TRANSFORMING MINISTRY
SOME RECOMMENDED BOOKS FOR LENT 2025

The Whole Easter Story

Author Jo Swinney
Publisher BRF £9.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9781800392694

Maybe you are looking for a book to study during Lent which offers an in-depth look at the relationship of God with His creation and His people; then at our response to God, our world and its inhabitants. If so, then this could be the very book for you! Jo Swinney moves us beyond a personal salvation within the Easter story, to an intense longing to preserve our planet and all its creatures. She has a passionate involvement with ‘A Rocha’ and its conservation programme, first in Portugal and now on six continents. She includes stories from ‘A Rocha’ in her book, along with forty Bible readings, reflections and prayers.

Jo has the ability to relate the profound truths of Easter in a fresh and readable way, sharing her own experiences and illustrating these with her pen-drawings of creatures and plants from around the world. There will be times you will smile, but also times of tearful regret as you soak up Jo’s poignant descriptions of the natural world, making it crucial to our Christian lives. This book comes at a critical time, propelling its readers to pray, to act and to discuss together how to make a difference. Included is a discussion guide for groups, extending over the six weeks of Lent. Here we have ‘The Whole Easter Story’; let’s embrace it and encourage others to do likewise, looking to the cross as it offers salvation to a struggling world and a needy people.

Reviewed by BETTY TAYLOR

Lent

Who do you say I am?

Author Joanne Grenfell & Adam Atkinson
Publisher Canterbury Press £13.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9781786225696

If a word were stressed in the title of this collection of fourteen ‘Lent and Easter Reflections for a Holy City’ as the subtitle defines it, it should be you. The authors share John’s Gospel’s conviction that Christ is a God of unconditional love: their meditations focus on the challenge of our response to that love, informed by the authors’ experience of living lives of faith in contemporary London. Each meditation on a section of John 12-21 consists of a sonnet and a prayer by Atkinson, a reflection by Grenfell and an intense illustration by Ali Mulroy. Shards of light in these images suggest a holiness already present in the city, and the extraordinary potential for its further transformation. Grenfell’s reflections confront topics like violence, abuse, racism and death, but also celebrate interfaith communities, liberation, transcendence and love. Some dwell more in the biblical text, others more in life experience; all are unflinchingly direct.

Atkinson’s sonnets are densely muscular, sometimes contorting syntax to fit the form, powerfully wrestling with the struggle of ‘what’s been a God-Almighty fight’ in Holy Week, whereas the prayers flow in lucid five-syllable poetic lines of often childlike appeals: ‘Dear Jesus, I ask, / Please listen to these / My supplications.’ The unadorned prose of the NRSV text of John chosen for the volume complements these prayers particularly well. The diversity of the elements of each meditation suggests the book’s capacity to appeal to readers of differing tastes, and this, together with its focus on communities, makes it a strong contender for group study during Holy Week and early Easter. Both individuals and groups, however, will be challenged by the title question and, the authors hope, inspired to voice their answer.

Reviewed by JOHN MOSS

Lent

Living to Please God

Author Lee Gatiss
Publisher IVP £10.99
Format pbk
ISBN 9781789745399

Subtitled ‘Life for a higher purpose and pleasure’, Lee Gatiss has written a book which is very thought provoking. How can our lives ‘put a smile on the face of God?’ By tackling the themes of God’s happiness, why please God, who pleases God, how we can rejoice in repentance, what delightful worship is, what is right or wrong about a life of pleasure and what might be the most treasured of gifts in the spiritual life, we have a series of thoughtful provoking chapters which could provide the basis for a Lent discussion group. Each chapter contains some stimulating questions which can help develop dialogue and reflection. There are many phrases in the text that stop you and make you think. Take this one – ‘True happiness is holiness.’ Many of us would not necessarily formulate a sentence like that, but Gatiss is right in drawing our attention to what life should be. The author is the leader of the Church Society and as an evangelical, he does draw upon Puritan thinking from authorities such as Thomas Manton. The book could benefit from some more up to date examples and quotations, as well as the wisdom of the ages that he gives us; but this is a thoughtful brief introduction to God’s holiness and how that should influence the way we live.

Reviewed by CAVAN WOOD

Lent