Reviewed by Martine Bates Fairbanks
Sam Storms. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2017. 264 pp. (Paperback).
I have debated whether to review this book. The entire time I have been reading it, I have had this doubt noodling around in the back of my mind. As you see, the doubt was dismissed and I am going for it.
The book is pretty hardcore when it comes to what are often referred to as “sign” gifts. I have been interested in the debate between cessationists and continuationists since I read John Sherrill’s famous book, “They Speak with Other Tongues,” and even more so since Jack Deere’s “Surprised by the Power of the Spirit.” In a way, I was disappointed — the author wrote early in the book that his purpose was not to convince anyone “of the validity and operation of all spiritual gifts in the present day.” He directs his readers to his other books and a sermon series for that argument.
Instead, Storms wrote the book “for those … who are convinced from God’s Word that the Spirit is still operative in and through the charismata — but you don’t have a clue what to do next.”
Well … I was pretty clueless so I waded in. The book is just what the author promised — a “how to” guide for implementing, or maybe allowing the implementation of, the sign gifts in churches today. I read the book with a degree of reservation that diminished little as I read.
I think the problem is that, while Deere’s and Sherrill’s books were narratives of what they had observed and experienced, this book comes from another place entirely — a place of attempting to evaluate and manage the public display of gifts. Can that be done? Maybe — the apostle Paul did it to a degree. I’m not sure Storms has done it — or maybe I just need to read his earlier books and watch that sermon series.
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