EQUIPPED TO SERVE
By Richard Bewes
Christian Focus. 224 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 781 912 867
Equipped to Serve is a gift to the church. It is a very readable, practical and deeply Christ-centred book, the fruit of a lifetime of serving our Saviour.
It is the sort of book that can be read in just a few sittings, but has a message that will take a lifetime to exhaust. At its heart is a conviction that every Christian is involved in Christian work (‘anyone who gets to a prayer meeting is a Christian worker’ – p.13) and that, as a result, every Christian needs to be suitably equipped: a goal which this book more than meets – it really does do what it says on the cover!
The book is immensely practical and covers a lot of ground that is often simply assumed in churches. Chapters on how to share your testimony, read the Bible in public and leading in public prayer are extremely helpful – both as a guide for those who are going to do these things for the first time and as a reminder to those who have asked them to do it. These are areas of service that need guidance and teaching as much as preaching or leading a Bible study.
One particular chapter that stood out as I read this book is on the prayer meeting as the church’s secret weapon That chapter alone is worth the price of the book. It is perhaps the most succinct and helpful chapter I have read on the importance of prayer in the life of the church. In days when prayer meeting attendance is generally in decline, this chapter is a helpful reminder of the central place that such a meeting ought to have in the church’s weekly diary.
The message of this book is a timely reminder for all Christians, whether out in front or behind the scenes, that we are all involved in the glorious task of the service of our Saviour, a task we for which need to be fully equipped.
