Book Reviews

Now a professor at the University of Edinburgh, Oliver O'Donovan spent some two decades as pastor of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. His new book The Word in Small Boats: Sermons from Oxford (Eerdmans) shares 32 of the sermons he preached in the heart of that university city. The "small boats" of the title represent the sermons that carry the Word into the life of the church.

The prophetic witness of preaching biblical justice has been a tradition in much of the African-American church. In her book Prophetic Preaching: A Pastoral Approach (Westminster John Knox) Leonora Tubbs Tisdale talks about the nature of such preaching and urges a restoration of the prophetic pulpit in our own day.

Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching (IVP Academic) is an outstanding collection of essays offering practical insights for preaching from various literary genres found in the Old Testament, including narrative, lament, poetry, prophetic material and more. The book includes work by outstanding Old Testament scholars and will be a useful tool in the hands of expository preachers.

Mark Batterson has written some outstanding books that have helped preachers and teachers, and his latest release also will find a receptive audience among church leaders. In Soulprint (Multnomah), Mark uses the life of David as the basis for recognizing the defining moments in our lives.

In The Attractional Church (FaithWords), Billy Hornsby offers a practical model for church growth through creating churches that impact lives by service and ministry.

Is everything you think you know about evangelicals wrong? Well, not quite, but authors Steve Wilkens and Don Thorsen do take on the myths and realities in their book Everything You Know About Evangelicals is Wrong (Well, Almost Everything) (Baker Books).

Many are the books written about Jonathan Edwards, but rarely has Edwards work been presented in such a manageable form as in The Essential Edwards Collection from Moody Press. Edited by Owen Strachan and Douglas Sweeney, these five small volumes present Edwards' thought on several key topics:

Magnifying God in Christ (Baker Academic) by Thomas Schreiner is a summary of New Testament theology. This smaller volume digests many of the insights from Schreiner's massive New Testament Theology.

What do Americans think about God? That's the focus of America's Four Gods (Oxford Univ. Press), by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader and based on a major survey of Americans' religious beliefs.

Thomas Troeger is a professor of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School and has written extensively on preaching and worship for many years. In his book Wonder Reborn: Creating Sermons on Hymns, Music and Poetry (Oxford University Press)...