If you haven’t noticed, I love to read.  Reading is a great way to deepen my understanding of God, life, and ministry.  And I find it extremely relaxing and enjoyable, too.

In fact, this blog started a place to post book reviews, and that’s still a large part of what I do here.  The book review side of things is called The Randleman Review.  Over the last couple of years, I’ve read and reviewed dozens of books for several different publishers.  I even made a business card for the book review side of things.

I recently started following Tim Challies’ blog.  And I have to say, I find it extremely interesting.  There have been some excellent resources posted there in the few short weeks I’ve been reading.  I would recommend that you check it out.

One of the things he’s doing there is a book club, called Reading Classics Together.  Right now, he is reading Christianity And Liberalism, by J. Gresham Machen. And he’s invited anyone to read along, discussing it chapter by chapter on his blog.

Here’s what Tim has to say about the book:

This book has long been a classic defense of orthodox Christian faith against Liberalism. Published in 1923 at the height of the Liberal onslaught against orthodox faith, Machen establishes the traditional teaching of the church on Scripture, God, humanity, salvation, and ecclesiology, are not only defensible but preferable to those propounded by Liberals. It is important to keep in mind the Machen is not talking about modern political liberalism, but the religious liberalism many denominations and seminaries were accepting in the early 1900’s. Named one of the top 100 books of the 20th century by Christianity Today and WORLD, this work remains timely, relevant, and important.

It may be particularly relevant today as we see a resurgence of just the kind of denials that Machen battled in his day.

I’ve decided to jump in and read this book with Tim.  Chapter 1 was to be read by yesterday.  But I received it yesterday, so I’m a bit behind already.  That’s ok.  I’ll catch up this week.

I’m really looking forward to reading this with several other people.  Bouncing ideas off of other people really helps me grow and retain what I read.

Even though I have a lot of other things on my “to read” shelf, I think it’s important, at least for me, to take the time to read a chapter a week of this book.  Even though I feel overwhelmed sometimes with the amount of books I want/have to read, I think this one will be helpful.

I’ll let you know how it goes.  My plan is to post my thought on each chapter here as I read it.  If you want, grab a copy and join in!

Do you read the classics?  What is your favorite classic book?  Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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