FIRST STEPS
By Stephen Gaukroger
Scripture Union. 111 pages. £4.99
ISBN 1 84427 070 X
This is a book for new Christians which seeks to help them take their first steps in following Christ. It is written in a popular, very down-to-earth style that is easy to read. Its tone is appropriately warm and reassuring.
The topics covered are repentance and faith, church life, growing in godliness, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, prayer, evangelism and guidance. At the end of each chapter there are some discussion questions for a group to work through together.
The vast majority of the material is helpfully expressed and uncontroversial in content. It does exactly what it aims to do in giving new Christians a good grounding in the fundamentals of the Christian life. It anticipates likely questions, deals with very practical issues and makes no assumptions about the reader's background. All of this make it very useful and a model of its type.
The only hesitations I would have about using it are the following. First, new Christians need to grow in their understanding of the gospel as well as the Christian life - this book is very weighted to the latter and as a result I would want to add to what it covers. Second, while the group discussions contain some Bible verses to look at they are mainly based around the chapter rather than a Bible passage. While questions are very good I would have liked to see Bible passages given more prominence. In fact, that is true of the book as a whole. Third, there a few areas where more conservative readers may disagree, for example the position taken on 'be filled with the Spirit'. However, these areas are very few and quite mild in nature. I should stress that these are only hesitations to an otherwise very helpful book.
Graham Beynon,
Knighton Evangelical Church, Leicester
