Dr. Senske has outlined very practical applications for leaders of any type of organization. He outlines what it takes to be an ethical and effective leader. He explains how to appropriately respond to challenges and dilemmas that await leaders at every turn. Having served on the board of directors of Lutheran Social Services of the South with Dr. Senske as CEO, I have witnessed first hand the effectiveness of what he outlines in the book. A must read for all leaders!

Kurt Senske offers a practical wide-ranging approach to balancing the critical issues for executives - the bottom line v. relationships, and family v. career. His ascertain that Christian faith is the point that makes this balance possible offers hope for executives and their organizations, and their families. Executive Values is well researched. Senske has brought together supporting evidence from a wide range of sources in the political, corportate, and non-profit arenas.

Senske's Executive Values is an excellent resource for managers at any organization, profit or nonprofit, large or small, faith-based or secular. This well-researched, compact book lays out the steps one needs to take to ensure that a culture of "doing the right thing" occurs in an organization. He sets out examples of ethical dilemmas every manager is certain to encounter and walks the reader through the decisionmaking process.

Looking forward to his next book!

How often do you read a book written by an orthodox Jew that converted to Buddism? Well, this one is! Within the first four pages, Ms. Salzberg grabs you with the events of her early childhood. She experienced such tradegy that she was forced into a journey of faith. She describes her journey in a realistic and practical manner. This is a quick read, but offers great principles to take away. Well worth it!

Sharon Salzberg has given spiritual seekers a beautifully written collection of personal stories and helpful teachings. Her own story will inspire any reader to explore and trust her own truths. Non-dogmatic, human, compassionate, accessible - Sharon is a great teacher, and this, her latest book, is a gem.

This is a deeply authentic spiritual biography of some historical significance in American Buddhism and a volume on faith that should be added to every stack of soothing bedside books. In a childhood of emotional isolation and unanswered forbidden questions, Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg suffered sudden abandonment by her beloved father at age 4, the bleeding death nearly before her eyes of her mother at age 9 and the lifelong institutionalization of her mentally ill father at age 11. Entering college at age 16, she was chosen early in her Buddhist studies in India to teach meditation in America not because of her scholarship but because "You really understand suffering." Chapter 5 (of 7), Despair: The Loss of Faith, is a candid existential leap by a both grounded and luminous spiritual teacher who has mentored students who have suffered "childhood beatings while hanging, childhood physical and sexual abuse, betrayals, illnesses, depression, loneliness, oppressive relationships, oppressive secrets, exhausting moral dilemmas"; knowing she was not alone was "a good qualification for a life of practice." "Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?" Sharon Salzberg, for one. She does a masterful job of communicating the paradoxes in the Buddhist practice of "taking refuge" -- taking refuge in freedom and the burden of the authentic self. Highly recommended.

Bob Welch destroys the myth that most Christian books are fluff....this is quality writing by the best writer in the Christian market today....one of the finest writers in the secular field as well....

I read this book in one sitting -- I couldn't put it down! Using the analogy of the changing seasons, Welch takes us through a journey of parenting that is insightful and meaningful for both men AND women. Through his remarkable ability to place the reader smack dab in the middle of the story, he weaves a tapestry of heartfelt and humorous events and memories drawn from his experiences and "seasoned" with the recollections of others. From the all too familiar ritual of hanging Christmas lights to the depths of loss and forgiveness, the reader embarks on a journey full of tears and laughter. At the end, we can't help but contemplate our own stories of family and life while anxiously scanning the Internet for more books by this talented and inspiring writer!

Bob Welch has done an excellent job of describing in story form the journeys of men, boys, and fatherhood. One paragraph has you laughing, the next can have you in tears. As you remember your childhood growing up, Bob also reminds you what is like to be a father and to watch your children break away and gain their freedom. This is a must-read book for anyone who is serious about being a Dad. Also nicely done is his easy-going witness of his Christian faith. You will not be disappointed with this book.

This book is the best book i have ever read on how to share your faith in a real, relavent, non threatening way with the people you work and live around that are not open to the Gospel of Jesus Christ! This is a must have for any believer who is serious about their faith.

If you are an evangelical Christian, this is a book that comes highly recommended.

I purchased this book at a conference after a friend of mine (who hadn't even read it!) suggested it to me. It is perhaps the best book on evangelism that I have read (with Becoming a Contagious Christian by Bill Hybels a close second). Any Christian could share with you the importance of evangelism, and most could probably offer a suggestion of "how to". But this book breaks out of the box that so often limits our evangelism efforts.

As someone trained and practiced in the use of the Four Spiritual Laws (a gospel presentation frequently used by Campus Crusade for Christ, the organization of which Tim Downs is a part), I am relatively comfortable in "random" evangelism. But I have often struggled with reconciling such evangelistic attempts with being a "real" person. This book has helped me (and continues to, along with prayer and Scripture) to bridge that gap. Mr. Downs goes far beyond just a gospel presentation, but instead points readers in the direction of allowing their Christianity to spill over into every area of their life, thereby breaking the limits we so often place on our own evangelism efforts.

But beyond that, he also focuses on how to communicate with those who don't share the same worldview that we have become indoctrinated in. Many times, I've found that outreaches offered around me have been appealing to those who have grown up in the Bible belt and share this worldview, though don't actually consider themselves believers. But these often don't appeal to people who specifically disagree with elements of my worldview. How, then, do we reach out to these people?

This book is full of relevant, scriptural insight. It is worth every dollar you spend.

This book approaches the issue of Christians reaching out to people in the Western culture in ways that are both helpful and meaningful. It is the best book on this topic and avoids the many dangers and failures of a book which seeks to speak a foreign set of values (Christianity) in an increasingly materialistic and relativistic culture. Tim is an excellent writer. His life bears out his writings.

Hettinga offers a compelling perspective on what it truly means to be a follower of Christ. He raises the problem with the evangelical gospel presentation and then redeigns it within the context of the Biblical concept of the "kingdom of God." Though sometimes bordering Lordship salvation, I think he is correct in reinserting the reign of Christ in the gospel presentation. When a person comes to Christ, he is giving up the reins. I recommend this book for any Christian who seriously wants to follow Jesus Christ in the biblical sense.

What a fantastic insight to the Christian path! It is such an incredible blessing to have the most powerful and important relationship of our life explained in a "simpler" point of view. This book has made a dramatic impact on my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Jan Hettinga gave me a copy of this book in 1996 but I didn't read it until 2000. Since then I have not stopped recommending it to my Christian friends. Its message of genuine commitment of servant to Master is desperately needed in our world today. I have purchased over 30 copies to give or sell to people whom I have urged to read it. It is a life-changing book for anyone who wants to get serious about living for Christ.

This is a life changing book! I have grown so much because of her gentle nudging in these pages. I have been reading and re-reading the book since 2000. For three years now I have picked it up again and again. I'm starting accountability groups based on the book now. This is one where there is always more to learn about myself and about God.

This book is 3 books in one. The first part, Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman, gives you advice and tips about every day living: wardrobe, time management, etc. The second part, Disciplines of the Heart, helps you enhance your relationship with God and your faith and trust in Him. This part has helped me a lot to be more confident in God, to not worry so much but
trust Him. The third part, Disciplines of the Home, is addressed especially to women who are also mothers.

Mrs. Ortlund does a beautiful job in teaching women how to organize their lives and get their priorities in place according to what will please God. She clearly sets the ideal, which may be unattainable for most women, especially those with young children. However, every woman should be able to gain some insight from this book and make her life better.

Before I begin my review, allow me one caveat: the casual reader, to be sure, who stumbles upon this work after seeing it quoted in popular apologetics books (i.e. Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism), risks being in over his/her head completely. Such was the case with me about 3 and a half years ago when I was starting out my study of doctrine and history. For 3 years this book sat on my shelf, all attemts that I made to read it having failed because I lacked the proper foundation. It was only after I spent considerable time studying history and especially the ancient heresies that I was able to grasp what Newman was saying. The following example, taken from a passage found on pages 314-315, should demonstrate my point:

"It is very observable that, ingenious as is their theory and sometimes perplexing to a disputant, the Monophysites never could shake themselves free of the Eutychians; and though they could draw intelligible lines on paper between the two doctrines, yet in fact by a hidden fatality their partisans were ever running into or forming alliance with the anathematized extreme. Thus Peter the Fuller the Theopaschite (Eutychian), is at one time in alliance with Peter the Stammerer, who advocated the Henoticon (which was Monophysite). The Acephali, though separating from the latter Peter for that advocacy, and accused by Leontius of being Gaianites (Eutychians), are considered by Facundus as Monophysites. Timothy the Cat, who is said to have agreed with Dioscorus and Peter the Stammerer, who signed the Henoticon, that is, with two Monophysite Patriarchs, is said nevertheless, according to Anastasius, to have maintained the extreme tenet, that "the Divinity is the sole nature of Christ." Severus, according to Anastasius, symbolized with the Phantasiasts (Eutychians), yet he is more truly, according to Leontius, the chief doctor and leader of the Monophysites. And at one time there was an union, though temporary, between the Theodosians (Monophysites) and the Gaianites."

That being said...

The premise of this book is to examine the developments of doctrine that have occured both within and without the Catholic Church since the earliest times. In the earlier part of the book, Newman spends considerable time discussing the methods used by the Anglican Divines to discern developments from corruptions, and shows how their methodology is flawed, and how in many cases they rejected things which had more early concensus than things they accepted.

Other points he makes throughout the book is the treatment of the Catholic church by the various heretical sects and dissident groups. He shows how despite their disagreements with each other, they were usually united in opposition to the Catholic Church, using the same blasphemous phrases to describe her as the Reformers did and many Protestants continue to this day, while the latter group would generally accept the body accused of these things as orthodox in earlier times.

After his rather long introduction, so to speak, Newman lays out his seven principles which will serve to distinguish developments from corruptions: 1. Preservation of Type, 2. Continuity of Principles, 3. Assimilative Power, 4. Logical Sequence, 5. Anticipation of its Future, 6. Conservative Action on its Past, and 7. Chronic Vigour. Newman then goes on to examine each of these in detail (though the first 4 are examined in far greater detail than the latter 3), showing how doctrinal developments in the Catholic Church throughout history, as well of those proposed by groups deemed heretical, have fared when these 7 principles are applied to them.

The details of his agruments are covered well in other reviews, and indeed a thorough examination of them cannot be done justice here in my 1,000 word limit. Suffice to say that this book will be guaranteed to give the informed reader, be he symathetic or skeptical, something to ponder seriously, as this is indeed the most comprehensive work written on the subject of the development of doctrine.

John H. Newman wrote four magisterial works (not including his large body of sermons) of which this Essay is one of the most important and influential. It is perhaps the most accessible of J.H.N.'s works, and the most significant.

The problem that Newman wants to resolve is how can Christian doctrine develop, if, as is commonly believed, Jesus embodied all revelation, once and for all. Another way of attacking the same problem is to determine how certain doctrines not stated in an overt manner in the Bible (e.g., purgatory) can be shown to be a licit and legitimate development based on scriptural integrity. Newman doesn't hold the view that the Bible itself is the only form of revelation, but he does hold the view that subsequent development of doctrine cannot repudiate biblical statements. Broadly and coherently developed, Newman shows that development of Christian doctrine under certain restrictions is both necessary and fundamental to the Christian dispensation.

Where Newman is less convincing is with more recent papal doctrines like the immaculate conception and the assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary. While these latter two doctrines have different aetiologies, one clearly developed in a manner consistent with scripture while the other is plainly contradictory. The Assumption (or else, Dormition, Glorification, etc.) of Mary has very ancient traditions and is the manifestation of the doctrine of our own glorification on the Last Great Day. Conversely, the immaculate conception was determined by Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor and preeminent theologian of the church, to be inconsistent with the sacred deposit once and forever revealed and directly contradicted by scripture.

What do these two doctrines have to do with Newman's book? Newman wants to insist the doctrine continues to "evolve" or "develop," but that this growth, be be licit and legitimate, must be consistent with the initial sacred deposit once received, and that this development must grow organically out of that which the Church has inherited and must not be a novation or innovation. The doctrine of Papal primacy has likewise remained consistent with some form of belief from the Church's earliest beliefs, but the notion of papal "supremacy" is of recent origin and not consistent with scripture or church history. Both papal supremacy and the immaculate conception are at odds with the Church's earliest positions, was repudiated in the Middle Ages, and is contrary to Scripture's insistence.

So Newman's task is a difficult one. He wants to defend the Roman tradition, but the Roman tradition, especially as it embarked on the nineteenth century, created a few novations that and innovations it heretofore had repudiated. Newman, I think, succeeds in walking this fine line of showing how the sacred deposit fully and for all time singularly received does develop over time by the synthesis of episcopal collegiality, consensus fidelium, sacred scripture, and venerable tradition. Newman's hermeneutic allows for the Spirit to breathe multiple understandings of the same ostensible dogma in such a way as to be said to "grow," but it remains consistent with the original deposit through the four-fold synthesis through which the Holy Spirit operates.

Where a chasm occurs is with doctrinal novations, such as the immaculate conception and papal supremacy. The dogma of the immaculate conception is not only INCONSISTENT and INCOHERENT, it is also CONTRARY, to the received tradtions; likewise, the magisterial belief in the primacy of the Petrine See having been remade into the supremacy of Papal infallibility. In all candor, it is Newman who remains consistent, while the Church that has breached its historical deposit.

Newman, except for these two important exceptions, shows how development of doctrine is not only consistent, but necessary, over time. To keep the Church static in one solitary interpretation or understanding is to deny the Church's variety of charisms. Perhaps more importantly, to deny an evolving and developing plethora of understandings is to stifle the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity, which is the Person guiding and governing the Church since Pentecost, from expressing its kerygmatic and paraclitic mission.

These exceptions set aside, this wonderful book can be profitably read by all Christians of all stripes to great personal and collegial benefit and enlightenment.

The sainted Cardinal Newman's "Essay" is a masterpiece, one of the few books of it's kind. This work, which was undertaken by him while he was in the process of deciding to convert to Roman Catholicism, is based upon a simple premise - that the nature of the human intellect is to grasp the full implications of an idea or set of related ideas slowly, over time, by a process of development. Because of this, any set of formal doctrines held to by a body of believers will necessarily grow and *apparently* change over time, in just the same way that a human being gorws and changes over the span of a lifetime. However, just as the human being is physiologically and metaphysically identical with himself over the course of his life, so too will be the body of doctrine and the standards of practice given to the faithful, provided it is guarded from corruption by a teaching authority insured from error.

N.B. - this is *not* the same thing as saying that revelation must be ongoing. The faith itself may be delivered once and for all, in it's entirety. What needs time to develop, and what can never be truly completed, is the systematic exposition of what that faith means, and why it is so rather than otherwise. For example, that there is a God is an article of the Creed that can be communicated once and adhered to forever. But why there should be a God, and only one rather than five or six, and why that God should have such attributes as He is said to possess - these matters are the doctrines that are historical and developmental, and each of them will in turn raise more questions that will need to be answered. Revelation is finished, but theology, the explanation of revelation, is a continuously growing enterprise.

Newman's book does not stop at these abstract considerations, which, after all, could apply to any religion built on a alleged revelation. It proceeds to examine the specific points of controversy between Protestants and Catholics as to whether or not the Catholic faith or the Protestant faith is the authentic inheritor of the Apostlic community. Needless to say, it comes down on the side of Rome. The only real flaw in these detailed portions of the book is the lack of specific footnotes for the points Newman cites in the Fathers of the Church. The editions he used, or course, would be long out of print, but it would still be useful to know what portion of St. Basil's or St. Augustine's texts he was quoting from.

If you are interested in the history of Christian dogma, orare looking for a highly erudite Catholic apologetic, this is a fine book to own.

A couple of stories to work on, and such a direct approach to the faith of the nuns in the story. Most mysteries that involve nuns focus much more on the mystery, the story, the plot, the characters, etc. Faith - and true good and evil - usually get short shrift. Not so here.

Hilger gently introduces the uniniated into the not always gentle world of the religious. An excellent first effort, and I look forward to the next Sister Abigail mystery. Ms. Hilger, your reading audience awaits!

Great plot, super characters, and prose that seemed to come from heaven itself in places. My only complaint was the novel's length. I hope subsequent installations of the series have more pages to turn. Bravo to Ms. Hilger for a job well done.

Long writes to boomers from a boomer perspective but I, as an Xer myself, was glad to "listen in" on his thoughts. The book is somewhat repetitive--but that could be to drive his point home. I think Long's work is a good introduction to Gen X and, more importantly, to the church's adapting to postmodernity.

Long's experience in campus ministry is extremely evident and lends credibility to his recommendations for ministry changes by the church. I especially appreciate his seeing my generation as one VERY ripe for revival. I heartily agree!

This is a very useful book for those of us who are boomers trying to reach the Gen X crowd. It is a short little book but is loaded with insights as to the differences between boomers and Gen X. It will get you thinking how one may minister to Gen X differently.

This book is an outstanding summary of the effects of postmodernism on generation x and the critical need for the church to adapt and change ministry strategies in order to reach this hurting generation.