Journal: Trinity Journal
Volume: TRINJ 13:2 (Fall 1992)
Article: Book Notices
Author: Anonymous

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TrinJ 13:2 (Fall 1992) p. 247

Book Notices

All the books noted below have been selected by the respective department’s faculty as being works worthy of your notice.

Practical Theology

Larsen, David L. The Evangelism Mandate, Recovering the Centrality of Gospel Preaching. Wheaton: Crossway, 1992. 256 pp. $12.95.

The Evangelism Mandate fills a glaring gap on the shelves of seminary libraries and pastors’ studies. The need is obvious both by the paucity of available literature on evangelistic preaching and its neglect in today’s pulpit. This call to the return to an evangelical priority is the product of a lifetime of fruitful preaching and disciplined scholarship. The reader spends time with David Larsen both in the classroom and pulpit. Strategies and methods are integrated with fascinating biblical, theological, historical, psychological and sociological considerations. Classical issues are explored along with a perspective on contemporary pastoral concerns such as “lordship salvation” and “signs and wonders.” The appendix, featuring model sermons by Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, Stewart, Truett, and Graham is prefaced with a succinct study guide sure to sharpen the preacher’s homiletical skills.

Ted Olsen

George, Carl F. Prepare Your Church for the Future. Tarrytown, NY: Fleming H. Revell, 1991.

This is an important book! Though George suffers the “preoccupation-with-numbers-mania” that afflicts most church growth strategists, the book remains a significant contribution to the literature on the changing configuration of the church in contemporary society. The emphasis on “side-door” evangelism and small cell groups as basic building blocks—how to run them and develop leadership for them—is alone worth the purchase of the book.

Jim Speer

Collins, John N. Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. 384 pp.

One of the greatest gains of the church in the last fifty years is the rediscovery of the ministry of the laity. Along with this development biblical scholars, theologians, and churchmen have seized upon the NT word diakonia to designate the church’s ministry of mercy and compassion.

Drawing upon a much broader investigation of ancient Greek usage of diakonia and its cognates than one finds in standard lexicons,

TrinJ 13:2 (Fall 1992) p. 248

dictionaries, etc., Collins argues that to the earliest Christians diakonia would not have conveyed the ideas of “care, concern, and love.” These ideas do not belong to the “field of meaning of diakonia and its...

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