What Color Is Your Library? [Revisited]
As you know (hopefully), when we are choosing books for our resource shelves, we try to provide diversity in our selections. In other words, we don’t just want to have books authored by white men. We make an effort to have books written by women and people of color, because we believe that different life experiences provide valuable perspectives. We want New City to be a diverse church, because God’s kingdom is diverse.
For Black History Month, we will have these three books on our resource shelves. Check out their descriptions below and be sure to pick one up in February!
The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors
By Thabiti Anyabwile
The cliché is that those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. But Thabiti Anyabwile contends that it is not the mistakes we must study; it is the people who have overcome them. So he presents three of the most influential African-American pastors in American history who can teach us what faithful ministry entails.
Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833) reminds pastors that eternity must shape our ministry. Daniel A. Payne (1811-1893) stresses the importance of character and preparation to faithful shepherding. And Francis J. Grimké (1850-1937) provides a vision for engaging the world with the gospel. While they are from the African-American tradition, they, like all true saints, belong to all Christians of every background and era. Distinctive for its use of rare and out-of-print messages, Anaybwile's work is valuable as a reference as well as a devotional resource.
United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity
By Trillia Newbell
On the Last Day every tongue and tribe will be represented in the glorious chorus praising God with one voice. Yet today our churches remain segregated. Can we reflect the beauty of the last day this day?
United will inspire, challenge, and encourage readers to pursue the joys of diversity through stories of the author's own journey and a theology of diversity lived out.
It’s time to capture a glimpse of God’s magnificent creativity. In the pages of United, Trillia Newbell reveals the deeply moving, transforming power of knowing—really knowing—someone who is equal yet unique. As we learn to identify in Christ rather than in our commonalities, we begin to experience the depth and power of gospel unity.
Black & Reformed: Seeing God’s Sovereignty in the African-American Christian Experience
By Anthony Carter
African Americans have a rich and compelling Christian heritage, one that stretches back to foundational figures such as the church fathers Augustine and Tertullian. Yet white Christians often expect their black brothers and sisters to embrace a Eurocentric theology that marginalizes their own experiences and traditions.
In this book, Anthony Carter draws both black and Reformed theology together, showing how Reformed theology's biblical stance addresses African-American experiences such as the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade and oppression by so-called Christians. Carter also explores a few of the ways that an explicitly black theology can enhance our understanding of God and his Word, no matter our ethnicity.