As the sub-title of Garrison’s book suggests, this book provides both an historical narrative and analysis of how the wind of the Holy Spirit is drawing Muslims from the nine rooms of the Dar al-Islam (House of Islam). The rooms refer to the nine different geographical sectors of the globe from West Africa to the Indonesian islands where Islam is dominant.

Garrison’s work is the result of his work as a missionary pioneer with the Southern Baptist International mission Board for thirty years. Over the years he traveled a quarter-million miles in the nine different areas of the Muslim world. Well-versed in twelve different languages, he was able to interview and converse with Christians having a Muslim-background before their conversion.

A Wind in the House of Islam became part of his responsibility as global strategist for evangelical advance on behalf of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. The book, however, is of a much broader scope than that of Southern Baptist interests. He discusses the contributions of the Assemblies of God, the Brethren, Lutherans, and other Christian bodies as the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands within each of the nine geo-cultural rooms of the House of Islam.

Garrison distinguishes “2,157 distinct Muslim cultures and people groups” which are found in nine different “affinity clusters cohering around shared experiences of geography, language, and history (p.31).” Apart from the introductory and closing chapters, Garrison devotes a chapter to each of these affinity clusters. He identifies them as Indo-Malaysian, Eastern South Asian, Western South Asian, Persian/Iranian, Western South Asian, Turkestan, North African, Western African, Eastern African, and ends with the Arab “room.” He begins his narrative with the Indo-Malaysian “room” of the House of Islam and closes with the “Arab” which includes the Arabian Peninsula along with Egypt and the western coast of the Red Sea.

The author identifies eighty-two Muslim movements to Christ throughout history with two occurring in the nineteenth, eleven in the twentieth, and sixty-nine in the twenty-first centuries. Garrison distinguishes the Arab Christians from those who, under the mantle of Islam, swept across the Near East and northern Africa and toward the Pacific in the late seventh and eighth centuries. The time frame of Garrison’s work is, therefore, concentrated within that time frame and the consequent centuries leading into the 21^st century.

Garrison writes of six different Muslim cultural groups: the Alawite, the Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi, Ibodite, and Ismaili. The major ones are the Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi, the last-named being a “mystical”—for lack of a better word—form of Islam. The ones making the most news are the Sunni, Shi’a, and Alawite, the last named being the smaller of the three and confined mostly to Syria. Assad, the “president” of Syria is Alawite.

As appearing the Summer 2000 issue of The Pneuma Review

Almost forty years have passed since that incident. I have followed the developments of the Charismatic renewal within the Episcopal Church with great interest since then: for ten years from the perspective of a member of a Pentecostal denomination, and for the past thirty years as an Anglican. It is out of this dual background that I have been asked me to write a critical evaluation of the Charismatic Movement within the Episcopal Church.

I Bennett was not the first Anglican to receive the Pentecostal experience. In his much-publicized letter to his parishioners, dated April 5, 1960, he wrote:

“St. Mark’s is not alone in this Pentecostal phenomenon. I am not alone in this. I know of dozens of Episcopal parishes throughout the country where the work of the Holy Spirit is known in just this same way. I know of dozens of Episcopal clergy who know about it all, and rejoice in their knowledge.”¹

He claimed the movement was also in evidence in other established denominations but that “up to now it has been kept a secret.” His announcement brought the phenomenon into the open and gained national attention. Soon he was responding to numerous invitations to speak and teach in distant cities in the United States and beyond.² Jean Stone, a parishioner at St. Mark’s also fostered the early growth of the movement. Articulate, charming and capable, she spread the charismatic word on television, radio, in the press, and at ecumenical gatherings and in Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship meetings. She launched Christian Advance, a nationwide preaching mission and established Trinity House, a temporary home for displaced clergy who had been relieved of their parishes because of their Pentecostal witness. Most significantly to the fledgling movement, she founded and edited Trinity magazine to promote the Pentecostal message among Episcopalians. By the end of 1961 she estimated that over 1,000 Episcopalians in Southern California alone were numbered within the movement.³

Jim Cymbala is the pastor of  the Brooklyn Tabernacle, New York, NY. Pastored by Cymbala since 1972, the Tabernacle has, as of 1996, began holding four services a Sunday, each with at least 1,600 per meeting. This is despite the fact that they have been sending groups out to plant churches since 1985, seventeen as of the printing of his book. In the inner city, a church isn’t likely to grow due to transference of members from other churches, or slick programs. Churches grow in dark places when they meet the deep spiritual needs of the people. Clearly then, Jim Cymbala has something to say.

The first part of the book shows the struggle Jim and his wife Carol endured when they took on a small dying church in Brooklyn, that could not even pay it’s bills. A young man with no formal training in ministry, he heard all manner of church growth advice (p. 24). Finally the Lord spoke to him, saying that if he would lead the people to pray and call on his name, that they would never build a building large enough to accommodate the crowds God would send. On that word from the Lord, Cymbala instituted Tuesday night prayer in his church and, as they say, the rest is history.

Cymbala told his church that the Tuesday prayer meeting would become the barometer for the church, the gauge by which they would judge success or failure (p.27). By this measure Cymbala sees the church in America sadly lacking. In Brooklyn, broken lives were healed, from prostitutes to drug addicts, not because of polished sermons, or better teaching, but because of love birthed in prayer.

Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire is a plea to the church in this country to return to prayer. “Pastors and churches have to get uncomfortable enough to say, ‘We are not New Testament churches if we don’t have a prayer life’” (p 50). Many pastors have come to him and told Cymbala that they would be embarrassed to have a prayer meeting in their church because nobody would come. “Does the Bible say anywhere from Genesis to Revelation that  ‘My house shall be called a house of preaching?’” (p. 71). He is bold enough to say that he is embarrassed that religious leaders in America talk about having prayer in public schools, when we do not even have prayer in our churches (p. 72).

Cymbala rounds out the book with an assessment of the church’s penchant for novelty (chapter 7), marketing (chapter 8), and doctrine without power (chapter 9). This includes a sober and refreshing look at fads, and “new” doctrines. This reviewer was encouraged by Cymbala’s questioning of weird, yet widely accepted teachings. Although this book is far from being polemical, the author is at times less than even-handed, calling into question the motives of some without sufficient information, and a using some loaded language. He does not, however, name names, which is admirable.