The Church- Conduit of the Power of God

Hezekiah Harvey was a prominent Baptist preacher, teacher and author in the 19th century. His comments here on the importance of the church are strikingly relevant today.

“The gospel becomes a permanent and aggressive power on earth only through the church, the divinely constituted organization, to which God has committed it, and through which it is appointed to act on men. The pietism which, in the professed interest of spiritual religion, undervalues the outward institutions of the gospel, finds no sanction in Scripture; on the contrary, the church, with its heaven-given ministry and ordinances, there stands in the foreground as God’s agency for the conservation of his truth and the conversion of the world.”

--H.H. Harvey, Timothy to Peter, An American Commentary on the New Testament (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1890), 129.
Several of Harvey's books can be found online here.

Africa Bible Commentary Series

Just this week I received an advanced copy of the inaugural volume of the Africa Bible Commentary series, and this volume is on the Pastoral Epistles! I have not had time to read much of it yet, but I wanted to go ahead and mention this volume to others.

The series grew out of work on the one volume Africa Bible Commentary. The introduction for the series states:

The contributors are Anglophone or Francophone African scholars, all of whom adhere to the statement of faith of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa.

The series is aimed at pastors and sermon preparation with more technical issues handled in footnotes. It is also self-consciously aimed at the African context- illustrations are drawn from life there and the current concerns of churches in Africa are addressed. Study questions at the end of each section raise specific issue current in African churches. One of the key aims of the series is then to be more directly accessible by African readers. Of course, for those of us in North America or Europe, it offers us the opportunity to hear from the church in Africa, to see how they are wrestling with the scripture in their context. I am particularly interested to read how the issues discussed in the Pastorals are being dealt with by my African brothers and sisters. This looks like a promising series.