Lupton (Inter Varsity Press)
Robert Lupton’s Renewing the City is a thought-provoking volume combining biblical insight with the challenge of community development and urban renewal.
Lupton tells the ancient story found in the book of Nehemiah. His storytelling is patterned after the Jewish tradition of Midrash. Lupton describes Midrash as “a combination of commentary, parable and poetic imagination.” He uses the first part of the book to tell the story of Nehemiah in a way that is engaging and entertaining.
The second part of Lupton’s book is devoted to community development and urban renewal. Lupton is not content simply to tell the story of Nehemiah, allowing its lessons to hover as concepts completely divorced from any particular context or present-day challenge. Instead, Lupton takes concepts from the Nehemiah story and challenges the reader to apply them to real-life urban situations.
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Reader beware! If one is looking for simplistic, black-and-white answers to the problem of the inner city, this is not the book for you. However, if you genuinely desire to struggle at the intersection of the biblical witness and real-life urban challenges, this is a book for you.
Kyle Reese, pastor
Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church
Jacksonville, Fla.
Dinner With a Perfect Stranger: An Invitation Worth Considering by David Gregory (WaterBook Press)
If you know someone who hasn’t yet come to faith in Christ, give this hundred pages to him or her. Light reading, but the book imagines what a restaurant dinner with Jesus would be. A contemporary visit that reflects his warm, insightful personality in the Gospels. After dessert, he hands his guest his business card!
Bob Beck
Fort Worth
Second Calling: Finding Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life by Dale Hanson Bourke (Integrity Publishers)
If you are a woman who has sensed God might be whispering to you deep inside—longing to have a moment of your attention—this book is timely. Using the Old Testament character Naomi as a middle-aged example of how to live passionately and purposefully, Bourke explains what it means to invest fully in your “second calling”—one that is a holy calling rather than dictated by others.
By sharing personal lessons learned, Bourke encourages women in or approaching the second half of life. She states unmistakably the one thing that “is our passport to the greatest adventure of our lives.” I’m not going to spoil things by revealing it. Suffice it to say, through Bourke’s urging you will understand what it is you must learn to do if you do nothing else in the second half of life.
Second Calling is a quick read, earnestly written with sensible suggestions—a book benefiting women aged 40 to 60 as well as women’s groups. If you are at a place of wondering, “What’s next?” pick it up and read it.
Sheri Pattillo, planning & projects manager
Partners in Ministry
Kerrville
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