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.

Bill Jackson, The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard (Cape Town, South Africa: Vineyard International Publishing, 1999), 419 pages.

New movements need their stories told and Bill Jackson, pastor of Black Mountain Vineyard Church in San Diego, has told the story of the Association of Vineyard Churches. This is an “insider” perspective because Jackson has been a part of the Vineyard movement since early in its history. Jackson’s book serves as an official history in that it is published by and sanctioned by the Vineyard leadership.

The title is the main theme in Jackson’s portrayal of John Wimber and the Vineyard movement. The middle ground is the attempt to retain the biblical foundation of Evangelicalism and the openness to the Spirit of Pentecostalism. Bill Jackson’s Vineyard history documents the ebb and flow of this challenge to balance the “Word and the Spirit” (p. 39). This “quest” is a difficult one as the history of any revivalistic and renewal movement will attest.

Jackson drew upon personal contacts, letters, interviews, audio and video-tapes, specialized web-sites, religious magazine articles and a few published works. The result is a sympathetic but sufficiently objective look into Wimber’s rich and complex life and ministry and the church renewal movement that he helped to launch.

Bill “Jax” Jackson

How this book struck me as a classical Pentecostal reviewer was to see a series of parallels between Vineyard history and Pentecostal history (and in particular the Assemblies of God of which I am a member). Let me enumerate a few similarities. First, revivalistic/renewal movements fear organizational loss of fervor. Jackson cites Max Weber’s theory of the routinization of charisma of religious movements (pp. 18, 349). As Vineyard moves into a new generation of leadership “who knew not Joseph [John Wimber]” will it sustain its growth and vitality? Second, both Vineyard and Pentecostals are “Jesus” people. For Vineyard it was Wimber’s reliance upon George E. Ladd’s theology of the kingdom as a springboard for doing the works of Jesus today. For Pentecostals it was the adoption of A. B. Simpson’s four-fold gospel of Jesus as Savior, Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King. Third, the educational thrust of both Vineyard and early Pentecostals was upon the training of pastors and church leaders. Vineyard, to this reviewer’s knowledge, has not founded a liberal arts college or seminary but has developed regional training programs for its leadership. Early Pentecostals founded Bible institutes to train its gospel workers. Fourth, God uses flawed people for His glory. For the Vineyard movement it was people like Lonnie Frisbee and Paul Cain. For Pentecostals it was Charles Parham and Aimee Semple McPherson. Fifth, crises that occur early in a movement’s story help to define its subsequent history and mission. For Vineyard it was the prophetic restoration ministries in Kansas City and the unusual spiritual phenomena in Toronto that shaped their middle-ground position of spirituality. For Pentecostals it was the role of glossolalia and the nature of the Godhead.

James K.A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2004), 291 pages.

Post-modernism is a philosophical perspective many Christians are now embracing in order to overcome the debilitating effects of modernity on the Christian church. What is refreshing about James Smith’s book is that he questions whether this approach is as helpful for Christian theology as it first appears. In fact, Smith proposes that post-modernism is in reality a continuation of the modernist project. This book offers an overview of the place of radical orthodoxy (RO) within the context of a post-secular/post-modern theological landscape. His aim is to draw together the thematic strands of RO in order to appraise its contributions to the theological enterprise and critique the misaligned assurance in the supposed neutrality of the modernist and post-modernist paradigms.

The book is divided into two sections. The first provides a map for understanding RO within the context of current theological trends. Smith suggests that four theological schools of thought have come to prominence. (1) The correlationist project emerged out of Tübingen (Germany) and made its way into the US through Union Theological Seminary (NY), The University of Chicago Divinity School (Chicago) and even ironically the fundamentalist school Dallas Theological Seminary (Dallas). This approach tries to correlate revelation with cultural, political and economic systems, and assumes the neutrality and universally accessible methods of the so-called “secular” sciences. (2) The Revelationist school is Barthian at root and has made its way from Basel (Switzerland) to Yale Divinity School (New Haven), Princeton (NJ) and Duke University (Durham, NC). This school highlights the antithesis between the gospel and culture, and therefore subverts all secular frameworks. The tendency in the Revelationist approach, though, is to jettison the secular sciences as irrelevant and focus exclusively on revelation claims. (3) The Neo-Calvinist school emerged in Amsterdam and has made its way into Calvin College (Grand Rapids) and the Institute for Christian Studies (Toronto). This approach represents an early post-secular critique, which is deeply suspicious of secular methods for arriving at knowledge and calls into questions the “sacred” tenets of modernity. (4) Finally, the Cambridge phenomenon of RO likewise emphasizes the antithesis between revelation and culture, but unlike the Barthian project’s abandonment of the secular, RO maintains there is no secular because even these methods presuppose faith commitments. For radical orthodoxy, all nature and culture is graced, but in need of redemptive transformation. RO is therefore critical of post-modernism because it is in reality a continuation of modernity.

Smith then outlines the theological contours of RO, which includes an ecumenism that transcends confessional boundaries, a retrieval of pre-modern sources and a hermeneutical disposition that seeks to be unapologetically confessional. Moreover RO is critical of modernity as a flawed system, because it reduces truth to a single system based on a notion of universal reason; RO is post-secular in the sense that it identifies secular reason as myth; as a theological movement it emphasizes participation and materiality, meaning that creation has to be understood as participating in and suspended from transcendence. This position fights against modernist and post-modernist notions that the world is self-contained and therefore without the need for the divine. In other words, nihilism (e.g. lack of transcendence) is questioned because it assumes that the universe is isolated and self-supporting. RO also emphasizes the sacramental, liturgical and aesthetic modes of worship as a consequence of the incarnation and participation in the divine. Finally, RO offers a cultural critique of the world in the hope for its redemptive transformation in all areas of language, history and cultural. Throughout the discussion, Smith draws upon the Dutch Reformed tradition to voice his agreements and disagreements with RO, arguing that the two disciples would benefit from fruitful dialogue.