"The Purpose-Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission" – by Rick Warren

The central theme of this book is that when churches think first and prioritize their inner health, growth is sure to follow. "If your church is healthy," writes Rick Warren, "growth will occur naturally”. According to Rick, healthy, consistent growth is the result of balancing the five biblical purposes of the church. These five purposes are to “Love the Lord with all your heart”, “Love your neighbor as yourself” , “Go and make disciples”, “Baptize them”, and "Teach them to obey."
The book is classified under classification "253 Pastoral Office & Work" under the Dewey Decimal Classification.

The serving team at the Library wishes to take this opportunity in conjunction with the Passion Week and Easter to wish everyone a blessed Easter. We have so many things to be thankful for but most importantly Easter proclaims the HOPE that Jesus will rescue His followers from the horror of death. We will not only survive death, but we will be raised from it just as Jesus did. We will be given new bodies like Jesus’ resurrection body, bodies with new and undreamed of powers.  We will have no more afflictions, perplexity, persecution, catastrophe, and no more "being delivered over to death."
Jesus can open our eyes to spiritual reality. He can forgive our sinful rebellion, dissipate our fear of what happens after we die, and He can give us life to the fullest in Him. All we need to do is turn to Him as Savior and Lord. Romans 10:9-10 explains that "…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved”; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. Also, in 1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness".  Trust Jesus as our Savior, surrender our will to Him as Lord. Then we will know the thrill, the joy, and the security of the resurrected Christ Jesus living inside us.
For more understanding on the above, kindly refer to the book “Basic Christianity” by John Stott which can be found in our library.

We often come across the saying that "God will speak to you". Do we really hear the audible voice of God?
Read this book and you will discover how to enjoy a dynamic, vital, and intimate relationship with God as you learn to ‘hear’ Him ‘speak’ daily through the Bible. You’ll embark on an adventure that will introduce you to His handpicked mentors, men and women who may save your health, your marriage, your ministry, and your future. Wayne outlines a simple process for reading and reflecting upon the Bible, and shows many examples of the approach.
In summary – "read the Bible every day and God will mentor you".

This month’s book review is on " Why Believe the Bible?" written by John MacArthur. – Can we really trust God’s Word for what it says? What does God’s Word mean to us today? How can we get the most from God’s Word? This book examines these and other questions regarding the authority, infallibility and trustworthiness of the Word of God. Whether you are a new Christian or just want to brush up on some of the basic truths of Scripture, this book will give you confidence in the power of God’s Word to transform your life and show you that the Bible does make a difference.  This book includes a Bible reading plan as well as helpful tools and resources for studying the Bible. The book is classified under shelve 220.13 under Dewey Decimal System under category Christian Theology – - Moral Theology
Those who wish to sign-up as member of the SAPCKL library can still do so by obtaining the requisite application forms from the library. Please kindly contact Steven Mun @ +60125029377 or Chirstian Saputra @ +60163195312."

Membership Drive
On the Sundays of 13th and 20th March the librarians of the church will be registering library members. All are invited to sign up at the table which will be set up in the Fellowship Hall. For more information please contact Steven Mun @ 012.3309076.

Book Review
This week’s book review is on " Why Believe the Bible?" written by John MacArthur.  – Can we really trust God’s Word for what it says? What does God’s Word mean to us today? How can we get the most from God’s Word? This book examines these and other questions regarding the authority, infallibility and trustworthiness of the Word of God. Whether you are a new Christian or just want to brush up on some of the basic truths of Scripture, this book will give you confidence in the power of God’s Word to transform your life and show you that the Bible does make a difference. This book includes a Bible reading plan as well as helpful tools and resources for studying the Bible. The book is classified under shelve 220.13 under Dewey Decimal System under category Christian Theology – Moral Theology.

“The Cost of Discipleship” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer This is a book that will profoundly change your understanding about what it means to be a person of faith in the world. Bonhoeffer challenges us to look beyond the values of this world, and asks us “are we willing to embrace the true cost of discipleship?” His analysis of cheap grace, and its corrupting influence reminds us that there are times that we have to challenge the powers of this world, that there are times when to be a good Christian means we can’t always be a good citizen. Bonhoeffer wrote in the shadow of evil, made even worse by the reality that many so-called Christians were only too willing to serve Adolf Hitler and his evil regime. Bonhoeffer makes it clear to the reader that cheap grace is at the heart of such fatal compromises of faith, that allow evil to flourish. It is through understanding costly grace, that we can embrace discipleship that will allow us to witness to this world in such a way that we are freed from the powers of this world. Bonhoeffer’s words are just as important today, as they were in the dark days of the Nazis, and will always challenge us in our faith.
The book is classified under Dewey’s Decimal Classification 241.53 – Moral Theology

This week’s book review is on Bill Hybel’s “Holy Discontent: Fueling the Personal Fire That Ignites Personal Vision”. This book, like many others in the genre, is a call to action. It is a reminder that God intends for us to be acting on His behalf in the world to make it closer to what He intended it to be. Hybels has summarized the stories of a few people that he has met over the years into his view of what pushes people past the boundary of recognizing the brokenness and ACTING ON that recognition to resolve the problem. Thus the title “Holy Discontent”.
Hybels states that “a bad day lived from the energy of your holy discontent is far better that the best day lived anywhere else.” We are called through Christ to engage our broken world, and with God’s help, take action. This book can help you do that or if you’re already doing it, this book will provide a great source of encouragement to keep doing it. Enjoy. The book is available in the Lbrary under classification 248.4 – Christian Experience, Practice & Life.

This week’s book review is on CS Lewis’ "The Screwtape Letters".  In this book, C.S. Lewis provides a series of lessons on the importance of taking a deliberate role in living out the Christian faith by portraying a typical human life, with all its temptations and failings, as seen from the devil’s viewpoint. This book will crawl into your consciousness, and describes every mental battle you’ve ever had, explaining those subtle arguments which steered you away from spiritual growth.
The book is available in the Library under classification 248.4 – Christian Experience, Practice & Life.

Never judge a book by its cover. That is one of the first, and for some of us continual, lessons we human beings learn about knowing others. With a slightly confrontational title like Eve’s Revenge, we’d do well to apply this lesson to books too. In her debut book by that title, Lilian Calles Barger explores what, if any, meaning the body has for us and how, as committed Christians, we should live in light of that. But beware – this is no self-help book, nor is it an instruction manual. Barger has been on a journey and she invites us to journey alongside her and make our own assessment which is one of the things I really appreciate about this book.

As I read the early chapters of this book, I felt an increasing heaviness over the ways in which women try to measure up to false standards of beauty, value, and success fed to us by incessant media broadcasts and advertisements. We are all born into imperfect bodies with imperfect souls but there’s an endless range of products and services available to help us in our quest to measure up. Religious and non-religious women alike are lured to either renounce the body as having nothing to do with the true self; or use their resources to take control over their body – even alter it, to create a culturally acceptable identity for themselves. But those diverging paths do not lead to integrated lives. We need lives that have meaning where our embodied experience points us to greater realities beyond ourselves.

There is one who we can look to as we seek, in Barger’s words, “a spirituality that allows us to remain in the body as we reach for something greater and outside ourselves, along with a social vision that redeems the whole person in community and in place.” It is none other than Jesus of Nazareth who came to give us abundant life. In his ministry on earth, Jesus treated women inclusively as able-bodied participants in ushering in the

Kingdom of
God among us. In a culture where women’s bodies were often seen as unclean, he was not afraid to extend his healing touch, welcoming all who would come to him into God’s peace and freeing them from a life of exclusion. He teaches us by his example to live lives of congruence between body and spirit in the places where we find ourselves today. Reading this book has reinforced my love for Jesus and it has awakened in me a desire to see other women know him and live lives of wholeness in Christ-centred community.

For those of us within the church this book is a wake-up call to begin thinking about our bodies as God’s good creation, bearing His image. We must realize that the things we do to our individual bodies have a communal significance. As the body of Christ on earth, our uniqueness is not something that we should harbour to ourselves but like our Lord we are to work towards reconciling a lost world to the transforming love of God. If you want to know where a lot of searching women are, and you doubt that the church has anything to offer them, may I suggest you read this book?