Book Review - God's Story: A Student's Guide to Church History (22/7)

Who likes history? Honestly, I think not many will thrilled at this particular topic. However, Brain Cosby has attempted to make church history something interesting to the kids/youths with this book.



First Cosby defends the need for us to know our history well, the common adage ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ has proven to be true numerous time. But christians has an even more important reason to know our history well. We each come from a particular denomination and they have existed for a particular reason, it would be wise for us to know why. Secondly, history is really His-Story. When we know about our history we can rejoice what God has done, and trust in what he will do in the future.

Cosby then explains and teaching church history chronological, starting from the very first church! Those that are started in the apostolic times and working across the centuries and millennium, Cosby brings out the ‘big players’ during the particular eras. No particular person was given extra attention, though John Calvin did received slightly more attention.

What Cosby did excellently in this book is how he approach the topic on ‘Crusades’, this is a dark history in the church’s history but Cosby does not sweep things under the rag, he slowly tease out the issue, and explains how christians can answer those who questioned the atrocities committed by the church.

Cosby did give more content in this book to the reformation and those reformation era, which was covered in greater depth than the eras before that.

This is a relatively easy book to read too, it can easily be finished in a few sitting, however since it is published by CF4kids, I do question at what age is it especially pitch at? I feel that kids that are younger (12 and below) would most likely not read this book, and unless for teens who are deeply interested in this topics, the rest might not be engaged enough in this book to read it through. However, this remains to be a good primer for those who wants a quick, brief, succinct introduction to church history (even for adults!). You might be surprised at how much you’ll actually learn from this thin book. [Update: It's meant for teens 14-16!]

One tiny complain for this book, a little too much self-promotion of the previous books the author has written (no I don't dislike the author!). But maybe also include references to other books by other authors too.

Rating: 3.75/5

If you're interested, you can get this book here, and here (free international shipping), Kindle.

Disclaimer: I was given this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Here's the book trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1mCUEAQlf8