In Church as It Is in Heaven Receives Award of Merit from Christianity Today
Christianity Today calls the book “a must-read for pastors and church leaders”
Today, Christianity Today announced the winners of their 2024 book awards. I was delighted and surprised to learn that my book with Jamaal Williams In Church as It Is in Heaven won the Award of Merit in the Church and Pastoral Leadership category.
Here’s what Josh Wredberg had to say in Christianity Today about our book:
It would be easy to dismiss In Church as It Is in Heaven as just another book on Christianity and race. But its charitable tone and wise counsel make it a must-read for pastors and church leaders. Many books on multiethnic ministry call for repentance, but few provide practical steps to restoration. Williams and Jones augment biblical instruction with personal stories of triumph and failure in a way that is convicting and encouraging. They have guided their own church toward embracing a multiethnic kingdom culture, and their experience provides a blueprint for other churches to follow.
According to the InterVarsity Press press release celebrating this award,
The Award of Merit recipient in the Church/Pastoral Leadership category, In Church as It Is in Heaven: Cultivating a Multiethnic Kingdom Culture by Jamaal E. Williams and Timothy Paul Jones, shows how multiethnic churches provide a unique apologetic for the gospel. Along the way, the authors tell the story of their own church—a majority-white congregation which is being transformed into a family that reflects the diversity of heaven. “This is as clear and compelling a book about the multiethnic church as I know of,” said [Ethan] McCarthy. “These guys bring not only real skill as writers, and a learned and compelling biblical basis for their model, but also a wealth of practical experience from their own church. This isn’t a bunch of nice-sounding ideas, or a ‘what if?’ kind of book. It’s coming out of the actual struggles and joys of working toward the multiethnic kingdom of God in our actual churches, with actual people.”
Another book honored in the awards was Baptist Political Theology, co-edited by Andrew T. Walker, one of my colleagues in the Department of Apologetics, Ethics, and Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Baptist Political Theology won top honors in the category Politics and Public Life. Samuel D. James, one of our students at Southern Seminary and author of one of the best newsletters here on Substack, also won a top award in Culture and the Arts for his book Digital Liturgies.
To see all the winners, click here: Christianity Today’s 2024 Book Awards.