Empowered Evangelicals: Bringing Together the Best of the Evangelical and Charismatic Worlds

Rating:
Summary: Help for the Cautious Evangelical
Review: Empowered Evangelicals serves as an excellent resource to help dispell fear in seeking MORE of God's presence and power in a more experiential way in church life. Coming from a conservative evangelical background, the book helped me feel more comfortable with the new wave of renewal and the resulting manifestations. A satisfying discussion of two worlds that need not clash but merge to be one burning church on fire to reach the lost and heal wounded people.

Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, Biblical, Practical
Review: Nathan and Wilson score on this collaboration! Great for pastors and church leaders looking for guidance in how to have a church that is both strong in Word and strong in Spirit. This book, along with Doug Banister's Word and Power Church, argues convincingly that the best of the Evangelical and Charismatic worlds can be mutually embraced. The authors write carefully and thoughtfully as they strike a balance between the often characterized two extremes: mind and emotion.

The only weakness of this book is that it is difficult to keep up with who wrote what. I frequently found myself thumbing back several pages to try to place who exactly was sharing a personal story (Nathan or Wilson?).

If you are extremely Pentecostal or extremely anti-charismatic, you will probably disagree with the conclusions drawn in this book, but if you have an open mind, "Take up and read!"

Rating:
Summary: Jesus-Minded in a World of the Sin-Minded
Review: What I like especially about this book--and I like a lot about it--is that it corrects an imbalance in the thinking and feeling lives of fervent Bible-believing people.

For a long time, what we've gotten is a lot about what Paul thinks about things. And as a consequence, we've gotten a lot of emphasis on sin, sin lists, sin avoidance, sin management, sin identification, sin angst, sin taking over the world, sin in the schools, sin on TV, sin in the newspapers and magazines, sin on the Internet, sin in our neighbors, and so forth. A sense of the Christian life as a battle against sin.

But this book reminds us that Jesus and the love of God and the love of our neighbors are where our hearts should be. It reminds us to expect God's power in our lives. To open our hearts and minds to this. And this is welcome. Most welcome. Highly welcome. It is indeed good news.