2009 Chrisianity Today Book Awards

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Our judging process began with 436 titles submitted by 67 publishers. CT editors selected finalists in each category, and then our panels of expert judges — one panel per category — sorted out the cream of the crop from 2008. Here are the 10 winners and 11 notables that best shed light on the people, events, and ideas that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission, with comments from our judges.

Fiction

Home: A Novel Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Theology/Ethics

People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology Michael S. Horton (Westminster John Knox)

Spirituality

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life Kathleen Norris (Penguin/Riverhead)

Missions/Global Affairs

Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change Paul G. Hiebert (Baker Academic)

The Church/Pastoral Leadership

Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck (Moody)

History/Biography

Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America John G. Turner (University of North Carolina)

Christian Living

Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing Emmanuel Katongole, Chris Rice (InterVarsity)

Christianity and Culture

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling Andy Crouch (InterVarsity)

Apologetics/Evangelism

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism Timothy Keller (Penguin/Dutton)

Biblical Studies

Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus Klyne R. Snodgrass (Eerdmans)

2009 Chrisianity Today Book Awards

T

Our judging process began with 436 titles submitted by 67 publishers. CT editors selected finalists in each category, and then our panels of expert judges — one panel per category — sorted out the cream of the crop from 2008. Here are the 10 winners and 11 notables that best shed light on the people, events, and ideas that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission, with comments from our judges.

Fiction

Home: A Novel Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Theology/Ethics

People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology Michael S. Horton (Westminster John Knox)

Spirituality

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life Kathleen Norris (Penguin/Riverhead)

Missions/Global Affairs

Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change Paul G. Hiebert (Baker Academic)

The Church/Pastoral Leadership

Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck (Moody)

History/Biography

Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America John G. Turner (University of North Carolina)

Christian Living

Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing Emmanuel Katongole, Chris Rice (InterVarsity)

Christianity and Culture

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling Andy Crouch (InterVarsity)

Apologetics/Evangelism

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism Timothy Keller (Penguin/Dutton)

Biblical Studies

Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus Klyne R. Snodgrass (Eerdmans)

Good or Bad Medical Educators?

Wilson was inwardly thankful that his long day of assisting in the operating room was finally coming to an end. As a fourth-year medical student heading toward a residency in surgery, he had at first been ecstatic when he secured a rotation with Dr. Cartwright, a renowned surgeon and head of the trauma surgery service...

On the first day that Wilson was allowed to assist in the operating room on a fairly stable case, Dr. Cartwright had seemed to be in a nastier mood than usual. He raised his voice when he thought the nurses were too slow in complying with his orders or when supplies were not immediately available. He swore audibly on most of these occasions. Wilson had earned honors in the surgery clerkship during his third year of medical school and was fairly confident in his skills. On this occasion, he couldn't do anything right apparently. Dr. Cartwright upbraided him each step of the way, constantly criticizing how Wilson was holding the retractors. He sometimes simply shoved Wilson's hands out of the way or rapped him on the knuckles with the instrument he had in hand at the time. When it came time to close up, Dr. Cartwright's patience seemed to have reached an end, and he simply pushed Wilson out of the way, finishing up the sutures himself.

read more

Medical education or training of young doctors have always been an apprentice system. Though recently there have been moves to make it less person-dependent and more task-orientated. The reason is that the apprentice system depends on persons- senior doctors! And persons comes with attitudes and personalities.

An ideal medical educator will be a person with cutting edge medical knowledge and wisdom on his or her finger tips, pleasant personality and an helpful gentle encouraging attitude. Unfortunately these three positive combinations in one person is hard to find. Often a student have to bear with or struggle with one or two negatives or even, horrors, three negatives in their tutors.

Does that means students do not learn? No, it just means that they have to learn to deal with their tutors for that too is a fact of life and the earlier they discover that nothing is given to them free on a silver platter, the better. While I am not condoning abusing behaviour on the part of medical educators, I am against the move to make every medical educator, and every medical experience a pleasant one for the students. The students will soon discover when they graduate that the world outside is not a nice place and that not everyone they meet is kind. And that their medical career involve coming to terms with persons that are difficult. Personally I believe that dealing with their medical tutors, however weird they are, is part of their learning experience.

picture source

Good or Bad Medical Educators?

Wilson was inwardly thankful that his long day of assisting in the operating room was finally coming to an end. As a fourth-year medical student heading toward a residency in surgery, he had at first been ecstatic when he secured a rotation with Dr. Cartwright, a renowned surgeon and head of the trauma surgery service...

On the first day that Wilson was allowed to assist in the operating room on a fairly stable case, Dr. Cartwright had seemed to be in a nastier mood than usual. He raised his voice when he thought the nurses were too slow in complying with his orders or when supplies were not immediately available. He swore audibly on most of these occasions. Wilson had earned honors in the surgery clerkship during his third year of medical school and was fairly confident in his skills. On this occasion, he couldn't do anything right apparently. Dr. Cartwright upbraided him each step of the way, constantly criticizing how Wilson was holding the retractors. He sometimes simply shoved Wilson's hands out of the way or rapped him on the knuckles with the instrument he had in hand at the time. When it came time to close up, Dr. Cartwright's patience seemed to have reached an end, and he simply pushed Wilson out of the way, finishing up the sutures himself.

read more

Medical education or training of young doctors have always been an apprentice system. Though recently there have been moves to make it less person-dependent and more task-orientated. The reason is that the apprentice system depends on persons- senior doctors! And persons comes with attitudes and personalities.

An ideal medical educator will be a person with cutting edge medical knowledge and wisdom on his or her finger tips, pleasant personality and an helpful gentle encouraging attitude. Unfortunately these three positive combinations in one person is hard to find. Often a student have to bear with or struggle with one or two negatives or even, horrors, three negatives in their tutors.

Does that means students do not learn? No, it just means that they have to learn to deal with their tutors for that too is a fact of life and the earlier they discover that nothing is given to them free on a silver platter, the better. While I am not condoning abusing behaviour on the part of medical educators, I am against the move to make every medical educator, and every medical experience a pleasant one for the students. The students will soon discover when they graduate that the world outside is not a nice place and that not everyone they meet is kind. And that their medical career involve coming to terms with persons that are difficult. Personally I believe that dealing with their medical tutors, however weird they are, is part of their learning experience.

picture source

Postcards from the Edge (3)

Postcards from the Edge (3)

Driving Parents Crazy

Nice diagram from Paediatrics at a Glance by Lawrence Miall, Mary Rudolf and Malcolm Levene

Driving Parents Crazy

Nice diagram from Paediatrics at a Glance by Lawrence Miall, Mary Rudolf and Malcolm Levene

Chris Webb on Lectio Divina

Chris Webb, the President of Renovare writes about lectio divina in his Heart-to-Heart Fall 2008 Pastoral Letter.

The roots of lectio divina lie back in the earliest days of the Christian church, especially in the teaching of the desert fathers and mothers and in the Benedictine tradition. The classic description of lectio was written sometime later, though, by a Carthusian prior called Guigo II who lived in the French Alps during the twelfth century. He writes about his thinking in a simple, unaffected way:

One day when I was busy working with my hands I began to think about our spiritual work, and all at once four stages in spiritual exercise came into my mind: reading (lectio), meditating (meditatio), prayer (oratio) and contemplation (contemplatio) . . . Reading is the careful study of the Scriptures, concentrating all one’s powers on it. Meditation is the busy application of the mind to seek with the help of one’s own reason for knowledge of inner truth. Prayer is the heart’s devoted turning to God to drive away evil and obtain what is good. Contemplation is when the mind is in some sort lifted up to God and held above itself, so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness (Scala Claustralium, chapter II).

Guigo is describing a way of reading Scripture which is quite different to the approach many of us have learned. This is not a “study” of Scripture, an attempt to draw out from the Bible eternal principles which we then teach others or apply in our own lives—coming to the Bible as though it were a user’s manual for the Christian life. Guigo assumes that, when Paul writes that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16), he is speaking less about issues of truth and infallibility, and more about the infusion of divine life itself into the text. So, when practicing lectio, we do not come looking for doctrines to be learned—we come looking for a Presence to be encountered. The Bible is not so much the stone tablets recording the law, as it is the burning bush from which God speaks . . . here and now.

Lectio divina begins, of course, with reading. A careful, attentive, prayerful, and open-hearted reading of the Bible. This takes time. We cannot read Scripture the way we read the New York Times or an article on Wikipedia. The Bible is not susceptible to skimming, to summarizing, to speed-reading; there is a fundamental difference between Google and the gospel. Scripture is deep, rich, complex, and multi-layered. It speaks through nuances and details. It yields its fruit slowly and gently. This means we need to find the right environment to practice lectio with prayerful attention. We can, of course, read the Bible anywhere: on a train, in a mall, over a coffee in Starbucks. But some places are more conducive to lectio than others; a good length of time spent reading in uninterrupted quiet is essential. For some, that is hard to achieve. Try not to fret about this: take what time you can, where you can. A good half hour once a week is better than a frantic five minutes every day.

Reading leads to meditation (meditatio). Christians of past generations had a very rich idea of what the inspiration of Scripture might mean: for them, it meant that the consistent character and purposes of God were reflected in every part of the Bible, so each passage of the Bible spoke to all other passages. We see this in Paul’s letters: the lives of Sarah and Hagar are figures of the two covenants (Gal. 4:12); the Hebrews drank water from the rock, and that rock was really Christ (1 Cor. 10:4); the veil over the glory of Moses’ face is the veil over the hearts of those who do not receive Christ (2 Cor. 3:15). Meditation is the process of slow reflection on Scripture that allows these perpetual echoes to be heard, so that over time the various voices and stories of the Bible integrate into the one great narrative of God and creation. By reflecting on Scripture, we allow the Spirit to speak through the words of the many human authors; we take inspiration seriously.

After meditation comes prayer, oratio. But this is not the place to lay down the Bible and take up our intercession lists. When we speak of prayer in the process of lectio, we are speaking of allowing the text to draw us beyond the page into the Presence. As we listen for the voice of the Spirit in Scripture, so we respond to the Spirit present within us. We transform our reading into conversation, sharing with God our responses to the text, the concerns it raises, the memories it provokes, the people it reminds us about. In turn, we listen for God’s direct and present voice replying, bringing the text alive in our current experience. We allow the living and active word to speak into our lives, to challenge and provoke us, to comfort and console us.

And finally we come to rest in contemplation—perhaps the least understood movement in lectio divina. We often use the word “contemplation” to mean thinking; perhaps, then, contemplation is yet more reflecting on the words of the passage? No. In the Christian tradition, contemplatio is becoming still in the presence of God, neither speaking nor necessarily being spoken to, but simply waiting attentively and lovingly on God. Think of the way old friends can allow conversation to drift into companionable silence. When our relationship is deep and rich enough, we do not need to talk all the time: it is enough just to be together. This is contemplatio. We have allowed Scripture not only to increase our knowledge of God, but also to entice us into deeper relationship with God.

read more

picture: fickr: Idiay

Chris Webb on Lectio Divina

Chris Webb, the President of Renovare writes about lectio divina in his Heart-to-Heart Fall 2008 Pastoral Letter.

The roots of lectio divina lie back in the earliest days of the Christian church, especially in the teaching of the desert fathers and mothers and in the Benedictine tradition. The classic description of lectio was written sometime later, though, by a Carthusian prior called Guigo II who lived in the French Alps during the twelfth century. He writes about his thinking in a simple, unaffected way:

One day when I was busy working with my hands I began to think about our spiritual work, and all at once four stages in spiritual exercise came into my mind: reading (lectio), meditating (meditatio), prayer (oratio) and contemplation (contemplatio) . . . Reading is the careful study of the Scriptures, concentrating all one’s powers on it. Meditation is the busy application of the mind to seek with the help of one’s own reason for knowledge of inner truth. Prayer is the heart’s devoted turning to God to drive away evil and obtain what is good. Contemplation is when the mind is in some sort lifted up to God and held above itself, so that it tastes the joys of everlasting sweetness (Scala Claustralium, chapter II).

Guigo is describing a way of reading Scripture which is quite different to the approach many of us have learned. This is not a “study” of Scripture, an attempt to draw out from the Bible eternal principles which we then teach others or apply in our own lives—coming to the Bible as though it were a user’s manual for the Christian life. Guigo assumes that, when Paul writes that “all Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16), he is speaking less about issues of truth and infallibility, and more about the infusion of divine life itself into the text. So, when practicing lectio, we do not come looking for doctrines to be learned—we come looking for a Presence to be encountered. The Bible is not so much the stone tablets recording the law, as it is the burning bush from which God speaks . . . here and now.

Lectio divina begins, of course, with reading. A careful, attentive, prayerful, and open-hearted reading of the Bible. This takes time. We cannot read Scripture the way we read the New York Times or an article on Wikipedia. The Bible is not susceptible to skimming, to summarizing, to speed-reading; there is a fundamental difference between Google and the gospel. Scripture is deep, rich, complex, and multi-layered. It speaks through nuances and details. It yields its fruit slowly and gently. This means we need to find the right environment to practice lectio with prayerful attention. We can, of course, read the Bible anywhere: on a train, in a mall, over a coffee in Starbucks. But some places are more conducive to lectio than others; a good length of time spent reading in uninterrupted quiet is essential. For some, that is hard to achieve. Try not to fret about this: take what time you can, where you can. A good half hour once a week is better than a frantic five minutes every day.

Reading leads to meditation (meditatio). Christians of past generations had a very rich idea of what the inspiration of Scripture might mean: for them, it meant that the consistent character and purposes of God were reflected in every part of the Bible, so each passage of the Bible spoke to all other passages. We see this in Paul’s letters: the lives of Sarah and Hagar are figures of the two covenants (Gal. 4:12); the Hebrews drank water from the rock, and that rock was really Christ (1 Cor. 10:4); the veil over the glory of Moses’ face is the veil over the hearts of those who do not receive Christ (2 Cor. 3:15). Meditation is the process of slow reflection on Scripture that allows these perpetual echoes to be heard, so that over time the various voices and stories of the Bible integrate into the one great narrative of God and creation. By reflecting on Scripture, we allow the Spirit to speak through the words of the many human authors; we take inspiration seriously.

After meditation comes prayer, oratio. But this is not the place to lay down the Bible and take up our intercession lists. When we speak of prayer in the process of lectio, we are speaking of allowing the text to draw us beyond the page into the Presence. As we listen for the voice of the Spirit in Scripture, so we respond to the Spirit present within us. We transform our reading into conversation, sharing with God our responses to the text, the concerns it raises, the memories it provokes, the people it reminds us about. In turn, we listen for God’s direct and present voice replying, bringing the text alive in our current experience. We allow the living and active word to speak into our lives, to challenge and provoke us, to comfort and console us.

And finally we come to rest in contemplation—perhaps the least understood movement in lectio divina. We often use the word “contemplation” to mean thinking; perhaps, then, contemplation is yet more reflecting on the words of the passage? No. In the Christian tradition, contemplatio is becoming still in the presence of God, neither speaking nor necessarily being spoken to, but simply waiting attentively and lovingly on God. Think of the way old friends can allow conversation to drift into companionable silence. When our relationship is deep and rich enough, we do not need to talk all the time: it is enough just to be together. This is contemplatio. We have allowed Scripture not only to increase our knowledge of God, but also to entice us into deeper relationship with God.

read more

picture: fickr: Idiay

Liturgical Song

The latest from Thinking Faith...


Lyrics for Liturgy 1: Liturgical Song
In the first of a two part series on Thinking Faith looking at musical traditions in the Church, Frances Novillo describes the function of liturgical song in uniting a congregation. How do the music and text of a hymn, when properly chosen, enable us to worship as a community? Read >>


I believe music has a large role in our worship, don't you?

.

Liturgical Song

The latest from Thinking Faith...


Lyrics for Liturgy 1: Liturgical Song
In the first of a two part series on Thinking Faith looking at musical traditions in the Church, Frances Novillo describes the function of liturgical song in uniting a congregation. How do the music and text of a hymn, when properly chosen, enable us to worship as a community? Read >>


I believe music has a large role in our worship, don't you?

.

John Updike, Theological Novelist

From Christianity Today

January 27, 2009 2:54PM

John Updike, 'Theological Novelist,' Dies at 76The Pulitzer winner surveyed the spiritual emptiness of post-World War II family life.

by Katelyn Beaty

Prolific American novelist John Updike died Tuesday in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, after a battle with lung cancer. He was 76. Winning the Pulitzer Prize for two books in his best-known Rabbit quartet, Updike's novels and short stories frequently chronicled the spiritual and moral confusion of the middle-class American family adrift of its Judeo-Christian moorings.

Never afraid to explore sexual exploits frankly, the lifelong churchgoer also deftly wove theological themes into many of his novels, most overtly in Roger’s Version (1986), In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), and Seek My Face (2002). He was strongly influenced by the works of modern theologians Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, but in later years credited his hometown church in Massachusetts as his spiritual foundation.

Jesuit magazine America awarded Updike its Campion Award in 1997 as “a distinguished Christian person of letters,” and President George W. Bush gave him the National Medal for the Humanities in 2003.

Christianity Today contributing editor Mark Buchanan called Updike “North America’s most theological novelist” in his profile of the author from July 2003. He wrote,

Nearly [Updike’s] entire life’s work is concerned with theological questions, and a good number of his works hinge on these. How many other contemporary authors could—or would—bandy about the theology of Barth, Tillich, or Bultmann in their novels? Or have page after page of dialogue between characters working out intricate doctrinal positions? Updike does this repeatedly and with discernment.

Mark Oppenheimer also profiled Updike in sister magazine Books & Culture in 2004, observing of his angst-ridden protagonists, “Updike’s characters were raised in church, and they want truly to believe in God, but the disciplines God requires inhibit the joy he is supposed to bring.”

Read more obituaries from The New York Times (which also has a slideshow), the Associated Press, Time magazine, and PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine posted "Seven Stanzas at Easter," Updike's well-known poem on the Resurrection, last March.

John Updike, Theological Novelist

From Christianity Today

January 27, 2009 2:54PM

John Updike, 'Theological Novelist,' Dies at 76The Pulitzer winner surveyed the spiritual emptiness of post-World War II family life.

by Katelyn Beaty

Prolific American novelist John Updike died Tuesday in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, after a battle with lung cancer. He was 76. Winning the Pulitzer Prize for two books in his best-known Rabbit quartet, Updike's novels and short stories frequently chronicled the spiritual and moral confusion of the middle-class American family adrift of its Judeo-Christian moorings.

Never afraid to explore sexual exploits frankly, the lifelong churchgoer also deftly wove theological themes into many of his novels, most overtly in Roger’s Version (1986), In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), and Seek My Face (2002). He was strongly influenced by the works of modern theologians Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, but in later years credited his hometown church in Massachusetts as his spiritual foundation.

Jesuit magazine America awarded Updike its Campion Award in 1997 as “a distinguished Christian person of letters,” and President George W. Bush gave him the National Medal for the Humanities in 2003.

Christianity Today contributing editor Mark Buchanan called Updike “North America’s most theological novelist” in his profile of the author from July 2003. He wrote,

Nearly [Updike’s] entire life’s work is concerned with theological questions, and a good number of his works hinge on these. How many other contemporary authors could—or would—bandy about the theology of Barth, Tillich, or Bultmann in their novels? Or have page after page of dialogue between characters working out intricate doctrinal positions? Updike does this repeatedly and with discernment.

Mark Oppenheimer also profiled Updike in sister magazine Books & Culture in 2004, observing of his angst-ridden protagonists, “Updike’s characters were raised in church, and they want truly to believe in God, but the disciplines God requires inhibit the joy he is supposed to bring.”

Read more obituaries from The New York Times (which also has a slideshow), the Associated Press, Time magazine, and PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine posted "Seven Stanzas at Easter," Updike's well-known poem on the Resurrection, last March.

Standards of some house officers in Malaysia

NST Online » Frontpage

2009/01/31

Housemen lack basic know-how

By : Annie Freeda Cruez

KUALA LUMPUR: Some medical universities, both local and overseas, are churning out doctors who cannot carry out common medical procedures, have no proper clinical exposure, cannot communicate effectively and cannot even take down the history of patients properly for diagnosis and treatment.

Senior medical consultants in government hospitals are now saddled with the task of having to retrain these people to ensure they meet the country's standard of medical practice.

Some of these fresh doctors are retained in their houseman training postings for years, some even up to six years, because they cannot meet the standards. The compulsory housemanship is two years.

read more

This is disturbing news because after housemanship, these doctors will be licensed to practice medicine on their own. I hope relevant authorities will take this seriously because the lives of the rakyat (people) is at stake here.

related posts
Too many doctors in Malaysia
The coming surplus of doctors in Malaysia