"Resolve: The Church That Endures Onward" Luke H. Davis. A Review

 

In a season of bad press, fallen leaders, naysayers, and kooks, how does one convey the positive side of the church’s story? Recently Luke H. Davis, teacher of ethics and Church history at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis, has given readers a new and final installment in his “Risen Hope” series that brings his account of the church’s story up to the present. In this 176-page softback, “Resolve: The Church That Endures Onward,” Davis takes on more contemporary Christian men and women to show how they dealt with evil and difficulties in their allegiance to the Lord Jesus. The book is written for teenagers but will be valuable for older adults as well.

 

The author covers a wide array of people from multiple continents and Christian traditions, to give a solid sampling of fidelity and endurance. He covers Sammy Morris, J.C. Ryle, Francis Grimke, C.S. Lewis, Benjamin Kwashi, and many more to give readers a quick tour from the early 19th century to the late 20th. Sprinkled throughout are “Fact Files,” which are side trips into significant subjects such as great preachers, the shadow of evil, and apologists, where Davis gives details of other important people and their roles in regard to specific subjects. The final fact file takes on naysayers forecasting the end of Christianity in the West and beyond. It leaves the readers with the “enduring onward” theme of the book.

 

The stories are written in a historical-fiction style. This is where real people are pictured in mildly fictitious scenes but voicing their actual words or sentiments. It’s very attention-keeping, informative and responsible. By the time a reader has finished a story they will have a solid idea of who the protagonist was, what they faced, and where they headed.

 

If you want your kids to glean a healthier view of the church’s march upward and onward, I recommend the whole 5-Volume set of the “Risen Hope” series. And if you’re looking for a decent perspective on the church in the last 130 years, “Resolve” would be a fine place to start. My thanks to the author and Christian Focus Publications for sending me this volume. They didn’t ask me to do anything, and so this review is my own idea and in my own steam. I’m glad I read the book and highly recommend it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“The Shift” - 2023 Movie. A Review

Image
  What do you get when you cross a dark dystopian storyline with sci-fi, alternative dimensions, theological and philosophical questions, and the biblical book of Job? You get The Shift , written and directed by Brock Heasley, produced by Ken Carpenter, and distributed by Angel Studios. This roughly one hour and 45 minute tale swirls around Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) as he moves from one realm of life, with it’s happiness and heartbreak, to another dimension that is a dismal existence clearly governed by The Benefactor (masterfully played by Neal McDonough). A viewer will be asking questions all the way through, and picking up clues and answers that pull the story together bit-by-bit. The story bumps up against an infinite set of alternative possibilities, of time, space, and versions of one’s self that will likely stoke a viewer’s imagination. But the heart of the narrative - besides love, grief, loss, trust/distrust - is around the place of evil, specifically, personal or human evil.
Read more

"On Getting Out of Bed" by Alan Noble. A Review

Image
  When it comes to family members or friends going through a significant mental crisis, or suffering, we often can feel like we’re fumbling about to help them. Sometimes, we can become like Job’s friends, whom he had to call “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). But very recently Alan Noble, assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee Oklahoma, and cofounder and editor-in-chief of “Christ and Pop Culture” penned a deeply beautiful 120-page hardback that addresses mental affliction. “On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living” is written for those who struggle with mental affliction, but also pastors, teachers, parents, and loved ones, to “help them understand their loved one’s suffering. It is for anyone who ever struggles to get out of bed” (3). I finished this book earlier this week, and kept finding myself saying, “Finally! Someone gets it!” Eight chapters fill up this handy manual. They run through several subjects, like not sounding like Job’s f
Read more

Community?

Image
  (This is from my letter to my congregation I sent out today, 30 August 2023) As one of my elders was leading us through Carl Trueman’s Strange New World in our adult class , I appreciated Trueman’s emphasis on community. And our discussions, especially the last two Sundays, were very fruitful as we thought out loud together about this subject. Therefore, I thought I would share something from David Brooks, an Op-ed columnist that leans into this discussion.   Brooks published a book in 2019 titled, “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life”. In that work he was taking a gentle punch at destructive trends he has been seeing, and giving some helpful correctives. And so, he notes that “Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism” (34). He then shows how the loneliness and spiritual emptiness of individualism taken too far have become more prevalent in our time and the ways that they lead to very dark social consequences. These darker social consequences foster the need t
Read more