I'm a Christian, aren't I?

Identity parade

I’M A CHRISTIAN, AREN’T I?
By Dan Clark
IVP. 144 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-419-0

This is a book every young Christian and anyone in a discipling relationship should read. It’s clear, funny, contemporary, and well argued but not dry, with its use of several real life stories in each chapter.

The book provides a logical step-by-step presentation of what it really means to be a Christian. The pieces of the jigsaw are presented as follows: a Christian must believe, belong, behave, be baptised and born again.

In ‘believing’, we need to know God personally through Jesus Christ. This goes way beyond just accepting the truth of Christianity. We need to trust God with our lives and know that without him we are lost. We need to repent and turn back to God in sorrow for our sins so that our relationship with God is restored and we can live as we were meant to live.

In the chapter on ‘belonging’, Dan Clark teaches us about what church is and holds out an exciting vision of church. He says that Christians who don’t play an active part in church miss out and endanger themselves.

The next piece of the jigsaw is ‘behaving’. In this section the common misconception, ‘God will forgive me. It’s his job’, is countered and great motivation and help for change of behaviour is given.

The chapter on baptism is well explained. Clark says: ‘.... baptism is .... the public ceremony that acknowledges a Christian’s new status, stemming from the inner change of heart involved in becoming a Christian’. Dan is a vicar in an Anglican church so he baptises infants too — but he only mentions that briefly.

The final piece of the jigsaw is that a Christian must be truly born again. It wasn’t fundamentalist American evangelists who coined this phrase, but Jesus himself. Dan explains how the second birth happens, the effect it has and how this part of the jigsaw fits in with all the others.

Those who read this book will be left in no doubt as to what a real Christian should look like according to the Bible. The alliterated chapters, great illustrations and real life stories make it really easy to read and very practical.

Chris Webb,
pastor, Send Evangelical Church, Surrey

© Evangelicals Now - September 2010
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Main Articles

• God set to use London?
• The Commentary
  Encouragement for the disappointed evangelist
• Housewarmings
  Tips on getting to know neighbours
• Roman Catholicism?
  An examination
• Lessons from 30 years
  As Wesley Aiken celebrates 30 years as pastor at Rochester Baptist Church, he reflects on what he has learned
• Growing a caring church
  An interview
• Turnaround churches need older ladies?
• Embracing resurrection life
  Colossians 3.12-17
• Monthly media and arts column
  Should we watch this?
• Monthly youth leaders column
  Gangland youth groups?
• The Music Exchange
  The lonesome piper?
• To change the world
  Letter from America
• Horror and 3D
  Two recent developments in film

Other articles

• Toy Story 3
• Inception
• John Henry Newman: becoming Rome's first ecumenical saint
• Francis Schaeffer: a mind and heart for God - Second of two extracts
• Rev - A BBC2 series
• Gospel-centred life - Ninth of a series of extracts
• Does the Bible really say that?
• Cherished - Boys, bodies and becoming a girl of gold
• Two Testaments, one Bible - The theological relationship between the Old and New Testaments
• English Standard Version Study Bible
• Works of William Tyndale (2 vols.)
• Personality and stress
• Pope Benedict XVI and the United Kingdom
• I'm a Christian, aren't I?
• Liberal education and the National Curriculum
• Facing grief
• Rest in God - A calamity in contemporary Christianity
• War child - Memories of a World War II childhood
• The radical disciple
• Preaching Christ from Ecclesiastes
• I wish someone would explain Hebrews to me!