Tempered Resilience: How Leaders are Formed in the Crucible of Change

By Tod Bolsinger (InterVarsity Press)

Written during a year of considerable social, political and economic strain, Tod Bolsinger’s second book on adaptive leadership, Tempered Resilience, is a gift to those leaders who have faced significant resistance and/or sabotage over the last year, and who are ready and willing to be formed for longer-lasting ministry.

To depict resilience, Bolsinger turns to the metaphor of forging steel. Anyone who has seen the History Channel’s “Forged in Fire”—or who has forged their own metal tools or art—will appreciate how Bolsinger aligns the formation of a leader with the shaping of metal. Comparing leadership formation to the heating, holding, hammering and hewing of the forging process is an evocative picture of the leader’s life. Key to this metaphor is the leader remembering he or she becomes a leader in the midst of leading.

Bolsinger’s second book on leadership follows his well-received debut, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory. Rather than technical solutions to technical problems, both books focus on the internal work leaders need to do to overcome the anxiety of uncertainty, leaning heavily on The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow.

Tempered Resilience builds on Edwin Friedman’s Failure of Nerve and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ Lessons in Leadership. Friedman’s phrase “failure of nerve” diagnoses a person’s anxious response to others. To that failure, Bolsinger adds “failure of heart,” which is a burned-out leader’s coldness toward others. To avoid these failures when change efforts are met with resistance or sabotage, a leader must become resilient, able to get back up when knocked down.

With all that is good about Tempered Resilience, one section in Chapter Seven needs further development. In light of the intensified racial tension in our country, communities and churches during 2020, the personal example of managing reactivity is too short. It easily could have been a case study for the entire chapter.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor

Baptist Standard

Praying with Our Feet: Pursuing Justice and Healing on the Streets

By Lindsey Krinks (Brazos Press)

Lindsey Krinks, street chaplain and co-founder of Open Table Nashville, tells the stories of unhoused people—her preferred term over “the homeless”—by inviting readers into her own deeply personal spiritual journey. Brought up in a conservative Church of Christ congregation, she grew frustrated with those who told her ministry had to be done within a conventional structure, but she shouldn’t worry about it anyway, because vocational ministry was reserved exclusively for men.

In time, she responded to a sense of calling to minister among those who lived on society’s margins and to speak on their behalf. As she tells it, she felt drawn to ministry among the unhoused not because she had something to offer or wanted to provide all the answers to their problems. Rather, she writes: “I was drawn there because I had something to receive, something to learn. I was drawn there because that is where I found God moving most tangibly.”

Krinks offers an intimate account of her doubts and fears, her weaknesses and her personal struggles. Along the way, she lovingly introduces us to a colorful cast of characters who have made her life whole. Krinks writes with the blunt earthiness of the Hebrew prophets, giving readers an honest look at life on the streets.

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard

The Mad Cash Dash 

By Art Rainer (B&H Kids)

Money matters, and money especially matters in helping children learn balance and the importance of giving and saving. To help instill a healthy Christian view in young readers, Art Rainer has created the Secret Slide Money Club series of chapter books for children in grades 1-4. The second in the series, The Mad Cash Dash, builds on lessons in The Great Lemonade Stand Standoff.

In the story, Brody, Sophia and Jake have completed the first of three challenges to become official Secret Slide Money Club agents who rescue classmates from the evil Albatross who turns children into smelly Albies. The “really cool and smart kids” realize in art class that their friend Kate smells like “dirty … wet … socks” and wants to purchase Pretty and Plus Ponies to add to her hundred-plus collection.

Sure enough, Agent G.B. calls the three to enter the Secret Slide Money Club by pushing GIVE-SAVE-LIVE buttons in order. He shows them Kate has just bought three more ponies and doesn’t follow the Master’s Money Plan. After explaining the working ants in Proverbs 6:6-8, the future agents receive their assignment: Help Kate learn to give and save before her bracelet glows red, the sign of Albatross control.

The mission leads them to help Kate earn money raking leaves, sweeping sidewalks and pulling weeds. However, mischievous Albies interfere by shaking trees, splashing mud balls and making a muddy mess. Jake, Sophia and Brody ultimately help their friend figure out how to put aside 10 percent to give and the rest to save. Soon, the smell of “dirty … wet … socks” disappears, and the three are ready for their final challenge.

Like Kate, girls and boys who read The Mad Cash Dash adventure will learn how to make good money choices. Breaks in the book add interest, and the story ends with a personal giving challenge. The fun characters bring lots of laughter and offer easy-to-remember lessons like the one from the ants and GIVE-SAVE-LIVE. Stay tuned for the final book in the series.

Tucker Joseph Hillman, age 10, with his grandmother

Kathy Robinson Hillman, past president

Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco

The Gravity of Joy: A Story of Being Lost and Found

By Angela Williams Gorrell (Eerdmans)

How would you respond to the death of three family members over the course of a few weeks? Angela Gorrell, assistant professor of practical theology at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary, describes vividly her own experience losing a family member to suicide, her father to opioid addiction, and her young nephew to sudden cardiac arrest—all in the span of a few weeks.

Ironically, Gorrell endured these family tragedies just as she began studying joy and teaching about a life worth living at Yale University. When she was supposed to be at the top of the mountain, she found herself in the depths of hell. While leading a regular Bible study group for women in prison, Gorrell discovered joy, but not without more pain. As she ministered to and with incarcerated women, she learned of lives loaded with suffering.

Gorrell’s telling of her sorrow—and others’—is true to life. The telling, as with lived suffering, takes longer than any of us think we can bear up under the pain, leaving the reader tempted to quit reading too soon. Indeed, the stories Gorrell shares testify of trauma and despair and ought to be approached carefully. She devotes a considerable amount of the book to descriptions of drug addiction and despair leading to suicide.

The reader who endures will find Gorrell’s source of joy in what she calls God’s “withness and witness,” which she found coexisting with sorrow. The book culminates in the final chapter with Gorrell’s full description of joy, as well as its cultivation and sharing.

The Gravity of Joy, expected in March 2021, is a quick and captivating read with the flavor of a personal journal, not a theological treatise. Throughout Gorrell’s personal narrative are sprinkled thought-provoking theological, psychological, social, biblical and spiritual reflections.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher, editor
Baptist Standard

How (Not) to Read the Bible:

Making Sense of the Anti-Women, Anti-Science, Pro-Violence, Pro-Slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

By Dan Kimball (Zondervan)

Dan Kimball, a prominent voice in the Emerging Church movement, grapples in his latest book with what he sees as a growing trend—using the Bible to discredit the Bible.

Memes and websites frequently make much of strange or controversial verses in the Bible, leading many to view Christianity and its adherents as unbelievable. Kimball seeks to engage people unfamiliar with the Bible, to take them seriously, and to help them read the Bible more accurately. How (Not) to Read the Bible encapsulates that effort.

Kimball takes on simple things like unicorns and footballs, and more complicated and thorny issues like God permitting slavery in the Mosaic law, calls for brutal violence—even against children—and treatment of women as property. He contends Christians don’t have the option anymore to ignore these topics in the Bible. They must examine the Bible’s difficult passages and form a ready response to questions about them.

Lest someone be concerned about Kimball’s view of Scripture, he states his position early and plainly, that “every word in the original documents of the Bible is exactly what God wanted it to say.” He also starts with “four facts about how to read and how not to read the Bible.”

When reading the Bible, a person must remember the Bible is a library of books, rather than a single book. It is “written for us, but not to us.” Furthermore, “never read [just] a Bible verse,” but keep the verse in the context of the storyline. And remember, Jesus is the focal point. These four facts are not sufficient in themselves to convince a skeptic of the Bible’s truth but help to keep the Bible in perspective.

Kimball uses the rest of the book to respond to specific questions about the trustworthiness and relevance of the Bible today. He examines some Levitical laws—a frequent focus of derision among skeptics—within their historic context and as they appear in the New Testament. As the subtitle indicates, Kimball also does not shy away from addressing criticisms of the Bible’s instructions about slavery and other difficult passages. One addition to the subtitle is his treatment of the Bible’s claims to exclusivity—Jesus as the only way to God.

Kimball’s main audience is anyone without knowledge of the Bible beyond what they have seen in memes and skeptical websites. The writing is accessible to youth, as well as adults.

How (Not) to Read the Bible is best as the start of what may be a long conversation. Much skepticism is savvy and won’t be impressed by Kimball’s vague references to experts. Perhaps for that reason, the book is intended to be used in small groups and has a companion curriculum available on Kimball’s website.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher, editor
Baptist Standard

Chasing Vines: Finding Your Way to an Immensely Fruitful Life

 By Beth Moore (Tyndale)

For more than 25 years, Beth Moore has found God’s way to fruitful living through in-depth study of Scripture. She has shared those insights in writing and by teaching Bible studies, speaking and leading women’s conferences, and encouraging others to love and serve Jesus. She expands and extends her ministry to all Christians in Chasing Vines: Finding Your Way to an Immensely Fruitful Life.

The volume’s inspiration comes from a trip to Tuscany she shared with grown daughters Amanda and Melissa. Everywhere she looked and everything she learned led her thoughts to vines in the Bible. Although the Living Proof Ministries founder wrote Chasing Vines before the pandemic, Moore’s chosen Scriptures, illustrations and information about the vineyard, the vinedresser, the vine, the fruit and the harvest provide greater meaning today. That’s particularly true in her writing on the death of stability in the sections on soil and roots: “We just want some semblance of our old lives back. The hard truth is, there’s no real going back. But once we get up again, there can be going forward.”

Chapters related to planting, inspection, pruning and the importance of soil, roots, trellises and yes, even manure, offer principles, promises and parables from Scripture. Moore uses carefully crafted language to paint vivid word pictures describing vines and their grape-growing requirements. She emphasizes the importance of deep roots in the Father to bear fruit of his love. Otherwise, “all fruit is plastic.”

Like the vines she describes, Beth Moore’s spiritual roots have grown deeper and her fruit sweeter through challenging times. In Chasing Vines, she shares the result of digging deep into rich Bible soil and encourages chasing scriptural vines, because the “divine Vine” has already issued his call to all.

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco

Majority World Theology: Christian Doctrine in Global Context

Edited by Gene L. Green, Stephen T. Pardue and K.K. Yeo (IVP Academic)

Christianity has declined in Europe and North America—from where centuries of missions and theological and biblical study has come. By contrast, Christianity has grown significantly in Africa, Asia and Latin America—the three continents containing the majority of the world’s population. Unfortunately, the vibrancy of theology in the so-called Majority World has been largely overlooked in Europe and North America. Majority World Theology is a response to that oversight.

The book is not small; it is nearly 700 pages and the size of a reference book. It is divided into six sections like a systematic theology, each section focusing on a different doctrine—God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church and last things. Each section includes several essays from varying perspectives collected over six years of annual conversations with scholars and pastors around the world.

Essays on the Holy Spirit offer an example of the book’s content. A Kenyan scholar argues for the unifying power of the Holy Spirit to overtake the division arising from teachings about spiritual gifts. A Cameroonian scholar, who earned a Ph.D. from Baylor University, examines the pragmatic and deeply spiritual nature of much African theology, which informs the posture of African theology toward imported Western theology. Another essay explores the question of what Christians are “to make of God’s occasional encounters with” peoples in the Americas before the Europeans arrived. Indian, Chinese and Argentinian Christians also contributed essays to this section.

Majority World Theology can help those ministering in diverse settings to gain a deeper appreciation for their brothers and sisters in Christ who see Jesus through different eyes. It ought to be part of every theology and ministry student’s education. For a church thinking about partnering with another church of a different nationality or ethnicity, insights from this book should be included in their deliberations.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher, editor
Baptist Standard

This Hallelujah Banquet

By Eugene H. Peterson (WaterBrook Publishing)

Editors at WaterBrook Publishing have given Christian readers a wonderful gift for the new year by compiling nine sermons Eugene Peterson, beloved translator of The Message, preached at Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Md. Subtitled “How the End of What We Were Reveals Who We Can Be,” this insightful book focuses on the New Testament book of Revelation.

As readers familiar with Peterson’s work would expect, he doesn’t tediously speculate about End Times events or timelines, nor does he spend undue time deciphering cryptic symbols. Instead, he concentrates on Christ’s message to the seven churches in Asia, as recorded in the second and third chapters of Revelation. Peterson describes how each church faced a specific test of faith—love, suffering, truth, holiness, reality, witness and commitment. Bookending the sermons on those seven tests are two other messages that manage to be simultaneously timely and timeless—“The End is Where We Start” and “The Supper of the Lamb: A Benediction.”

The editors include a guide for prayer and personal devotions, well-suited to Lent or any other time of spiritual renewal. The guide simply includes a brief quote from each sermon, along with a question to ponder and pages on which to write reflections. I read the book in one afternoon, but I’ll spend several weeks leading up to Easter reflecting on what it says.

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard 

African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation

By Lisa Bowens (William B. Eerdmans)

What might enslaved people think of Paul, who wrote, “Slaves, obey their masters?” More pointedly, how might we expect African American men and women to receive the person whose writings white preachers and slaveholders used to subjugate them?

African American Readings of Paul answers those questions through a scholarly examination of how Paul and his writings have been received and interpreted by African American readers of Scripture. As such, it is the first study of its kind. Other authors have considered Black readings and interpretations of Scripture as a whole, but none has focused on the African American reception, understanding and use of Paul.

Lisa Bowens, associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, examines the work of several African Americans preachers, writers or theologians—using primary, or firsthand, sources—with an eye to allowing each person to speak for himself or herself.

Through this survey of men and women, readers will notice African Americans were not of one mind with respect to Paul. A common denominator among them, however, is a clear awareness of American Christianity’s hypocrisy and complicity with slavery. Another common denominator is the deep spiritual insight and knowledge many African Americans always have had about the Bible, despite most attention being given to European and Anglo-American theologians and preachers.

Two-thirds of the book is taken up by three chapters. The first chapter explores African American interpreters of Paul from the late 1700s through just before the Civil War, the second covers the second half of the 19th century, and the third picks up at the end of the 19th century and finishes with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

More than a few of the people Bowens surveys will be new to many readers. Their stories and writings demonstrate the power of God at work within enslaved people, formerly enslaved people and/or their descendants. Accounts of maintaining faith in God and Scripture despite severe suffering at the hands of so-called Christians ought to be held with reverent and humble awe.

Bowens points to the embodied nature of African American understandings of Scripture. In their response to white preachers and slaveholders condensing the gospel to spiritual salvation alone—and thereby excusing the brutality they inflicted on Black bodies—African American exegetes insisted God intended their bodies to be free, also.

The last two chapters are much shorter. One looks at how Pauline language is expressed in some African American conversion accounts. The final chapter summarizes interpretive themes appearing in African American readings of Paul.

The Scripture index at the end is a helpful resource for readers wanting to know how particular biblical passages are treated by those Bowens surveys.

Any reader will gain from Bowens’ work, but being written for a scholarly audience, the general reader likely will find this book overwhelming. Pastors and teachers of the Bible—especially those in an African American context or who wish to minister and teach across racial lines—should add this book to their library.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher, editor
Baptist Standard

The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama

By Michael W. Goheen and Craig Bartholomew (Brazos Press)

Surely, Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew must take the prize for the most audaciously titled book of the year. Actually, it is an abridged and updated revision of their 2004 book, The Drama of Scripture. Readers familiar with N.T. Wright’s work will recognize the metaphor of the biblical narrative as a drama, and the authors acknowledge their debt to Wright for that approach.

In fewer than 200 pages, Goheen and Bartholomew provide an easily accessible overview of Scripture as the story of the King and his kingdom, structured in six acts with an intertestamental interlude halfway through the drama. They use as their outline a half-dozen themes: creation, fall, restoration initiated, restoration accomplished, the mission of the church and restoration completed.

The key contribution of Goheen and Bartholomew is the effective way they relate the overarching story of Scripture to the lives of everyday people today. The authors make it clear the Bible is more than simply a book of religion or the history of an ancient people. They demonstrate not only how God’s actions provided Israel a unique sense of identity and purpose, but also how God’s work in human history offers meaning to every person. By their reckoning, the story of the Bible, in a real sense, is the grand unifying story that offers a framework for understanding God, the universe and everything in it.

After helping readers consider contemporary applications for each act in the drama, the authors include a section of discussion questions, “Finding Our Place in the Story,” at the conclusion of every chapter. The open-ended questions provide a good springboard for discussion in a small-group setting, as well as for personal reflection.

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard. 

Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World

By E. Randolph Richards and Richard James (IVP Academic)

What would it be like to read the Bible with eyes that see? To be able to read stories that have shaped Western civilization and 2,000 years of Christianity with clearer understanding? It might be like listening to your favorite song after knowing the back story for the first time. All of a sudden, new layers of meaning would open to you. Or it might be like putting on glasses for the first time and seeing what you were missing all along.

This clearer understanding doesn’t come from some kind of secret knowledge, like a newly discovered Gnostic gospel. It comes from reading the Bible as its first readers would have read it, with all the taken-for-granted culture in mind. Two thousand years later and at least one culture apart, we need a new prescription to be able to see all the Bible has to offer. E. Randolph Richards and Richard James have written that new prescription, if we will take up and read.

To that point about the significance of understanding culture for proper biblical interpretation, the authors assert: “Language and culture are usually two sides of the same coin. It is very important to learn the ways insiders in a culture speak about their culture. While it can be confusing—because they assume you know what is going (on) without being said—it is usually the best way to understand how culture really works.” Just as learning a modern foreign language is about so much more than vocabulary and grammar, so is understanding the Bible. Richards and James seek to fill in some cultural gaps sometimes lacking in learning Hebrew or Greek or reading biblical commentaries.

Richards is provost and professor of biblical studies at Palm Beach Atlantic University and has several books to his credit. James is a pseudonymous co-author and cross-cultural trainer and church planter in the Middle East. Richards brings academic expertise and James brings lived experience to their project.

Together, they peel back the film of Western individualism that has accumulated over so much modern biblical study and interpretation. They enable Western readers to see the structure and role in collectivist cultures of family, patronage, brokerage, honor and shame in the ancient Near East. Each chapter provides examples of these cultural factors at work in the biblical narrative.

To elaborate on just one of the above: For the majority of the world for the majority of history, family has been larger than the stereotypical nuclear unit made of 4 1/2 people. Family in these contexts is a community itself, complete with those who serve and work alongside the family. It grows through birth, marriage and/or adoption, and the reasons for this growth are more practical than romantic. The father and firstborn son are responsible for the welfare of the entire family and therefore are afforded authority and resources others are not. The authors offer a compelling description of how collectivist family structures affect the reading of Scripture in ways individualist readers don’t readily see.

Chapters also begin with firsthand stories of interactions with collectivist cultures, such as those in modern Bedouin communities and Papuan families. These stories bring to the present the cultural underpinnings of the ancient biblical world and shed helpful light on misunderstood biblical stories.

It would be hard to overstate the importance Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes can have for preaching and teaching, as well as for all readers of the Bible. A reader could spend a lot of time in the first part alone and come away with a wealth of new understanding.

Eric Black, executive director/editor/publisher
Baptist Standard

A Higher Mission: The Careers of Alonzo and Althea Brown Edmiston in Central Africa

By Kimberly D. Hill (University Press of Kentucky)

A Higher Mission is a multi-faceted account of history, missions, education, colonization and decolonization, global politics, racism and more.

Kimberly D. Hill, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas, examines the reach of W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington’s academic dispute beyond African American communities in the United States. She shows how, within the context of Christian missions, their differing educational philosophies were implemented among some of the most vulnerable people in Central Africa.

Much of the dispute between DuBois and Washington was about which education was best suited for raising oppressed people—namely, African Americans—out of poverty. Washington argued for vocational training, while DuBois argued for sharpening the intellect.

Beyond the United States, the question was which form of education was best suited for civilizing colonized people according to Western standards and which would make colonized people most productive for European and American aims.

At the time, many in Europe sought the natural resources abundant in Africa. Many in America eyed sending formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants to Africa. There was bound to be a clash, and Christian missionaries often lived and worked in the middle of such conflict.

Alonzo Edmiston and Althea Brown served the American Presbyterian Congo Mission in the Congo Free State, previously the Belgian Congo. Edmiston, educated at Tuskegee Institute and Skillman Institute, was the director of the first industrial school in the Congo Mission from 1905–08. Brown, a graduate of Fisk, created a dictionary of the Bushoong language spoken in the Central African Kuba kingdom.

Brown and Edmiston met on the mission field. They married and honeymooned in the ruins of the mission station that brought them together. Such was their devotion to missions in a volatile place, which they saw as more home than the United States. Both saw part of the role of missions as confronting and alleviating poverty. Not far removed from slavery in America, they evangelized and worked alongside tribes enslaved by others in Africa.

Hill’s account of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission shows how governments sometimes co-opt the work of Christian missionaries to serve their own purposes. A reader might wonder how often Christian missionaries served government interests as much or more than the interests of global evangelization.

A Higher Mission is unique for its analysis of the work of African American missionaries. At the same time that American Presbyterian Congo Mission missionaries were navigating the dispute between differing pedagogies and between colonizers and the colonized, the Edmistons and other African American missionaries also were navigating the racial tension within their denomination back in the United States. Such tension affected the support of white churches vital to missionaries serving on foreign fields in the 20th century.

Though Hill’s treatment is intended for an academic audience, anyone interested in missions, geopolitics, racial justice, education and their interplay in the 20th century will benefit from reading A Higher Mission.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor
Baptist Standard