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

What Does it Mean to be Welcoming: Navigating LGBT Questions in Your Church

By Travis Collins (InterVarsity Press)

Wasn’t the question of same-sex marriage answered in 2015? Haven’t churches already decided where they stand on marriage and sexuality? Aren’t there more pressing issues right now?

Even when people’s attention is on the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial and political tension in the United States, some churches still are examining their posture toward LGBTQ people.

Travis Collins seeks to offer guidance to churches holding to the traditional position on marriage and sexuality who want to welcome LGBTQ people without relinquishing a traditional position.

Collins is the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala. He is personally invested in what he writes, having experienced the layers of pain and difficulty associated with the relationship between churches and LGBTQ people.

For those nervous about where Collins might be leading, he states and defines his position on page 10. He welcomes “all people to membership in the church family,” does “not affirm same-sex sexual behavior,” believes all people “are called to be transformed into the image of Jesus,” and that “all are still in process.”

Writing as a pastor, Collins wants to avoid polarization and the bitter accusations and division so often accompanying it. He writes with compassion toward those he disagrees with and those who will disagree with him. He also wants people to be heard and so includes testimonials from people who identify as gay and lesbian, as well as pastors relating what the conversations have meant for their churches.

Collins offers a brief overview of the affirming and traditionalist positions on sexuality, giving more attention to the latter. He also points out problems he sees with the affirming view, making clear he does not see affirmation on balance with traditionalism. His chapter on the key biblical passages related to same-sex sex further confirms his opposition to the affirming position.

The latter portion of the book—in which Collins shares First Baptist Church of Huntsville’s process and position statement, a discussion guide, and resources for further study—will be helpful for churches yet to address their position on sexuality. For churches who still have not done so, Collins asserts that time will come for most of them. They can engage the matter proactively or reactively.

Some of the questions Collins considers may become relics of the past within a decade or so, but they still are live issues in a number of churches at present. Therefore, he intends What Does it Mean to be Welcoming to be helpful for churches, small groups and even denominations as they wrestle with the fine details of what it means to be welcome and traditional places.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor

Baptist Standard

A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus

By J.P. Hannah (Wipf & Stock)

After bestsellers like Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ and Josh McDowell’s New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, is there still a need for books on apologetics? And what does J.P. Hannah offer that others have not?

As helpful as popular defenses of Christianity can be, they often are published by popular Christian publishing houses with all the requisite marketing—a fact not lost on skeptics. From the start, Hannah’s book grabs a skeptic’s attention, because it isn’t overtly trying to close a sale.

Hannah does not set out to defend the Christianity, its creeds, or even organized religion in general. Rather, she invites the reader to join her on her own “journey of independent investigation” of “facts relevant to the ongoing debate between atheism and faith in general, and Christianity in particular.” The reader is led to deal for him or herself with Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?”

The journey to that question takes place in three parts: an examination of the New Testament, a consideration of the implications of science for faith, and a quick summary of the Old Testament’s foreshadowing of Jesus.

Hannah covers many details and none exhaustively. Admittedly, it wouldn’t be possible to be more complete in a single volume. Nevertheless, she treats each sufficiently.

Those in doubt about the historicity and divinity of Jesus, as well as the reliability and veracity of Gospel accounts about him will find a thorough consideration of arguments for and against Christianity’s claims.

Chapters are broken into sections, each focused on a single question, such as “What is the manuscript evidence for the Gospels?” After laying out her findings, Hannah concludes each section with a review of the evidence and a call for the reader to come to his or her own verdict on that question.

A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus could serve well as a reference book for teachers, preachers or friends, family members or coworkers of people asking questions contained in the book.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher, editor
Baptist Standard

A Festschrift in Honor of Karen O’Dell Bullock

(Baptist History & Heritage Society)

A festschrift is a collection of writings honoring and celebrating a scholar. In this instance, the scholar is Karen O’Dell Bullock. Bullock is a prolific Baptist and church historian who taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dallas Baptist University. She now is the director of the Ph.D. program at B.H. Carroll Theological Institute and a regular contributor to CommonCall magazine.

The festschrift contains six historical essays written by colleagues, friends and former students of Bullock. Each author treats a topic important to her. The essays are written in an academic style. Though off-putting to some readers, the essays are accessible to general readers.

Those with a general interest in history will enjoy Gregory Tomlin’s essay examining Roger Williams’ influence on religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment. Tomlin describes Williams’ concerns about state-sponsored and compulsory church membership that led him to see the Church of England as the beast depicted in Revelation.

General readers also likely will appreciate Stephen Stookey’s history of Brooks Hays, a prominent progressive Southern Baptist pastor and politician during the turbulent years of desegregation in the United States. Hays’ sense of calling and his proximity to significant national history make for compelling reading.

Michael Williams’ essay on Leslie Lee Gwaltney may appeal more to those with particular interest in the history of Baptist journalism. Gwaltney was the editor of The Alabama Baptist from 1919–50 and was known for such things as pacifism and some ambivalence about the Ku Klux Klan.

Similarly, Melody Maxwell’s essay on ordination of women “within the Baptist context in Atlantic Canada” in the 1980s might seem at first blush to be too specific. But here again, readers can gain general insight into a topic still under discussion among Baptists.

Sheila Klopfer’s essay on a theology of laughter is a bit more technical and ought to be read by ministers. What Klopfer doesn’t include—but this author knows—is that her interest in humor stems from her own parents, Paul and Sally Klopfer, who ran Sivells Baptist Camp outside Cloudcroft, N.M. for at least a generation. Paul—fluent in Spanish, Navajo and Karl Barth—is known for his intelligent humor, and Sally is known for her rich smile, laughter and cinnamon rolls. Knowing this background to Klopfer’s essay humanizes her academic treatment of humor.

Brian Talbot closes the festschrift asking a question on many Baptist minds: Who are we? In search of an answer, Talbot examines what has been important to Baptists throughout their history and several lists of what makes Baptists distinct to come to his conclusion. But if I told you what it is, you wouldn’t have to read his essay.

A Festschrift in Honor of Karen O’Dell Bullock was published by The Baptist History and Heritage Society, a nonprofit scholarly organization for Baptist historians in America that brings its scholarship to bare as a congregational resource. To learn more about the society, click here.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher, editor
Baptist Standard

I Am Restored: How I Lost My Religion but Found My Faith

By Lecrae Moore (Zondervan)

Lecrae Moore—known as Lecrae (luh-KRAY’)—is a Grammy Award-winning Christian hip hop artist also popular in mainstream hip hop. He also is the co-owner and co-founder of Reach Records.

In I Am Restored, Lecrae’s second book, he discusses his past and trauma he experienced in his childhood. He talks about being sexually and physically abused, being fatherless and struggling with alcohol. He also shares how his past started to come out in poor choices and a crisis of faith.

The book has three parts. The first two parts focus on Lecrae’s “chaos”—his battle with himself, his battle with his critics, and his battle with the larger society. He describes the difficulty of being a celebrity and the extra pressure of people thinking he had everything together.

In Part Three, Lecrae focuses on hope in the middle of chaos. Here, he points readers past their pain by talking through his own and explaining even public figures experience normal human problems.

His experiences and his strength to be able to share them with the public will help others struggling with anxiety, depression and maintaining faith. We need more courageous people like Lecrae to be honest about their problems.

I appreciate that Lecrae didn’t just list his problems and then say, “Well, now I’m fine.” Instead, he describes how he found faith and hope.

At just 170 pages and with large print, the book is a quick read.

The first chapter may be difficult for those with past trauma to read because of Lecrae’s descriptions of his experiences. If readers need to skip that chapter, they can pick up his story in Chapter Two, though he does make a reference to his past there.

I Am Restored is an inspirational book that will uplift and inspire many readers.

Allen Black
Plano, Texas 

A Concise Guide to the Quran: Answering Thirty Critical Questions

By Ayman S. Ibrahim (Baker Academic)

Ayman Ibrahim, who grew up as a Coptic Christian in Egypt and earned a doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Haifa, understands the Middle East and the Muslim world both experientially and academically. Consequently, he is able to present a nuanced and balanced picture of how Muslims across the Islamic theological spectrum view the Quran.

Ibrahim, who directs the Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, follows a simple and straightforward approach by answering 30 questions about the sacred text of Islam. They range from the basic—“What is the Quran?” and “What do Muslims believe about the Quran?”—to the complex—“Are all Arabic versions of the Quran the same?” and “Why and how was the Quran compiled?”

The author deals fairly but critically with difficult issues, such as the Islamic doctrine of abrogation—the belief that later “revelations” in the Quran render some earlier commands invalid. He does not shy away from asking difficult questions about the meaning of jihad and whether the Quran classifies Christians and Jews as “infidels,” but he avoids sweeping generalizations and broad characterizations. The sections about what the Quran says regarding Jesus and the prophets—pointing out both the parallels to the Bible and key differences—particularly are insightful and instructive.

Ibrahim offers non-Muslims a helpful introduction to the Quran. He treats the material critically but respectfully, and his approach offers a good example of how Christians can engage their Muslim neighbors in religious discussions.

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard.