Chalmers' Blog

A Bit Like the Busses…

Have you ever heard the saying that something is ‘a bit like the busses’? Basically, you can stand at a bus stop for a long time and nothing comes but then suddenly three busses come at the same time. Well, here are 11 short book reviews for you. This post has devotional material, academic books, Christian living, Church history and more. There will definitely be something in this post for you to enjoy, if you don’t think there is drop me a message and I’l recommend something else for you 🙂

Saturday Snippets (February 6)

As well as reading a lot of books, I also read a ton of articles every week. Here are some of the articles that I’ve read recently and have found interesting, helpful, challenging and encouraging. I hope that they will be the same for you, my dear readers…

The importance of truth in a truth-less world

I was in a lecture today and a minister who was conducting our Q and A session mentioned a quote that I’d never heard before. G. K. Chesterton said this “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” When I heard that quote I thought “That hits the nail on the head”. I think that this quote is a succinct description of the post-truth world we live in, but it also has some implications for the church.

Serving the Saviour they loved…

One of the mistakes that I have made over the years is that I have not read a lot of biographies. I’ve written before about the importance of reading and listen to the testimonies and stories of older saints, but this year I’m going to actually do it! Here are the first two I’ve read. One about a man I’d heard a little of before and one of a woman that I had never heard of. These two books are different, but both good. One will help you understand a man who touched so many lives with his ministry and service and the other is a story of a woman who left behind all she knew to go and tell people about Jesus. I highly recommend you get at least one of these and you start to read it right away!

Saturday Snippets (January 30)

To ‘seminary’, or not to ‘seminary’

This may sound a bit weird if you’re coming to this post completely out of the blue. Allow me to give you a bit of context. A few days ago on Twitter I came across a tweet from Ed Stetzer, which peaked my interest. Stetzer said “I don’t know who need to hear this, but doing a PhD is probably not what you need unless you plan to be a professor. And, I don’t know who need to hear THIS, there are a LOT of people getting PhD and very few professor jobs”. This tweet got me thinking, as did some conversations that I saw following on from that, about academia and ministry.

Fear, Final Words and a Doctor…

I know, it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. I apologise.

I enjoy reading. I also enjoy writing book reviews for you folks to read. I do this to highlight helpful books that you could be reading and so that you can hopefully know if a book is worth your time or not. Not everyone has the time, nor desire, to read that many books. Here are a few of the books I’ve read recently that I thought I’d share with you 🙂

Saturday Snippets (January 23)

Don’t Substitute Your Pastor For A Screen

I know, I do see the irony, we are all on screens at the moment. However, there has been a problem with this whole thing way before COVID was an issue. The problem is that many Christians are very quick to make famous pastors ‘their pastors’. Whilst there are many great things we can learn online from people like Alistair Begg, John Piper, Mark Dever, John MacArthur, Ligon Duncan, they are not your pastor.

Books for kids, teens and families. Something for all ages.

Finding good and biblical reading material for children is really important, whether they read it themselves, parents read it to them or it’s read as a whole family. We need to make sure that we’re investing just as much time in teaching children as we would in teaching adults. The materials should be exciting, pleasing to the eye and understandable for the target age group. Here are some really helpful books for kids, teens and for whole families to read together. I’ve put them in age order, starting with small children and going up to family devotions.