Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries

This is a wonderful book. The breadth of coverage, accessibility of style, and the judicious use of sources reminds me of one of my favorite books: Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace.

Just finished Gerald Sittser's book Water from a deep well for my next D.Min. class. I have to admit, this is not a book that I would have sought out or even stumbled across in a bookstore, but it is a treasure. This is one of the most powerful books I have ever read, and that is saying a lot, since I've read a few. What Sittser does is something that every Christian needs, not just leaders, but everyone who claims to follow Jesus. He gives us a history lesson. So many of us have no idea about the history of Christianity, why at its heart it is a missionary religion, the passion of those who have gone before, the blood that was spilled for the movement of Jesus to be where it is. It is so rich, so powerful and gives us such passion and enables us to continue following after God to this day. It starts by looking at martyrs throughout church history. For many of us in the Western world, the idea of dying for your faith is remote, if not a non-thought. But, as "missiologist David B. Barrett estimates 160,000 Christians were martyred in the year 2000 alone. They died that year for the same basic reason they died in the year 155, when Polycarp was marytred, or in 202, when Perpetua was martyred. The early martyrs believed that if Jesus is Lord and the only Savior, then he accepts no rivals - no person or religion or ideology or empire. They affirmed that the Christian faith requires nothing less than a firm and joyful commitment to this conviction. Jesus came as God in human flesh to show the way to God and to be the way to God for us. This is the only Jesus there is. A lesser Jesus is not the real Jesus at all, at least not according to the testimony of the martyrs, from Stephen to the present." Here are a few things from the book I highlighted: The only way to understand something is to love it first, that is, to study it with sympathy, patience and appreciation. That we might not have to die for Christ is irrelevant. How we live for Christ is the real issue. It is easy to gawk but not learn, listen by not sympathize and thus trivialize what is sacred. These stories are not fanciful, fictional accounts that have been recorded and passed down for our entertainment. The martyrs were real people who did in fact die horribly. They had families and friends, hopes and longings, and they wanted to live a long, peaceful and prosperous life, just like us. They chose to accept death rather than renounce their faith because they believed something was more valuable than the long and happy life for which they longed. The early church lived by a different ethic, which impressed the very people who suffered the most as victims of Rome's immorality and injustice. The appeal of Christianity still lay in its radical sense of community: it absorbed people because the individual could drop from a wide impersonal world into a miniature community, whose demands and relations were explicit. To love all members alike, pastors have to love them all uniquely. St

I really enjoyed this book. It enlarged my perspective and really gave me an appreciation for the history of Christianity and an understanding of the root of many different movements in the church. I really like he author. He is one of my favorites!

I found this to be a good book that covered many different parts of Christian history. It was not dry and technical, but was very engaging and multiple times I found myself putting the book down to reflect what was being said. Also, since it gave such a warm summary, it spurned me on to use other resources to do a more indepth study of the topics that really interested me. It really help cultivate a passion to engage in my studies, not for the sake of rote, but to embrace and appreciate the different aspects of my Christian faith.

Jerry's ability to display his passion for the history of Christian Spirituality is second only to his desire for us to glean wisdom and practice in our spiritual lives through reflection on the saints. His representation, as a whole, of the history of Christian Spirituality is seamless. The written testimony of so many great saints and fathers of "the way" directs us towards the practical outcroppings of our faith in our daily walk with the Lord. History textbooks on this subject are needed and wonderful, but Jerry takes the history of the past and makes it the spiritual workings of the present; were we to lose the Christian foundations that we find in these martyrs and saints, we would be like a man who having climbed to the top of Mt. Everest could not remember his trek up the vast mountainside, but instead stood on the peak and asked his fellow climbers, "how did we get here?" Jerry's passionate display for history to shape and impede upon us is a refreshing walk in the land of Christian Spirituality. If your feet are weary from the journey, take off your shoes and dip them into this refreshingly crisp deep well that is sure to invigorate your soul.