BOOKS
Intimate Fulfillment
Intimate & Unashamed
By Scott Farhart, M.D.
Siloam Press
224 pages; paperback; $13.99
Reviewed by Pamela Robinson
Scott Farhart, M.D., author of Intimate & Unashamed, informs his work with medical expertise gained from 14 years in private practice as an obstetrics and gynecology specialist and delivers his advice with spiritual maturity gained as an elder at Cornerstone Church under John Hagee's leadership.
Bible references, medical facts and composite case presentations form the 18 chapters of this book. The reader will discover timeless truth about God's design for sexual fulfillment. In Chapter 1, you are told it's OK to ask questions. From there on, Farhart somehow manages to discuss candidly and gracefully everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask about sexuality.
He celebrates the marriage bed, the place God has ordained for men and women to fulfill their sexual desires. From that foundation, Farhart builds his discussion of premarital abstinence, birth control, marital sex, marital sin, abortion, and sex for aging men and women. He also provides illuminating chapters on sexually transmitted diseases, the AIDS epidemic and the three kinds of love.
Every Christian--from teens to seniors--should read this book. Anyone who has already practiced sex outside of marriage also needs this book. Farhart teaches us how to redeem our sexuality, how to sanctify it and make it holy, through the God-ordained physical union of becoming one with our marriage partner. Married or unmarried, saint or sinner will learn through biblical teaching what it truly means to be intimate and unashamed.
Unconditional Worship
The Secret Place of Joy
By Lindell Cooley
Regal Books
150 pages, softcover, $10.99
Reviewed by Margaret Feinberg
As music minister at the Brownsville Assembly of God church in Pensacola, Florida, Lindell Cooley has ridden the wave of revival for nearly a decade. In his book The Secret Place of Joy, Cooley challenges readers to move from simply being a spectator of worship to a daily worshiper. In a conversational tone, he discusses the importance of forgiveness, the role of the maturation process, and the need for intimacy with God.
Cooley explains that worship is about loving God without condition or qualification. When we become the worshiper God longs for, then we will enter the secret place of joy. The book is extremely easy to read, and Cooley's down-to earth approach to spiritual topics is refreshing. If you wan to have a greater sense of joy in your worship, then read this book.
RESOURCES
High-Tech Helps
Worship Leader Assistants
By Integrity Music
Reviewed by Marsha Gallardo
Songbooks will soon be a thing of the past. Digital songbooks are much more efficient. Integrity Music calls them Worship Leader Assistants, and they are now companions to all the new Hosanna! Music releases.
Like regular songbooks, digital songbooks give you printable sheet music and chord charts, but instead of going to the copier, you pop a CD-ROM in your computer and, picking songs you liked off the music CD, print out what you need for your worship team.
The CDs can be side by side, the songbook right next to the music, and no need to file copies when it's always digitally available. The most efficient feature on the Worship Leader Assistants is the lyric text files. In seconds you can cut and paste the lyrics for a song sheet, the bulletin or a PowerPoint slide.
Assistants are available for the fresh releases of You Shine, featuring Brian Doerksen; Live From Dublin: Mercy, with Eoghan Heaslip; a compilation of popular songwriters on Hope of the Nations; and Travis Cottrell's songs on Unashamed Love.
ScreenVue Video Clips
Reviewed by Matt Green
Although many pastors incorporate video clips in their sermons, until now there has been no easy way to find, organize and display these clips, apart from the laborious task of recording them from their original sources or keeping a quick finger on the pause button.
ScreenVue offers DVDs with clips organized by categories and Scripture reference. Each disc contains approximately 40 clips, descriptions of each clip and a short tutorial to lead the new user through the process of using ScreenVue.
ScreenVue includes clips from both Christian and mainstream films, including Shadowlands, The Omega Code, China Cry and The Cross and the Switchblade, and the developers of the product anticipate gaining access to a wider selection of well-known films as interest in ScreenVue expands.
A subscription to ScreenVue costs $119 per year, plus $15 shipping and handling, and includes a total of 200 clips.
In order to legally show the clips to an audience, churches must purchase a license from Christian Video Licensing International (CVLI), which sells viewing rights based on the size of the audience. Access to all the producers CVLI works with costs as little as $180 for a church of fewer than 100 to $600 for churches of 3,000 or more.
A license from CVLI is not limited to the clips found on the ScreenVue DVD, and allows a church to show both clips and full-length films from producers such as Artisan Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures and Warner Brothers.
Users will find the ScreenVue DVD menus easy to navigate and will be impressed by the quality of the sound and video transfer. Although the selection of films from which clips are taken is currently rather sparse, ScreenVue is clearly an idea whose time has come.
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