SPIRIT EMPOWERED MISSION:
Aligning the Church’s Mission with the Mission
of Jesus
By Arturo G. Azurdia III
Christian Focus. 240 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 781 917 749
The author takes us in detail through the opening two chapters of Acts. What a great meal is set before us!
Starting slowly, I admit that the first couple of chapters took a bit of extra chewing where he describes churches which lose sight of their main mission. But as he got into the meat of the book, I began salivating. He handles the text thoroughly, evenly, brilliantly and practically. By so doing he thus faithfully reproduces the great emphases of the human, and the Divine, author. So here we find our Lord and Saviour exalted to the right hand of the Father, and sending the promised Holy Spirit. And here we see the Trinity ‘at work’ bringing to fruition in missional endeavour all that has been achieved by the sacrifice of the cross. Because he works from the biblical text, he doesn’t separate what it doesn’t; namely the work of the Son and the work of the Spirit, and the Spirit and his Word – as sometimes done in contemporary treatments of this subject.