From the Rising of the Sun: A Journey of Worship Around the World by Tim Challies and Tim Keesee. Zondervan. 186 pages. 2025
*** ½
This book by Tim Challies and Tim Keesee reminded me of the excellent Dispatches from the Front documentary films that Keesee made with Frontline Missions that “highlighted the marvelous extent, diversity, and unity of Christ’s Kingdom in our world”. In this book (which has accompanying streaming videos that you can access via a code in the book), Keesee joins Tim Challies on an odyssey that took them from the rising of the sun to its setting, from one side of the earth to the other.
The world is divided into twenty-four time zones. The authors decided to aim for about twelve episodes, or a country in roughly every second time zone. Once they had chosen countries, they began to search for churches within them. They found faithful churches that align with a variety of Protestant traditions. All were bound together by a deep commitment to Scripture and sound doctrine. This book is about their visits to those churches and worship services all around the world.
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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~What Is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid by Tim Keller
I’M CURRENTLY READING….
Each of the chapters is a travelogue drawn from Keesee’s journal during the three or four days that he and Challies spent at each location, giving the feeling that as a reader or viewer, we are right along with them.
Between the travelogue chapters that that Keesee wrote are special features that Challies wrote to go deeper on the subject of Christian worship. Challies also wrote helpful discussion questions for personal or group use to help you get the most out of the journey together.
Their travels began in Fiji, and took them to Australia, South Korea, Cambodia, Zambia, Poland, Morocco, Brazil, Chili, Mexico, before ending in Alaska.
I enjoyed reading and watching the authors as they worshipped with diverse gatherings of believers on six continents for more than a year.
- The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. Tim Challies reviews Carl Trueman’s new book The Desecration of Man:How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. He writes that the book “Is a challenging and sobering read, yet a helpful one, for it helps explain the world as it is today. Better still, it is an optimistic one, for it calls us to commit and re-commit ourselves to the divine solution, which is understanding, practicing, and living out the Christian faith in the context of the local church.”
- My Book Reviews. Enjoy more than 580 of my book reviews on Goodreads. Read my recent reviews of The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God’s Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders by Dave Harvey, A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation by Matthew Bingham, What Depth of Love: Devotions on the Cross and Resurrection by Charles Spurgeon, and Everyday Gospel Easter Devotional by Paul Tripp.
- Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy has published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you have read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.”
- Sometimes I Get It Wrong. Tim Challies reviews Matthew Bingham’s book A Heart Aflame for God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation. He writes that the book “Is as good a book as any I have read this year and one I wish I had read last year. It refreshed my understanding of spiritual formation and deepened my confidence that the Reformed tradition has deeply satisfying means for developing, increasing, and moving forward as a Christian.”
Won’t you read along with us?
What Is Wrong with the World?: The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid by Tim Keller
Please join us in reading the first book of Tim Keller’s that has been released since his death in 2023.
From the Amazon description:
“During his tenure as founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Timothy Keller explained on a weekly basis how the Bible provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated response to the fundamental questions of life. In What Is Wrong with the World?, based on a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Keller answers the title’s pressing question by revealing that the only thing that can account for the world’s pain and chaos is what the Bible calls sin. This clear-eyed and ultimately hopeful book reveals how sin is not simply a “bad” thing we do but something much more subtle and complex, affecting our relationships, our thinking, and every aspect of our existence. And only when we recognize sin for what it is can we find the profound, life-transforming answer our souls long for.”
This week, we look at the Introduction. Here are a few quotes from this section that I found helpful:
- The supreme question that each of us asks ourselves time and time again: What is wrong with the world? What is wrong with the human race?
- We will never be able to resolve our personal problems, let alone the rest of the world’s problems, unless we possess a full comprehension of sin.
- Each chapter in the book illuminates a specific aspect of sin and explores how we might be saved from it.
- There are two reasons why it is not just important but all-important that you understand sin. The first reason is that the biblical teaching about sin is one of the strongest arguments for the truth of Christianity. The second reason is that it equips you to best handle life as it is.
- Without a full understanding of sin, you won’t have the grounds for the optimism necessary to remain hopeful in the midst of life’s harsh realities.
- If you don’t understand sin, you’ll be neither pessimistic enough nor optimistic enough to deal with life.
