Phillip Jensen reviews Introducing God: Meeting the God who loves us as he launched the book in August 2006

1. Introducing God.
2. The book, and
3. It’s usefulness.

1. Introducing God.

There is nothing much that you can do in this lifetime that is any more important than introducing God. That is one of the greatest things that anybody can ever do for anybody at any time anywhere. That amongst all the activities you can’t love God more than uphold Him cause we love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, mind. You can’t love your neighbour more than to introduce them to Him. And so the very activity of introducing God is just so important that any book that’s going to address that issue is a book that we need to pay careful attention to. And, in particular, Introducing God has become such a useful vehicle as a course, as a programme, as a way, as a set of DVDs, and all the rest that’s gone with it, God has blessed so richly, both here in this building, but across our city, across our nation and across the nations of the world, that it is a wonderful thing that we have got this new way of saying the old message. The new expression, like it, a word like autonomy, of that which the Bible has taught all along. And so introducing God is terrifically important and Introducing God, the course, has been wonderfully blessed and is of great importance for us. So it’s great to be here tonight to talk about.

2. The Book

Introducing God is an interesting and arresting read. That’s really valuable because amongst the people, I’m going to talk about its usefulness in a moment, amongst the people we want to give it to, are people who are not necessarily book readers, not necessarily people who are interested in reading about Christianity. But within a few pages you’re caught, within a few lines of it you’re caught. It’s an interesting read, it’s an arresting read. It has the racy journalist kind of language usage that means the pages turn quickly and you’re not noticing it. You don’t have to go back and reread the sentence three times because your mind wandered or because the words were complex and you missed the grammar of it. It’s the simple grammar of modern journalism: Subject - verb - object. Sometimes just subject - verb. Sometimes just subject. The idea that you’ve got to have a verb in a sentence, that’s a very strange idea. No, its usually got verbs.  Its quick, it’s racy, it’s easy to read, it’s that…

Furthermore it’s redolent with illustrations. Humans are always interested in stories and we’re particularly interested in stories about other humans. And the book had so many interesting illustrations about people. So that you keep your attention all the time on what has been happening. At the end of each section there’s these biographies for a couple of pages which is perhaps even a more heightened thing and as is one’s habit to do, I confess I did, I stopped reading the argument and just read the biographies and then came back and read the argument again. (Daniel, you’re laughing, but my suspicion is that there are two sinners in this room.) You can’t help yourself. A story about a person is going to be interesting. They’re well told and some of you are here and good on you. Thank you for standing out like you are and giving testimony to what God has done in your lives. That’s fantastic. They’re well told. They’re interesting stories. But also very cleverly chosen in the diversity of peoples and their religious backgrounds that can be told. And so it has those interesting but the cleverness of the book lies in the fact that it is actually the exposition of Scripture. And that each of the chapters is really dealing with - I can hear they’re sermons that have been worked over, cut up, chopped around changed - they’re the talks that come. And so you work through Acts 17 but instead of saying “We’re now going to work through Acts 17” there’s just bits of the story told and you’re reading the Bible before you know you’re reading the Bible. And the key sections of it are here. It doesn’t say “look up the Bible” it just says “as it says…” and then off you go and you find you’re reading more and more of the Bible. And so very cleverly the reader is seduced into reading the Bible without knowing that they’re doing it, in a sense. I mean it’s straight up front, it’s open, it tells you this is from the Bible but you just get taken through key passages of Scripture and the exposition of the Scriptures. And so that’s really important because without the Scriptures you’ll never know God. And so if we’re going to introduce people to God we have to get them to be reading the Scriptures. And that’s what this book does. That’s what’s really so fantastic. For all the illustrations, anecdotes, biographies, the terrifically designed little diagrams, six little diagrams, I mean that’s just ingenious, one would say, for all the kinds of bits and pieces of communication skill that goes into it, the point is, chapter after chapter, it really is explaining and expounding, writing and producing for us the Word of God and that’s what actually makes it such a valuable book.

3. Usefulness.

Three uses:

1. One. Very helpful for Christians to read because it: takes us back over the Gospel, clarifies our mind, what it is we believe, why we believe it, skills us in being able to explain it to other people. It’s a really terrific way for Christians to grasp hold again more clearly still the Gospel.
2. Secondly. Because it’s a great backup for the course. I’m sure the courses will be made all the richer for having this material available as well. To reinforce what people learn gathering in dinners and watching the DVDs.
3. But thirdly, I think – I don’t know this is written for this purpose or not – but from my perspective, I think it’s a very valuable giveaway. You’ve always got to be looking for what’s the book that I could just put in the hand of an unbeliever that the Gospel would explain and I think that this does that. I don’t think there’d be any … I didn’t find anything embarrassing in it that would make me have the Christian cringe factor that would say “well you know this is a really good book but just you know don’t worry about the jokes, they’re really awful” or you know “skip over chapter two” you know what I mean? There’s none of that kind of cringe factor. I’m fairly comfortable and confident to be able to say, “Here’s a really good book that will help you meet God” because that’s what it’s about. And I think it’s a really valuable book in that regard. And therefore I don’t think it is a book you should buy. I think it’s the book that you buy consignments of because you are expecting to give them away. This is not a book to buy and read. This is a book to buy and give away. Read first, but then give away. And so therefore what’s the deal? I can’t remember. It’s gone now. It gets a lot cheaper if you buy multiple copies. And you should buy multiple… Some books you buy, read, throw away. There are other books you buy, put on your shelf that you’re going to consult for the rest of your life. And there are other books that you buy in order to give. And this is the buy-in-order-to-give book so therefore buy half a dozen don’t buy one and just keep on giving away. And so therefore I think you’re on to a financial winner because this is the kind of book that sells multiple copies to the same individual customer.

Phillip Jensen is the Anglican Dean of Sydney.