PneumaReview.com: In what ways would you see Pentecostal/charismatic church leaders using your book?

John Hiigel: This book will serve any leader who is working to nurture effective disciples for Jesus. Partnering with the King is a set of thirty-one pastoral and devotional readings through the Gospel of Matthew, focusing on Jesus’ call to live with him as his disciples. By way of format, the text of Matthew is printed right in the book, portion by portion, followed by my explanations.

Partnering with the King: Study the Gospel of Matthew and Become a Disciple of Jesus from Paraclete Press (2013).

Partnering with the King can serve church and parachurch ministries in several ways. First, it is a book you can give to newcomers to faith. Beyond helping individual readers, it is well suited for person-to-person discipling or for discipleship training programs in the church or on the college campus. I have students who will attest that it can be helpful even for those who are still exploring whether to start the journey with Jesus. The book is by no means just for beginners, however. There is plenty of meat for veterans to Christian life, who find it to be a source of vision and spiritual stimulus.

This book on discipleship also works with groups. I have included right in the book a set of discussion and reflection questions for each of the 31 readings. That’s the right number of sessions for a group to meet weekly from fall to spring. Or for groups who want to work through it more rapidly and intensively, you could pick up the accompanying DVD that provides six-minute video introductions and discussion questions for seven meetings in a six-week period. Either group format (slower or more intensive) could work for a church’s spiritual growth groups, a leadership or mission group, an adult Sunday school class, or a college student ministry. It could also be a resource for summer discipleship and service training programs.

PneumaReview.com: As a professor of Biblical studies, what message would you like to convey to the Pentecostal/charismatic movement?

A sermon on Matthew 28:18-20 preached by Craig S. Keener at the opening of the 2014 Biblical Studies Lectures at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University.

The name of John Stott is widely known in the evangelical world. He was one of the most respected leaders in Christianity. For many years he served as pastor of All Souls Church in London, England. The thing that made him well-known to the wider Christian world was his writing. Dr. Stott was certainly one of the most prolific evangelical writers prior to his death in July 2011. The Radical Disciple is his last published book.

This is one of Stott’s shorter books; however, while it is relatively short in length it is not short on substance. This book contains the words of a man who has thought much about what it means to be a Christian and what is important in the Christian life. In The Radical Disciple Stott addresses eight areas of discipleship that he feels are often neglected but need to be taken seriously (pg. 16). The topics that he covers are: nonconformity, Christlikeness, maturity, creation care, simplicity, balance, dependence, and death.

In chapter one, “Nonconformity,” Stott warns Christians about being like the world. Specifically, he addresses the challenges of pluralism, materialism, relativism, and narcissism. After telling us what we should not conform to the author tells us whom we should conform to: we are to be like Christ. In chapter two, “Christlikeness,” Stott tells us that we are to be like Jesus in His incarnation, service, love, patient endurance, and mission. In this chapter he also tells us that suffering helps us to be like Christ, that the effectiveness of our evangelism is related to how much like Christ we are, and that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is necessary in order for us to be like Christ. Chapter three, “Maturity,” deals with the need for the growth of the believer. Christians need to have some spiritual substance. One may be surprised to see chapter four, “Creation Care,” included in this book. While concern for the environment is not a subject we frequently hear in the church, it is a subject that the scriptures address. “Simplicity” is the subject of chapter five. In this chapter Stott reproduces a rather long document called “The Evangelical Commitment to Simple Lifestyle.”  This document came out of The International Consultation on Simple Lifestyle and covers topics such as these: the church as the new community, the need for a simple personal lifestyle, international development, justice and politics, evangelism, and the Lord’s return. Chapter six is titled, “Balance” and here Stott looks at a number of images in Scripture that refer to believers: babies, living stones, holy priests, God’s own people, aliens and strangers, and servants. He tells us what can be learned from these images regarding the kind of people we are to be. Chapter seven is “Dependence” and in this chapter Stott tells us that dependence is the only appropriate attitude for the radical disciple (pg. 109). This is a very personal chapter in which the author shares a very difficult time in his own life. Chapter eight is “Death,” in this chapter Stott traces the themes of death and life as they relate to salvation, discipleship, mission, persecution, martyrdom, and mortality. In all of them, he says, death leads to life.