YouthWorker Journal - March/April 2009 - (Page 63) Christianity is anything but static, subject to the forces of culture, and even to the whims and needs of human spirituality. —Grant F.C. Gillard Graffiti Erin Davis Moody Publishers, 2008, 166 pp., $13.99, www.moodypublishers.com Deliberate Simplicity David Browning Zondervan, 2009, 250 pp., $16.99, www.zondervan.com I Could Sing of Your Love Forever Lindsay Terry Thomas Nelson, September 2008, 288 pp., $19.99, www.thomasnelson.com The subtitle says it all: Stories Behind 100 of the World’s Most Popular Worship Songs. While several books along this line have been published, a Ph.D. hymnologist writes this one. Lindsay Terry conducted most of these interviews with songwriters himself through the years, yielding short, often gripping accounts of many beloved praise songs from the last couple of centuries. For your youth with a knack for history or music, this will be a fun volume. The book includes devotional thoughts, which sometimes sound trite, and a CD with interview audio. The main content is great and definitely worth reading. —John Dunham Whether you are 15 or 50, you have dealt or will deal with personal struggles about not feeling beautiful enough. Who are we letting determine the definition of beauty, and what is enough? Davis confronts these struggles and much more in this book with a conversational style that allows the reader to journal and work through personal feelings as the author shares her own issues with an eating disorder. Because she and her husband have worked with youth as pastors, she is knowledgeable about the exact issues with which young women are dealing. Her advice is biblical, practical and prayerfully life-changing. —Lara M. Van Hulzen In an attempt to recapture the power of first-century Christianity, Deliberate Simplicity offers a “new equation” to developing simple churches that make a big impact in our world. The backbone of this resource is the author’s own experience of developing a multi-campus, mini-church movement that ministers to thousands of people with a simple approach. Rest assured the author has lived out his convictions on the topic of simplicity and offers numerous success stories of simplicity being practiced in the business world. However, the overemphasis on a single church’s experience along with the lack of practical application hinders the book’s effectiveness and appeal to a wider audience. Don’t expect to walk away with a list of goals and action steps, but Deliberate Simplicity serves as a great introduction to pastors living in the tension between the complicated and simple church paradigms. —Jeff Tillson http://www.moodypublishers.com http://www.zondervan.com http://www.thomasnelson.com http://www.mantisbible.com http://www.mantisbible.com
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