Witmer's approach is imho innovative, engaging, accessible and realistic. I appreciate his introductory comments setting out the rationale and limitations of the project as well as the carefully considered (and didactically attractive) supporting pendulum diagrams. He is sensitive but clear, thoughtful, but concise.

My wife comes from the (ultra) Dutch-reformed wing of the church and is quite a critical type anyway, with an in-built bias against her upbringing. Nevertheless, her grasp of reformed doctrine and memory of the Psalms is nothing short of exemplary. However, this predisposition did evoke in her a pessimism about the subtitle- I'm sure in large part in over reaction (there's the pendulum again), but I'm happy to live with that because I understand how these types of pendula(?) work).

The church we go to (in general) tends to favour (cultural) innovation at the expense of belief, but things are clearly changing now that we have a new curate (trainee vicar) working in the senior leadership. One of his strengths is as an expositor (explainer) of the Bible, so this has been helping to raise the profile of balanced and sound Bible-teaching. This promotes good belief AS WELL AS healthy lifestyle: a balance that inescapably oozes out of every page of 'Don't Stop Believing'.

Unfortunately, I have not seen Wittmer's book in mainstream Christian bookshops in the UK yet. This does concern me a little. Perhaps it's considered too provocative for the UK market? That I do find that hard to believe. Stuffy doctrine? Not a bit of it. The gauntlet has been thrown down to all who for whatever reason find themselves acquiescing to the politically-correct brigade of our day.

If you get the idea I'm excited about this book, you'd be right.

If I don't win it, I'm going to go out and buy a copy, because what you've described in reviewing the book seems to be the struggles I'm working through inside my head at the moment.

I agree, it is a great subtitle and an important reminder. In fact, I don't know if we can really live like Jesus if we don't believe he is exactly who he says he is. He's not just another guru to take advice from. Faith and works…it just makes sense.

The sub-title of the book really grabs at my heart – "Why LIVING LIKE JESUS is not enough" – POWERful all by itself…I'll be pondering that statement alone for awhile.

I, for one, will be very excited to 'hear your heart', as you share a series of posts on this book!

Thanx again for sharing!!! Appreciate you letting me know.

Thinking through all of that played a small part in my choosing a name for this blog about 6 or 8 months ago. I call it ChurchETHOS because I want to help churches develop right practices and behaviors that are in sync with our orthodoxy. We often have stated beliefs and actual beliefs. The stated beliefs are what we say we believe and the actual beliefs are what we actually believe based on how we act.

You can read more about this on my post What is ChurchETHOS? but for now suffice it to say that ethos has to do with orthopraxy. Ethos simply means the habits and customs of a group or an individual. It's the word we get ethics from. It's "the way we live." Someone can believe they are following Christ but they might fellowship with believers once a month. That's divorcing orthodoxy from orthopraxy. But ethos, pathos, and logos were also terms that Aristotle used to describe the effectiveness of an orator or speaker. The speaker might bring about change in a hearer if he had enough of these qualities. Were his words believable (logos), was he believable (ethos), and did he really believe it (pathos). These three things had to do with his message, his reputation with the listeners, and his passion about the subject. ChurchETHOS takes all these thoughts together about ethos and that's what I try and write about, the reputation and the believability of the church, and also our own customs and ethos as we seek to practice our beliefs correctly to the glory of God.

As I mentioned to Eddie, Zondervan has agreed to post internationally so you will be in all 12 of the drawings Thanks for being a part of the conversation!