I took some time off this past week to try to catch my breath in between a high school graduation, a college graduation a wedding in three weeks and the celebration of my half-a-hundred birthday. I had pre-ordered a book I saw at a conference in April. It is the book entitled Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word. It is written about one of my heroes by one of my mentors. Let me explain. Since 1989 I have been reading stuff about the work of God in the soul of man to save him. I have sought to understand what others have written about regeneration and conversion. The trail has inevitably led to books about Jonathan Edwards. Everyone trying to understand the salvation of the soul inevitably is led to Edwards' writings. He mediated an outpouring of the work of God in New England in the early to mid 1700s. Historians look back on this period and call it the "Great Awakening". I have found no one with more provoking things to say about God's work bringing men to himself. He wrote a lot. I am still trying to recover from what I have read. The Yale edition of his Awakening Writings and his Religious Affection are two of the most influential things I have ever read. Sometimes reading things out of our time period can give one a fresh insight into our time. I have found that true in Edwards.

When I finished my DMin degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois I had to connect with a faculty member to mentor me through research and analysis on a final project. The program director had told me about Doug Sweeney. Doug had come to the history department at Trinity to work next to a brilliant colleague in John Woodbridge. Doug had been for several years a part of the Jonathan Edwards Works project at Yale University. Their office is in the Divinity School at Yale. After his PhD work at Vanderbilt he took up this station for a few years and joined a small cadre of scholars who were laboring to thoughtfully publish and edit the works of Jonathan Edwards. He wrote so much and the work was carried on at such a level that the project lasted for over forty years of publishing. Doug is brilliant. But what I most appreciate about him is that he is a humble Christ-follower deeply committed to ministry. But that was Edwards, so what should we expect?

Inter Varsity press just published Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word. The subtitle is "A Model of Faith and Thought". The book includes a well written narrative of his life that is quite readable. It is very well written and reads like a good story. Doug is a good writer. He may have got that naturally from his father who used to edit books for Moody Press. He worked with Joe Stowell in his first book on taming the tongue, (if I have my story right) from a group of messages that he originally worked up in some embryonic form while pasturing at Southgate.

The book's footnotes are a treasure trove of invaluable bibliographic insight into the life, thought and ministry of Jonathan Edwards. As the title says, the book traces Edwards' commitment to the ministry of the Word for his days. It was a characteristic that defined him. Edwards loved the Word and ministered with a Biblically saturated vision of life and thought. Edwards is a wonderful model of a pastor-theologian. He loved Christ and sought him passionately. He loved the Lord with his entire mind and worked hard to equip his mind to think well and live accordingly. He is a great model of not spinning out in one side or the other. His was a ministry pregnant with both mind and heart. I found the book a great encouragement to read and a provoking challenge to stay at a ministry defined by and saturated in the speech of God. The book is very attractive and a really good readable introduction to his life and thought, Edwards, America's greatest theologian. Watch for Sweeney's stuff, it is worth your while.