Turning Points

I will start this post on the most mundane and ubiquitous topic: the weather.  It's no longer Spring in Des Moines.  I hear the next two weeks we'll be lucky to get to a high of 40 degrees.  Neat.  At least March Madness is coming and will allow me to be super-content to be in-doors, watching the Madness.

Most of you know that we moved to downtown Des Moines February 1st and live a block and a half from a robust, new and clean public library.  I do not know how many titles I have checked out, but it is  assuredly over 15 and under 25.  My current reads range from Marilynn Robinson's first novel Housekeeping to a biography on Winston Churchill to the Baker History of the Church, Volume II: From Constantine to the Middle Ages.  Man, I love the library.  For a frugal bookworm, what could be better than significant amounts of free reading material?  I have yet to bring bedbugs home (I hope, knowing it is a possibility; see http://journalstar.com/news/local/nancy-hicks-dog-sniffs-out-bedbugs-in-one-city-library/article_eb6591b6-a54d-57b5-8f5a-d4a717410b65.html) and I have yet to develop a debilitating social disorder (I think.)

Today, I sadly have to turn in Turning Points by Mark Noll.  I finished it this morning, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning about the basics of Church History.  The book is a wide-ranging overview of Christian history, starting from the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD and ending with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and Lausanne Covenant (1975).  Noll focuses on 13 "turning points" in the history of the Church and provides enough detail to make the long history come alive.  He is a clear communicator who follows Christ himself, and I appreciate his scholarship and his heart in  sprinkling ancient and modern Christian hymns, prayers, and poetry throughout the chapters.  I am also indebted to my friend Eric for providing me with all the titles I could handle for pursuing my self-directed Church History "class."

I think so often Protestants only know a bit about the Reformation and the abuses of the Catholic Church which precipitated the "Protest" but have not considered how we got to Martin Luther and Billy Graham.  Noll's book would do much to remedy some of that information gap, in a way that, I contend, would only make a Christ-follower worship and marvel more and more at a Faithful King who has preserved a rag-tag bunch of messed-up followers for two millennia.  The 3rd edition of Turning Points just came out in 2012, so it is as up-to-date as possible.  And, hey, it may be found, bed-bug free, at your local library!