Elliot Ritzema's Blog, page 8

The Habits of Leading: A Review

For about six months a couple of years ago, I was a regular listener of the Catalyst podcast. Catalyst is an organization that seeks to grow young leaders in business and the church through conferences. I had never been to a Catalyst conference, and I can’t even remember now how I became interested in the podcast. I wasprobably interested in hearing an interview withsomeone I had heard of.

At the time, the podcast was hosted by Ken Coleman and Brad Lomenick, the president of Catalyst. While...

The Wisdom of Speaking Foolishness: A Review

Apologetics—the systematic defense of Christianity—sometimes gets a bad rap, but for different reasons. For one thing, in our current cultural climate it is often frowned upon to “proselytize” anyone.For another, the field of apologetics has too often (at least in my experience) been the refuge of belligerentpeople who are trying to put a spiritual sheen on an attitudethey should really be repenting of. And finally, apologetics is sometimes treated as a silver bullet—as if all you need is th...

A Pilgrimage to Krakow: A Review

I fell in love with Krakow when I was teaching English in central Europe from 2002–2004. Part of it was the timing of my first visit. InPrague, where I was living, the Soviet-era project of state-sponsored atheism was largely successful. In Krakow, the Catholic Church had resisted the story told by communism, insisting instead thatreligion was not something that could be banished to the private sphere and that all humans had inherent dignity by virtue of their being created in God’s image. So...

How Five Well-Known Podcasts Approach Storytelling

It has been over a month since I last posted, and I’ve been busy. I preached three sermons during that time, in addition to my regular work responsibilities, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time for pleasure reading or thinking bloggy thoughts.

But I did finish a unique book yesterday:Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio.The author, Jessica Abel, is a graphic novelist, and in this book she uses that medium to explorehow severalpopular radio shows approach the...

A Great New Study Bible Focused on Biblical Theology

Any Bible reader looking for a quickorientation to the text without getting bogged down in extraneous scholarly discussions needs a study Bible. Creating a good study Bible is hard: the notes have to be informative, but they must draw attention to the text, not themselves. That is why so many theme-oriented study Bibles fail. They are too self-conscious.

D. A. Carson and a team of more than 60 scholars have created a very goodstudy Biblein the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible.This is not an edi...

Religion and Politics Are Inseparable: A Review

I first encountered the writing of Richard John Neuhaus when I took a class on Christianity and culture in seminary and I had to choose a book to review from a list. The title of Neuhaus’sThe Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America stood out to me. He had written it in 1984, twenty years before, and some of what he wrote about was dated to the time when groups like the Moral Majority (which he was definitely not a part of) was at its most influential. But overall the book provi...

Good to Great: One of the Great Business Books

I don’t read a lot of business books, but at least I don’t sneer at them like I used to (progress!). Many of them are notgreat as literature, but I’ve come to believe that I can learn from almost any book, even if it’s just what not to do.

Over timeI’ve come to realize that, like all areas of literature, there are a few business “classics.” Jim Collins’ book Good to Great is one of them. This year, I decided it was time to see what the fuss was about. The book, which was originally published...

Why You’ve Heard of the Vanderbilts: A Review

When I was a kid my parents once took me to the Biltmore, the enormous estate built by George W. Vanderbilt outside Asheville, NC. I didn’t know it then, but Vanderbilt’s fortune came primarily from railroads, and itbegan with his grandfather, Cornelius. I just finished reading a biography of Cornelius,The First Tycoon by T. J. Stiles, which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in biography.

What makes this book so fascinating (and long) is that it is not just the biography of one man. It is the story...

Asking Creative Questions and Finding the Right Data: A Review

Steven Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago who developed a reputation for coming up with unusual questions to answer using economic analysis: Why do crack dealers live with their mothers? Why do real-estate agents tend to sell their own homes for more than they sell yours? Which parenting practices have a positive correlation with children’s academic success, and which ones have no effect? Does a child’s name make a difference for his or her success in life? Which is more dang...

The Church as Salad Bowl: A Review

What is the church supposed to look like? Is it the club ofsimilar peoplethat many of us know, or is it an outpost of God’s kingdom that consists of a group of people who would never get along if it weren’t for God’s grace? Prolific New Testament scholar Scot McKnight has written a book exploring this question(I call him prolific because I was about to call this book his “latest,” but it came out in February so now I’m not so sure).

The book,A Fellowship of Differents: Showing God’s Design fo...