• Cloud of ash to cloud of witnesses
• The Commentary
  Healing the nation?
• Breadwinner challenge
  Coping when the traditional roles have to be reversed
• A pastoral approach to bereavement and miscarriage
• God's gangster
  From street gang member to Christian role model
• What's in a name?
  Barnabas as a role model
• Evangelicalism with a broad brush
  The editor's personal overview of where we are now
• Technology boulevard?
  An article linked to the Lausanne Global Conversation
• Cohabitation?
  New insights into current trends
• Monthly media and arts column
  The Burj Khalifa
• The Music Exchange
  P.A.: everyone needs a Rhodri
• Letter from America
  Western evangelicalism and 'postmodernism'
• Mark Ashton, 1948-2010
  Obituary
• Earle Ellis, 1926-2010
  Obituary
• 60 years of ministry to children
  CEF in Britain

other articles

• Cemetery Junction
• Robin Hood
• What wondrous love is this (CD)
• The Assassin's Song - Shelf life: Looking at secular books
• Gospel-centred life - Sixth of a series of extracts
• Love & War - Finding the marriage you've dreamed of
• Dominion over wildlife?
• The intercession of Christ
• The unquenchable flame - Introducing the Reformation
• Peacemakers - Building stability in a complex world
• Rediscovering Roy - Roy Joslin
• David Brainerd - A flame for God
• Darwin's racists
• The breeze of the centuries - Introducing great theologicans
• The word of God?
• The message of holiness
• A history of Christianity
• How to save a life - Becoming a Christian
• Filling up the afflictions of Christ

Overcomer

DAVID BRAINERD
A Flame for God
By Vance Christie
Christian Focus. 320 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978-1-84550-478-6

He was born in 1718, expelled from Yale in 1741, a life-long depressive, continually sick, and died from TB (at the home of the great Jonathan Edwards) in 1747.

Yet David Brainerd became one of the most influential missionaries since apostolic times, with William Carey, Henry Martyn, Jim Elliot and countless others helped and encouraged by him.

This very readable biography by Vance Christie does Brainerd justice. I particularly appreciated his treatment of Brainerd’s depression: Christie certainly does not see it as a sin but nor on the other hand does he see it as a virtue. The frequent melancholy of Brainerd’s journals is not a target to be aimed for. The poor man was sick, and his devotion to Christ and his self-sacrificial labours among indigenous Americans stand as a testimony to what God can do through weak and damaged people. And the story is not by any means all bleak; Brainerd certainly knew times of real closeness to God, and saw touches of revival in his ministry.

With that in mind, I warmly commend this biography to everyone; pastors producing a ‘reading list’ for their young people would do very well to include this as one of the key biographies.

Gary Benfold,
Moordown Baptist Church, Bournemouth