Book Review: Practical Theology for Women

How Knowing God Makes a Difference in Our Daily Lives by Wendy Horger Alsup

Sometimes Practical Theology for Women uses a question and answer format, so it seemed appropriate to review it using questions and answers. And I’m guessing that when you read the title and subtitle, you had some of the same questions I did, starting with this one:

Who is Wendy Alsup?
Wendy Alsup, says the blurb,

enjoys teaching theology to women. Alsup resides in Seattle with her husband, Andy, and two young children.

She is also involved in teaching theology to women at Mars Hill Church, and this book is one of Mars Hill’s Re:Lit publications.

Still want to know more? Here’s an interview with Wendy Alsup at Pure Church, the blog of Thabiti Anyabwile. Best of all, you can read her very own blog called—what else?—Practical Theology for Women.

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What Is a Healthy Church Member?

by Thabiti Anyabwile (Thu-BEE-tee On-ya-bwee-LAY-hee)

What Is a Healthy Church Member? is patterned after the book What is a Healthy Church? by Mark Dever, and is the third book in the IXMark series. It gives us “one proposal for becoming a healthier member of your local church.”

The ten chapters in this little book (and it is little) are based around ten marks of a healthy church member. Each chapter ends with a few questions for deeper thinking on the topic of the chapter, and many chapters also include a short list of books for more reading on the topic. It’s all biblically grounded, theologically sound, and most of all, practical.

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Book Review: Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

by John Piper.

This book is right up my alley. Back in my early blogging days I did a series of posts on the reasons for Christ’s death given to us in scripture. In a final summary post, I wrote this:

We have looked at only the explicit purpose statements [for Christ’s death] …. Any result of Christ’s death listed in scripture, however, is also an intended purpose of Christ’s death, and an important purpose of Christ’s death. God has the power and wisdom to do things so that only exactly what He wishes is accomplished—so that there are no unintended or tertiary results from anything God does.

What John Piper has done in this book is do all the extra work that I didn’t do when I looked at the purposes of Christ’s death. He’s taken fifty of the results of Christ’s death and listed them for us as fifty reasons why Jesus came to die. 

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