CPYU BOOKSHELF

CPYU Book Reviews

2011-10-18T14:55:00.002-04:00

For current CPYU book reviews please see CPYU's ENGAGE E-Journal and Simply Youth Newsletters.

Consuming Youth

2011-06-20T10:13:00.001-04:00

In recent years, the news media have reported on a handful of child kidnapping stories that for years remained unresolved. While each of these stories are complex and nuanced, it’s always surprising to learn that the unwilling captive was somehow brainwashed to the point of assimilating themselves into the system of the captor to the point where they lived there willingly, rather than trying to escape. I wonder if the same dynamic isn’t at work on us and our kids as marketing hijacks our hearts and minds so effectively, that we willingly enjoy and seek out the opportunity to keep riding along?

In their book, Consuming Youth: Leading Teens Through Consumer Culture (Zondervan, 2010), John Berard, James Penner and Rick Bartlett take readers on a tour of the history of consumer culture and how it established consumption as the primary purpose of our kids. Youth culture and modern adolescence are relatively recent social and economic inventions. They have functioned to shape our identities so effectively that we’ve just come to accept that this is the way it is, and the way it’s supposed to be. But the trio of authors asks those of us who love and care for kids to step back and see that consumer culture is really doing to our kids. Then, they start a conversation about what it means to re-think youth ministry in ways that shape significantly different ideology of youth, one that debunks the myths of consumer culture while helping them find their identity and calling in Christ.

Consuming Youth is a thoughtful book that raises important issues and can get us started on the journey to reframing our ministries in response to the ways that marketing and consumer culture so quickly and easily rope our kids – and us – in. This is one worth reading and discussing in a group.

--Walt Mueller

Teenology

2011-06-09T09:51:00.006-04:00

The teenage years can seem like a minefield at times: you want to give your children the freedom to strongly walk forth and become responsible adults, and yet you want to protect them from making choices that could rupture not only their present circumstances but their futures as well. Plus, given the rugged terrain that teens have to navigate—pornography available online and via cellphones, the extreme pressure on body image by the culture, the epidemic of cyberbullying, just to name a few—anyone given the task of raising teenagers is in great need of guidance.

Jim Burns, a man who has devoted his life to helping kids and who is the father of three himself, responds to this need for guidance in his book, Teenology: The Art of Raising Great Teenagers (Bethany House, 2010). In his book, Burns tackles some of the major issues surrounding the task of raising teenagers into responsible adults. He gives a basic overview of the process of changes known as adolescence and then delves into the problems that can occur, whether it’s a block in communication between parents and teens, or combating the allure of pornography or sexual promiscuity that is so prominent in today’s culture. And though Burns delves into uncomfortable topics, he comes from the standpoint of one who has already been through this process three times before with his own children, and countless other times with his youth groups. His main message is to “Stay calm. Adolescence is a temporary transition. Work your plan. Hold on to your seat belt. Get as emotionally, physically, and spiritually healthy as you possibly can, and before you know it, that sweet kid who morphed into a teen and sometimes hates you will become a responsible adult.”

There is no book (to my knowledge) that provides easy answers for raising God-serving teenagers. But, if you are looking for a foundation from which to understand the “art,” as Burns calls it, Teenology is a good place to start. A book more focused on practical solutions than theoretical wonderings, this is a good resource for parents or soon-to-be parents desiring advice as well as tools to best help their children maneuver the “minefield” of adolescence.

--Angelina Deola

Too Small To Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most

2011-06-01T10:02:00.004-04:00

It’s no secret that Jesus had a big heart for little children. He calls us to love, lead, and care for the smallest among us as well. Ironically, we live in a time where parents are almost over-committed to their children, but children are suffering from both neglect and over-stimulation. We struggle to get it right.

Wess Stafford has been loving and ministering to children for decades. He serves as the President of Compassion International, a Christian childcare ministry that serves impoverished children globally through church-based programs funded by child sponsors. Currently, over 1 million children are sponsored through Compassion International. Stafford has a heart for the world’s young not just because that’s what he’s been called to, but because as child himself he was victimized by the very people he should have been able to trust. The son of missionaries to Africa, Stafford spent several months a year at a Christian boarding school. It was there that he suffered years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the school’s teachers and administrators. He tells that story and issues a call to care for the young in his book, Too Small To Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most (WaterBrook, 2007). By taking readers through the Scriptures and the realities of our current culture, Stafford calls readers to make children a priority in every area of life. He invites readers to become champions for children, offering practical suggestions on how to make that happen.

While this is not a book on parenting or youth ministry, it is a book that parents and youth workers will benefit from reading. After all, our ministries and families must be centered on living out Biblical priorities in the way we raise and relate to the kids we know and love. Too Small To Ignore is worth your time and attention. As an added bonus, the book includes study and discussion questions that lends it well to individual reflection or small group discussion.

--Walt Mueller

The Wisdom of Stability

2011-05-26T14:21:00.002-04:00

So much of our lives consist of running--running from one event to another, running through high school, college, and job training, running to get the telephone or running to the store to buy the newest version of the iPhone. In our fast-paced American culture, speed and mobility are paramount.

Yet in his book, The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture (Paraclete Press, 2010), Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove explores the costs of running and the often overlooked advantages of staying still. Wilson-Hartgrove looks to the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers—the likes of St. Antony, Julian of Norwich, and Bernard of Clairvaux—as well as to the lessons learned from more current voices like Wendell Berry. Wilson-Hartgrove’s own restless past and rooted present stand behind his assertion that the difficult discipline of stability is worth “staying” with.

Wilson-Hartgrove believes that stability is life-giving in our draining mobile culture. Learning the discipline means learning to follow the Greatest Commandment to its fullest, to live in long-term community where you and the other are known fully and loved deeply. Using examples of communities from the civil rights movement, Wilson-Hartgrove shows how the body of Christ unites when its members breathe the same air and encounter the same battles together. When that unified community gathers on a Sunday, after weathering the storms that come from living life together during the week, they are able to sing in unison against the devil’s schemes and in eager expectancy of God’s greater plans.

What makes Stability an especially worthy read is that even if your life is, at least for the moment, inescapably unstable (i.e. child running between divorced parents, young adult on the brink of graduation, adult in the process of changing or finding jobs, etc.), Wilson-Hartgrove addresses more than the task of staying in one place. In his chapter entitled, “Midday Demons,” he focuses on stability as a daily discipline in one’s prayer life. Wilson-Hartgrove recognizes, along with a long line of Christians before him, that it is often after we commit to stay still--in prayer, solitude, or study--that we are tempted with the expected yet overbearing “midday demons:” demons of boredom and ambition. Speaking with the voices of the desert fathers and mothers, Wilson-Hartgrove gives practical, wise, and surprisingly simple methods to fight against what tears us away from solitude with God.

The Wisdom of Stability is a must-read for youth leaders, parents, and teenagers alike. The idea of “being rooted” is counter-cultural in our day for adults and students, yet rootedness yields fruits of patience, compassion, and a better understanding of ourselves and God. Wilson-Hartgrove lovingly challenges us to learn to love God and our neighbors more deeply by slowing down. With stability, we have the chance to not only enter the world of the other, but to loyally join the other in genuine community.

--Angelina Deola

The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson

2011-05-23T10:20:00.012-04:00

Eugene Peterson is probably best known for his Bible translation The Message, or his countless books on the spiritual life or his many years as a seminary professor at Regent College. What probably isn’t as well known, is that Peterson was a pastor for 29 years before publishing his contemporary version of scripture, or writing many of his books or teaching at a seminary! Now retired and living in his hometown in Montana, Peterson’s latest book reflects on his life as a pastor. The Pastor: A Memoir (HarperOne, 2011) offers readers a behind-the-scenes look at Peterson’s life as a pastor of a Presbyterian church-plant outside of Baltimore, Maryland. The book explains how he reluctantly and haphazardly became a pastor, growing into his call overtime.

Writing honestly about his own struggles as a pastor, he is especially concerned with the state of the pastoral vocation today: “I didn’t want to be a religious professional whose identity was institutionalized. I didn’t want to be a pastor who sense of worth derived from whether people affirmed or ignored me. In short, I didn’t want to be a pastor in the ways that were most in evidence and more rewarded in the American consumerist and celebrity culture.” Instead, Peterson became a pastor with a ministry that was rooted in scripture and prayer; one that focused on worship of God and care for people over programs and number of attendees; and offered his Baltimore suburb something that was different from the world, not accommodating to culture.

Shepherding a flock of sinners is never easy, to be sure. But it’s definitely not easy being a pastor in today’s world. So much cultural pressure is working against people from becoming the pastors that are so desperately needed. Peterson’s book reminds pastors to keep first things first and reminds congregants of the challenges facing pastors today. This book is highly recommended for all people who care about the church and care about the people God has called to lead them.

--Derek Melleby

Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence

2011-05-12T14:32:00.000-04:00

I read lots of books on theology, culture, and teenagers. Every now and then I just get flat-out tired of reading stuff that forces me to go deep. Ever feel that way? I was feeling that way when I wandered into the airport bookstore before a long, cross-country flight. Then, I spotted it! It was the cover and the title that caught my attention. The cover featured a family picture from the 1970s complete with geeky kid, under the words Kick Me: Adventures in Adolescence (Three Rivers Press, 2002). Written by the creator of the TV series Freaks and Geeks, Paul Feig, this book takes readers on a hilarious autobiographical journey through junior high and high school.

Because Feig grew up during the 70s, some of the cultural references are unique to the times. Those of us males who grew up about the same time might think Feig is writing about us, as if he had gotten into our heads and recorded what we were thinking, experiencing, and feeling as our hormones were setting themselves in motion and bouncing around out-of-control. But Feig captures the life-stage in ways that not only make this book a laugh-out-loud (which I did several times on the flight!) read for anyone, but a helpful reminder of just how difficult and confusing the teen years can be for adolescents of all generations.

While the book is really funny, it does serve as a reminder of just how important it is for our kids to receive nurture and support from home and church. We know that adolescence in today’s world is no laughing matter for far too many kids. From Feig’s recounting of everything from dodgeball to dating. . . this is one hilarious book!

--Walt Mueller

Make College Count Video

2011-05-09T12:17:00.004-04:00

Learn more about Make College Count.

Purchase Make College Count from the CPYU Resource Center.

Learn more about EXCLUSIVE CPYU Grad-Gift offers!

Somewhere More Holy

2011-05-02T11:30:00.003-04:00

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about the different rooms of our homes, reflecting back on memories, and how God was and is present in each room. Thankfully for readers, author Tony Woodlief took the time to do so and invites us into his home in Somewhere More Holy: Stories from a Bewildered Father, Stumbling Husband, Reluctant Handyman, and Prodigal Son (Zondervan, 2010). Through each chapter, Woodlief focuses on a different room in his home, and shares with us the ups and downs he and his family have experienced in each one. Much of his story revolves around the death of his 3 year old daughter to cancer and how it has greatly impacted him and played a role in his faith. His personal struggles with guilt, doubt, anger with God, a broken past, sinful behavior, and a marriage slowly falling apart are all revealed in heart-wrenching but honest ways.

Though Woodlief wanted to give up on God, his family, and even himself, the pages of his book reveal that God’s grace was at work in the midst of all the pain and brokenness even if he was completely blind to it at the time. His pain and struggles are not gone, and his attempts at figuring out how to live out these realities in front of his wife and 4 boys, all born after their sister passed away, makes this book that more approachable, especially to parents living with young children. Laughter and humor also ring true as he tells tales of his boys, including the water-strewn disasters (and bodily functions) that take place in the bathroom, their turning of the living room into a wrestling ring, and the joy that takes place when they all gather together on their parents’ bed, despite the sleep (and other activities) of their parents that are often interrupted.

These reflections, as he walks us from room to room, are a way for Woodlief to wrestle with issues related to raising his children in a way that points them to Christ and brings glory to God and about being a loving and faithful husband. More than that, he helps us all understand that we might not understand God, or fully grasp His love and grace and we may even feel like we don’t deserve it, yet there it is for the taking. Accepting this, as Woodlief has, will help us realize we can make our homes somewhere more holy, as the title suggests.

--Chris Wagner

One.Life Giveaway Winners!

2011-04-26T09:24:00.006-04:00

Drumroll please…

The three winners (randomly selected) for the One.Life giveaway are:

Darryl Schafer
Doug
Rob

Please send us an email (cpyu@cpyu.org) with your mailing address to claim your prize! (Include this subject line: One.Life Giveaway)

We still have more copies of One.Life to giveaway… stay tuned on Facebook (CPYU “Group”) and Twitter for more chances to win!

Thanks for playing!

Scot McKnight's One.Life Giveaway!

2011-04-18T14:54:00.007-04:00

It’s time to give away some FREE books! This week on CPYU Bookshelf we’re giving away 3 copies of One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow by Scot McKnight!

McKnight was motivated to write One.Life by wrestling with one central question: What is a Christian? In a very creative and engaging manner, McKnight is providing an overview of the Christian faith. Here’s a question for our readers, for a chance to win a FREE book:

What other books do you think provide a helpful overview of the Christian faith?

On Monday (April 25) we will randomly select three winners from the comments. Only one comment (entry) per person, please.

Be sure to check out Facebook and Twitter for more ways to win FREE copies of One.Life.

One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow

2011-04-13T11:06:00.009-04:00

It is becoming increasingly more obvious that we are living in a “post-Christian” society. Meaning, more and more people no longer have Christian reference points for a Christian understanding of the world. Put another way, it’s not so much that people are antagonistic toward the Christian faith, it’s that most people have no idea what the basic Christian beliefs are. This provides a remarkable opportunity for the church to introduce people to the faith without having to undo some of the Christian “baggage” which was associated with the cultural Christianity of years gone by.

This is what’s great about Scot McKnight’s new book One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow (Zondervan, 2010): McKnight is able to connect with both audiences. The book is good for people that have grown up in the church as well as people who are learning about the faith for the first time. Here’s McKnight’s main point: the church needs to have a more biblical understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ. In the introduction, McKnight tells his own story about wrestling with the deeper meaning of being a disciple. For many years of his life, when asked what a Christian is, he would respond: “A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus; and the Christian life is the development of personal (private) practices of piety, separation from sin and the world, and a life dedicated to rescuing sinners from hell.” Basically, McKnight was raised to understand Christianity as being “saved” from hell and being a morally good person, demonstrated by reading the bible, going to church and trying to get other people to do the same. There is some truth to this description, to be sure, but McKnight is convinced that it isn’t complete. He now answers the question much more simply: “A Christian is someone who follows Jesus.”

The rest of the book explains what “following Jesus” looks like in everyday practice. Chapters cover a wide-range of subjects, including: Kingdom, Love, Peace, Wisdom, Church, Sex, Vocation and Eternity. Many of McKnight’s examples are stories of college students who are eager to follow Jesus but aren’t sure how, making it a great book for youth and college pastors, parents of teenagers and younger Christians. McKnight does a masterful job of taking complex biblical concepts and making accessible to a wide-range of people, regardless of where they are on their spiritual journey.

Click here to read an excerpt from Chapter 10: Sex.Life

Click here to visit Jesus Creed (Scot McKnight's blog)

Click here to listen to an interview on Steve Brown Etc

Big News: Thanks to the good people at Zondervan, next week we will be giving away copies of One.Life! Be sure to check out Facebook, Twitter and our e-Update for details.

New Book from Walt Mueller!

2011-03-29T15:16:00.007-04:00

99 Thoughts for Parents of Teenagers: The Truth on Raising Teensagers From Parents Who Have Been There

Click here to purchase.

If you’re the parent of a teenager, you need all the help you can get. How do you help your children make wise choices? How do you give your teenagers freedom to make their own choices while still providing a guiding hand? How do you invest your time and energy in ways that make an eternal difference in your children’s lives?

Walt Mueller delivers the goods in 99 Thoughts for Parents of Teenagers, a no-holds-barred look at the good, bad, and ugly aspects of parenting teenagers. Drawing on his experience as a parent of four children who have passed through their teenage years, Walt shares wisdom, thoughts, insights, and suggestions for making the teenage years count. If you’re a parent, you’ll want to read, devour, and absorb the dynamic truths in this book. And if you’re a youth worker, you’ll want to get this book into the hands of parents in your ministry to guide them, encourage them, and give them insights on fulfilling God’s great call to raise children who pursue a Jesus-centered life.

Click here to download an excerpt.

More books by Walt Mueller.

Pure Scum: The Left-Out, the Right-Brained and the Grace of God

2011-03-08T10:35:00.004-05:00

It seems that Mike Sares never wanted to pastor a church with such a brazen name. But more importantly, he was open to following God’s call. In Pure Scum: The Left-Out, the Right-Brained and the Grace of God (InterVarsity Press, 2010) pastor Mike Sares shares with us his experiences leading up to, and being the pastor of Scum of the Earth Church in Denver, Colorado. The church’s name comes from 1 Corinthians 4:13. Scum of the Earth is a church for those who wouldn’t normally set foot in a typical suburban evangelical congregation for fear of rejection. Goths, punks, drunkards and homeless are regular attendees at Scum.

In Pure Scum we are taken on a journey that explores what it means to follow Christ, to listen to his calling, and to be obedient to it, even when doing so means taking substantial risks. Sares shows us that following Christ is an adventure, and he firmly holds to the idea that it is an adventure worth taking. To pastor a church like Scum is to experience extreme hardship, to share in immense pain and to live in community with many of whom the world has rejected. The characters encountered in this book are loveable because Sares shows us that they too, matter to God.

At its heart, Pure Scum reminds readers that we are all in fact, broken; we are all desperately in need of a savior. This book points us to a God whose grace is far greater than we realize, far greater than we’ll ever know or understand this side of heaven. Hopefully reading this book will stretch readers to more fully understand that God’s love reaches out to those whom we often overlook, even despise at times. We are all messed up, and perhaps it’s because the “left-out” and the “right-brained” realize this more about themselves than others that they experience God’s grace in ways that are so compelling.

Reviewed by Chris Wagner

Good News for Anxious Christians: An Interview with Author Philip Cary

2011-01-31T12:21:00.004-05:00

An interview with author Philip Cary by Angelina Deola.

Dr. Philip Cary, professor of Philosophy at Eastern University, has released several books, the most recent entitled: Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Worry About (Brazos Press). Though Dr. Cary is unapologetically attacking the unbiblical tenets of what he calls the “new evangelical theology,” he does so with the intention of preaching the gospel—that is, the good news of Jesus Christ. He has a deep love for the gospel and for God’s people, and it is his belief that ideas like “hearing God in your heart,” “finding God’s will for your life,” or “having to continually experience joy” are hurting Christians rather than helping them.

Good News for Anxious Christians offers a much needed look at what the gospel is and how Christians can live in light of the gospel, not adhering to extra-biblical ideas but instead clinging to the mystery and miracle that is found in the Son of God himself.

CPYU: You said in the introduction to Good News for Anxious Christians that your inspiration for writing the book came mostly from interacting with your students because they “are most oppressed by the new evangelical theology and most in need of permission not to believe it.” What was your experience like interacting with these students over the years, and why do you think that it’s important to preach the gospel by revealing the mis-teachings of the new evangelical theology?

Cary: Well, I think that what I call the new evangelical theology—not a very inspired label but nonetheless a useful one—makes people awfully anxious. So for instance, a whole lot of students come from my university thinking they’re supposed to find God’s will for their lives and they get worried that they might not find God’s will for their lives, or they might find God’s second best will for their lives, or they might not find the one person that God has planned for them to marry. And, I think these worries do them a lot of harm and make it difficult for them to make responsible adult decisions.

What an adult decision maker needs to do, like Solomon when he prays for wisdom, is discern between good and bad decisions--not to discern “God’s will for your life.” Solomon asks for a heart that discerns good from bad, because that’s what responsible adults are good at. That’s what God wants us to want. So after years and years of hearing this from students, I respond with: “Look, you don’t have to do this, it’s not in the Bible! I’ve got good news for you!” So the good news is that what you’re supposed to believe is in the gospel, it’s about Jesus Christ. And you are supposed to obey God’s law, and that’s his will for your life.

CPYU: Given that this “new evangelical theology” is harmful, how do we re-teach ourselves and our teenagers?

Cary: There are lots of things we have to learn to do. First and foremost, we have to learn to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is to say, to give people good news about who Christ is, and therefore good news about who they are, because the news about who Jesus is, which is the gospel, is news about who we are. We find who we are in him.

And what is the gospel? The gospel is not a technique for getting saved, like “how to get saved.” The gospel is the story about Jesus Christ. In fact, it sounds like Christmas carols. “Oh come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, oh come ye, oh come ye to Bethlehem! Come and behold him, born the King of angels.” It also sounds like music. It sounds joyous, and it says, “Look, look at the baby in the manger! There he is! He’s the king of angels! He’s our Savior! ‘Child for us sinners, poor and in the manger, who would not love thee, loving us so dearly.’” It says, “There he is! Take hold of him!” You’ll know how to live the Christian life if you have Christ.

CPYU: In your book, you say that the desire to be relevant, within the church and within the greater society, is not helpful in teaching people about Christ. Instead, you say that teachers must depend on students’ willingness to learn. What about the teenagers who don’t even want to be in church?

Cary: The alternative to relevance is beauty. Part of this is my own experience. You know, I was a baby boomer, and they invented relevance for baby boomers, and I routinely find the attempt to be relevant just boring. Suppose you’re a kid who doesn’t like poetry, who has to take a class on Shakespeare. Which is more likely to get you interested: a class on how Shakespeare is relevant to your life, or a class which actually teaches you to understand Shakespeare? I think the class on relevance is likely to be boring. Likewise, which is more likely to bore a kid coming to church: a sermon on how relevant God is for your life, or a sermon about who God really is? I think that the second kind of sermon is going to be more exciting, especially if you understand that indeed God is beautiful. The story about who God is is a beautiful story, a powerful story, a somewhat terrifying story—it’s a story that moves us. But it is not, thank heaven, relevant to our lives, because when you try to be relevant, what you do is you reshape the story to fit our lives, and that makes it boring, because it doesn’t change our lives. Our lives become the criterion to fit the biblical story into, whereas what a good sermon does, and good teaching in youth group and so on, is it gets us into the biblical story, which we discover is larger, more powerful, more beautiful, and a bit more scary than we realized, and that’s exciting because it’s in contact with what’s real.

But here’s the secret: you have to find this stuff beautiful and exciting yourself. If you don’t, then you’re not going to be able to convey that to someone else. So if you’re trying to be relevant, you’re essentially acting as if, “Well, I know this stuff is boring so I’ll try to make it relevant to you...”

CPYU: In the conclusion of your book, you criticize the “practical” sermon because “it talks as if nothing important happens when Christians gather on the Sabbath, because everything depends on our going out Monday morning and putting into practice what the preacher told us to do on Sunday.” But, there are critics of Christianity who say that Christians are only Christians on Sundays. So how are pastors supposed to fight the epidemic of hypocritical Christians without being overly “practical”?

Cary: What I think changes us from the bottom up is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We become those who find Christ as our beloved. That’s what changes our hearts. And you can’t do that by telling people how to love Christ. You have to do that by telling them about Christ.

What we should learn is to take Christ as our beloved and obey him. And the way to get there is to get us deeper and deeper into the story of who Jesus is, and to find ourselves in that story, and then to say, “Ah, we can follow him.” There is a place to tell people about the Christian life, but that’s always as part of the overarching story of who Jesus is, who God is in Christ, who the God of the Bible is, who the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are. “Who” questions are the crucial things, because when we know who this is, the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that’s what changes us, and then you can add a little bit about how to live the Christian life. But telling people about how to live the Christian life will not change their lives. Telling them about Jesus Christ does.

If you’re a preacher, you have this incredible privilege of giving people nothing less than Jesus Christ. WHY would you want to give them something less?! Okay, you can give them the other things too if you want to, but first give them Jesus Christ. If it’s all about the application, then it’s all about me. I come to church to hear about Jesus Christ, not about myself.

Takeaways
Are the questions we ask ourselves and our teenagers centering anyone on the gospel? As Cary writes, “The story we live in, whether we believe it or not, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the disciples and the soldiers, the women who are healed and the children raised from the dead, we are all characters in Christ’s story, recognizing that we are one of the many sinners for whom Christ died.” As active participants in the gospel story, are we attempting to better understand our story’s great protagonist or are our questions causing us to grow in anxiety rather than in Christ?

Are we asking questions at all? Dr. Cary claims that one of the main purposes of his book is to get Christians thinking about the assumptions we have made about their faith, such as the need to hear God speak to our hearts, or the need to experience joy all the time. Whether we agree with his conclusions or not, it is important to evaluate the assumptions we make about our faith and reflect on their validity, their usefulness, or even their goodness in our lives.

Angelina Deola is currently a student at Eastern University and in the fall of 2010 served as a writing intern for CPYU.

Derek's Top 10 Books of 2010

2011-01-26T10:58:00.008-05:00

Also available as a pdf.

It’s hard to believe that another reading year has come to an end. There were certainly some great books again last year. It’s always difficult to choose favorites, but I’ve managed to narrow it down to ten once again. I’m pleased to see that I selected three novels this time. I enjoy reading novels and have crazy dreams of trying to write one someday. (I’m sure you haven’t heard that before!) So, here we go: My top 10 books of 2010 listed alphabetically by author:

Imagination in Place by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint Press). I noted before that I love Berry’s novels and enjoy his poetry, but have been less drawn to his essays. I know he is a fine essayist, some say the best alive today, but I’d rather dig into one of his works of fiction or reflect on one of his poems. Imagination in Place, however, was different. I think it was the autobiographical nature of these essays. Berry reflects on the people and places that have influenced his writing the most. Humility marks every page. The final essay “God, Science and Imagination” is worth the price of the book. He writes, “[Imagination] is the power by which we see the place, predicament, or the story we are in.” Beautiful.

Back on Murder: A Roland March Mystery by J. Mark Bertrand (Bethany House). I’ve gotten to know Mark a little bit over the past few years and I was excited to read this book long before it was published. My plan was to read it while on vacation in July, but my dad starting reading it first and wouldn’t give it back! I eventually read it, and raved about it online and dreamed about the characters. It’s a three part series and I can’t wait for the next one! Mark is a good writer and the book received many positive reviews. Thoughtful, gripping and quite entertaining.

Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the Americ an Church by Kenda Creasy Dean (Oxford University Press). Dean offers deeper analysis into the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) from a Christian perspective. While the book Soul Searching, Christian Smith’s groundbreaking report of the NSYR, attempted to be a “neutral,” sociological study, Dean responds to the data from a more distinctly Christian angle. According to Dean (and the NSYR), the majority of the teenagers in our churches live life based on a moralistic, therapeutic, deist (MTD) worldview, which they have learned from watching their parents. “Nurturing faith in young people means investing in the faith of their parents and congregations.” She sees the “MTD problem” as being deep and church-wide. This is a must read for all who care about nurturing teenagers in the faith.

Looking for the King: An Ink lings Novel by David Downing (Ignatius Press). This book would easily win the award for best trailer of the year as well. Wow. Downing is a professor at the small college up the street and it has been a privilege to get to know him. A world renowned C.S. Lewis scholar, in his first novel he takes a shot at crafting a suspenseful mystery where the main characters come in contact with the Inklings, Lewis’s group of friends in Oxford, including Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien. You don’t have to be a Lewis fan to enjoy the story, but if you are, you will be gripped by the conversations and British settings.

The Confession by John Grisham. Earlier in the year I wrote of how Grisham’s first novel A Time to Kill changed my life. Well, it had a major part to play in my marriage, anyway! Grisham’s latest novel could be life changing for other reasons. Without giving the plot away, in this powerful book, Grisham forces readers to think more deeply about our court system and the death penalty. It’s not an easy book to read but it’s worth it.

Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful: A Biblical Vision for Education in the Church by Gary Parrett and Steve Kang (Intervarsity Press). This is a massive, 450+ page book that I enjoyed on every page. My work as the director of the College Transition Initiative requires me to think and speak about developing in young people a faith that lasts. I’m also a young father, so that question is also pressing in other areas of life as well. This book was very informative, challenging the church to be more intentional in its Christian education. It connects learning to the biblical story, going into much depth as to what the church ought to teach and provides numerous, practical suggestions on how to disciple all ages.

Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ by Eugene Peterson (Eerdmans). With this book, Peterson’s widely successful and deeply formative “conversations in spiritual theology” series comes to a close. The final installment discusses maturing in Christ, the church and provides insightful (as always!) commentary on the book of Ephesians. I loved it and savored it, reading a few pages a day over several months. Challenging, provocative, satisfying. Peterson continues to serve the Church he loves with passion, patience and grace.

Letters to a Young Calvi nist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition by James K.A. Smith (Brazos Press). Reformed theology has been becoming more and more popular in North American Christianity. With many “emerging” churches chasing after innovations and the latest way to re-imagine/invent/think itself, the “New-Calvinists” look back to the reformation for inspiration, calling the church to deeper theological training, especially in regards to the historical doctrines and creeds. There are many positive aspects of this movement, but Smith wants to proceed with caution. He argues that the “new-Calvinism” focuses too much on TULIP and individual salvation and misses the broader perspective that Calvin himself emphasized. This collection of fictitious letters is an engaging read and a much needed voice in contemporary, Calvinist conversations.

The Fatherless Generation: Redeeming the Story by John Sowers (Zondervan). The first half of the book paints a bleak picture of fatherlessness in America. Thirty-three percent of youth—over 25 million kids—grow up without a dad. According to Sowers “the fatherless boy lives with the nagging accusation that he will never be adequate, never measure up, never really be a man.” And, “while our fatherless sons rage, our fatherless daughters decay. Driven by a crippling sense of unworthiness and a gnawing hunger for Dad, they are emotionally and sexually promiscuous.” But there is hope. The second half of the book is an urgent plea for churches to invest in intentional mentoring programs. Sowers forces us to open our eyes to the devastating crisis of fatherlessness. It is pervasive. And because it affects everyone in some way, everyone should read this book. If you come from a fatherless background this book will help you to make sense of your situation. Youth workers should read this book in order to better understand how to serve the fatherless in their congregations and communities. And, finally, fathers should read this book to be reminded of the importance and challenge of being a faithful dad.

Basic Christian: The Inside Story of John Stott by Roger Steer (Intervarsity Press). I’m a big fan of John Stott. His theology continues to undergird much of my approach to issues of faith and culture. Steer writes an engaging and inspiring biography of Dr. Stott. He takes readers on an adventure into the life of one of the most influential Christians of the 20th century. Stott has quite a legacy and it is worth knowing about in detail. We are indebted to Steer for his time in writing the story of a man everyone should know.

Read Walt's best reads of 2010!

Almost Christian: What Teens are Telling the American Church

2011-01-03T10:27:00.003-05:00

One of the messages that we constantly trumpet here at CPYU is this: like it or not, we MUST listen to cultural trends. And like them or not, cultural trends give us deep insights into who we are, along with who we are becoming. Then, when viewed in light of who we’re supposed to be, cultural trends help us to answer our responsibility to respond in ways that bring honor and glory to God by promoting His Kingdom values. When it comes to our kids and who they are, listening to their culture shows us what we’ve failed to do, along with what we must do. And so it is with the message of Kenda Creasy Dean’s fabulous and challenging book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church (Oxford University Press, 2010).

The cultural trend Dean reminds us of is the saddening mutation of Christian faith that is embraced and lived by our kids, a faith that’s been labeled as “moralistic, therapeutic, deism” by Christian Smith and others involved with the National Study of Youth and Religion. While Smith described this disturbing cultural trend in his book Soul Searching, Dean goes a step further to offer analysis on who’s to blame, along with who needs to step up and do something – including suggestions on what to do – to remedy the decline of faith among our kids. Not surprisingly, the blame is placed first and foremost at the feet of families who have forfeited their God-given responsibility to nurture their children in the faith of the Old and New Testament. Also to blame is a church that hasn’t equipped parents to do their job. And now we are reaping the fruit in what Dean calls a “Church of Benign Whatever-ism.”

Almost Christian takes readers on a journey into what it means to promote a “consequential faith” through a variety of faith-building strategies including passing on the faith legacy through the rediscovery of the process of “catechesis,” something that’s been lost in the age of the market-driven mega-church. Readers are prompted to consider what it means and what it will take to move kids beyond embracing a self-serving spirituality to a faith that reflects the God-centeredness and other-centeredness of the Gospel.

This is a book highly recommended for youth workers and parents, but it’s also a necessary read for pastors, church boards, and whoever else is pondering what it means to be the church in today’s rapidly changing culture.

--Walt Mueller

Love Is an Orientation

2010-12-21T11:28:00.003-05:00

The first words of Andrew Marin’s book, Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community (InterVarsity Press, 2010), reads as a statement that reflects my own life: “I am a straight, white, conservative, Bible-believing, evangelical male. I was raised in a Christian home in a conservative suburb of Chicago and grew up in a large evangelical church. And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community.” However, over the last 10 years he has immersed himself in this community choosing to live in the gay district of Chicago called Boystown. One of the most polarizing discussions that can happen in our church today surrounds the topic of homosexuality. As someone that works often to illuminate and prompt dialogue on sexuality, this can be one of the most sobering and difficult conversations I have. To be honest, I would rather not discuss this topic because I know what lies beneath and it is neither easy nor quick to understand.

Marin’s story begins when three of his best friends “come out” over a three-month period. This title wave of revelation led him to deeply consider what he believed and how he was going to cope with this new reality, all three of his closest friends were gay! His decision, however, was one that some find strange. In order to completely answer the Holy Spirit’s call in his life, he decided to fully immerse himself in the GLBT community. Marin says that he wanted to be, “the most involved, gayest straight dude on the face of the earth.”

His immersion in this culture is what led him to write Love Is an Orientation. It is a challenging, yet dynamic work of literature on the issues surrounding the intersection of the church and the GLBT community. He points out that we need to begin moving past our default responses toward the GLBT community. He is not asking Christians to change their beliefs, nor is he asking them to change their foundational understanding of Scripture. His heart is to create a new paradigm that elevates our discussion on this issue.

Marin writes, “We have no problem wrestling with apologetics for people of different ethnicities and cultures that are totally removed from ours. Christians diligently study other belief systems and incarnationally move into neighborhoods of people with different beliefs, join their groups, attend their events and partake in their daily life, reveling in the unique opportunity to engage in what we don’t know. But Christians do none of those things for the GLBT community.”

Love Is an Orientation will challenge you to believe that their lives are as real as ours, and our faith in Jesus Christ requires us to meticulously seek honest transparency not only within the GLBT community but in ourselves as well.

--Jason Soucinek

Hipster Christianity?

2010-12-17T09:43:00.002-05:00

What does it mean for the church to be hip? Is cool Christianity something we should even strive for? These are a few of the questions that frame Brett McCracken’s Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Baker Books, 2010). The book has received a lot of attention, garnering both praise and criticism. While some of the generalizations and presuppositions McCracken makes through the early portions of the book may miss the mark, the book lands on solid ground as McCracken comes to his conclusions in the latter chapters.

The book takes us through a historical look at the concept of cool and what it has looked like in practice over the years. Though nowhere near exhaustive, it provides a broad view that helps paint the picture of hipsterdom and some of its main tenets of freedom, individualism, exclusivity, and rebellion. Hipster Christianity then describes what hipsters look like in today’s society, generalizing them into twelve basic categories based on the author’s experiences. (Insert ironic criticism here.) McCracken then takes us on a tour of what he considers the rise of hipster Christianity dating back to the 1960’s. Those who grew up in evangelical homes during the 80’s and 90’s will at least relate to, if not appreciate McCracken’s references during this time period. The middle portion of the book focuses on what so-called “hipster Christianity” looks like today in practice, starting with a brief but helpful profile of several different well-known churches.

As stated before, the book holds the most weight in the concluding chapters as McCracken takes a look at whether the concept of “cool” can be reconciled with Christianity. In short, McCracken states that it cannot. Though he does allow that following Christ is a “cool” venture all to itself, he argues it’s not the same type of self-obsessed notion of cool that we have come to highly regard as a culture. If we’re not careful, and if we don’t hold tight to Scripture, the church can quickly lose its identity as found in being the body of Christ, and instead be focused on how attractive we look to the outside world. He suggests that churches who are trying to be cool simply for the sake of marketing to young believers or seekers, or to satisfy the fleeting desires of the “marketplace” are no different than corporations advertising their latest products. To be a radical for Christ means to deny oneself, and be fixated on the eternal aspect of God’s kingdom, rather than the vain, in the now, fleeting pursuits of “hip.” For many individuals and churches, this will be a tough pill to swallow.

Youth pastors and pastors alike would do well to read the final five chapters of this book. It will help them take a closer look at the decisions their churches make and hopefully encourage them to base those decisions on the unchanging Word of God rather than their personal desire to be cool or to appeal to the outside world.

--Chris Wagner

Looking for the King this Christmas?

2010-12-13T09:27:00.009-05:00

Just in time for the release of the latest Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and for the gift-giving Christmas season, our good friend Byron Borger, proprietor of our favorite bookstore, Hearts & Minds, has assembled an excellent list of C.S. Lewis resources. Byron writes, “This year has marked some very important new C.S. Lewis resources, books and audio and--yes--some educational DVDs that are sorely needed, to enhance our appreciation of the great Oxford don.” Please check out Byron’s great list and, perhaps, think of that special someone who would greatly benefit from reading a book about or by C.S. Lewis.

Byron briefly mentions a new novel by David Downing that we are excited about. Check out the trailer above for the “Inklings” novel, Looking for the King. Is that not the best book trailer you’ve ever seen? Dr. Downing is a friend, teaches at the college up the street from CPYU’s office and a few years ago helped us see what C.S. Lewis might have to say to Christian students making the transition from high school to college (C.S. Lewis for College Students). His new novel also contains some “imagined” conversations with Lewis. While the trailer highlights the adventurous aspects of the story, the best parts of the book, in my opinion, are the conversations between the main characters and Lewis and his friends. Did you ever wonder what it would be like to have a cup of coffee with Lewis? Do you dream of the opportunity to meet J.R.R. Tolkien at a pub? This book is for you! And, if you’re just looking for a thoughtful, page-turning mystery, this book is for you too! It would be a wonderful gift for both Lewis fans and for friends learning about Lewis for the first time.

Tis the season to give books as gifts. David Downing (and Lewis) always seem to make my Christmas shopping a little bit easier!

--Derek Melleby

Interview with James K.A. Smith on "Letters to a Young Calvinist"

2010-12-10T14:56:00.012-05:00

Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition is getting a lot of attention. Here's a good, short interview of James K.A. Smith talking about his new book. You can read the Bookshelf review here. And Dr. Smith responds to his baptist critics here. Enjoy!

About You

2010-12-07T13:24:00.004-05:00

The pile of books "to be read" in my office just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Every once in a while a new book darkens the doorway that I allow to jump to the front of the line, or top of the pile as it were. A couple of weeks ago one of those books showed up and I devoured it quickly. It never even made it to the pile. . . I just took it home and started reading. It's a book by Dick Staub, a friend whose past books, Too Christian and Too Pagan and The Culturally Savvy Christian, I've made required reading for students in classes I've taught. The feedback is pretty consistent – things like "thanks for making me read that book" and "that book was a life-changer for me." Staub's latest offering, About You: Fully Human, Fully Alive (Jossey-Bass, 2010) is good reading I'm "assigning" to anyone who reads this review! It's good reading because it's filled with good writing that shatters some of the myths we've come to believe about God and ourselves, while offering a clear corrective regarding the ways things are and ought to be.

The book's cover is sure to attract attention from both Christians who think they know what being a Christian is all about, and non-believers who know Christians who have erroneously communicated what being a Christian is all about. Those facts hit readers when they spot this thought-provoking quote on the cover: "Jesus didn't come to make us Christian; Jesus came to make us fully human," words penned by Hans Rookmaker, a hero of the faith Staub and I share. Those words capture a reality that's so much bigger and better than what we've come to accept.

Rooted in the context of the unfolding Biblical drama of Creation, Fall, and Redemption, About You takes readers on a journey to discover what it means to be fully human, fully alive, and how to get there. This isn't a book about getting saved. This is a book about rediscovering the purpose, meaning, and shalom of life in the Garden, the echo of which haunts us all in our brokenness. About You engages both the saved and the seeker, leading them down the path to understanding one's self and all of life in the role we've been made to play in that great drama. It's a book about restoration that will open your eyes to who you were made to be and how to get there once again.

--Walt Mueller

Letters to a Young Calvinist

2010-12-01T13:03:00.019-05:00

There has been a recent interest in Reformed theology in general and Calvinism in particular. Major media outlets have reported on how many young people are attracted to what has been called “New-Calvinism.” YouTube clips abound of young pastors decrying the doctrinal shallowness of the contemporary church while urging protestant, evangelical churches to return to their reformed heritage.

As with any movement, the renewed interest in Calvinism has had both positive and negative aspects. Positively, the “New-Calvinists” desire to think more deeply, biblically and theologically and stress the importance and necessity of the local church for nurturing a worshipping community. But there have been a few negative aspects as well. While the reformed tradition has prided itself as being Gospel and grace centered it has also, well, “prided” itself. For some, being “right” doctrinally and theologically becomes a source of pride and arrogance often leading to divisive attitudes. What’s more, some of the “New-Calvinists” reduce Calvinism to its doctrine of salvation, popularly known as TULIP, or the 5-points, and miss the broader, richer vision of John Calvin himself.

What is the bigger, theological vision missed by the New-Calvinists? That’s what James K.A. Smith spells out in his new book Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition (Brazos Press, 2010). Smith’s own Christian journey took him all over the theological map, from Pentecostalism to currently teaching philosophy at Calvin College. His own journey is what motivated him to write these letters to a young Christian. In fact, truth be told, Smith is basically writing letters to himself, retelling his own pilgrimage through his theological pride to becoming a humbler, gentler Calvinist.

The book is creative, engaging and stimulating. It serves as a helpful corrective to all of us who may run the risk of missing Jesus while constructing persuasive theological schemas. At times, I think Smith assumes too much from his (supposed) young readers, referring to people, places and historical events that most young people will be learning about for the first time in these pages. In that sense, I’m not sure it serves as the best “invitation to the Reformed tradition.” But like Paul’s epistles, these letters do a marvelous job of ensuring that Jesus and the Kingdom remain the focus of the Gospel. A book like this one needed to be written and Smith was just the person to do it. His love for Jesus, the Bible and the church are evident on each page.

--Derek Melleby

Redeeming the Realities of Marriage

2010-11-17T09:15:00.004-05:00

I often wonder what it is my kids think about marriage. I wonder what they’ve learned by watching me and my wife live out the vows we recited to each other over 28 years ago. I wonder if the example I’ve given them is a good one. Do they have a high view of marriage? Or, like so many of their peers, do they view the institution of marriage with a skepticism that’s been fueled by faulty media depictions, the confusion of infatuation with love, declining sexual standards, a “feel-good” moral code, and the failure of marriage to work under the roof where they spent their childhood?

Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost our center when it comes to matrimony. When we get around to choosing marriage, our expectations are way off. When we get into marriage, those false expectations bear fruit that leaves us feeling like failures. . . and then far too many marriages disintegrate. The good news is that even though this is the cultural climate of the times, a majority of our kids long to enter into a stable, loving, and enduring marriage. Eighty-two percent of our teenage girls say that having a good marriage and family life is “extremely important,” and that’s a number that’s been trending upward in recent years. While the boys lag behind, over seven out of ten share that desire. But how can we help facilitate a transition from great expectations, to seeing those expectations become reality?

I’m fully aware that marriage and individual marriages are extremely complex. But stated simply, the two best things we can give to our kids is 1) an example of a healthy marriage, and 2) constant guidance and direction before their married so that they are prepared for the marital realities than run the spectrum from good, to bad, to even ugly.

One of the things I’ve come to love about Dr. Paul Tripp is his realization that life is messy. He would be the first to admit that his own life has been messy. He also trumpets the theological reality that we are all deeply flawed people who are living in a deeply flawed world. Not only that, but it is the grace of God as evidenced in the cross that not only saves us, but saves us from ourselves while allowing us to live in marital bliss and marital lack-of-bliss as one flawed person committed to another flawed person. His latest book, What Did You Expect??: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage (Crossway, 2010), is a vulnerable, biblically-based, realistic, and very hopeful guide that can set us on the path to healthy marriages, the setting of good examples, and healthy conversations with our kids about the nature of marriage.

Tripp recognizes that our marriages need “the regular rescue of grace” because we are sinners who are married to sinners who are trying to live the married life in a broken and messed up world. Tripp proposes that contrary to popular opinion, the secret to a successful marriage is not rooted in romance. Rather, a marriage of love, unity, and understanding is rooted in the worship of God. It is only when we are focused on the worship of God “that we find reason to continue” in our marriages.

After smashing the faulty and idolatrous notions of marriage that we so easily believe and embrace in today’s culture, Tripp shares and explains six commitments that flawed couples must keep if they are hoping to grow in their love for each other and build a marriage that endures. They are. . .

- We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness.
- We will make growth and change our daily agenda.
- We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust.
- We will commit to building a relationship of love.
- We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace.
- We will work to protect our marriage.

What Did You Expect?? is a timely book that I highly recommend. Of course, it’s one that all parents should read, discuss, and prayerfully endeavor to live. Youth workers would do well to give it a read? Why? Your kids are watching! Couples considering marriage will find the book especially helpful. And then anyone who wants to help young people hear and live a realistic and healthy understanding of this God-given institution will find more than enough good stuff to unpack and discuss with kids.

Tripp writes, “It is only when a husband and wife are in love with the same King and live in practical pursuit of the same kingdom that they have any hope of functional unity, understanding, and love.” Yes, God is in the business of rescuing us from ourselves and making all things new. . . including our marriages!

-- Dr. Walt Mueller

The Fatherless Generation

2010-11-10T09:16:00.004-05:00

Fatherless Generation: Redeeming the Story (Zondervan, 2010) by John Sowers is eye-opening, dismal, but ultimately hopeful.

The first half of the book paints a bleak picture of fatherlessness in America. Thirty-three percent of youth—over 25 million kids—grow up without a dad. According to Sowers “the fatherless boy lives with the nagging accusation that he will never be adequate, never measure up, never really be a man.” And, “while our fatherless sons rage, our fatherless daughters decay. Driven by a crippling sense of unworthiness and a gnawing hunger for Dad, they are emotionally and sexually promiscuous.” Citing various sources, Sowers concludes: "The fatherless generation is accountable for most of the serious problems we face today…"

63% of youth suicides
71% of pregnant teenagers
90% of all homeless and runaway children
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions
85% of all youth who exhibit behavior disorders
80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger
71% of al high school dropouts
75% of all adolescents in chemical abuse centers
85% of all youths sitting in prison

But there is hope. The second half of the book is an urgent plea for churches to invest in intentional mentoring programs. Sowers is currently the president of The Mentoring Project, which “seeks to respond to the American crisis of fatherlessness by inspiring and equipping faith communities to mentor fatherless boys.” He offers countless stories and statistics of boys and girls who made successful and healthy transitions from adolescence to adulthood. The common denominator was that they had mentors in their lives, showing them want it meant and looked like to be men and women. Understanding the daunting task of being a mentor, the book concludes with helpful and inspiring advice on how to engage the fatherless among us.

Sowers forces us to open our eyes to the devastating crisis of fatherlessness. It is pervasive. And because it affects everyone in some way, everyone should read this book. If you come from a fatherless background this book will help you to make sense of your situation. Youth workers should read this book in order to better understand how to serve the fatherless in their congregations and communities. And, finally, fathers should read this book to be reminded of the importance and challenge of being a faithful dad.

-- Derek Melleby

Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers

2010-11-08T08:43:00.005-05:00

Billy Joel once sang about how only the good die young. It was a song about a good catholic girl and a bad rebel trying to sway her from her religious roots. Now we never know what happened to that girl at the end of the song (to many ooo’s and woah’s to find out) but if the author of Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, 2007), Mark Regnerus, has any say in the matter he might conclude that she ran off with the boy.

Forbidden Fruit is a few years old so it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve missed this one recently. However, the answers to what is happening in the lives of teens as it relates to sex and sexuality, and more importantly the behavior of teens, is why this book deserves to stay on our reading lists. Regnerus asks questions about religion and sex among American teenagers, and his conclusions are neither simple nor straightforward. In fact, he poses that simple and straightforward answers to questions about sex (like, avoid sex before you're married) have largely fallen flat among American teens, Christians included. There's new material on emerging sexual norms, masturbation, homosexuality, virginity loss, and post-virginity sexual decision-making. For these reasons, I think the book could be considered as a standard in the study of adolescent sexual behavior, independent of its emphasis on religion.

Forbidden Fruit is not only a meta-analysis on the issues of religion and sex as it relates to teens but it also gives insight into how people of faith have discussed the topic of sex. Regnerus quotes Don Schrader who says, “to hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs, and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals.” Unfortunately the data collected suggests that religion has failed to persuade people to talk about sex in ways that are not dehumanizing and demonizing all in the hope of keeping teens from having sex before marriage.

Whether you are a parent, pastor or educator I would recommend this book. It can at times be very thick with statistics, but Regnerus masterfully balances his overall analysis with the rawness of teenage emotion and experience. Overall, I think this is worth the time to sit and read. There are few authors who can tackle such a serious subject in such a disarming way.

-- Jason Soucinek

Reinventing Youth Ministry (Again)

2010-11-02T13:34:00.002-04:00

I’m not a guy who has a long list of heroes. Perhaps it’s because it takes a lot to impress me. To qualify as a hero for me, someone has to be a real flesh-and-blood person (sorry, Superman!) who has unselfishly pursued their God-given life-calling with single-minded purpose and almost reckless abandon. They also have to have done with great humility and integrity. It’s for that reason that I list Wayne Rice as one of a small handful of my youth ministry heroes.

I was a freckle-faced kid longing to survive life Huntingdon Junior High School and the harrowing transformation from childhood to adolescence when Wayne Rice was blazing the youth ministry trail with his buddy Mike Yaconelli. . . a partnership that would very quickly birth Youth Specialties. Although I didn’t know it, my youth pastors around that time were discovering and tapping into the youth ministry stuff Wayne and Mike had originally been selling out of the trunks of their cars. In a few short years, I would find myself answering the call to youth ministry, a calling that was fueled in large part by the growing volume of resources and training provided by YS.

Over the years, my relationship with Wayne Rice morphed from me admiring him from afar as he led music onstage at a convention, to a highly-respected friend. Wayne Rice has always been the real deal. . . that’s what I love about him. Now, after a few years out of the spotlight spent pondering his own story and legacy, Wayne is sharing his time-tested wisdom and heart in his brand new book, Reinventing Youth Ministry (Again): From Bells and Whistles to Flesh and Blood (InterVarsity, 2010).

Let me be straightforward and blunt about this book – every youth worker needs to pick it up and read it. Reality is that lots of younger youth workers might be tempted to write Wayne off as an old guy who’s a youth ministry has-been, which means that he’s got nothing worry saying to people in youth ministry today. But if you understand the wisdom that comes with having a history and honestly evaluating that history, then Wayne Rice is a voice who needs to be heard. It’s no stretch to say that Wayne Rice had a huge hand in making youth ministry what it’s been since the 1960s and into today. . . . both the good and the bad. Wayne would admit that – and does admit that – himself in this book. Reinventing Youth Ministry (Again) takes readers on an autobiographical and historical tour of youth ministry without the cloudy vision caused by taking the tour with rose-colored glasses. And by telling us all what was done right along with admitting what was misguided and wrong, Wayne helps today’s youth ministry mavericks avoid the mistakes that so many of us made. Instead, he calls youth workers back to a biblically-faithful and mature view of the Scriptures, the church, the family, and what has to be in place for lasting spiritual nurture to take place in the lives of kids.

Some day, everyone of today’s youth workers will arrive at the age where they take a look in the rearview mirror and think about what they’d do differently if they could only have a chance to do it all over again. It’s inevitable. But I believe that today’s youth workers will reach that point with a shorter list of regrets and would’ve, could’ve, should’ves if they would carefully consider Wayne’s words in Reinventing Youth Ministry (Again). All of us in youth ministry owe a debt of gratitude to Wayne Rice. With this book, our debt just got bigger.

–- Walt Mueller

Jonathan Morrow Interview: Is God Just a Human Invention?

2010-10-15T09:38:00.004-04:00

Jonathan Morrow is passionate about encouraging and equipping the next generation to think Christianly about all of life. He is the author of Welcome to College: A Christ-follower’s Guide for the Journey and the coauthor (with Sean McDowell) of Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists. Jonathan also contributed several articles to the Apologetics Study Bible for Students. He holds a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in philosophy from Talbot School of Theology, where he is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry in Engaging Mind and Culture. Currently he is the equipping pastor at Fellowship Bible Church in Murfreesboro, TN.

Jonathan has been a guest on Family Life Today and Point of View and blogs regularly on the intersection of Christianity and culture at http://www.thinkchristianly.org/. He and his wife Mandi have been married for 10 years and have two children. What follows is an interview with Jonathan about his latest book Is God Just a Human Invention? and about equipping Christian students for college.

CPYU: What motivated you and Sean to write this book?

Morrow: One of the things we have noticed in our experience with students and people within the church today (Sean as a Teacher and myself as a Pastor who works with students and adults) is that the New Atheists’ books, articles and debates, have been wreaking havoc on their faith. And so we wanted to write a book for this generation that would be understandable and engaging but that would also contain substantive responses to the eighteen biggest objections raised by the New Atheists. We also wanted to cover a wide spectrum of topics from scientific and philosophical issues to moral and biblical ones—all in one place. Most people aren’t going to read the best 5 books on a single topic, so we wanted to offer a resource that really hit all the big issues. The conversation about God and truth can get pretty heated. However, our goal was to have a productive conversation so we tried to maintain a civil tone while at the same time making a rigorous case for God and responding to the specific objections raised by the New Atheists. I guess the bottom line in writing Is God Just a Human Invention?, is that Sean and I wanted to make sure there would be someone to help guide young adults in their faith journey and ensure that they have the opportunity to seriously consider an un-caricatured, thoughtful understanding of Christianity because becoming a lifelong follower of Jesus Christ is the best decision one could ever make.

CPYU: How did you develop your passion for apologetics?

Morrow: For me, that journey really began as I was asking the big questions of life during college. This was aided by the fact that I also seemed to end up with every hostile professor to Christianity on campus! So I scrambled for answers and wanted to know if there were good reasons to be a Christian. Was it true? I had no interest in following fairytales and certainly didn’t want to base my life on religious wishful thinking. But, the more I investigated, the more confident I became that this really is true. I began reading people like Ravi Zacharias, William Lane Craig, Norman Geisler, and J.P Moreland and it was like a breath of fresh air for my soul during these formative years. That really gave me a vision for doing for others what they did for me (cf. 2 Timothy 2:2).

CPYU: A very helpful aspect of the book is that each chapter concludes with a “why it matters” section. Why was that important to you?

Morrow: We wanted this book to have a unique angle that speaks to this generation. And so we invited eighteen leading scholars to share a little bit of their own stories and how these truths were meaningful to their lives in a “why it matters” section that follows each of the chapters that we wrote. We thought it was important for students to see that this is not just an academic exercise for those who get into that sort of thing. These questions really matter. Ideas have consequences! We were blown away and humbled by the generous response of these scholars to give of their time to help encourage the next generation in their search for truth. Their willingness to participate really speaks to how important these questions really are for all of us.

CPYU: Many of the readers of this blog are concerned with the college experience for Christian students. How will this book help college students as they encounter tough questions about faith on campus?

Morrow: Specifically, I think it will help them in a couple ways. First, I think it gives them solid reasons to believe that God not only exists, but that he has also spoken in the person of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:15). This is something you can investigate with eyes wide open. Furthermore, it will help explode slogans and myths that get bantered about like “science has made God irrelevant” or that “Christianity is dangerous” or that “Christianity is based on blind faith.” Another way this book will help is that students will be introduced to 18 leading Christian thinkers as they read. Sometimes, people can get the idea that not many people take the life of the mind seriously in Christianity. This is simply false. We are commanded to love God with all of our minds (Matthew 22:37). In addition, we offer the top 2 resources for further investigation of that topic at the end of each chapter plus websites and DVD’s. Finally, we hope students who work through this book will walk away with a renewed sense of confidence that Christianity really is true and that they would seek out the unique part God would have them play in the mission of God.

CPYU: From your experience traveling and speaking, do you think the New Atheist Movement is growing or shrinking?

Morrow: One thing is for sure, they have the media’s attention. They are selling lots of books, developing apps for the iPhone, are active on social networking sites and Internet forums, and sponsoring billboard campaigns. One of the things that is “new” about this manifestation of atheism is the evangelistic zeal with which they are trying to get their message out. In my experience, people may not always be able to tell you the names of the new atheists, but they are raising the same issues and objections mentioned in their writings. So while this is still a relatively small percentage of the people in America, they do have access to the microphone to get their message out which means we need to be ready to engage.

CPYU: What do you think the rise in popularity of the New Atheists has taught the church? What should Christians learn from the kinds of questions the New Atheists are asking?

Morrow: The New Atheists present both an opportunity and a challenge for the church. The difference between an opportunity and a challenge largely depends upon how a person responds. The New Atheists want students to question their faith. In a sense, so do we. If Christianity is really true, then it has nothing to fear from honest and vigorous investigation. Let the best ideas win! In the end, everyone has to answer the big questions in life: Where did I come from? Do I matter? Is there a God? If so, does this God care about me? Was Jesus really who he claimed to be? What is the good life? Is there life after death?

We see this as an opportunity because when Christian students come out on the other side of wrestling with these fundamental questions and the challenges of the New Atheists, they will have formed convictions—and passion flows from conviction. After all, we are called to contend for the faith (Jude 3).

But here is the challenge. The church must do the hard work of equipping the next generation to think about their faith. This will take time, resources, mentors, study and careful thinking. And it will not always yield “immediate results.” But the return on investment will be huge down the road. There is no shortage of books and polls documenting that an increasing number of students seem to be checking out from their faith in college and beyond. I think recovering an emphasis on apologetics and Christian worldview training is one important part of the remedy, along with cultivating strong peer and mentor relationships.

Click here to learn more about Jonathan’s ministry

Follow Jonathan on Twitter

Download: Teaching Teenagers to Filter Their Media Choices

2010-08-31T09:26:00.003-04:00

A sample video clip from a new resource from CPYU and Simply Youth Ministry. Download: Teaching Teenagers to Filter Their Media Choices with Walt Mueller is a 3-week small-group video curriculum. Download is available in the CPYU Resource Center.

Also be sure to check out CPYU's How to Use Your Head to Guard Your Heart: A 3(D) Guide to Making Responsible Media Choices, available at the CPYU Resource Center.

Back On Murder

2010-08-18T14:28:00.005-04:00

Have you ever been so engrossed in a novel that you started to think that the story was actually happening in real life? That happened to me on multiple occasions while reading J. Mark Bertrand’s first installment of Roland March mysteries, Back On Murder. My wife and I would be having dinner and I’d say something like, “They still haven’t found Hannah yet, have they?” That would get a blank stare followed by me trying to act like I was only joking. One time while watching a cable news channel, I actually thought the next story was going to be an update about the case. And, truth be told, I had a dream that included some of the book’s characters.

I was beginning to think that, perhaps, I thought this book was too good. Do I have to get out more, I wondered? In fact, when I showed the book to someone and mentioned how great it was, a glazed look came over his eyes. He glanced at the Christian imprint. The face said it all: it can’t be that good. But then, slowly, other glowing reviews started being published. John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, says that it is a “promising debut” and he is “ready for the next book.” In a review for Comment, Richard Doster writes, “In this first installment of a promising new series, Bertrand has given readers an intriguing plot, delightful prose, engaging dialog, and a story that's well worth reading.”

So, if they can do it, I can do it. Let the gushing begin. Back On Murder is engaging, suspenseful, thoughtful, and entertaining. It’s everything crime fiction should be. And here’s Bertrand’s real gift, and it is a gift, to be sure. There is not one f-bomb in the whole book, and yet the dialogue is realistic. There is not a single description of a sexual encounter and yet the book is not without sex. Like a good comedian who is funny without swearing, Bertrand reveals that it is possible to write a good story without being crude. Most importantly, the book is refreshingly honest about the human condition. The protagonist Roland March is complex, often discussing deeper motives behind his actions and being frustrated by his limitations. And, I hope I don’t need a “spoiler alert” for this one, the ending is satisfying without having everything neatly tied up.

Here’s the one word I would use to describe Back On Murder: flawless. Now I know that’s a strong statement, and certainly every book has flaws. But I really couldn’t ask for more from a novel. The good news is, there’s more to come! I know what I will be reading at the beach next summer.

Click here to read a Bookshelf Interview with Bertrand about his book Rethinking Worldview

NEW DVD Curriculum from Walt Mueller

2010-08-03T09:53:00.003-04:00

Download: Teaching Teenagers to Filter Their Media Choices with Walt Mueller

3-Week Small-Group Video Curriculum

CD & DVD Included

Published by our friends at Simply Youth Ministry and Group Publishing!

Available for pre-order. Releases this September!

Your teenagers are inundated with media every day—video games, TV, movies, YouTube, texting, Facebook, iPods. In fact, studies show that the average teenager consumes more than 7 hours of media a day. That doesn’t even count any media related to homework assignments or class projects!

With so many media options out there, it’s critical for teenagers to be equipped with tools that help them make wise choices. That’s where Download comes in. This 3-week video curriculum from CPYU President Walt Mueller will teach your teenagers how to filter their media choices.

In a culture where the traditional institutions like families, schools, and churches don’t nurture teenagers like they once did, students are turning more and more to the media for the nurture and guidance they need. Give your students—and their families—tools for walking wisely in this media-saturated world.

3 video lessons on DVD include:

Lesson 1 – Discover

Lesson 2 – Discern

Lesson 3 – Decide

Discussion questions in PDF & Word format also included.

CPYU recommends using Download with our best-selling 3(D) Guide. CPYU's How to Use Your Head to Guard Your Heart: A 3(D) Guide to Making Responsible Media Choices would be a great companion piece to this video based curriculum. Learn more about our 3(D) Guides here.

Final Words of Wisdom

2010-07-12T13:19:00.004-04:00

(The following review by Denis Haack originally appeared in Critique, a publication of Ransom Fellowship. To purchase The Radical Disciple by John Stott from the CPYU Resource Center, click here.)

Over the years, John Stott’s writings have nourished my soul. His faithful exposition of Scripture, always beguilingly simple, never fails to engage my heart and mind, and always spurs me on to greater obedience and fuller adoration. Now he comes to old age, and he ends his life as he lived it, namely, well.

In The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling, Stott reflects biblically on eight issues, and then closes his public ministry with a word of Farewell. This slim volume is good reading, a lovely immersion into the truth of God’s revelation in Scripture, full of wise words for those who find themselves on a pilgrimage through a dark world towards a City filled with divine light. The brief excerpts that follow are not intended as summaries of Stott’s chapters, but as appetizers intended to stimulate you to read the book.

Nonconformity. “We are not to be like reeds shaken by the wind, bowing down before gusts of public opinion, but as immovable as rocks in a mountain stream. We are not to be like fish floating with the stream (for ‘only dead fish swim with the current,’ as Malcolm Muggeridge put it), but to swim against the stream, even against the cultural mainstream” [p. 27].

Christlikeness. “Why is it that our evangelistic efforts are often fraught with failure? Several reasons may be given, and I must not oversimplify, but one main reason is that we don’t look like the Christ we proclaim” [p. 35-36].

Maturity. “When I was traveling in the 1990s in the interests of the Langham Partnership International, I would often ask an audience how they would summarize the Christian scene in the world today. I would receive a variety of answers. But when invited to give an answer to my own question, I would sum it up in just three words, namely, ‘growth without depth’” [p. 38].

Creation Care. “We human beings find our humanness not only in relation to the earth, which we are to transform, but in relation to God whom we are to worship; not only in relation to the creation, but especially in relation to the Creator. God intends our work to be an expression of our worship, and our care of the creation to reflect our love for the Creator. Only then, whatever we do, in word or deed, shall we be able to do it to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31)” [p. 54].

Simplicity. Quoting from An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Life-Style: “So then, having been freed by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, in obedience to his call, in heartfelt compassion for the poor, in concern for evangelism, development and justice, and in solemn anticipation of the Day of Judgment, we humbly commit ourselves to develop a just and simple life-style, to support one another in it, and to encourage others to join us in this commitment” [ p. 82].

Balance. “We have followed Peter in the six metaphors which go to make up the portrait he paints of the disciple [in 1 Peter 2:1-17]. Here they are again: as newborn babies we are called to growth, as living stones to fellowship, as holy priests to worship, as God’s own people to witness, as aliens and strangers to holiness, as servants of God to citizenship. This is a beautifully comprehensive and balanced portrait” [p. 97-98].

Dependence. “I sometimes hear old people, including Christian people who should know better, say, ‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I’m happy to carry on living as long as I can look after myself, but as soon as I become a burden I would rather die.’ But this is wrong. We are all designed to be a burden to others. You are designed to be a burden to me and I am designed to be a burden to you. And the life of the family, including the life of the local church family, should be one of ‘mutual burdensomeness.’” [p. 110].

Death. “Death is unnatural and unpleasant. In one sense it presents us with a terrible finality. Death is the end. Yet in every situation death is the way to life. So if we want to live we must die. And we will be willing to die only when we see the glories of the life to which death leads. This is the radical, paradoxical Christian perspective” [p. 133].

Farewell! “As I lay down my pen for the last time (literally, since I confess I am not computerized) at the age of eighty-eight, I venture to send this valedictory message to my readers. I am grateful for your encouragement, for many of you have written to me.

“Looking ahead, none of us of course knows what the future of printing and publishing may be. But I myself am confident that the future of books is assured and that, though they will be complemented, they will never be altogether replaced. For there is something unique about books. Our favorite books become very precious to us and we even develop with them an almost living and affectionate relationship. Is it an altogether fanciful fact that we handle, stroke and even smell them as tokens of our esteem and affection? I am not referring only to an author’s feeling for what he has written, but to all readers and their library. I have made it a rule not to quote from any book unless I have first handled it. So let me urge you to keep reading, and encourage your relatives and friends to do the same. For this is a much neglected means of grace… Once again, farewell!” [p. 136-137].

In none of these chapters does Stott say all that needs to be said on the topic, and many are explored in more detail in his previous publications. The Radical Disciple is more like what I imagine he might say to a young friend who is accompanying him to the place of his retirement, and who has the chance to listen in on what Stott is most exercised to pray for when he thinks of the church he has served so faithfully for so many years. It isn’t the final word, perhaps, but it’s a timely one, and a word of wisdom worth heeding.

--Denis Haack

Summer Resource: The Radical Disciple

2010-06-28T11:46:00.007-04:00

CPYU Resource of the Summer:
The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling by John Stott.

What is a life of radical discipleship? At root, it means we let Jesus set the agenda of our lives. We aren't selective. We don't pick and choose what is congenial and stay away from what is costly. No. He is Lord of all of life.

In the last book by the leading evangelical churchman of the twentieth century, John Stott opens up what it means at root to be a follower of Jesus. He explores eight aspects of Christian discipleship which are too often neglected and yet deserve to be taken seriously.

Here, including the last public sermon he ever preached, Stott offers wisdom gained from a lifetime of consistent Christian commitment. In addition, he poignantly reflects on his last years of life and ministry.

The message is simple, classic and personal: Jesus is Lord. He calls. We follow.

Click here to purchase The Radical Disciple

Click here to read Walt Mueller's blog about The Radical Disciple

Click here to read an interview with Stott biographer Roger Steer

Abbie Smith Interview: The Slow Fade

2010-06-09T09:42:00.006-04:00

Abbie Smith has been a good friend of CPYU over the years. She has spoken at college transition seminars with Derek, and her first book Can You Keep Your Faith in College? continues to be one of CPYU's bestselling resources. Abbie's latest book The Slow Fade, cowritten with Reggie Joiner and Chuck Bomar, seeks to help churches be more attentive and intentional with young adults. What follows is a recent interview with Abbie about her own story and why she is passionate about helping God's people mentor twentysomethings:

CPYU: In the beginning of the book you write that you are “experiencing the fade.” Tells us a little bit about what you mean by “the fade,” and how it connects to your story?

AS: “The fade” I’m referring to is that of 18-25 year olds from the Church. High-school seniors raised in the faith tend to hit college and dismiss belief systems for various other more appealing and inviting options. And we as their Body have yet to do anything terribly active to explore, understand and ultimately, move toward this fade’s halt. Instead of seeking-out this age-stage as a viable asset to our whole, we tend to focus our energies on more seemingly “willing” assets in our midst (not the assumedly rebellious, non-committal/conforming/tithing type, like the college-aged). Being a twentysomething myself, I’ve felt and watched the shrapnel of this fade far too often, and can’t in good conscious allow it a lenient, or passive, response. So I guess “The Slow Fade” is a piece of my story’s response.

CPYU: The book’s main strategy to keep twentysomethings connected to the church is to “recruit a new breed of mentors to invest time in those who are college-aged.” How did you arrive at that conclusion?

AS: The book is tri-authored, alongside Reggie Joiner and Chuck Bomar. After witnessing frustrated personal and church-wide conclusions in our respective circles, realizations about programmatic approaches, or college-aged individuals wanting more than entertainment, the simple task of older believers opening their lives to the journey of younger believers stood-out as the most apparent transformer (particularly important for this age-stage, for reasons explained in the book). Furthermore, in this relationship the individual is intentionally transitioned from adolescence to adulthood, discovering a purpose, belonging, and thus reason to remain participatory in his/her faith community.

CPYU: Part of your story you relay in the book is that it “took you about a week in the following-Jesus journey to realize college students lacked a voice in the church.” Why do you think that is? What are a few simple things churches can do to give college students a voice at church?

AS: Whether considering typical church budget allocations, demographics of attendance, or philosophies of ministry, rarely will you find a church who is taking ample consideration of the 18-25 year old voice. Reggie, Chuck and I believe this voice is not only of Biblical integrity to include, but has potentials of passion and creativity that are our loss to exclude. A great first step would be noticing college-age attendees at your church and offering to take one out for coffee, or a meal, simply with a goal of letting them speak—listening to their story. And for those who are intimidated by such a thought, we’ve written a series of “Conversation Guides” for ideas on how to navigate and further understand this age-stage. See xp3college.org for more on this.

CPYU: Many of our readers are youth workers. What advice would you give them to help prevent the slow fade?

AS: I’d give encouragement before I’d give advice. Namely, that what they’re doing in choosing to relationally invest in teens is absolutely incomparable. Whether they ever see fruits of transformation or salvation, the steadfast work of modeling love to this vulnerable age-stage is an investment with capacities toward not just one life, but the lives of future families and generations. My advice, then, would be to cling closely to God's love and belief in who they are and what they're doing. Such a task (discipleship of youth) is one that will rarely come easily, and never without resistance, for such a task is denting the markings of eternity. Finally, I would tell them they are so very appreciated.

Beach Reading and Win a FREE Book

2010-06-02T15:17:00.005-04:00

Collin Hansen of Christianity Today recently listed Seven Theology Books for the Beach. He writes, “Summer affords many of us a few spare moments to sit down someplace warm and relaxing and read a good book. In case you're looking for something deeper than a celebrity magazine or cliffhanger novel, consider picking up these new releases that make theology accessible and practical while staying true to Scripture.”

After reading Hansen’s list, I glanced at my bookshelf and thought, “What do I hope to read this summer?” To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter stuck out. I hope to get to it very soon. But we'd like to hear from you...

For a chance to win a free book and to help others create a summer reading list…

What books do you hope to read this summer?

(There needs to be at least 10 comments to qualify. Winner will be chosen randomly from list of participants. Only one comment per person, please.)

The Wisdom We Need

2010-05-19T10:16:00.009-04:00

My favorite books are written by older, wiser Christians reflecting on their lives as followers of Christ. Some of the best books on how to follow Christ in the 21st century have been written by John Stott, rector emeritus of All Souls Church in England. His latest book, The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor (InterVarsity), is both a personal memoir of the development of his deepest convictions, and solid, important advice to today’s Body of Christ.

This book is full of pastoral wisdom we desperately need to hear. Of course, if you are going to talk about today’s church, you need to say something about worship. Stott suggests, “Young people tend to be impatient with the inherited structures of the church. Understandably so, for some churches are too conservative, too resistant to change… We must of course listen to young people. But the Holy Spirit’s way with the institution of the church is more the way of patient reform than impatient rejection. So don’t let’s polarize between structured and unstructured.”

But there is more to “church” than worship services. Stott explains that the church needs to be a learning, caring, worshipping and evangelizing community that is more concerned with those outside of its walls than those on the inside. Here’s vintage Stott: “If society becomes corrupt, there is no sense in blaming society for its corruption. That is what happens when human evil is unchecked and unrestrained. The question to ask is: Where is the church? Where is the salt and light of Jesus?”

We need voices like Stott’s to wake us from our complacency and remind us of what is most important. This book needs to be read by everyone who truly desires to see the church be the church in the midst of a hurting world. It is not formulaic or cliché, but solid wisdom from someone who cares deeply about the state of contemporary Christianity.

-- Derek Melleby

Roger Steer Interview: The Inside Story of John Stott

2010-05-17T09:58:00.004-04:00

CPYU is a big fan of John Stott. His theology continues to undergird much of our approach to issues of faith and culture. British biographer, Roger Steer, has recently written an engaging and inspiring biography of Dr. Stott. Basic Christian: The Inside Story of John Stott (IVP) takes readers on an adventure into the life of one of the most influential Christians of the 20th century. What follows is an interview with Mr. Steer (RS) about his new book:

CPYU: What motivated you to write a biography of John Stott? Were you friends with him before you began the project?

RS: I first got to know John when he spent just one afternoon in the mid 1990s helping me with my book about evangelicalism which was published in the USA by Baker Book House under the title Guarding the Holy Fire (1998). Previously I had heard him preach at All Souls in the 1960s but not known him as a friend.

CPYU: Our hope is that this interview leads people to read the book for themselves, but, if you would, briefly explain who Dr. Stott is and how he has so profoundly influenced the church, especially evangelicals.

RS: John Stott became Rector of All Souls Church, Langham Place, London in 1950 at the age of twenty-nine and Chaplain to the Queen in 1959. He chaired the British National Evangelical Anglican Congresses in 1967 and 1977, shaped the Lausanne Covenant in 1974 (advocating a new balance between evangelism and social action), founded both the Langham Partnership (to equip Christian leaders and pastors throughout the world) and the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (encouraging Christians to listen both to the Word and the world – “double listening”). He is known for his writing (51 books translated into nearly 70 languages), preaching and bird-watching. He led fifty university missions worldwide. My book attempts to reveal the man behind John’s public persona, and weave his timeless insights into the story of his remarkable life.

CPYU: What surprised you the most as you dug deeper into Dr. Stott’s story?

RS: The roundedness of his personality: his gift for friendship, his sense of humor, his stamina, his humility, the absence of a ‘dark side’ and his total, selfless commitment to Christ. That is not to say that John has no faults: and honoring his instruction to tell his story ‘warts and all’ I have allowed both his friends to make their intimate comments and his critics to have their say.

CPYU: Many of our readers are young youth pastors. What do you think they would gain from reading your biography of Dr. Stott?

RS: They should read about John’s relationship with a succession of young men (and they were only men I’m afraid!), mostly Americans, who worked for him as study assistants. They will discover what John taught his young study assistants and what they taught John! They will read about what John said in personal interviews with university and college students in missions throughout the world. They should note the comments of those who have known John for many years and who think of him more as a gentle pastor and friend than as a famous preacher and writer.

CPYU: For people new to the writing of Dr. Stott, where do you suggest they begin reading? Do you have a favorite Stott book?

RS: An immediate answer would be John’s The Cross of Christ (first published 1986) about which he told me, “More of my own heart and mind went into it than into anything else I have written”. But, less predictably perhaps, I am especially interested in a little book he wrote which arose out of the Presidential address he gave in 1972 to the annual conference of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship at Swanwick, Britain, on the place of the mind in the Christian life. “Nobody wants a cold, joyless, intellectual Christianity,” he said. “But does that mean we should avoid ‘intellectualism’ at all costs? Is it experience, rather than doctrine, that really matters? Many students close their minds with their textbooks, satisfied that the intellect should play little, if any, part in the Christian life. How far are they right? For the Christian, enlightened by the Spirit, just what is the place of the mind?”

He made no secret of the fact that partly in his sights were “Pentecostal Christians, many of whom make experience the major criterion of truth”. His argument was that the great doctrines of creation, revelation, redemption and judgment all imply that we have an inescapable duty both to think and act upon what we think and know. We are created to think. The fact that humanity’s mind is fallen is no excuse to retreat from thought into emotion, for the emotional side of our nature is equally fallen. In spite of the fallenness of our minds, commands to think, to use the mind, are still addressed to us as human beings. God invited rebellious Israel, “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord” (Isaiah 1:18).

John insisted that the fact that God is a self-revealing God and has revealed himself to humanity indicates the importance of our minds. Redemption carries with it the renewal of the divine image in us, which was distorted by the fall. This includes the mind. Paul described converts from paganism as having “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:10) and as being “made new in the attitude of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23).

What is faith? John asked. It is neither credulity nor optimism but reasoning trust. Faith and thought go together, and believing is impossible without thinking. He argued that the battle for holiness is nearly always won in the mind. It is by the renewal of our mind that our character and behaviour are transformed (Romans 12:2). “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things” (Philippians 4:8). We certainly shouldn’t think of the mind as being against the things of the Spirit: “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:5–6). In order to combat the risk of the use of the mind resulting in a barren intellectualism, he concluded his talk with a powerful section showing how knowledge should lead to worship, faith, holiness and love. The text of the lecture was published by IVP as an influential booklet, Your Mind Matters.

If they could get hold of it, I think your readers would love this booklet. If not, of course, The Cross of Christ, Basic Christianity and I Believe in Preaching are all classics which have become international bestsellers.

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Click here to visit Roger Steer’s website

Click here to purchase The Contemporary Christian by John Stott (named as one of Walt Mueller’s “Top Ten Most Influential Books”)

Click here to read Derek Melleby’s review of Stott’s The Living Church

Click here to learn more about Stott’s latest (and final) book The Radical Disciple (IVP)

Walt's Top Ten Most Influential Books

2010-05-07T09:25:00.005-04:00

So Derek has issued the challenge. . . . the 10 books that have had the greatest influence on my life. I’ll add this clarifier. . . “besides the Bible.” This is a tough one. How do you narrow it down? I estimate that I’ve got about 2200 books on the shelves in my office. Several hundred more are at home. Others are sitting on the shelves in the libraries where I checked them out, and still more are books that I sold. . . . which means they probably weren’t that influential, or I just flat-out needed some money.

I established some parameters to help me narrow it down. The books have to be books that I look at and say, “Yep, that book has shaped who I am, what I value, and how I live my life.” A really influential book has the power not only to shape, but to be read again and to leave you re-shaped. I chose 10 books that I would call “marker books.” In other words, they were so influential that they stand out as catalysts for or part of watershed moments in my life.

The first book I remember is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. When I retreat into my memory and travel back to third and fourth grade at Cedar Road Elementary School, I can see myself standing in the library. Right there in the middle shelf on the outside front wall, about halfway up. . . that’s where this one sat. I remember checking it out several times. My name was on that card more than once. I can still feel and hear the crinkle of the cellophane jacket as I escaped into this fabulous story. My academic career was one marked by frustration. I sometimes wonder if I didn’t have some kind of learning disability or ADD. My only success came in reading. I was always in the highest-level reading group and even skipped up a grade once to read with the older kids. I loved reading for that and several other reasons. I’m not sure how A Wrinkle in Time shaped my life other than it was the first thick book I ever read. And, I loved it enough to keep going back.

A strange addition from my childhood would be the Book of Common Prayer, specifically the edition used in the Reformed Episcopal Church. My dad was an R.E. pastor way back then. When I was in 6th grade I went through Confirmation Class, an experience which culminated with my public profession of faith. I think there was a reception after the ceremony. But what I remember most was being handed a brand new red-covered copy of the Book of Common Prayer that was personalized with my name – “Walter Mueller” – in gold stamping right there on the front cover. That little book nurtured me into an appreciation for the beauty and order of well-thought-out liturgy, and it shaped the way I pray today.

Fast-forward to college. I was a sociology major. The text for Sociology 201 was written by the professor, Dr. Russell Heddendorf. The book was titled In The World: An Introduction To Sociology. It wasn’t published at the time and it still hasn’t been published. The text was on mimeographed sheets that were copies of Doc Heddendorf’s own typed manuscript. It was in a cardboard loose-leaf notebook. Built on the foundation of Jesus’ prayer for His disciples in John 17, that book steered my worldview in a new direction that I’ve been going in ever since. I still pull it off the shelf from time to time.

During those same years I took a little one-credit discussion class on John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I learned a little bit about reading the classics, a little bit about reading good literature, and a lot about my faith. I need to go back and read it again.

Shortly thereafter I graduated and went into campus ministry with the Coalition for Christian Outreach. It was during my time with the CCO that I was exposed to the next two books on my list. Number Five is John White’s The Fight. My copy of this then-popular book on discipleship shaped my thinking on what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I led numerous student groups through a study of The Fight.

Without my CCO years I don’t think I would have ever discovered Albert Wolters’ Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview. This book is serendipitous and transformative for all who read it. Not only is it a great intro to the life-giving and incredibly liberating theological system known as Dutch Neo-Calvinism (the foundation beneath our theology of faith and culture here at CPYU), but it lays out redemptive history in amazing ways. Anyone who is a follower of Jesus Christ needs to give this book a shot. You will quickly learn that the Gospel encompasses much, much more than the message of how to personally get saved.

My time at Gordon-Conwell Seminary was filled with books. Surprise, surprise. Several thousands of pages from books too numerous to count for each and every course I took. I narrowed my seminary time down to one book: How to Read the Bible For All Its Worth by Douglas Stuart and Gordon Fee, two of my GCTS profs. I think it's now out in its third edition. This book is the antidote to so much of what ails the church in terms of Bible study, interpretation, and application.

Next up is John Stott’s Contemporary Christian. I’ve read it several times. I’ve marked it up. I’ve quoted it endlessly and will keep on doing so. I’ve assigned it as required reading to students. Again, this one is an antidote to much of what ails me and serves the same purpose for the contemporary church.

Because I study youth culture, I have to add a book to my list that opened my eyes to the stuff kids face. David Elkind’s All Grown Up and No Place to Go was dead-on when it was written 25 years ago. It was also prophetic. Why? Because it’s dead-on for today. I had the thrill of talking to Elkind when he spoke at a National Youthworkers Convention back in the 1980s. He autographed my book. His mark is also on my life. I study culture because kids hurt. Elkind help me to understand hurting kids.

Finally, there’s a book that I pull off my shelf from time to time as a prescriptive remedy to difficulty. My dad turned me on to it, which means that it has a special place in my heart. It’s from Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure has served me well over the years. Enough said.

That’s it. Ten. I wonder if my list will look any different ten years from now. Maybe I’d better get around to reading The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness!

Top-Ten Most Influential Books

2010-05-05T15:43:00.005-04:00

John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture, has been encouraging readers to list the top-ten books that have influence their view of the world. It’s a fun but tough question, of course. This morning I grabbed a sheet of paper, glanced at my bookshelf, reflected on my life as a reader, and jotted down the books that came to mind. I wanted to do this quickly. I didn’t want to overanalyze my list or try to list the books I liked the most. What I was looking for were books that have really influenced the way I see, understand, and live in the world. Influence is not easy to define, but I do think that the following list reflects books that have influenced me deeply over the years. I return to them often to discover even more ways that these books have shaped me:

1. The Bible. If the Bible does anything, it certainly influences one’s view of the world! It’s the starting point. It’s where a view of the world comes from, for Christians. For me, the books of the Bible that have been most meaningful, at different times of my life, for different reasons: Genesis, John, and Ephesians. I’ve written an extensive study on Genesis that also tells more about my story and how it relates to the influence of the Bible: In the Beginning of the Beginning: A Study of Four Great Events in Genesis.

2. Hatchet, Gary Paulsen. Most of my reading as a child was to earn points to get free pizza at Pizza Hut. Paulsen’s classic put this thought in my head: maybe reading a book can be as good as watching a movie. Who knew? But seriously, because of Hatchet, I gave reading a chance!

3. A Time to Kill, John Grisham. I read this book in high school to impress a girl and now we are married. That’s influence. I’ve told this story elsewhere: Falling in Love, One Book at a Time.

4. A Walk Through the Bible, Lesslie Newbigin. I can still remember where I was sitting when I read it. It was a major ah-ha moment. In a brief 85 pages, Newbigin tells the biblical story from start to finish, showing readers how it holds together in Christ. Before I read this book I was reading the Bible mainly for nuggets of wisdom, or for proof-texts to make a point. Not any more! Newbigin taught me most fundamentally that the Bible is a story that shapes a community. The implications for this central idea greatly influenced chapter 4 of my coauthored book, The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness.

5. Creation Regained, Albert Wolters. This book expands on the major themes of the grand-narrative of scripture: Creation, Fall and Redemption. Wolters’ distinction between structure (the goodness of creation) and direction (moving either toward or away from God) was life-changing. I explain this in greater detail in the Genesis study mentioned above.

6. The Fabric of Faithfulness, Steven Garber. How do you connect what you believe about the world with how you live in the world? Why are the years between 18-25 so crucial for wrestling with that question? Not only did this book help me in my own discipleship, but it also helped to shape my paradigm for college ministry. A must read for those concerned with reaching every generation with the Gospel!

7. The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis. For me, Lewis, the person, has probably been more influential than his books. As an undergraduate, I needed models to show me that it was possible to think and be a Christian at the same time. But The Screwtape Letters revealed something else to me as well: it is possible to be creative and a Christian at the same time.

8. The New Testament and the People of God, N.T. Wright. Currently, Wright is somewhat of a controversial figure in some Christian circles, but this book was written nearly 20 years ago, before his now public debates about Paul and the doctrine of justification. Here Wright focuses on three major questions: How do we do history? Who was Jesus in his historical context? What difference did and does Jesus make? In my humble opinion, this is Wright’s best and most important book.

9. To End All Wars, Ernest Gordon. I often say that this is my favorite book of all time. The first time I read it I was wrestling with this question: What difference does being a Christian make, really? Gordon’s story of being a P.O.W. in Southeast Asia in WWII illustrates the transformational power of the Gospel. Not only was Gordon’s life changed by following Jesus, but the entire P.O.W. camp was transformed. I dare you to read it!

10. Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry. Berry is my favorite writer. Part of me wants to qualify that. The other part, more influenced by Berry, perhaps, says I don’t have to! Let’s put it this way: my wife and I live in the same town where we grew up, on purpose. This is due, to a large extent, to the writings of this farmer from Kentucky. I wanted to name our first son Jayber, but my wife has not been as influenced by Berry as I have been! For what it’s worth, I love Berry’s novels, enjoy his poetry and tolerate his essays. For most Berry fans, I’m learning, that list is reversed.

As I look at my list, I notice something surprising: a few of my favorite writers are not listed! People who know me well, know that I am constantly reading or re-reading something by Eugene Peterson, Os Guinness, or Tim Keller. The person who I often say most embodies my theology is John Stott. But I don’t have a single book listed by any of those writers. Interesting.

The second thing I notice is that all of the books are written by white men. Ephesians being the exception. (That was a joke! Please, please, please, do not quote me on that. I was trying to be funny!) I’m not sure what to do about that, except to make sure that I continue to read more diverse writers.

And there you have it… my list of top ten most influential books. Anyone else want to join in on the fun?

Gary A. Parrett Interview: Grounded in the Gospel

2010-05-03T09:53:00.008-04:00

Grounded in the Gospel seeks to recover an ancient practice for modern evangelicals.

Historically, the church's ministry of grounding new believers in the essentials of the faith has been known as catechesis--systematic instruction in faith foundations, including what we believe, how we pray and worship, and how we conduct our lives. For most evangelicals today, however, this very idea is an alien concept. Packer and Parrett, concerned for the state of the church, seek to inspire a much needed evangelical course correction. This new book makes the case for a recovery of significant catechesis as a nonnegotiable practice, urging evangelical churches to undertake this biblical ministry for the sake of their spiritual health and vitality.

CPYU President, Walt Mueller, on Grounded in the Gospel: "J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett offer a diagnosis and prescription to remedy our shallow faith and practice. While the prescription might not be popular in our individualistic, do-it-yourself contemporary church culture, it's precisely the remedy needed to reverse the pandemic of narcissistic spirituality and lethargy plaguing the church."

What follows is an interview with one of the authors, Dr. Gary Parrett (GP). Dr. Parrett is professor of educational ministries and worship at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

CPYU: Grounded in the Gospel is dedicated to David Wells with this inscription: “To David Wells, who diagnoses so clearly the malaise for which catechesis is the remedy.” Would you briefly describe the cultural malaise that you are referring to?

GP: David has decried the encroachment of the forces of secularism and consumerism (and much more) upon the life and vitality of the evangelical church. We have let the surrounding cultural forces shape us rather than allowing God, by His Spirit and through His word, shape us into the likeness of Christ so that we may have a Gospel impact upon the cultures in which we live. To use the titles of a couple of David’s books, too often we evangelicals seem to have No Place for Truth and have long been Losing our Virtue. Catechesis is, we believe, a critical piece of the answer to David’s lament.

CPYU: What is catechesis and why do you think some evangelicals are skeptical of using it for instruction in the faith?

GP: Catechesis is, to use the definition we propose in the book, “the church’s ministry of grounding and growing God’s people in the Gospel and its implications for doctrine, devotion, duty and delight.” It is a biblically based and historically affirmed ministry of ensuring that the people of God have a grasp on the essentials of the Faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. This, we believe, includes: clarity about the Gospel, a sense of foundational theology (doctrine), a sense of how to commune with the living God in worship and prayer (devotion), a sense of how to love God and neighbor in daily living (duty) and, over and above all, a sense of delighting in the God who has so profoundly loved us in Jesus Christ (delight). One of the key reasons contributing to evangelical skepticism about catechesis is that for nearly two centuries, most evangelicals have simply not used this language or approached teaching and formation in this way. We have heard the term, if at all, chiefly from our Roman Catholic friends, and most evangelical Protestants are wary of whatever they perceive to be “Catholic” practices.

CPYU: Who is your target audience for the book?

GP: We have chiefly written the book with evangelical pastors in mind, as well as church leaders of various types, especially those charged with ministries of teaching and formation in their churches. A secondary audience would be seminary classrooms where pastors and educators are being trained. I would say that it really is the senior pastor of churches that we most hope to speak to in this book. For too long, too many evangelical pastors have not seen teaching and formation as a critical part of their responsibility (though there always are, of course, many wonderful exceptions). We sense and hope the tide may be turning in this respect and hope the book may be part of this turning and that it may, also, become a help for pastors who will be looking for guidance as they renew their commitment to be the primary teachers of their flocks.

CPYU: What advice would you give young parents who desire to raise their children in the Christian faith, especially as it relates to the themes in your book?

GP: A few quick points of emphasis would be: 1) please take up your biblically appointed calling to raise their children in the Faith, and do this in partnership with our servants in the church, including pastors and teachers; 2) please believe in your children’s capacities to learn the deep things of the Faith, even as you believe that they are capable of great achievement in other areas—academics, athletics, the arts, etc.; 3) please teach the Faith with a concern for biblical holism—that is, teaching not only their minds, but aiming to shape their hearts and their habits as well; 4) please be concerned not only for the ‘content’ of the Faith you would teach your children, but also of your example in living out the Faith with your children, and of the family ethos and culture in which you teach them. And finally, pray that all your efforts at Faith training are joyous and Jesus-focused.

CPYU: What advice would you give to people from “free church” backgrounds that might want to begin to integrate catechesis into their church’s discipleship and educational ministries?

GP: Really, the entire book is an attempt to answer this question, so it’s hard to give a brief answer, except to encourage them to carefully read and consider the book’s arguments and suggestions for first taking first steps in this direction.

CPYU: Has anything surprised you about the way Grounded in the Gospel has been received?

GP: I have long suspected that the time was ripe for catechetical renewal in evangelical churches, and the response to the book thus far has been affirming that sense. The book, we hope, can spur further discussion and help to stimulate new efforts and proposals. I am so grateful that the early evidence suggests that these things are already beginning to occur.

Sunnier Side of Doubt?

2010-04-28T09:58:00.002-04:00

If you have been a Christian for more than a week, you have probably encountered many moments of doubt and uncertainty about your faith. We all do, and somehow, by the power of the Spirit, we learn to grow through these trying times. For many, however, doubt can become a major stumbling block to deeper faith. We begin to question whether or not God exists, or if Jesus really was who he said he was. Sometimes our questions turn personal, and we doubt ourselves, particularly our ability to follow Christ.

Renowned Oxford University professor, Alister McGrath, has provided a valuable guide to helping Christians through difficult times of doubt. His book Doubting: Growing Through the Uncertainties of Faith (InterVarsity Press) puts doubt into perspective and offers practical advice for struggling Christians. McGrath suggests, “Doubt is an invitation to grow in faith and understanding, rather than something we need to panic about or get preoccupied with. We must all learn to grasp and value what Alfred Lord Tennyson calls the ‘sunnier side of doubt.’”

The book begins with a cultural and Biblical understanding of doubt, and progresses to specific issues such as: doubt and the vain search of certainty; the personal aspects of doubt; doubts about the Gospel; doubts about God; and doubts about Jesus Christ. It concludes with guidelines for handling doubt in the Christian life.

Full of wisdom, insight and illuminating illustrations, McGrath has provided an important guide to helping students, as well as ourselves, through the difficult times of doubt and uncertainty.

Jason Boyett Interview: O Me of Little Faith

2010-04-26T10:37:00.011-04:00

Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker, marketing professional, and the author of Pocket Guide to the Afterlife, Pocket Guide to the Bible, and several other books. He has appeared on the History Channel and National Geographic Channel and written for a variety of publications.

In O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling, Boyett brings you a transparent and personal account of his own of struggles with doubts and unbelief in living out his faith. With humor and frankness, he uses personal anecdotes and a fresh look at Scripture to explore the realities of pursuing Christ through a field of doubt.

CPYU: We have never met. Is that a picture of you on the cover?

JB: No. The little guy on the cover is a kid named Drew who lives in Michigan. That photo was taken a couple of years ago for an ad campaign promoting the Grand Rapids Marathon. He was six years old at the time. When the Zondervan art department came across the photo, everyone knew instantly that they'd found the cover of my book. Drew is in 2nd grade now, and he thinks it's pretty cool to be the face of O Me of Little Faith.

CPYU: What motivated you to write O Me of Little Faith?

JB: I have been dealing with spiritual doubt for most of my adult life, but until a couple of years ago that struggle had been completely private. I kept it hidden inside because I didn't feel like my uncertainty was something I could admit in my church or among my family and friends. I pretended to have it all together. But then I got tired of pretending. As I became more honest about these questions, I discovered that a lot of other people have the same kinds of questions and doubt -- but we lack a safe place to talk about them. My hope with the book wasn't to "fix" a person's doubt or give them the answers to their questions, but rather to tell my story, explain how I've maintained my faith despite persistent doubts, and let them know they're not alone. Doubt can be lonely. I wanted to reach across the loneliness -- mine and theirs -- and offer the kind of encouragement that comes from shared experience.

CPYU: There have been a few books written recently about how doubt relates to faith. Why do you think reconciling doubt and faith is such a popular theme right now?

JB: We're living in a fascinating time in human history. People have more options than ever in regard to spiritual expression. Due to the Internet and entertainment industry, the world has gotten smaller -- we're exposed to far more religious traditions than previous generations. Advances in medicine and science continue to provide explanations for things that used to be mysteries. We're seeing major failures of the Church, from the Roman Catholic abuse scandals to public sex scandals among evangelical leaders and religious politicians. All of these things add up to a lot of uncertainty. If you're paying attention at all, you're going to be confronted with some big questions -- and some of those questions don't have easy answers. Doubt is what remains when the answers aren't always satisfying. I think, in this global religious climate, believers are going to have to learn how to handle these doubts when they show up. You can't avoid uncertainty altogether, but can you still follow Christ despite it? Can the presence of doubt actually deepen your faith rather than damage it? I believe the answer to those questions is YES, and that's partly why I wrote the book. In our culture, doubt is inevitable. But doubt doesn't have to paralyze you. It works alongside your faith, and ultimately can make it stronger.

CPYU: Many of our readers are youth pastors and parents of teens. What advice would you give them about nurturing faith in young people, especially as it relates to doubt?

JB: We need to pull down doubt from the scary pedestal our culture has placed it on. Doubters of all ages hide their uncertainty because we're afraid of what it looks like -- that you'll hear our honest questions and come to the conclusion that we're falling away, or about to abandon our faith. Help us realize that we're human, so it's perfectly OK to have questions about the divine, or the Bible, or the history of our faith tradition. Help us understand that doubt doesn't have to cancel out faith, but instead is essential to faith because faith requires uncertainty...or else it's not faith. (Faith without doubt isn't faith -- it's knowledge.) But most importantly, live out Jude 22 with us. "Be merciful to those who doubt." We need grace, understanding, companionship, and the freedom to ask hard questions in a safe place. Give us opportunities to serve and take action as we strive to follow Jesus, even if the following sometimes gets ahead of the belief. But don't react to our questions with judgment and fear. That kind of response is what makes us bury our doubts in the first place.

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MORE FROM CPYU ON FAITH AND DOUBT:

Article: Affirming Doubt: Helping Students Ask and Answer Tough Questions by Derek Melleby

Review: Doubting: Growing Through the Uncertainties of Faith by Alister McGrath

Interview: David Dark on The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

2010 Graduation Bundle - Great Gift for Seniors!

2010-04-19T09:06:00.005-04:00

The CPYU Graduation Bundle includes two resources, The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness and ConGRADulations! Class of 2010

A great gift for graduating high school seniors.

Bulk discount rates available!

1-4 copies --> $25/each

5-9 copies --> $22/each

10+ copies --> $20/each

The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness

Coauthored by CPYU's own Derek Melleby this book issues a clarion call to students to integrate their faith and learning. Written for a narrative generation, this guide extracts illustrations from the Book of Daniel, The Lord of the Rings, the experiences of real students, and more.

ConGRADulations! Class of 2010

ConGRADulations! is a Music CD, a Media DVD, a Resource Website and a 48 Page Graphic Gift Book. Your seniors will be encouraged as the songs and videos prepare them for the biggest transition of their young lives. Includes video and written advice from Francis Chan and Dave Ramsey. Brought to you by interlinc.

CPYU's Resource Center offers other great graduation gift ideas.

Crossroads of Faith and Culture

2010-04-13T09:42:00.008-04:00

A central motivation for the writing of Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew’s latest book Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview (Baker Academic) is that a faithful Christian worldview must derive from Scripture. They argue, “If our worldview should, by our neglect, lose its roots in Scripture, it becomes vulnerable to being taken over by some story other than that of the biblical drama.”

Goheen and Bartholomew’s first book, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Baker Academic, 2004), provided an overview of the biblical story, explaining its major themes and applying them to all areas of life. Living at the Crossroads is its natural sequel, focusing on the story of Western culture and explaining where the two stories meet and conflict.

After a helpful introduction that defines the term worldview, explains how worldviews work and articulates the centrality of Jesus within a Christian worldview, the authors offer an overview of the story of Western civilization and its worldview. “Since every human culture since Eden has been shaped at least in part by a vision of life that is incompatible with the Christian faith, it is important that we understand well our own Western cultural setting and the beliefs that have shaped it.” Whereas the hero of the Christian story is Jesus, the hero of the western story is humanity: “Man becomes the measure of all things.” After the historical overview, the authors focus on the shape of contemporary culture with a helpful discussion of postmodernism, consumerism, globalization and the resurgence of Islam.

Even though there are many books written on developing a Christian worldview, this one should not be overlooked. How we live out that truth is always difficult and we need books like this one to help us be more faithful in our callings.

Visit the authors' website to learn more about this book and find many helpful resources.

-- Derek Melleby

Steve Miller Interview: Enjoy Your Money!

2010-04-06T10:31:00.005-04:00

Students (and parents) face many challenges transitioning from high school to college. CPYU’s College Transition Initiative seeks to address those challenges and help students make a successful transition. Finances are on a lot of people’s minds at CTI seminars. How do you pay for college? What do we do with debt? How can young people learn to manage their money?

We are always looking for helpful resources to pass along to parents and students and Steve Miller’s new book, Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It Save It and Give It Away is worth checking out. Steve is an educator, investor, entrepreneur, and speaker who is known for drawing practical wisdom from serious research and communicating it in accessible, unforgettable ways. What follows is an interview with Steve about his important and engaging book:

CPYU: What motivated you to write this book?

SM: My first wife died of cancer in her 30’s, leaving me with four boys to raise. Later, I married Cherie, who was raising three boys on her own. So we’re trying to help these seven boys, ages 16 to 28, to be successful in life. I like to research and write on issues that I’m personally struggling with. If we fail to transition them to successful independence, we’re sunk! How’s that for motivation?

CPYU: What are some of the biggest issues college students (and parents) face when it comes to finances?

SM: Our sons are very different from one another – different strengths, different weaknesses, different personalities. Because of these differences, they all relate to money differently. Some tend to save, but lack generosity. Others tend to be generous, but lack the discipline to save a penny for tomorrow. Living among diverse kids helps me to realize that there are many issues and that cookie-cutter formulas for financial success don’t help everyone.

Knowing that people differ so much led me to write the book as a story of four diverse students who meet in “In School Suspension.” They find that they have something in common – their parents are hopeless with their money and it hurts their families. The students, desperate to do better, do lunch with an eccentric teacher once a week to discuss personal finance. Rather than tell them what to do, the wise teacher tells stories of successful people and lets the students draw out principles and have wide-open discussions about how to apply them. The discussions help to bring out the different ways that different people might apply the same principles.

So back to your question about the “biggest issues.” Sure, I could mention the obvious issues people face, like overspending, misuse of credit cards, enslavement to materialism and personal debt. But I’d suggest that the main problem is that although young people today have access to knowledge, but lack wisdom. They desperately need to understand basic principles of finance and to think through how they apply to their individual situation.

Example: high school graduates know something about History and Math and English, but they know nothing about - and have absolutely no vision for - their incredible potential to build up wealth during their teen years, while their parents provide free food, clothing and housing. And concerning the potential of investing for the future (I call it “the power of early”), I’ve yet to meet a high school senior who knows something as simple as the “Laws of 10’s and 7’s” (Money invested at 10% interest doubles every 7 years. Money invested at 7% interest doubles every 10 years.) It’s one of the easiest methods to grasp the power of multiplying your money and to motivate people to start saving early.

Every young person ought to know how Warren Buffett saved up today’s equivalent (taking inflation into account) of $47,000 by high school graduation, doing jobs that anybody could do: paper routes, finding and selling golf balls, caddying, etc. Students don’t know the details of how Benjamin Franklin rose from having nothing to retiring in his early 40’s, so that he could devote full time to his experiments, community improvements, and founding a pretty cool country. (e.g., Franklin developed his skills, worked hard, learned insatiably, and lived frugally.)

CPYU: What mistakes do college students and parents often make when it comes to finances?

SM: First, they forget to serve. Today, as I write, I’m assisting with my 104-year-old granny. What could be more important? It’s a delight! Students could help a fellow student who needs a tutor. Volunteer at church. Many excellent Psychological studies tell us that people who make others happy find happiness themselves. Not only that, but serving at home, at church, at school and in the community gives you valuable relationships that you’ll need later in life. I hear it in seminar after seminar and read it in book after book: it’s all about relationships. People connect you with jobs. People recommend you for jobs. Good people skills make you successful at work. By serving, you build those relationships.

Second, they listen to bad advice. As Mark Twain once said, “It’s not so much what people don’t know that hurts them, it’s what they do know that ain’t so.” During the tech stock bubble, many advisors just knew that tech stocks would keep going up. They were wrong. During the housing bubble, many advisors just knew that the prices of houses would keep going up (after all, they aren’t making any more land!). Wrong again. Solomon warned us that “the fool believes everything he hears.” Consult an abundance of wise counselors about money decisions.

CPYU: What is one small thing that college students could do with their finances that would really make a big difference?

SM: One financial counselor said that what distinguished him from many others is that “I never stopped learning.” As Solomon advised, “The discerning heart seeks knowledge….” Read a little each week about personal finance and careers. Get to know your guidance counselor at school. Come up with lists of questions to ask your parents about finances and work and life. Read a chapter a week in a solid, financial book. Read a bit from Proverbs each day (I still do). Listen to mp3’s by sharp, well-respected success gurus while you’re running or doing the treadmill (I read on a stationary bike.) Do it for a year and you’ll look back with amazement at how dumb you were a year ago. Never stop learning!

CPYU: What makes your book unique compared to other books on the same subject?

SM: Although it’s well researched and documented (which I don’t see in a lot of money books), I wrote it as an entertaining story. That’s why one film producer called it “the money book for people who hate money books.” It’s multi-cultural, multi-generational, and encourages giving as well as getting. It’s also good for regular folks who may not make a lot of money. I’ve worked in churches, not-for-profits, and missions for most of my career, so I know what it’s like to struggle to get ahead, especially when life throws you a curve ball or two.

CPYU: How can people purchase your book?

SM: It’s always available on Amazon. If it’s not in your local bookstore, they can generally order it. Here’s more information.

Divorce and Kids

2010-03-23T10:29:00.003-04:00

“It doesn’t take long to figure out that the world’s answers do not work! There is not enough beer, sex, drugs, perfection, academia, counseling—in short, not enough of anything—to dull the pain, much less heal it. But there is an answer. God provides a firm foundation for healing our broken hearts.” This is the message that’s at the core of a hopeful book written by a child of divorce, Kristine Steakley. Painfully transparent in her telling of her own story of growing up in a broken home, Steakley invites readers to understand the dynamics and results of divorce in Child of Divorce, Child of God: A Journey of Hope and Healing (InterVarsity Press).

It is estimated that 50 percent of the children born in today’s world will grow up to experience the divorce of their parents. Typically, they blame themselves although they had absolutely nothing at all to do with it. Divorce hurts. Just ask any kid who’s been through it. Steakley’s own struggle has taken years. Sometimes it was all-consuming. Her parents’ divorce and her life thereafter has shaped and continues to shape who she is today. But the struggle has taken her deeply into the things of God.

Child of Divorce, Child of God is a book that should be read by anyone working with or ministering to kids. It is eye-opening. It’s also a book for anyone who shares the author’s own experience. The most valuable aspect of the book is that the road to understanding and redemption Steakley lays out is one that is deeply rooted in the character of God.

This is a book that shows how God can repair and re-parent the child of divorce in ways that heal and restore relationships with themselves, their parents and their Heavenly Father. In addition, an online blog for the book can be found here.

-- Walt Mueller

Andy Crouch: Reader Interview

2010-03-15T10:24:00.015-04:00

Current position/title: Senior editor, Christianity Today International; author, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

CPYU: Have you always been a reader? If not, how did you become one?

AC: Yes, I was a reader from very early on. I had the great gift of parents who filled the house with music and books. In high school I had a series of extraordinary English teachers, who taught me how much there was to discover in literature. They introduced me to the kind of close, patient attention that the best writing deserves.

CPYU: What are your reading habits and practices?

AC: This may sound incompatible with my praise of close reading, but I'll always be grateful to my systematic theology professor Robert C. Neville for teaching me the basic techniques of speed reading. When I sit down for the first time with a new nonfiction book, I scan through the whole book in a matter of 5 minutes or so, and write down (usually on the title page) any phrases or ideas that I retained from that very quick perusal. I then go through the book again spending about 5 seconds per page (roughly 20 minutes for a mid-length book). It's amazing how much of the book you can learn to grasp in that second reading, and even more importantly you get a clear sense of the book's outline and argument. Then I can decide whether to read the book in the usual way—and if I do, my initial scans have prepared me to read much more interactively and intelligently than I would have otherwise.Last year I realized that my reading was shifting in an unhealthy direction toward journalism and periodicals and away from books. So for the past several months I've been returning much more intentionally to books, inspired partly by a grassroots effort by a few friends called the 5252 Project. We've all made a commitment to read at least one book per week in 2010, and I'm tracking and sharing my reading through a Twitter account called @ahc_is_reading. I won't have any trouble exceeding 52 books, but just paying attention and recording what I've read is keeping me focused on books, which really are still the most information-rich, substantive form of writing we have, even or especially in the age of endless information.

CPYU: Name 3 books that have been very influential in your life and one sentence that explains why.

AC: Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Newbigin mapped our late-modern context, and the Christian response, with more depth and insight than anyone before or since.

Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son. This book is a model of close attention (to Rembrandt's painting) and a beautiful exposition of the heart of the gospel.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb. Capon's jubilant language not only rekindled my love of cooking but modeled how the best writing can be theological, poetic, and prophetic all at once.

CPYU: If you could meet any author, living or dead, who would it be and what questions would you ask him or her?

AC: I think I would want to meet Homer. Of course we are not sure that Homer was a single author, but assuming he was, I would want to talk with him about war—and especially what he himself thought of Achilles and his pursuit of kleos or immortal fame. And I'd want to talk about home and marriage—and what he thought of Odysseus's protracted journey away from home (especially his dalliance with Circe, which seems longer than strictly necessary). We seem to get only indirect, sly hints of the poet's own view of these central characters, but what we sense is a deeply humane imagination at work in the telling of these highly stylized and tradition-bound epics.

CPYU: According to a recent study by the National Endowment of the Arts, very few young people are reading. Do you have any ideas on how to get young people to read?

AC: Clearly the most important thing is to model delight in reading. When the parents and the kids are tussling over the latest Harry Potter when it's released (as we did with the last several books in the series) the kids learn that reading matters not just to children but to grownups. But it's also important to create a "boredom-free" home, which means a family culture where it is taken for granted that we will create our own entertainment rather than relying on television, the Internet, and videogames for amusement. The great secret to not being bored is not having entertainment technologies readily at hand. So we didn't buy a television until our kids were in double digits, and all the central spaces in our home are intentionally designed to help foster reading, making music and art, and other forms of engaged creativity like cooking. That's good not just for the children but for the parents as well.

Learn more about Andy Crouch here

Visit Andy's website Culture-Making here

Watch a video of Andy speaking on Culture-Making at Jubilee

Delayed Maturity

2010-03-08T13:01:00.005-05:00

Do you notice that it seems to be taking boys longer to mature into adulthood? Do you know of any “basement boys,” emerging adults who “find not only free lodging, meals and security at home but also the freedom to come and go at will and, in the privacy of their converted subterranean lairs where no one will tell them to make their beds, to play endlessly on their Playstation consoles?” Perhaps you’ve also heard the complaint by many young women who ask, “Where have all the men gone?” It was questions like these that motivated historian Gary Cross to write his book Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity (Columbia University Press). Cross calls many in this generation, “boy-men” who “live for today, disdain pretense and formality, are ever open to new thrills and experiences, but also mocking convention in celebration of amoral fantasy, crude vulgarity, and unrestrained appetite, the boy-man makes a fetish of the ‘cool.’”

Part of the problem is that “rites of passage” that typically aided in the maturation of young people are fading away. Many are having a hard time finding career-oriented work right out of college, marriage and child rearing have been delayed (if not abandoned altogether), and the entertainment industry has made being young so much “fun” that it is hard to let go. Cross traces the history of models of maturity, but does not glorify the past or point to a “golden age” when all boys matured to responsible adulthood.

In Men to Boys, Cross combines historical analysis with contemporary illustrations to reveal a generation of immature young people who need better models of maturity. By reading this book, parents will gain insight into how their children are bombarded by the media to remain “youth,” and pastors will be forced to consider how the church can minister to future generations.

Practice Resurrection

2010-03-03T15:10:00.006-05:00

The long-awaited, highly anticipated fifth and final installment of Eugene Peterson’s “conversations” series has arrived. Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ focuses on the book of Ephesians, particularly on themes of church and Christian maturity. Peterson writes, “The human task is to become mature, not only in our bodies and emotions and minds within ourselves, but also in our relationship with God and other persons.” And what is God’s plan for growing His people in maturity? “Church,” Peterson explains, “is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world. It is not that kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.”

It’s easy to become weary about the church. We all can become frustrated and cynical when we read our Bibles and survey our congregations. If we’re honest, we need to include ourselves in that “mess” as well. While Peterson offers many challenges to the American church, he hasn’t given up hope. In fact, he thinks the church as we see her is exactly what we need to grow in Christ. He writes, “Maybe the church as we have it provides the very conditions and proper company congenial for growing up in Christ, for becoming mature, for arriving at the measure of the stature of Christ. Maybe God knows what he is doing, giving us church, this church.”

This is a powerful book, one that shouldn’t be ignored by youth workers, parents and (even) students who long to grow in faith and understand the importance of the local church. Highly recommend!

Here are the other titles in Peterson’s series, all worthwhile:

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology

Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading

The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way

Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (A CPYU Bookshelf Book of the Year Winner, 2008)

Be sure to check out a series of blog posts by Scot McKnight about Practice Resurrection.

The phrase "practice resurrection" comes from a poem by Wendell Berry.

Postmodern Evangelism

2010-02-23T11:18:00.006-05:00

Collectively, as God’s church, many of our attempts at evangelism have fallen short and, as a result, we’ve pushed those we were trying to minister to further from God’s kingdom. In our postmodern culture, old evangelism methods that treated people more like projects than people loved dearly by Christ, should be scrutinized carefully.

I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus (InterVarsity Press) is an attempt to explore the journey young people take as they move closer to, and hopefully fully accept, God’s call on their life. Authors Don Everts and Doug Schaupp have years of experience ministering on college campuses. They began noticing a cultural shift taking place. College students they were ministering to were coming to faith in mysterious, even unthinkable and completely unfamiliar ways. Yet many of their stories had much in common. There seemed to be five distinct markers along the journey people were making on their path to Christ. Everts and Schaupp call these markers the five thresholds. At each threshold there are certain hurdles that need to be cleared as the Holy Spirit works to bring home the lost.

The beauty of recognizing these thresholds is it allows us to identify where each individual is on their journey toward the kingdom. We can then minister to them where they are. Everts and Schaupp not only describe the thresholds, but offer suggestions on how to help non-Christian friends cross each one. Credit also goes to the authors for realizing that once the fifth threshold (“entering the kingdom”) has been crossed, the journey in many ways has just begun. New Christians need to be supported, prayed for, mentored and ministered to as well. This book will prove to be a valuable read for college ministers and those who work closely with today’s young adults.

--Chris Wagner

Discovering Purpose

2010-02-18T09:32:00.003-05:00

Over the course of my 30-plus years in ministry, one of the most exciting trends I’ve sensed is the growing interest of the lost in being found. When talking to people about my faith, I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer respond with disengaged apathy. The good news is that more and more are responding with a posture of engaged skepticism when confronted with the Good News.

Charles Drew, pastor of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in New York City, has given us a wonderfully engaging overview of the answer to the world’s deep hunger in his book, A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World (P&R Publishing). Rooted in a proper historical-redemptive understanding of the unfolding drama God has given us in His Word, A Journey Worth Taking is an accessible book that Christians can put in the hands of their non-believing and/or skeptical friends—both young and old alike. Drew masterfully lays out God’s story and the place we’ve been created to take in it. After explaining the Creation and Fall, Drew invites readers to consider the wonderful message of Redemption that will ultimately conclude with Glorification and the ushering in of the new Heaven and new Earth.

People love a story. Everyone knows at some level that he or she is involved in a larger story, and is actually an unfolding story themselves. Drew does the spiritually confused a favor by gathering up scattered puzzle pieces of their lives, then putting them together in the magnificent mural that makes sense of life because it’s a picture of God’s big story. But don’t for a minute think A Journey Worth Taking is only for the unredeemed. For Christian readers, this book is a way out of the misunderstanding and theological shallows that mark so much of the church in today’s world. It can facilitate a serendipitous “aha!” moment for Christians and non-Christians alike.

--Walt Mueller

Deep Discount for Deep Church Audio!

2010-02-12T15:00:00.010-05:00

Not only did Jim Belcher’s book Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional win an impressive CPYU Bookshelf Book of the Year Award, but it also won similar awards by Hearts & Minds Booknotes and Christianity Today. We would like to celebrate Jim’s great book with all of our faithful Bookshelf readers and fans of CPYU!

For a limited time (expires March 1, 2010) you can download the Deep Church audio book from Christianaudio for only $2.98.

Click here to learn more and be sure to use the discount code: DEEPCPYU

Click here to r ead an interview with Jim Belcher.

What others are saying about Deep Church:

"A marvelously reliable guide—indeed I know of none better—for our much-needed efforts to go deeper as churches by mining the depths of the gospel for creative and faithful ministry in the strange and exciting new world of the twenty-first century."—from the foreword by Richard J. Mouw, president, Fuller Theological Seminary

"Jim Belcher shows that we don't have to choose between orthodox evangelical doctrine on the one hand, and cultural engagement, creativity and commitment to social justice on the other. This is an important book."—Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City

"Deep Church takes us beyond just the surface with what is emerging, emergent or traditional and gives us some wonderful insights toward an alternative future."—Dan Kimball, author of They Like Jesus but Not the Church

"Deep Church is a thoughtful, helpful and practical addition to the growing field of missional church thinking."—Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, Seattle

"Smart, passionate, thoughtful, hopeful and Jesus-centered... Lots of people are going to find this book very helpful."—Rob Bell, pastor, Mars Hill Bible Church, Grand Rapids

"Deep Church is the book we need. Jim Belcher is poised like no other to evaluate the emerging movement...There are only two or three really good books about the emerging movement, and this is the best analysis I've seen."—Scot McKnight, North Park University

Our Branding-Obsessed World

2010-02-09T11:54:00.004-05:00

Did you know that the sound of your car’s turn signal is actually branded by the car manufacturer? Or that companies are paying top dollar to have “product placement” in novels? Or that even the scent of most stores is uniquely selected because scent has been shown to influence consumer behavior and to increase sales? In his fascinating book, Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion (Public Affairs), Lucas Conley exposes the branded world in which we live. Conley believes there is “a global branding disorder that stands to shift human nature radically, perverting our definition of community and shaping our sense of self.”

Conley notes that “we’re branded, quite literally, from cradle to grave.” With so many products competing for consumer dollars, many brands spend more money on marketing than on improving products. Marketers now know that “price is a rational purchasing consideration and brand an emotionally driven one,” so the key is to trigger people’s emotions. What’s more, “branding’s most fervent gurus celebrate the best brands for their capacity to establish themselves firmly in our hearts and minds. Our relationships with our dearest brands, they argue, ought to resonate on a spiritual level.” Conley laments, “Branding is corrupting our culture by heralding emotion over reason, surface over core substance and packaging over experience.”

Unfortunately, Conley doesn’t seem to write out of religious conviction. The concluding chapter on how to respond lacks substance or even awareness of how religious communities can navigate a branded world. But that shouldn’t keep us from reading this book. It is very readable, and full of statistics and quotes that can serve as good conversation starters for anyone interested in how marketing affects young people.

--Derek Melleby

Stuff that Really Matters

2010-01-27T15:41:00.006-05:00

Prior to my trip to Rwanda, I read about God’s call for Christians to pursue justice, along with several stories of those saints who had done just that. What resulted was an eye-opening education that convinced me more than ever of the church’s need to go beyond our comfort zones. Gary Haugen is one believer who has been transformed by living this reality. Now, he’s encouraging others to do the same through the work of the International Justice Mission and his book, Just Courage: God’s Great Expedition for the Restless Christian (IVP).

Our lack of concern and action regarding justice is evident in the fact that while Haugen’s message is at the heart of the Gospel, he has to write a book to remind God’s people about what lies at the very heart of the God we say we follow.

In the book, Haugen tells the story of his friend Sean Litton, a lawyer who decided to put Christ’s call—to find one’s life by losing it—to the test. Litton walked away from his safe and secure job to work for Haugen’s IJM, addressing sexual trafficking and child sexual assault in the Philippines. His life was changed, but he almost didn’t go. He says four things were holding him back. There was the comfort of his nice house and all he had accumulated. There was his security and freedom from danger. There was the control he had over the circumstances of his life. And finally, there was the success he was experiencing in his career. But he let go of comfort, security, control and success, and he took the unsafe option by giving up his life and going to the Philippines.

What happened? Sean Litton found his life. In exchange for what he gave up he got back adventure, faith, miracles and a deep knowledge of Jesus. His faith grew and solidified in ways he could have never imagined. That’s why this book is must-reading for us all.

--Walt Mueller

Just Courage is a CPYU Bookshelf Award Winner

Past Interviews

2010-01-21T10:12:00.007-05:00

The great response to the Jim Belcher interview reminded us that CPYU Bookshelf has had the privilege of interviewing some remarkable authors over the past two years of its existence. So, we have created a new side-bar to feature all of the CPYU Bookshelf exclusive interviews. And, we offer the list to you in this one post as well. Please let us know if you know of an author that you would like us to interview and we will do our best to make it happen! Here is a collection of all of our past interviews:

Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School
David Lovelace, Scattershot
William Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology
J. Mark Bertrand, Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World
Amy Black, Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics
Matthew Bonzo, Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life
David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant
Kary Oberbrunner, The Fine Line: Re-envisioning the Gap Between Christ and Culture
David Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives
Mary Poplin, Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service
Mindy Meier, Sex and Dating
David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything
Benson Hines, Reaching the Campus Tribes (part 1 & part 2)

"Reader" Interviews:

Jason Soucinek, Director, iPulse

Paul Robertson, CPYU Associate Staff
Kara Powell, Executive Director, Fuller Youth Institute
David Kinnaman, President, The Barna Group

Abbie Smith, author
Denis Haack, Co-director, Ransom Fellowship

Jim Belcher Interview: Deep Church

2010-01-18T11:58:00.006-05:00

Jim Belcher's book, Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional, has not only won a prestigious Bookshelf Book of the Year Award, but it has also won awards from other respected voices in the book review world. Our good friend Byron Borger says that "it is one of the most important books published in recent years." Pastor Tim Keller says, "Jim Belcher shows that we don't have to choose between orthodox evangelical doctrine on the one hand, and cultural engagement, creativity and commitment to social justice on the other. This is an important book." Indeed, it is. What follows is an interview with Jim (JB). Deep Church could not be more highly recommended to pastors, parents and students!

CPYU: Tell us a bit about your story. What led you to write Deep Church?

JB: What led me to write Deep Church? A moment of insanity! Honestly, I thought it would help the church. I knew it would be risky to try to stand in the middle of two camps arguing but I really thought I could bring them together. As someone who has had a foot in both the emerging and traditional wings of the evangelical church, with deep friendships on both sides, I felt compelled help both sides listen to each other.

I also was saddened by the rhetorical shouting match going on between the two sides. I wanted to call for a “time out” and demonstrate in the book what it looks like to take the other side seriously, even when you disagree. My goal is to get both the emerging and traditional churches to first agree on what they have in common before they jump to what they disagree over. At the same time, I thought that both camps were missing some important truths. So my goal was to put forth a third way that transcends the limitations in both perspectives.

CPYU: What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that the traditional church has with the emerging church and vice versa?

JB: I think the biggest misunderstanding by the traditional church is over postmodernism. Because they define it so differently, they assume that the emerging church is embracing relativism, which is not true. The biggest misunderstanding by the emerging church, I would contend, is their view that because the traditional church values belief that they don’t see the importance of belonging in coming to faith. I think it is more complicated than this and I point out a “third way” in the book.

CPYU: Explain what you mean by a “third way”?

JB: In Deep Church I take up the seven most common protests of the emerging church has against the traditional church. I dedicate one chapter for each protest. After laying out the problems the emerging church has with the traditional church on each of these topics, I give the traditional church a chance to “push back”, to challenge the thinking of the emerging church. Then after looking at the positions of both sides, I demonstrate how both camps are missing something vital in the discussion. I propose an alternative to thinking about the standoff, what I call a third way. So there really are seven different third ways that I describe in Deep Church.

CPYU: Many of our readers are parents and youth workers. How would they benefit from reading Deep Church?

JB: One of the great challenges facing kids today who grow up in the faith is their failure to remain in the body of Christ when they go off to college. Sadly, many Christian kids fall away in college and drop out of church. What could prevent this exodus? According to sociologist Christian Smith, when kids grow up in a church that is multi-generational and where their parents model for them a discipline of Scripture reading, they have a much higher chance of remaining in the faith and in church. I think Deep Church can be a great encouragement to parents and youth workers, painting a picture for what this kind of church can look like. I know one high school teacher in Ohio that has assigned Deep Church for her Christian students. Not only is she trying to disciple them but she is attempting to safeguard them from falling away from the church when they go off to college. She reported to me how receptive her students are to the book, especially the stories of individual transformation.

CPYU: I see you are speaking at the annual Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh! What do you think college students would gain from reading your book?

JB: Studies show that most young people lack purpose and meaning in life beyond getting a job, making lots of money and buying tons of toys. They lack something bigger than themselves to attach their lonely selves to. Thus they are often depressed. What they need is a vision for the church and the Kingdom to inspire them to greatness. It is my prayer that Deep Church will provide a big, bold, exciting vision for the Bride of Christ and how amazing it is to be part of it. If young people want to be where the action is, to be at the center of what God is doing in his world, bringing truth and justice to broken people and institutions, it is most likely happening in the church and God’s Kingdom. I try to show this in my book. As a former college professor, I strongly believe that this is a big enough vision for college students to build their life around and provide enough meaning and purpose to last a lifetime.

CPYU: The book has gotten many positive reviews. What has surprised you the most about how the book has been received?

JB: I think what has surprised me the most is the fact that people have NOT lost their love for God’s church. They may be cynical about it, jaded by its failings, and just discouraged about how anemic it has become but they have not given up on it or failed to see how vital it is to God’s plan in the world. They long to see it renewed. They have been waiting for an excuse to get excited about it again. I think in a small way Deep Church has been the gasoline poured on the dying embers. And for many, this has ignited their passions and excitement for Christ’s body. I get emails every day from tired pastors who have been re-energized, laypeople who were ready to give up but now are using the book in study groups at their church, and even people giving it to non-believers and saying, “this is what Christianity is all about; not what you have heard in the media.” To the extent that God is using this book to engender a greater love for His church, I could not be more thrilled and humbled. May He receive all the glory and praise.

Visit the Deep Church website here.

Walt's Best Reads of 2009

2010-01-11T12:17:00.011-05:00

Once again, Derek has asked me to list my top 10 list of reads from 2009. Not all the books were published in 2009 but that’s when I read them. Consequently, my lists always run the risk of including some books others may have read a few years before I got to them. My criteria for choosing the following 10 titles was easy: choose books that made an impact on me in some significant way. Since Derek and I always have some overlap in what we’re reading, I chose books that would be unique to me. Since Derek got to his list first, I’m not including any books he might have already mentioned. Here goes. . . in no particular order. . . .

When People Are Big and God is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man by Edward T. Welch (P&R). Nothing like getting vulnerable with your first choice! This book’s been around for over 10 years and sitting on my “to read” pile for almost that long. Knowing this would be a long and challenging read due to the book’s topic, I kept putting it off. I’m sorry I did. Welch goes right at the core of so many of our insecurities and problems – fear of what others might think – from a helpful, Biblical perspective. In essence, this is a book about idolatry. As a follower of Christ, it’s my hope that I will always worship the Creator and not created things. This book has helped me to get a handle on some patterns and habits that are anything but good.

The Hole in O ur Gospel: The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World by Richard Stearns (Thomas Nelson). This one combines a memoir with a deep and necessary challenge to the contemporary American church. Stearns wasn’t always the President of World Vision. He was a wealthy and talented Christian businessman who had planned on staying at the top of the corporate ladder for a long, long time. Much to his surprise, God’s call knocked him off that ladder and into a deeper understanding of what it means to believe the whole Gospel. . . . not just the part about personal salvation. Stearns issues a masterful and convincing call to step away from the American Dream and into the life-giving will of God. American Christians will benefit from hearing a perspective that is necessary and corrective.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, and Power, and the Only Hope That M atters by Timothy Keller (Dutton). Are you seeing a pattern in my choice of books? This one, too, is all about idolatry. A true prophet for the ages who has a masterful ability to humbly communicate God’s Word in a direct and understandable manner, Keller tackles the big stuff that has become far too big and important in our lives. Only God can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. This is a great book for believers and for those who aren’t there yet.

The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement by Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell (Free Press). Over the course of the last few years of studying youth culture it’s become increasingly obvious to me that perhaps the most alarming trend is the growing commitment to love, serve, honor, and obey the “holy” trinity of Me, Myself, and I. In this book, researchers Twenge and Campbell offer insights and analysis based on their ongoing research into the shape and extent of narcissism in today’s world. This is a must-read for culture watchers.

Clearing the Bases: Juiced Players, Monster Salaries, Sham Records, and a Hall of Fame r's Search for the Soul of Baseball by Mike Schmidt (Harper). This read is more evidence of my shameless obsession since childhood with the Philadelphia Phillies and baseball. Schmidt, who some argue is the greatest third baseman of all-time, held down the hot corner for the Phillies during my adolescence and college years. I saw him play dozens of times. His book offers fans a peek into the hidden world of the game, along with some direct commentary and opinion on what the game has become. This was a fascinating read that offered some great insights into some of the more recent scandals, including steroids. I was especially fascinated by Schmidt’s take on how the ball, bats, and the strike zone have changed the game in significant ways.

Uncommon: Fin ding Your Path to Significance by Tony Dungy (Tyndale). I’ve always love sports books. Rare are the books by athletes that meld sports with great life lessons in deep and compelling ways. Then there’s Tony Dungy. This guy’s a man of integrity. Dungy challenges men and boys to consider what it means to live a life of integrity through a series of short chapters on matters of character. Reading this book offers a peek into what it must have been like to sit with Dungy in the locker room during halftime. I liken this book to reading the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. . . a source, no doubt, of much of what Dungy passes along to his readers. This book will get you thinking.

Just Courage: God’s Great Expedition for the Restless Christian by Gary Haugen (InterVarsity). This is another timely and convincing challenge to the church, this time from the founder of the International Justice Mission. Haugen tells it like it is, about both a hurting world and a Word that calls God’s people to exercise a costly redemptive presence. I read this book before traveling with Compassion International to East Africa. I will re-read it regularly.

The Gosp el-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World by Michael Horton (Baker Books). I have a short-list of authors whose every book I want to read. Horton’s on that list. This follow-up to Christless Christianity forces readers to think about both the silliness and negative consequences of our well-intentioned efforts to add to the Gospel, a problem that’s reached epidemic proportions in the market-driven church. Only the Gospel can change people. Horton unpacks this in a context full of excellent cultural critique. This isn’t an easy book. . . but it’s a must-read.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Imaculee Ilibagiza (Hay House). Hands down, this book had the greatest impact of any I read during the last year. This was one of many books I read in preparation for our trip to Rwanda. I wanted to have a deeper understanding of the dynamics and experience of the Rwandan genocide. Ilibagiza spent 100 days locked in a tiny bathroom with several other women. This testimony of the miraculous power and grace of God cannot be put down. I learned about the darkness of the human heart. I learned about the deep, deep love of God. And, I learned about me. This is an amazing story of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld (Picador). All my reading about the Rwandan genocide left me scratching my head about the killers and what must have been going through theirs. Then, I found this book. Hatzfeld offers insight into how the tide of Hutu power picked up and swept so many away.

CPYU Bookshelf Awards: Derek's Picks for 2009

2010-01-06T13:45:00.016-05:00

It’s time, once again, to award the best books we’ve read this past year. I have ten awards to give and Walt’s list is coming soon as well! A few of the following books were published in late 2008, but make this list because they were read in early 2009. They are listed alphabetically by author:

Deep Church: A Third Way Beyond Emerging and Traditional by Jim Belcher (InterVarsity Press). I read this book with great interest. It has a diverse group of endorsers. Do you know of any other book that includes endorsements from both Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell? Wow. It’s no secret that many people are questioning what it means to be the church in our post-Christian world. The latest church battle is between what Belcher describes as emerging verses traditional. He gives them both a fair and balanced assessment, but concludes by offering a third way, learning from both and pushing the church to go deeper. I think this is currently the best book available for anyone trying to make sense of the “emergent conversation.” It is thoughtful, engaging and personal. I’ve written more about this book at Living Jubilee.

Shop Cl ass as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford (The Penguin Press). Crawford makes a strong case for the value of “working with one’s hands,” or manual labor. With a PhD in political philosophy, Crawford has worked at universities and think-tanks, in what he calls “knowledge work.” But it was never satisfying. The “work” was too abstract, without much to show for it. When he opened a motorcycle repair shop things began to change. Not only did he find this work more meaningful and enjoyable, but he also noticed that it required him to think more. Repairing motorcycles was more intellectual in a richer, deeper sense of the word. Crawford wonders, “Given the intrinsic richness of manual work – cognitively, socially, and in its broader psychic appeal – the question becomes why it has suffered such a devaluation as a component of education.” Where have all the shop classes gone? As a culture do we tend to look down upon work and workers who do manual labor? In attempting to answer these questions, Crawford has some important things to say about education in general and higher education in particular. It’s an exciting book to read, a great conversation starter and forces readers to ask tough questions about the meaning of work and ultimately, of life.

In the Beginning, God: Creation, Culture, and the Spiritual Life by Marva Dawn (InterVarsity Press). I recommend reading this short book devotionally. Try a chapter a day and follow up on the biblical references. You won’t be disappointed. Dawn is a master at communicated deep theology in an accessible way. In the Beginning, God focuses on the first three chapters of Genesis, revealing how most of our essential doctrines can be found early on in the story of God. If we are going to read the Bible well, we need to get off to a good start and Dawn’s book provides a helpful framework that can lead to penetrating Bible study.

Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace by Cathleen Falsani (Zondervan). In February, I was perusing the book table at the annual Jubilee Conference and a good friend and fellow reader was nearby. I asked her one of my favorite questions: “Read anything good lately?” Without hesitation she replied, “You should read Sin Boldly.” I did and I’m glad. Falsani is an award winning journalist and it shows. She takes readers on a journey to discover grace. Grace may be tough to define but it’s easier to explain through story. Falsani is a master story-teller, opening the eyes of her reader’s to the grace-filled world in which they live. The book is funny and moving and never dull. It is a wonderful reminder of grace that has been found in some of the toughest places in the world.

The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World by Stephen Mansfield (Thomas Nelson). American Christians might be surprised to learn that beer has played a major role in world history, particularly religious history. Yes, beer. Mansfield’s book tells the captivating story of beer focusing on the life, career and family of the founder of the Guinness Brewery, Arthur Guinness. A master craftsman, Arthur developed his trademark stout as an act of discipleship; a way to love God and neighbor. Readers will be amazed by the Guinness story. In an age of corporate irresponsibility and corruption, the Guinness story is one worth telling and retelling.

Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right Colleges—and Find Themselves by David L. Marcus (The Penguin Press). This unique book follows a year in the life of an award winning high school guidance counselor in Long Island, New York. Readers not only get a rare glimpse into the world of high school and college administration, but they also learn more about the world of today’s teenagers. The college admissions process can be stressful and tricky. Most parents want their kids to build a resume and get into the best school possible. But is this the best approach? According to the guidance counselor in this story, the college application process should be about finding the best “fit” and discovering who you are in the process. This book is both challenging and refreshing. It strongly challenges the American narrative for college (you go to college to get a degree to get a better job, etc.) and shows readers a better approach to understanding the college years.

The Long Snapper: A Second Chance, A Super Bowl, A Lesson for Life by Jeffrey Marx (HarperOne). Marx’s previous book, Season for Life, is one of my all-time favorites so you can imagine how excited I was to see this new release. Marx is an excellent writer with the ability to tell gripping stories. His latest book tells the story of former NFL longsnapper Brian Kinchen, a thirty-eight-year-old middle school Bible teacher who was shockingly called out of retirement by the New England Patriots on December 15, 2003. The Patriots were in desperate need of a proven long snapper as they headed into the playoffs and Kinchen was offered the position. The Long Snapper is not only about life in the NFL—although readers will never watch a game in the same way again—it is also about faith, family, and calling. It is a emotional rollercoaster, to say the least. Kinchen is placed in a very difficult and important position on the team and his faith and family pull him through. It’s an inspiring story that reads like a fairy tale. Only it’s true!

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller (Thomas Nelson). Miller’s book Blue Like Jazz was a mega-seller that created a large following. It took Miller a bit by surprise. All of the sudden he was a best-selling author, being invited to speak at a variety of venues. But an even bigger surprise soon followed. A movie producer wanted to make a movie about his life adapted from his books. Thinking his life was pretty boring, Miller began to view life through the lens of this question: What makes a good movie? He came to realize that the same things that make a good movie will make a good life. Intrigued? Well, the book is about how he came to that realization. In characteristic Miller style, the book is often funny, making humorous observations and asking good questions. But this book also has a more mature agenda, in a good way. Miller wants readers to re-examine their lives in hopes that they would move a little closer to finding their story as a part of God’s story.

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness by David Naugle (Eerdmans). Naugle invites readers to consider what they should aim for to obtain a truly “happy life.” He suggests that we need “not a hedonistic but an ‘edenistic’ happiness that roots the fullness of human life in God and his creation.” This type of happiness only comes when we learn to love the right things. “The happy life consists of learning how to love both God supremely and the world in the right way at the very same time.” Using illustrations from history, pop culture and Scripture, Naugle makes a strong case for how followers of Christ can (re)learn how to live a “happy” (properly defined), good life. The book is deep, but accessible, and would be good reading for parents and youth workers as they help young people better understand what true happiness really is. And, truth be told, the message of the book is one we all need to be continually reminded of: Our happiness is found in our love for God. Read an interview with Naugle here.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose (Grand Central Publishing). On April 1, 2009 I made a bold prediction that The Unlikely Disciple would win a Bookshelf Award. Well, it has. I continue to amaze myself! Roose grew up in a self-proclaimed “liberal” environment. After high school he attended Brown University, also known for liberal ideals. However, Roose was not convinced that he was receiving a well-rounded education and convinced his advisor to allow him to attend Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. The Unlikely Disciple chronicles Roose’s adventure, inviting reader’s to consider an outsider’s perspective on evangelical Christianity. Here’s the surprise: Evangelical Christianity is not what Roose expected. In fact, not only does he develop deep friendships with fellow students at Liberty, but he also discovers that the faith is not as shallow as he perceived. This book offers a fascinating window in the supposed cultures wars, suggesting that the gap between “red and blue states” may not be as wide as we think. Readers will also benefit from its unique perspective on current college student culture, revealing the hopes and dreams of young people in America today.

As I look over this list, I am reminded of the blessing that a good book can be. Numerous, thoughtful, engaging conversations were started or enhanced over the last year by discussing these books. It’s not easy to write a book and I am grateful that these authors took the time to teach us something meaningful about life in God’s world. Thank you, thank you, dear writers of good books, for your sacrifice, patience and courage.

Essential Leadership

2010-01-05T09:24:00.003-05:00

New book from the Fuller Youth Institute: Essential Leadership by Kara Powell. Learn more here.

"Essential Leadership is an essential tool for building your youth ministry team into a group that forges ahead with unity, passion, knowledge, and depth in ways that will take kids deep in their faith…both now and for the rest of their lives."

--Dr. Walt Mueller, Center for Parent/Youth Understanding

Best Books of 2009?

2009-12-30T11:32:00.008-05:00

We are putting together our lists for the best books of 2009. Some of them were published in 2009 and some of them we just happened to get around to reading in 2009! You can read about last year's winners here: Derek's picks part 1 & part 2; Walt's picks part 1 & part 2.

Look for posts presenting CPYU Book Award Winners sometime in early 2010. For now, we're interested in hearing from you:

What were the best books you read this year?

(Just a reminder: whenever we have 15 or more comments we giveaway a FREE book. The winner is randomly selected from the "comment-ers.")

Forgetting Jesus?

2009-12-23T09:56:00.003-05:00

Many polemics have been written about the North American evangelical church. Some center on theology, others on practice, but many assume that what evangelicals think or do is gospel centered. Michael Horton, in his new book, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Baker), challenges readers to consider whether or not churches are preaching Christ, or something else. “I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful and perhaps even well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself,” Horton writes. “Judging by its commercial, political and media success, the evangelical movement seems to be booming. But is it still Christian?”

Horton believes many churches cater to society by offering a Gospel that is easy to accept, while preaching and teaching “good advice” not “good news.” He sifts through popular Christian writers and teachers, most notably Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, Robert Schuller, Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball and Mark Oestreicher, to reveal a reluctance to communicate the offensiveness of the gospel. According to Horton: “Today it is less about measuring ourselves against God’s holy will than about helping make good people better through good advice.”

Horton reveals that the moralistic, therapeutic, deistic worldview, discovered by sociologist Christian Smith is really the worldview of most Christian adults. Not everyone will agree with Horton’s arguments, but they certainly are worth considering. Has the church stopped preaching Christ and Him crucified? Are we leaving out central elements of the faith, especially when teaching the young? Horton’s diagnosis is compelling and seems more accurate than not, but it isn’t all bad news. He also reminds us of the Good News and suggests ways to put the church back on track.

Best Sex

2009-12-21T09:52:00.005-05:00

Shoot straight. That’s certainly what the culture does with its pervasive and assorted non-stop messages about sex and sexuality. What’s resulted is a do-anything sexual ethic void of any boundaries other than those one sets for himself or herself—and it’s assumed that’s where sexual freedom is to be found. “Not so!” says C.J. Mahaney. If you believe there’s something more, you believe correctly.

Mahaney, of Sovereign Grace Ministries, offers up a much-needed biblical corrective pointing to true and full sexual freedom in his accessible little book, Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God: What Every Christian Husband Needs to Know (Crossway). Rooted in the unfolding biblical drama and a deep understanding of God’s created purpose for His gift of sex, this book is forthright in setting out clear parameters for men in a world where the messages they usually hear and follow are destructive to relationships and lives. Mahaney reminds men that sexually satisfying intimacy is meant to bring Glory to God, and that “before you touch her body, you must touch her heart and mind.” He then goes on to describe ways to kindle romance, communicate and become immersed in “holy, erotic joy.” A wonderful chapter by Mahaney’s wife Carolyn is included at book’s end, offering “A Word to Wives.”

While Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God bills itself as a book for husbands, I highly recommend it as a book for mature young men who are not yet married. Not only will the book serve to outline a practical theology of sex for marriage, but it will help younger readers (and the youth workers who lead them) understand and practice their sexuality to the glory of God before marriage. My guess is that many older readers will find the book helpful, but finish it lamenting the fact that they had never discovered it before.

--Walt Mueller

Teen Life

2009-12-17T09:19:00.007-05:00

British author Nick Hornby’s novel Slam (Riverhead Books) is about a boy named Sam. Written in the first-person, Sam tells the story of being raised by his single, young, divorced mother. He’s a decent student who plans on being the first person in his family to attend and graduate from college. Skateboarding is his obsession and he has a poster of Tony Hawk in his room. He talks to the poster and the poster talks back. In fact, it’s safe to say that the poster functions as his mentor, giving him direction and frequently offering advice.

Life is going along as “normal” for an average 21st century teenager, until his new girlfriend, Alicia, gets pregnant. Sam and Alicia have major decisions to make and the book does a marvelous job at revealing how a teenager navigates these challenges. How will they tell their parents? Will they keep the child? Will they stay together in a relationship? Will Sam be able to go to college? Will Alicia drop out of school? Readers are given a unique, and I would say, accurate, look into how an adolescent shaped by contemporary youth culture processes such questions.

I highly recommend this novel for any student of youth culture, especially parents and youth workers who want to better understand the world of teenagers. Hornby knows their world well and his book helps us to see life through the thoughts and actions of teens. This book should be of special interest to anyone reaching out to teens from broken homes or helping teens navigate the challenges of teen pregnancy.

Learn more about Nick Hornby here.

The Winner is...

2009-12-15T15:56:00.009-05:00

Thanks for all who participated in our latest FREE book giveaway. We created a great list of books that would make excellent Christmas presents! The following person was chosen randomly from the list of comments and has won a free signed copy of David Crowder and Ben Hogan’s book, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die:

everybodylovesraymond

Please email us, cpyu(at)cpyu.org, with your mailing address to claim your prize. Thanks for playing! Stay tuned for future giveaways.

Columbine Reality

2009-12-10T09:45:00.005-05:00

Last week I finally got around to a book that's been sitting on the pile for quite some time. I wanted to read Dave Cullen's Columbine before the 10th anniversary year of the watershed school massacre came to an end. Riveting reading, it was difficult to put down. Considered the nation's foremost authority on those who perpetrated the event now known by the simple one-word name of the school, Cullen has spent ten years investigating every nook and cranny of what happened in Littleton before, during, and after April 20, 1999.

I remember where I was when I first heard the news. I was in the car driving from speaking to an English class at Lancaster Bible College, heading a few miles south to speak to some at-risk students in an after-school program at Lancaster City's McCaskey High School. An initial radio report had informed me that there had a been a school shooting in Colorado and a few kids had been injured. By the time I got back in my car a couple of hours later, a more grim story was unfolding fast. I was up all night glued to the TV. Since then - in fact before the bodies were removed from the school - Columbine reality and myth have been woven together in a mix that's allowed the truth to get muddied by chaotic confusion, trauma-fueled desire, misinformation, hasty assumptions, false conclusions, irresponsibility, and lies.

Yesterday, after finishing Cullen's book, I ran across this quote attributed to John F. Kennedy: "Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." Timely. The age of rapid information has combined with our desire for easy answers, our lack of good research, our need for Evangelical heroes, and our bent towards believing what we want to believe to cloud the truth about Columbine. And this bad habit is not only limited to the Columbine massacre. We do it all the time. And Evangelicals - a group I'm a part of that values truth and integrity - is usually no different. Mainstream media, viewers worldwide, Columbine families, and my own Christian culture jumped to some hasty conclusions. Then along comes Dave Cullen, shedding light on the facts and thereby illuminating the truth about Columbine in some undeniable ways. Granted, Cullen doesn't know everything and he has the advantage of post-dust-settlement hindsight. But he's helped us know more than we've ever known before...

Read the rest of Walt's review and view a video about the book here.

Books Make Great Christmas Gifts!

2009-12-08T11:55:00.006-05:00

We have another signed copy of David Crowder and Ben Hogan’s book to give away! You know, their book (signed!) Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die would make a nice Christmas present, don’t you think?

Books make great Christmas presents. We’re wondering:

Will you be giving any books as gifts this Season?

Are there any books you hope to get for Christmas?

"Comment" your answers... the winner of the FREE SIGNED BOOK will be chosen randomly from the list of comments (only one comment per person, please) on Tuesday, December 15, 2009.

Read an interview with the authors.

The winner from the previous giveaway still has not claimed his prize. Please check the comment section of this post to see if you are the winner.

Volunteer Help

2009-12-07T12:46:00.007-05:00

It’s always interesting to hear the responses when I ask a room full of youth workers to describe what they do in youth ministry. Those who volunteer their time to pour their lives into kids usually sell themselves short by almost embarrassingly confessing, “I’m just a volunteer.” But with a little bit of information and encouragement, these folks can begin to see that they need to drop the “I’m just a” to confidently embrace the amazing role they play in shaping the hearts and minds of young people.

My friend Jim Hancock made the transition to youth ministry volunteer after more than 20 years of getting paid to minister to kids. His experience as a volunteer taught him quite a bit, and in his signature style he has crafted a helpful and encouraging book for those who pursue this high calling and high privilege without getting paid a dime. How To Volunteer Like a Pro: An Amateur’s Guide For Working With Teenagers (Zondervan/Youth Specialties) is full of practical advice and helpful tips loaded into 37 short chapters, making it highly suitable for individual reading or small group training sessions. Jim includes guidance on everything from how to build relationships, to crossing cultures, to reporting abuse. One chapter even offers suggestions on how to ask good questions, with Jim passing on the three time-tested best questions he knows.

Youth ministry volunteers aren’t chaperones, supervisors or an adult presence. They powerfully serve Christ and kids by becoming the hands and feet of Jesus on the ground, right there where kids live. How to Volunteer Like a Pro will encourage and equip them to fulfill their God-given calling as an incarnational presence in young lives.

-- Walt Mueller

Engaging The Shack

2009-12-02T09:06:00.006-05:00

The novel The Shack has reportedly sold over 4 million copies. The self-published phenomenon has been a New York Times bestseller and author William Young has been interviewed by almost every major media outlet. If you haven’t read The Shack, someone you know has. And, chances are, it has left a lasting impression on how they view God and understand faith.

The Shack is about a man whose daughter is kidnapped and murdered, plaguing his life with a “Great Sadness.” He is invited to a meeting at the shack where his daughter’s dress was last seen. There he meets God and engages in long conversations with the Trinity trying to make sense of how a loving God would “allow” such an evil thing to happen.

The book is not without its critics. Some have declared it unbiblical and heretical. In his new book, Finding God in the Shack: Seeking Truth in a Story of Evil and Redemption (Intervarsity, 2009), Roger Olson offers a fair and wise assessment. Olson was moved by the book, found it very encouraging, especially for people who have endured hardships, and doesn’t want it dismissed. He explains, “The Shack is not a book of systematic theology or orthodox doctrine; it’s a story—like Jesus’ parables—meant to convey a message about God.” But, according to Olson, that does not mean we shouldn’t read it critically: “However great and inspiring it may be, The Shack is just a story and not God’s Word … while there have been amazingly popular and life-transforming books written since the Bible, all must be judged by Scripture.”

This book helps to that end, by walking readers through the story and comparing it to God’s Word and Church history. The Shack is not without its faults, and Olson has provided a user friendly guide to make sure readers do not lose sight of the truth of the God portrayed in The Shack. A small group discussion guide is also included.

Watch a video with Roger Olson discussing Finding God in The Shack.

Read a CPYU review of The Shack.

Listen to William Young interviewed by Steve Brown.

Shaping Kids with Words

2009-11-24T10:16:00.006-05:00

It’s easy to forget the power and importance of words. Regretfully, I’m most often reminded of their effect after feeling remorseful over poorly chosen words. But words can have a deeply positive impact as well. As a relatively new father, I’m just beginning to see glimpses of the effect my words and demeanor have, and will continue to have, on my 16-month-old son. How I long to be more intentional about the words and phrases I use with him.

That’s why I’m thankful to have read Words Kids Need to Hear: To Help Them Be Who God Made Them to Be (Zondervan, 2008) by David Staal. Staal packs this concise book with seven statements he believes are important to share with children and teens alike. Going beyond an explanation of why they’re important for kids to hear, he explores different ways to say them and the importance of backing those words and phrases with our everyday actions. As a children’s ministry director at Willow Creek Community Church, Staal is able to reference many helpful examples from the lives of families at his church. He also shares his own trials and triumphs in regards to sharing these statements with his own children.

It’s not as though these seven statements are new, formerly-hidden-to-parents, catch-phrases. Rather, Staal reminds us that deliberately using these words will help children realize, in healthy and biblical ways, their value, self-worth and the importance of boundaries as they learn to view themselves as not only our children, but as a child of God. Though using these words with younger children is important, let’s remember that our teens, regardless of whether they’ve heard us say them before or not, also need to be shaped by these significant words.

-- Chris Wagner

David Crowder & Mike Hogan Signed Book!

2009-11-20T09:25:00.005-05:00

The moment you’ve all been waiting for… We’re giving away a signed copy of David Crowder and Mike Hogan’s book, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die. And, I must say, David Crowder’s signature is one of the coolest I’ve ever seen! Here’s how it works:

Answer one of the following questions:

What is your favorite book by a musician?
What is your favorite book about a musician?

The winner will be chosen randomly from the list of comments (only one comment per person, please) on Monday, November, 23, 2009 at 1:00pm (EST).

Read an interview with the authors.

Click here to learn more about the book.

Tim Keller Round-Up

2009-11-19T09:07:00.005-05:00

Over at his blog, Walt highly recommends Tim Keller’s new book. Walt writes, “I finished Keller's latest little, easily read, yet meaty new book, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters. Keller hits it so far out of the park in this one that I'm going to watch the replay (read it again). . . and perhaps again. Because there's so much idolatry in me, there's so much in this book that I've got to ponder, digest, and take to heart… How easily I believe that the things that don't really matter really matter. I am prone to pursue, over and over and over again, created things rather than the Creator. While I can enjoy the things He's made, they can never fulfill.” You can read the rest of Walt’s review here: Home Run… Keller!

CPYU has benefitted greatly from Keller’s writing and ministry at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. We pass around his sermons, read his books, and have recently highlighted a new small group DVD curriculum. We hope more youth workers, parents and students consider learning more about Keller's work. Here’s a quick Keller Round-Up to introduce you to or remind you about the very helpful resources Keller has recently provided.

Read Walt’s review of The Reason for God (NY Times Bestseller!)

Read Derek's review of The Prodigal God

Learn more about The Prodigal God DVD

Visit The Reason for God website

Visit The Prodigal God website

Visit the Counterfeit Gods website

David Crowder & Mike Hogan Interview

2009-11-17T09:07:00.004-05:00

We are excited to let you know about a new book by David Crowder and Mike Hogan of the David Crowder Band. What follows is an interview with the authors. But wait, there’s more! We have SIGNED copies to give away. Stay tuned for details!

What motivated you to write Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven But Nobody Wants to Die?
DC&MH: It wasn’t one specific thing (that thing being the very sudden and very public death of our good friend and pastor Kyle Lake). Well, perhaps more accurately, it was one specific thing (the afore-mentioned tragedy in the previous sentence) that was preceded by many other things (sickness, death, unanswered questions), which then prompted us to the only logical conclusion when faced with such matters, which was to write a book. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense!  

Do you think there is some confusion about heaven among Christians? How does your book help readers gain a more biblical understanding of heaven?
DC&MH: Certainly! Truth be told, we have yet to meet someone who has been there and back to tell us what it’s all about. You know, at least in person… But, yes, in any area where the only information available is based on interpretation, opinion, conjecture, etc. there is sure to be some confusion. But then, people don’t really talk about it much, do they? At least not in specifics. We wanted to start talking about things that, for whatever reason, people don’t seem to talk about much. These are big issues (life/death/heaven), and insight would be a welcomed thing. When we were in the middle of grief we had a very hard time finding resources that discussed such things in ways that were moving to us. Hopefully our book inspires people to contemplate and discuss this stuff in a way that is interesting and reverently amusing.

Your book talks a lot about Bluegrass music. How does Bluegrass inform your theology?
DC&MH: There is a longing for the ever after that exists in bluegrass music that we admire. There is recognition that despite our best efforts to change the here and now it will still be broken; we will still encounter pain and suffering and tragedy. The beauty of bluegrass is the resilience and hope that is found in its content and the belief that there is something better coming causes us to live process things differently in the present. Hope changes everything.

Many of our readers are youth workers and parents. How will they benefit from this book?
DC&MH: They will become better looking, wiser, and live longer. They will become titans of industry and the arts, wielding great hammers of influence the world over. In short, they will benefit by becoming a more awesome version of themselves.

Also, they might find it a lovely resource for discussing death and the Christian response to it. As bleak as it sounds, none of us are getting out of here alive and we will all surely deal with the loss of someone we love or have friends or neighbors who are grieving. It’s so difficult to know what to say, how to help, what exactly it is that our loved ones are going through.

What’s the latest with the David Crowder Band?
DC&MH: Well, we just released our 5th (!!!) album, entitled Church Music, and we are currently touring this wonderful country in support of it. It’s an explosion of rock and (or) roll! Experience it for yourselves!

Click here to learn more about the book.

An Integrated Life

2009-10-27T10:09:00.003-04:00

Theologian John Stott has said that every Christian should experience two conversions. The first is out of the world to Christ. The second is back into the world with Christ. Sadly, many Christians fail to take the second step. Sometimes this is out of fear. It can be intimidating to engage the ugliness of the fallen world. But for many, the failure to re-engage the world is because of ignorance and lack of helpful resources.

In their new book, A Faith and Culture Devotional: Daily Readings in Art, Science, and Life (Zondervan, 2008), editors Kelly Monroe Kullberg and Lael Arrington hope to bridge that gap. With contributions from a number of insightful authors, including John Stott, Dallas Willard, Os Guinness, Randy Alcorn, R.C. Sproul, Frederica Matthews-Green and many more, this devotional takes readers on a 15-week journey “to marvel at the wonders of God and his world.” Monroe and Lael explain, “Our hope is that this devotional catalyzes a kind of kingdom education from master kingdom teachers, expanding our knowledge, strengthening our beliefs, and inspiring our love for God and others.”

Each week offers short readings from seven key cultural areas: Bible and theology; history; philosophy; science; literature; arts; and contemporary culture. The readings conclude with reflection questions for individual or group study. We need to be reminded that God is not just about the business of redeeming individuals, but that He cares deeply about His entire creation, including the cultures in which we live. This excellent and unique devotional serves as a daily reminder of God’s heart for His world.

Visit CultureDevo.com to learn more about the book and to see a complete list of contributors.

Walt's Latest Recommendations

2009-10-14T10:35:00.007-04:00

CPYU President Walt Mueller has offered two new book recommendations on his blog Learning My Lines. The Long Snapper: A Second Chance, A Super Bowl, A Lesson of Life by Jeffrey Marx “is a quick can't-put-it-down book that tells the story of Brian Kinchen's unprobable invitation to come out of retirement to long-snap for the Patriots during their Super Bowl run of 2003. Marx uses his engaging signature-style to take readers on Kinchen's journey from middle-school Bible teacher to the stresses of long-snapping when ultimate football prize is on the line.”

Walt also highly recommends Think No Evil: Inside the Story of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting and Beyond by his good friend Jonas Beiler. According to Walt, “Jonas gives a compelling firsthand account of not only what transpired at Nickel Mines and his personal involvement, but how the Amish were committed to forgive.”

Click here to read the rest of Walt’s post Read These.

Click here to learn more about The Long Snapper.

Click here to learn more about Think No Evil.

Happy Anniversary, Darwin?

2009-10-07T15:08:00.008-04:00

How will you celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species? I hadn’t really thought about it until I read an interesting article in Inside Higher Education. In his article, Darwin, From the Creationists, Scott Jaschik reports on a new strategy being cooked up by Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort. Jaschik explains, “Living Waters, an evangelical group that argues for the literal truth of the Bible, is planning to distribute 175,000 copies of The Origin of Species on university campuses next month, just in time for the 150th anniversary of its publication. But these won't be ordinary copies. They will feature a ‘special introduction’ to Darwin's classic.”

The special introduction is an added 50 pages written by Comfort that provides a timeline of Darwin, connects Darwin to Hitler and, according to Cameron, “gives a clear explanation of the Gospel.”

So, I'm curious, what do you think of this strategy? What do you think of Cameron's assertions at the beginning of the video? In the end, do you think this "outreach" does more harm or good for the advancement of the Gospel on today's college campuses?

The Prodigal God DVD

2009-09-24T10:08:00.003-04:00

Followers of CPYU will know that we are big fans of Pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. His latest books, The Reason for God and The Prodigal God have been reviewed and discussed in our speaking and writing. Both books won Bookshelf Book Awards for 2008.

We are exciting to let you know that Zondervan has recently released a DVD small group/discussion resource around the themes found in Keller's The Prodigal God. It is outstanding. The film quality is very professional and the message is illustrated powerfully. There are also discussion guides to assist the small group experience. From the back cover:

"In six captivating DVD video sessions, pastor and New York Times bestselling author Timothy Keller opens your eyes to the powerful message of Jesus' best-known—and least understood—parable. The Prodigal God is a revelation of the very heart of the gospel: God's radical love for sinners of every kind. Taking you and your small group or church beyond the traditional focus on the wayward younger son, Dr. Keller helps you glean insights from each of the characters in Jesus' parable: the irreligious younger son, the moralistic elder son, and the Father who lavishes his love on both. The Prodigal God will challenge the devout and the skeptic alike to see Christianity in a whole new way."

Visit The Prodigal God website to learn more.

View a trailer of the DVD here.

Not So Funny

2009-09-16T11:03:00.002-04:00

Reviewed by Walt Mueller

Chris Farley was one funny guy. But that humor masked an individual who was much more complex than someone who always was able to generate a laugh. When he died from an overdose at the age of 33, people wrote him off as another celebrity train wreck. It was like John Belushi all over again. Concerned that his brother would never be truly known as anything other than the overweight star of Saturday Night Live and several movies, Tom Farley decided to tell Chris’ story in The Chris Farley Story: A Biography in Three Acts (Viking, 2008).

Why would a ministry concerned with matters of faith and culture recommend a Hollywood bio? In this case it’s because The Chris Farley Story forces us to examine many of the emerging and oftentimes sad realities of living life in a celebrity-obsessed culture—whether one is a celebrity or celebrity watcher. Tom Farley wants readers to know that Chris was not only a comedic genius, but that he was a very real person who grew up struggling with the realities of living in a family crippled by addiction. Farley was earnest, sincere and a genuinely caring person who dealt with his own insecurities by trying to make other people laugh.

This hilarious and heartbreaking portrait not only tells Chris’ story, but includes more than a hundred exclusive interviews and observations from people who knew Chris the best, including David Spade, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin, Chris’ priest and his brothers. Readers should not approach this book as entertainment. Rather, it’s a case study in humanity, the ills of depravity and the desire for ultimate redemption. If you have a heart, this is a book that will make you grieve what we’ve become, grieve the brokenness that runs deep and wide in our culture, and see the need for ultimate redemption through Jesus Christ.

What Will College Students Learn?

2009-09-10T11:13:00.008-04:00

Millions of students started a new college year last week. Here’s a good question: What will students learn?

A few years ago I reviewed an interesting and important book by former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis. In Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?, Lewis looks at the state of higher education in America through the story of Harvard College. For better or worse, Harvard is looked to as one of the premier colleges in America and around the world. As Harvard goes, so will much of higher learning around the globe. According to Lewis, colleges in America (Harvard included), “have forgotten that the fundamental job of undergraduate education is to turn” teenagers into adults, “to help them grow up, to learn who they are, to search for a larger purpose for their lives, and to leave college as better human beings.”

Central to Lewis’ concern is that colleges have gotten away from giving students a well-rounded education. To prove his point, Lewis has launched a website (What Will They Learn?) that helps “college shoppers” better understand what is and isn’t being taught at colleges and universities across the country. The website is easy to use. It simply tells you how much a school costs and whether or not there are required courses in the following areas: E nglish composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and science. Why does this matter? From the website:

According to a recent study, only 31 percent of college graduates can read and understand a complex book. In another recent survey, only 24 percent of employers thought graduates of four-year colleges were "excellently prepared" for entry-level positions. College seniors perennially fail tests of their civic and historical knowledge. And rates of leisure reading have taken a nosedive. What you see on What Will They Learn? illuminates why these statistics are so dismal: Students seldom learn what they are not expected to learn. This is because our colleges and universities have largely abandoned a coherent, content-rich general education curriculum… We examine general education because these requirements encompass the courses the vast majority of students must take, regardless of major. Ideally, these courses—commonly known as the core curriculum—ensure that students encounter broad, foundational knowledge in both the arts and sciences, knowledge that provides the intellectual backbone for lifelong learning and informed citizenship.

The website gives schools a letter grade based on the required courses taken by students. It is fascinating browse. You will be surprised by how poorly most schools are graded. Now, I’m sure the website will be met with criticism, especially from highly selective colleges that receive an “F.” But it is a good conversation starter, to be sure: Just was exactly are students (parents) paying so much money for?

New Study Guide for The Space Between!

2009-09-08T10:25:00.004-04:00

If they aren’t there already, your children will someday be teenagers. Sadly, parenting teens has become one of the most dreaded and misunderstood phases in the exciting journey of raising children. Much of this fear and dread is rooted in our own memories of what it was like to be a teenager once ourselves. It wasn’t easy then. The parenting fear factor gets amped up a few notches when you consider that the pressures, challenges, problems, choices, and expectations facing teenagers in today’s world are more complex than for previous generations.

The Space Between: A Parent’s Guide to Teenage Development, by CPYU President Walt Mueller, sets out to help parents understand what kids in today’s culture face as they pass through the God-ordained process of growth and change. Believing that our fears can be alleviated through developing a deeper understanding of normal adolescent development, The Space Between offers a practical and hope-filled overview of adolescence that is built on principles from God’s Word along with years of experience in both studying youth culture and raising children. An admitted “fellow-struggler” along with all other parents, Walt walks readers through his research and own experience to offer a vulnerable window into the developmental world of today’s teens.

The Space Between Study Guide is a great resource to use with:

Parents’ Sunday School
Class
Small groups
Retreats
Neighborhood Study
Christian School Parents’
Meetings
Youth Group Parents’
Meetings
Individual reading and
study
College and Seminary
Youth Ministry Classes

Learn more about The Space Between Study Guide

Download the Study Guide (.pdf)

Purchase The Space Between at the CPYU Resource Center

Jason Soucinek: Reader Interview

2009-08-31T09:24:00.004-04:00

Current position/title: Director, iPULSE, a division of Life Services, and Associate Staff with CPYU

Have you always been a reader? If not, how did you become one?

Reading was one of those things that I dreaded when I was in school, even college. In fact, I took great delight in having passed all my English literature classes (and many others) without ever having read a single classic. It wasn’t until I graduated from college that I learned how much I LOVED to read. Now I can’t get my hands on enough books. It seems like I am always reading. Especially the classics! Funny how you avoid something most of your life then you spend the rest of it trying to make up for lost time!

What are your reading habits and practices?

A couple of things worth mentioning here:

As for habits, typically I love to read in the morning and in the evening. Whenever I travel I try my best to use public transportation. There is nothing like getting in a chapter or two while I wait to go from one point A to point B.

As for practices, I read on a variety of topics from several different perspectives. I feel this allows for me to understand issues in a much broader sense. I think it is silly when you don’t challenge yourself to see some of the big things we read about and not understand the other side.

Find one or two authors you love and read everything they ever wrote! For me that is John Steinbeck and C.S. Lewis.

Name 3 books that have been very influential in your life and one sentence that explains why.

Wow! That is like asking what my favorite band is or what movie I like the most but I will try my best. I am sure as soon as I send this off to you I will think of several others that could replace these three.

The Pearl, by John Steinbeck. This was the first book after I graduated from college that got me hooked on reading. Since then I have made Steinbeck a stable in my yearly reading pattern.

The Divine Conspiracy, by Dallas Willard. This book was thick! Not just in the physical sense but in the spiritual and mental sense. This was the first book that had me reading scripture right alongside the book I was reading. I remember spending days doing nothing but studying scripture and reading this book. Absolutely fell in love with the Lord all over again!

Why We Can’t Wait, by Martin Luther King Jr. There is probably no other person in modern history that has had as much influence on my life as this man. This is the book that started that adoration.

If you could meet any author, living or dead, who would it be and what questions would you ask him or her?

C.S. Lewis, where did you find time to write, teach and respond to all those letters while also having a social life?

According to a recent study by the National Endowment of the Arts, very few young people are reading. Do you have any ideas on how to get young people to read?

I think the one thing that this generation is missing is the use of their imagination. This might be hard to accept but I recently went to the museum with a group of students. When they were asked to look at the art on the walls they couldn’t place themselves in the picture. They had a hard time playing in the fields or thinking about what might be beyond the hills or who might live in the house that was painted. I believe that this is a direct result of a generation of students that are not reading or who have never been read to as a child. Reading unlocks our imagination. I learned this late in life but I am taking full advantage of it now!

One way for us to curb this trend is to use books in our teaching. Whenever I speak I love to use books that we all remember from our childhood like Where the Wild Things Are, The Giving Tree or The Velveteen Rabbit. What I’ve realized, however, is not everyone in my audience have read these books. But something happens when I read them aloud…people’s heads perk up and they are taken into the story. Maybe they’ve never read the story but it gets them excited about reading. I’ve had more than a few teenagers that will come up after I’ve spoken and ask about the book I just read out loud. My hope is that this starts a rhythm or practice that will start them on a journey of reading. Gosh, to think if someone had done that when I was younger…all the books I could have already read!

Learn more about CPYU seminars presented by Jason

Past Reader Interviews
Paul Robertson, CPYU Associate Staff

Kara Powell, Executive Director, Fuller Youth Institute

David Kinnaman, President, The Barna Group
Abbie Smith, author

Denis Haack, Co-director, Ransom Fellowship

Great Man, Great Advice

2009-08-28T09:35:00.008-04:00

Reviewed by Walt Mueller

The older I get the more I’m convinced that the greater the spotlight a person finds himself in, the harder it is to keep one’s priorities straight. We’ve all watched heroes and role models rise—and then very quickly fall. That’s why Super Bowl-winning coach Tony Dungy is such a breath of fresh air. He is a man whose life is marked by humility. He is a man whose greatest commitment is to be committed—truly committed—to Jesus Christ. Tony Dungy is the real deal.

After reading Dungy’s best-selling memoir, Quiet Strength, readers who had been exposed to Dungy’s life and story in that book hungered for deeper insight into the principles and commitments that guide his life. Now, Dungy has released his latest, Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance (Tyndale House, 2009), a book that shatters the cultural myths we so easily buy into on a quick path to idolatry.

Done with an easy-to-read style that’s packaged in digestible, thought-provoking nuggets, Uncommon leads readers on a helpful look in the mirror, challenging them to develop godly attitudes, to love their families, to be a positive model in the lives of their friends, to reach their full potential in life, to establish a mission that matters, to choose influence over image and to live out their faith. Uncommon offers a straightforward message that must be heard. While it’s recommended for all males, it’s especially suited for men and boys who might not normally read much at all.

Dungy writes in the introduction, “At the end of the day, I’m sure of one thing: accumulating stuff and women and titles and money are wrong keys. Fitting in, following the crowd and being common are not what we’re supposed to do. There’s more in store for us.” He’s pointing men in the right direction.

Visit Coach Tony Dungy's website

Michael Wittmer Interview: Don't Stop Believing!

2009-08-10T11:08:00.010-04:00

Michael Wittmer (MW) is professor of systematic and historical theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. Click here to read a review of his most recent book, Don't Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough.

CPYU: Before talking about your new book, Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough, our readers would also be interested in your previous book Heaven is a Place on Earth: Why Everything You Do Matters to God. Briefly tell us what you hoped to accomplish with that book.

MW: This book teases out the implications of the Christian worldview to explain the meaning of life. Many evangelicals think that this world is not their home, that matter doesn’t matter (or worse, that it is the matter), and so they mistakenly conclude that only their spiritual activities matter to God. Heaven Is a Place on Earth calls us back to a biblical understanding of creation and culture and to the cosmic scope of our redemption. It explains why everything we do—even the ordinary routines of life—drips with spiritual significance.

In this way it supplies a nice companion book to N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope and Dave Naugle’s new book, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives. Dave, who you interviewed belo w, is one of our premier Christian professors. I am blessed to count him as a friend and encourage everyone—especially college students—to profit from his wisdom in this book.

CPYU: What motivated you to write Don’t Stop Believing?

MW: I first heard of postmodernism in the early 1990’s, but it was always something that existed out there in the culture at large. In the last five years I’ve noticed that its perspectives have entered many of our churches and schools. My students are asking fundamental questions about things that we used to take for granted. It’s an exciting time to be a professor—because we are discussing big issues that really matter—but it’s also a bit scary, for the same reason.

I wanted to help students find their way through this new world by affirming where the new thinking is correct but also to warn about the dangers of going too far in this direction. In sum, I heartily affirm this generation’s emphasis on social ethics (they are much more socially conscious than I was at their age) but want them to remember that following Jesus also includes believing some foundational doctrines about who Jesus is and what he came to do.

CPYU: I find your book to be a very helpful bridge-builder between conservative and “emerging” churches. What do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that conservative churches have about “emerging” churches? And what do you think is a major misunderstanding among “emerging” churches toward conservative churches?

MW: A major thesis of Don't Stop Believing is that emergent churches emphasize loving our neighbor while conservative churches focus on right belief. While this is generally true, I think that many conservative churches are doing more social good than emergents give them credit for and many emerging churches do a good job of keeping the faith (I am less optimistic about emergent churches—which is a more liberal subset of emerging—for the leaders of this movement, such as Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Brian McLaren, have displayed a willingness to dismiss some of the church’s foundational doctrines, such as original sin and penal substitution).

CPYU: Tell us a good story (or more) about a response you have gotten to Don’t Stop Believing. Anything surprise you or stick out about the way people have responded?

MW: A few months ago I was a respondent on an emergent church panel at an evangelical college. My job was to ask the three emergent panelists any question I wished so long as I was prepared to answer it myself. Midway through the morning, I said that I affirmed all the social good that had been discussed that morning, but my question was whether a person also had to believe in Jesus in order to be saved, or was being a good person who did good things and asked good question sufficient. The panelists (from England, Ireland, and the host college) took five minutes each but did not answer my question. They merely restated the preface to my question, where I made the point that beliefs cannot be divorced from practice.

I didn’t respond to their non-answers then, but later in the day an older gentleman from the floor asked if I was happy with their response. I said that I wasn’t, for they hadn’t answered my question but had merely restated it back to me. They took another run, and this time 2 out of the 3 affirmed that beliefs are unnecessary to follow Jesus. One said that even to ask my question is to needlessly divide faith from practice. Another, the professor at this Christian college, espoused an inclusivism where “Christians, Jews, and Muslims all pray to the same God.” He said that beliefs are not essential, for “God does not make himself available only to Christians.”

When I explained from John 3 and Romans 10 why believing that we are sinners and Jesus saves us from our sin is essential for salvation, one panelist declared that I held a “Baptist, conversionist” view which treated people as heads rather than whole persons. I’m sure that they thought I was too modern and fundamentalist for asking my question, but the experience reinforced for me the need for a book like Don’t Stop Believing.

One funny story. I was on another panel recently where the emergent moderator kept agreeing with everything I said. Every time I would bring up the need to believe, she would say something like “I feel your passion, your heart beats with the love of Christ,” etc. I wanted to scream “Stop hugging me! It’s hard to have a conversation if you won’t acknowledge our differences.”

Finally, one of the other panelists had enough, and he declared that he didn’t know whether doctrine would make it through the worm hole into the future but he was sure that Jesus would. I responded that if doctrine did not make it, then neither would Jesus. He replied that the church has always permitted diversity of opinion. I agreed, but said that the church also declared that some thought was out of bounds, and one should pause before following a heretical strain. Many in the audience applauded and the emergent moderator announced “Oooo, he used the ‘H’ word.” Apparently the only heresy in some circles is to declare that there is such a thing as heresy!

CPYU: What’s next? Working on another book?

MW: I think many people today, both conservative and more liberal Christians, are confused about faith, its relation to doubt, and what it means to believe. I’ve got a catchy title, which I don’t want to give away but I promise that, like my first two books, it can be sung to a 1980s rock song (everyone needs a shtick, mine just happens to be dumber than most!). I am just beginning the research and haven’t pursued a publisher yet, so it probably won’t be out for a couple of years. In the meantime, anyone who is interested can follow my occasional musings at michaelwittmer.net.

Other Bookshelf Author Interviews:

Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School

David Lovelace, Scattershot

William Mattison, Introducing Moral Theology

J. Mark Bertrand, Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World

Amy Black, Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics

Matthew Bonzo, Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life

David Wells, The Courage to be Protestant

Kary Oberbrunner, The Fine Line: Re-envisioning the Gap Between Christ and Culture

David Naugle, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives

Mary Poplin, Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service

Mindy Meier, Sex and Dating

David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

Benson Hines, Reaching the Campus Tribes (part 1 & part 2)

Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough

2009-08-04T13:44:00.007-04:00

Reviewed by Derek Melleby

There is a popular, growing concern among some segments of the church that for too long Christians have focused on “believing the right things” instead of “living the right way.” Some claim that Jesus was much more concerned with how one lived than with what one believed. In his book, Don’t Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus is Not Enough (Zondervan, 2008), seminary professor Michael Wittmer warns that this popular notion may be taking things too far. He writes, “I appreciate the renewed turn to practice, but wonder why we must turn from doctrine to get there. If modern, conservative churches replaced concern for right living with right doctrine, shouldn’t postmoderns be wary of falling off the other edge replacing concern for right doctrine with right living?”

Wittmer writes with humor and passion, tackling the toughest questions the church is currently wrestling with to show how both right doctrine and right living is necessary. Sample questions include: Must you believe something to be saved? Are people generally good or basically bad? Which is worse: homosexuals or the bigots who persecute them? Is the cross divine child abuse? Is Hell for real and forever? Is the Bible God’s true Word?

Wittmer offers a balanced, thoughtful and biblical approach to these questions and many more. This book is essential reading for anyone who cares about the church and current theological debates. It is especially important for those who are both critical and receptive of the theology of what has become known as the “emerging church.”

Visit Michael Wittmer's blog

Coming soon: a CPYU Bookshelf exclusive interview with professor Michael Wittmer!

Denis Haack: Reader Interview

2009-07-30T09:36:00.005-04:00

Current position/title: Co-director, Ransom Fellowship; Editor, Critique; Grandfather to seven above average kids.

Have you always been a reader? If not, how did you become one?

We didn’t have much to read around our house, as I remember, except for the Bible. We were fundamentalists, and didn’t think much of most literature—after all, why read a good book when you could read God’s book? I discovered the library at school in 7th grade (like Napoleon Dynamite, sports were not an option for me) and fell in love with books that could transport me in my imagination to worlds unseen. I read in school every chance I got, saving homework to do at home. My parents, who frowned on unassigned reading, thought I was very studious.

What are your reading habits and practices?

Read all I can, though now I do it with the understanding that good writing, good stories, and good books are good gifts of God. Each year I try to take a look at everything I’ve read recently and make an attempt to balance out the topics and genres so I don’t get too narrow. I also work hard to read works whose authors come from a variety of differing—even conflicting—perspectives (religious, ethnic, political, world view, etc.). When I get too busy to have time to read, I believe I am too busy and so I change my commitments.

Name 3 books that have been very influential in your life and one sentence that explains why.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Perhaps the finest novel written by a Christian in the 20th century, it revealed the power of the written word by helping to unravel the lies of Soviet totalitarianism.

The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. This was the wedge that pried open the closed box of fundamentalism by letting me see that the fact that Christ was Lord had implications for all of life.

Knowing God by J. I. Packer. I fell in love with theology as something that could be authentic and alive, and with the God that has shown himself in Scripture.

If you could meet any author, living or dead, who would it be and what questions would you ask him or her?

Cormac McCarthy: Would you please tell me the story of your spiritual pilgrimage?

According to a recent study by the National Endowment of the Arts, very few young people are reading. Do you have any ideas on how to get young people to read?

Nothing profound. All I’d suggest is read good stories aloud to them—as often as possible, in every setting possible. We like inviting people over for a meal and then moving to the living to listen to a story. Or when my wife and I speak at a college retreat, Margie offers to read stories at bedtime. Sadly, we’ve found too few grew up in homes where this was standard practice.

Past Reader Interviews

Paul Robertson, CPYU Associate Staff
Kara Powell, Executive Director, Fuller Youth Institute
David Kinnaman, President, The Barna Group

Abbie Smith, author

NEW Leader's Guide for The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness

2009-07-29T13:41:00.006-04:00

While the book The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness can be used for individual study, we have found that students grasp the content of the book much more thoroughly when read under the guidance of a mentor, small group leader or teacher. Youth groups have used The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness as a way to prepare students for college. The Leader’s Guide is designed to assist leaders in their preparation for leading discussions around the themes in the book. Our hope is to see a generation of young people take both their faith and studies seriously. May this new study guide help toward that end!

Visit the book's website

Purchase the book from the CPYU Resource Center (save $2)

Learn more about the NEW Leader's Guide

Click here to download the Leader's Guide (.pdf)

Happiness Defined

2009-07-28T10:02:00.005-04:00

Reviewed by Derek Melleby

David Naugle, in his new book, Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness (Eerdmans, 2008), points readers toward a recent study of Americans. The research showed that while the U.S. highly values “happiness,” it came in number 23 on a list of the world’s happiest countries. Naugle writes, “Though there is significant disagreement on what happiness is and how to get it, there is substantial agreement in recognizing it as the bull’s eye on the target at which we aim our lives.” But here’s the problem as Naugle explains: “Scientific, economic and cultural forces have produced a paradigm shift in the way most people understand happiness. It has morphed in the minds of many Americans into a promise of sustained pleasure and painlessness.”

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives invites readers to consider what we should aim for to obtain a truly “happy life.” Naugle suggests that we need “not a hedonistic but an ‘edenistic’ happiness that roots the fullness of human life in God and his creation.” This type of happiness only comes when we learn to love the right things. “The happy life consists of learning how to love both God supremely and the world in the right way at the very same time.”

Using illustrations from history, pop culture and Scripture, Naugle makes a strong case for how followers of Christ can (re)learn how to live a “happy” (properly defined), good life. The book is deep, but accessible, and would be good reading for parents and youth workers as they help young people better understand what true happiness really is. And, truth be told, the message of the book is one we all need to be continually reminded of: Our happiness is found in our love for God.

Click here to visit David Naugle's website.

Click here to read a CPYU Bookshelf interview with David Naugle.