- Did you ever wonder who the best hockey players in Canada are? If you’re like me, you’ve never even thought about it, and therein lies some of Gladwell’s magic. He draws you into thinking and caring about topics that you may have previously been uninformed or indifferent about. The best hockey players in Canada are born in the first three months of the year. That’s right. They’re born in January, February, and March, and before you start to wonder whether Gladwell’s on some astrological trip, he unwinds the facts with clear, focused logic.

- I don't agree with everything in the book. Most of it, yes, I think he's right (why I think he's right and what I don't agree with are for another day and perhaps another venue). However, I know this for sure. His challenge to American Christianity is one of the most important voices in contemporary dialog. He's a prophet of sorts, and I have a clearer picture of The Jesus Way because of his writing, teaching and, most importantly, the way in which he lives his life.

- The opening story pulled me in; the later dialogs had me dog-earing pages to go back to. I find myself referring to ideas from its pages in conversation. There’s a lot of truth and love packed into this little story. I love the fact that it doesn’t play down the role of Jesus like so many current treatises on spirituality seem to do, but illustrates and reveals his role in drawing people to God’s heart.

- Skeptics still may not agree with emergent sensibilities, but at least Tony Jones's The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier leaves nothing in the bag to wonder about. Tony Jones lays out a treatise on the emergent movement in the newest of his flurry of books. In it he builds a long list of “dispatches” from the frontier and suggests that it’s decision time for mainline churches: join us, support us, or get out of the way.

- "Like most people, I knew Newton was a seafaring slave trader in his younger years and that he had a remarkable conversion experience at sea during a terrible storm, but I didn’t realize that his life was the kind of epic adventure you would normally associate with a Cecil B. Demille movie. Aitken’s biography is one of the most compelling historical books I’ve had the pleasure to read. It is thorough, well researched without being dry, and written by a man who knows something about “being lost but found,” since Jonathan Aitken became a believer while serving time in prison for perjury in an infamous London trial. Throughout the pages of Newton’s life you are confronted with a man that knew the depth of his sin, but by God’s grace, lived to preach, write and sing about God’s forgiving grace found in Jesus Christ."

- In a story that reads more like non-fiction than fiction (complete with concocted footnotes), Berlinski reveals the complex relationship between tribal people and the outsiders who wish to know them. Anthropologists want the people to stay forever the same; missionaries want to affect change at the heart level; journalists attempt to remain neutral, but rarely are. In a way, it’s a microcosm of how the Christian, the non-religious, and the media interact in America.

- In Missio Dei: In the Crisis of Christianity, Fred Peatross describes both the best and worst of our times. He is frank regarding the challenges, but hopeful about the new opportunities before us. Paradoxically, the hopeful is contained within the troubling. The church is no longer the center of western culture and has lost the privileged status it held from the time of Constantine. Society listens less and less to the church and no longer accords it significance. Some suggest that the church has become a mere chaplain, offering invocations and benedictions but little else as far as society is concerned.

- In Justice in the Burbs, Will and Lisa Samson give the reader close to 200 pages of conversation on how to live a quiet life that champions justice, whether it be in the suburb, the city, or at a City Mission Hall in an urban environment. This is an important book that deftly creates a vision for living justly.

- In Across the China Sky, C. Hope Flinchbaugh exposes some of the new and real challenges facing Chinese Christians. In this second book about Mei Lin and her family and friends, a new danger—Eastern Lightning—threatens to pull believers away from their faith.

- The eyes of God see the divine nobodies, says Jim Palmer in a provocative new book, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the unlikely people who help you). In this work, he shares his meandering faith journey, writing with humor and occasional self-deprecation. More importantly, he chronicles the path that led him to the heart of God. Instrumental in the process were the people he met along the way.

- Griffin Smith knows the road trip is a bad idea. He’d rather say his good-byes at the airport and fly to college. But his dad insists and, with best friend Cole along for the ride, how bad can it be? Add Dad’s hot young fiancée, a reunion, a betrayal and an angry coyote and the answer is… much worse than he ever expected. . . .

- "Bell reclaims sex, as did the Song of Songs long before him, for God. Sex is not fundamentally about pleasure or procreation -though it does embrace both of these -it is about being fully and relationally human. And that's human in the truest sense - human in the 'God's image' sense. When we realize this, suddenly even pleasure and procreation take on a deeper significance." . . .

- "I have been waiting for a book like this for six years. It is a delight to see a person of faith really engage continental philosophy and translate it for the nonprofessional academic. Smith effectively highlights and deconstructs the modern dysfunctionalities of our faith, and there are more dysfunctionalities than you may think."

- In his New Wineskins interview with Fred Peatross, Mike Frost suggests that American Christians should listen to him as if he were a man from our future. This presumes that Frost can speak from our future because Christianity in the United States is following, a few years later, the same trajectory of Christendom toward secularism in Europe and Australia. I do think that Frost is a prophetic (forthtelling, not foretelling) voice that we need to be paying attention to. . . .

- Scot McKnight is messing with Protestant views of Mary. And, as it turns out, Catholics are paying attention, too. And he’s more than just re-arranging the Nativity scene. He wants Protestants to quit running in horror from anything that smacks of honoring Mary, to not begin with polemics against Catholics and instead come to know “the real Mary." His new book re-visits each important episode in Mary’s life recorded by Luke, Matthew, Mark, and John and details important events in the history of the church’s understanding of Mary’s life.

- Stories come alive for me when they go beyond the conventional and dip into a range of storytelling that lets characters wear their faith like a mantle and not treat it like a sermon. Randy Singer’s page-turner fourth novel, Self Incrimination, successfully transcends the obviousness of the typical legal thriller by wrapping the meaning of redemption in flesh for us to see. While the book’s standard plot elements have all the potential of submerging to the depths of crass predictability, Mr. Singer expertly keeps the narrative afloat by evenly handing out disease and dysfunction, mixing in enough suspense and plot twists to keep the most jaded reader plunging forward. . . .

- "Christianity is far more than a set of beliefs or a compelling intellectual vision; it is also a comprehensive way of life." This premise both motivates and informs author Darryl Tippens, who in his delightful new book Pilgrim Heart presents "an invitation to consider afresh what it means to live like Jesus." Even the Gospel of John, he notes, which so clearly emphasizes believing, practically begins and ends with Jesus' personal call: "Follow me." This call is reflected in the subtitle to Pilgrim Heart - "The Way of Jesus in Everyday Life."

- What will you do if your faith is challenged at work based on the ‘facts’ in The DaVinci Code? Would you be able to hold your ground and decipher fact from fiction? Breaking The DaVinci Code will put you in a better position to defend your faith or make you distinguish between fictitious entertainment and historical elements of the Christian faith...

- In the introduction to his newest book, The Secret Message of Jesus, McLaren asks an important question about this phenomenon: “Why is the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book more interesting, more attractive, and more intriguing than the standard version they hear about from most churches?”

- Not until Hal Runkel’s ScreamFree Parenting has there been such a unique perspective concerning how to maintain personal sanity by making parenting “all about you.” “What?” you say? “All about ME? Isn’t parenting all about the kids? Runkel, a relationship expert, says no. In conversation with New Wineskins (NW) writer Anne-Geri’ Fann, he shares his thoughts on numerous topics about the task of parenting. He discusses, among other things, how to remain calm while your kids are losing it, the beauty of giving them choices, and above all “exposing the lie that I am the one responsible for my kids.”

- How would you feel if you found out your son is gay? And what if he had to tell you he also has AIDS? Elaine Young McGuire, a mother experienced in these complicated subjects, engages those who must address these concerns in her brilliantly illustrated book, The Good Thing About AIDS, The Bad Thing About AIDS: A Picture Album About Living & Dying. ...

- Fred Peatross reviews Doug Pagit's work Body Prayer: The Posture of Intimacy with God, released last month by Waterbrook Press ... "I found it difficult to label this a book when its primary strength is in its instructively whimsical, poetically thoughtful chapters on bodyprayer. This is more a guide for prayer than a book about prayer."

- "Jim Wallis grew up an Evangelical who lost his faith as a teenager because he was not allowed to question the world without being squelched. He chose social activism. Later he found his faith and his voice. In doing so he has tapped into a restless audience of church-goers who are fed up with politics as usual, who are ready for a movement that neither co-opts religion, nor ignores it."

- Reviewing Jim Henderson's a.k.a. Lost, Fred Peatross observes: "The gospels record 132 contacts Jesus had with people. Six were in the temple, four in the synagogues, and 122 were out with the people in the mainstream of life. In this new millennium the call has changed from ‘come-to-church’ to ‘come-to-Christ.’"

- Subtitled Forming Spirituality Through the Christian Year, Robert Webber’s latest work gives individuals and churches a rich resource for learning how we might be spiritually formed by the practice of the Christian year. Webber’s work is the third installment in the Ancient Future Series. The series seeks to connect people with the biblical and classical tradition of the church while engaging the full spectrum of the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant manifestations.

- At times political and social activist James Dobson may border on glorifying an American past where fathers worked, mothers stayed home and everyone knew their place. But the strengths of Dobson's Bringing Up Boys - its firm warnings against dangerous cultural assumptions and helpful suggestions for mothers and fathers - outweigh the book's limitations.

- The church is “the only institution that requires people to publicly confess they are sinners before they can join,” says Charles M. Sell, author of Helping Troubled Families: A Guide for Pastors, Counselors, and Supporters. “Yet,” he says, “it is the last place people with addictions and adult children of dysfunctional families (ACODF’s) want to go for help.” Dr. Sell believes that church leaders should be the leading experts in behavioral change.

- Richard T. Hughes calls us to see the American creed through the keen eyes of those whose life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness have not been self-evident throughout United States history: African Americans. In an election year, Myths America Lives By is a unique call to see the world through the eyes of another, rather than the party or ethnic group through which one has always viewed life, religion, and politics.

- Life expectancy in the United States has increased from 47 to 77 years in the past century, dramatically increasing the number of older Americans. In response to this demographic shift, policy makers, as well as medical and behavioral scientists, have focused significant attention on the issues associated with an aging population. The process of aging within the Christian belief system has received too little attention in theological circles. Expert in gerontology Dr. James L. Knapp is one Christian (and he gives resources for others) who is giving that needed attention to these issues. He reviews another important work on aging and the church in this New Wineskins Review.

- In Michael Card’s newest book, The Fragile Stone: The Emotional Life of Simon Peter, he offers several scenarios where Simon Peter said “no” to Jesus. This intrigued Laura Oldenburg, who brings this New Wineskins review. With each event in the shared life of Jesus and Peter, Card asks penetrating questions of the reader, similar questions to the ones Jesus asked Peter...

- “When Sunday mornings inspire, envision, and equip those who attend, a buzz of excitement is generated that feeds all the sub-ministries and events,” says Nancy Beach, author of An Hour on Sunday: Creating Moments of Transformation and Wonder. Daniel J. Tomlinson brings the second part of this NEW WINESKINS book review.

- There is scant scientific evidence to prove this, but in my fifteen years of ministry experience, ministry teams break apart more often because of "team shock"--personality conflict and tense team dynamics--than any other cause. John Trent, Rodney Cox and Eric Tooker,in their new book Leading From Your Strengths: building close-knit ministry teams say this kind of team shock can be avoided, and they provide guidance on how to navigate the white water of team conflict.

- In the world where many questions still pound the brain: What is truth? Why am I alive? Can I be religious and still do what I want? Consider this: Perhaps God is actually less concerned with celebrating Good Friday than he is about how we responded to last week’s Bad Tuesday. Calvin Miller tackles the everyman questions of life in the classic, poetic Calvin Miller way. The people Miller addresses are not so much those who march purposefully into hell as those falling asleep on the slopes and sliding in.

- The Smart Step-Family, by Ron Deal (Bethany House Press, 2002). 271 pages. - Books on healthy step families have been few, perhaps because Christians have been afraid of implications of saying anything related to divorce or something other than the "traditional" Christian familiy would work against a biblical view of what our families should be. This bold new book goes beyond that thinking, and we believe it should be read and discussed.

- In The Wind that Destroys and Heals: Trusting the God of Sorrow and Joy, Stephen Broyles reflects on consolation that seemed to trivialize the death of his wife. She died of breast cancer one Christmas day, leaving him with two children to “confront the perplexities of mortality and faith.” Broyles’s The Wind that Destroys and Heals could be on the hearth next to C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed and Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy. All three of these writers have been through the fires of grief and doubt.

- This book is not simply for those with a religious background in the Stone-Campbell Movement but also anyone wanting to confess Christ as the only benchmark today.

- Author Jeff Berryman, a former drama teacher at Abilene Christian University, is touring a ninety-minute drama based on Leaving Ruin. Steve Pederson, Willow Creek’s director of drama, called it “a masterpiece.”

- The authors make a strong statement about the nature of the church as a system: "…if we look at the church as a complex system, perhaps we can avoid reducing it to simply a social service agency, a church growth machine, or a religious entertainment center."

It is from that point that we are treated to what the church was called to be and do...

- In this new collection of 19 essays by Leafwood Publishers (formerly New Leaf),Trusting Women, all the women share a common love of their church heritage, a deep appreciation for the role of males in churches and in their own lives, abiding commitments to the authority of Scripture and to their Lord. Their stories reflect great varieties of experience and service—and yes some of them perform those ministries within assembly contexts.

Book Excerpts
Book Excerpt: The Feast
Josh Graves
09/02/2009 - Christianity in the West is malnourished—in need of a feast. I am part of the problem. You are part of the problem. We, together, are invited to a table to hear and digest the stories of our faith once again. This time, reading not to defend our previously held doctrines, but reading with humility and faith that God is doing a new thing among us. Reading to help us become part of God’s movement. When we feast upon the stories and life of Jesus, we are able to walk to a different cadence, for the childhood maxim of our mothers is correct: we are what we eat. When we eat and digest the words of Jesus, we will find ourselves energized to appreciate, engage, and serve God’s world. Taste and see that the Lord is good, that God is moving and working in our world today!


Book Excerpt: A Gathered People
J.M. Hicks, R. Valentine, J. Melton
10/30/2007 - Where have we gone astray? How can we recapture the wonder of worship that ancient Israel and Jesus had when they worshiped? The purpose of this article, partly an excerpt from our new book, is to revision the ancient ways of assembly in Israel, Christ, and the church that will help shape our assemblies today.


Book Excerpt: The Voice of Luke: Not Even Sandals
Brian McLaren
09/28/2007 - A fresh look at the gospel according to Luke by one of the foremost theologians of the dawning twenty-first century. Brian McLaren has authored the best-selling New Kind of Christian series and is a gifted speaker at conferences discussing the future and mission of Christ's church. "Tradition tells us that Luke is a physician, active in the early church in the years around A.D. 60. He travels widely with the emissary Paul; so he is a sort of cosmopolitan person, multicultural in his sensitivities, understanding both Jewish culture and the broader Greco-Roman culture of the Roman Empire. As a physician, he is more educated than the average person of his day, but I think you’ll be impressed with his ability to relate to common people—and especially his skill as a storyteller."


Book Excerpt: Pilgrim Heart - Singing
Darryl Tippens
03/07/2007 - For most believers, music is not a frill or an ornament, not some illustration of a theological truth; much more, music is the good news in word and sound, the purest and most potent expression of God's presence and transcendence, and the best way to engage our hearts and imaginations, our bodies and souls.


Book Excerpt: An Invitation to Live in God's Love
Gary Holloway and Earl Lavender
10/23/2006 - "In the recovery of authentic community we will find blessings that many contemporary Christians have lost. These blessings provide indispensable assistance in personal spiritual growth. They are the key to inciting authentic and dynamic growth in churches. True growth does not occur through increasing the numbers attending our services. It occurs through the personal spiritual growth of individual members within the context of genuine, loving community." . . .


Book Excerpt: Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity
Lauren Winner
09/23/2006 - Lauren Winner is one of the best Christian writers of our day, and we have invited her to our ZOE Look to the Hills Leadership Conference, October 5-6. This excerpt from Winner’s newest book continues a conversation with Lauren Winner in New Wineskins, which began two years ago. Enjoy this frank look at sexuality that is scriptural and spiritual - and make plans to come to the ZOE Look to the Hills Leadership Conference where Winner will present in three sessions on CLOSER: Intimacy with God. . . .


Book Excerpt from Together Again, Part 2
Bob Russell and Rick Atchley
04/02/2006 - "Jesus promised that the world would believe in him if we remained unified. That is why we have such a passion to see our fellowships come together again. This is about so much more than an occasional preacher swap or combined Thanksgiving services. The primary reason we are making efforts to unite our two groups is so that Christ’s mission can be accomplished."


Book Excerpt from Together Again, Part 1
Rick Atchley and Bob Russell
03/28/2006 - >A Call for Unity: The synergism of that weekend in 2003 really began with the speech Rick gave at the North American Christian Convention on Thursday night. The theme of the convention was, “I Can Only Imagine.” Here is what Rick said that night ..."God put something on my heart. I shared it that next Sunday in all three services of our church. I shared with them that God wants me to devote myself for the rest of my life to seeking reconciliation among the a cappella churches of Christ and Christian churches of the world."


Book Excerpt: Longing For A Homeland
Lynn Anderson
08/20/2005 - Read this excerpt, "The Old Homeplace," from Lynn Anderson's new book, Longing for a Homeland, due March 2004 from Howard Publishing Company. Call 888.216.9944 for ordering information. "During my childhood years, I felt that land would be my home forever. I roamed that homestead; explored every square yard of it. Every 'coulee' and every hill. Knew which Choke Cherry bushes yielded the sweetest fruit. The draw where the most colorful crocuses exploded from the soil each spring. I could take you to the exact wrinkle in the prairie hillside which hid the coyote pup-birthing den. And the best spots to snare jack rabbits. And the brush patch where hawks nested year after year." ...


Book Excerpt: Things Unseen
C. Leonard Allen
06/29/2004 - C. Leonard Allen is author of influential books in the Restoration Movement and increasingly advocates rediscovering the path toward Trinitarian Theology and the Spiritual Life. In this excerpt of Things Unseen, used by permission of Leafwood Publishers, Allen describes how postmodernity is very open to this deeper understanding of the Trinity and the Spiritual Life.



Book Excerpt: Mere Discipleship
Lee Camp
04/06/2004 - Following a Jesus who commands love of enemies, or sharing of one's provisions, or ongoing practices of forgiveness, is looked upon as "far-out," as an extreme viewpoint with little to offer the "real world," says Lee Camp in this powerful excerpt from his new book, Mere Discipleship, used by permission from Brazos.


Book Excerpt: A Beautiful Offering
Angela Thomas
03/09/2004 - Brokenness comes to us for so many different reasons. Sometimes it’s the way the world comes up to greet us. Sometimes it’s the consequences of our sin. Sometimes it’s the result of a lifetime of poor choices. And then sometimes we can’t even untangle the mess to give it a name ... In this excerpt from Angela Thomas's new book, A Beautiful Offering are some clues about how to break free and see from the Lord's view that we are indeed a Beautiful Offering to Him.


Book Excerpt: Authentic Faith
Gary Thomas
05/13/2002 - In the early 1970s, few places on this earth were marked by more human misery than Calcutta, India. Franklin Graham, now president of Samaritan’s Purse, once told me about his first visit there. Though Franklin has been in some of the world’s most violent places — Lebanon, Somalia, Kosovo — Calcutta may have been the most difficult, the type of place that makes you want to leave as soon as you set foot on its soil.


Book Excerpt: Leaving Ruin
Jeff Berryman
03/18/2002 - "I was scared, frankly. We don't get many transients here in town, and if we do, I don't normally do that sort of thing, but as a minister, the homeless bother me, inside my clean little pastor hole, and I can't stand it to just go by every time, like a Levite or a priest. I think I'm supposed to help. The church doesn't have a ministry to those sort of folks, and we're doing good to post a couple of volunteers at the Christian Service Center once a month. The whole problem makes me nervous, and I generally avoid it."


Book Excerpt: Jabez: A Novel
Thom Lemmons
01/07/2002 - The first thing I remember was my mother’s crying. Sometimes I think she fed me on her tears instead of her breast milk. Even then, long before she told me the story of my beginning, I think I tried to guess it in her eyes. A child sees many things that he cannot name. And then, when I was old enough, I heard it in the taunts of the other boys in the village. “Hey, Pain-boy, it hurts me just to look at you.” I was small for my age and an easy target for bullies. They tripped me and hit me and rolled me in the dirt. They told me they were making me match my name. They said it with a dirty laugh and an upturned lip.