Book: Passion by Mike McKinley

Today’s book is brought to you by Cross Focused Media.

The book this week is Passion: How Christ’s Final Day Changes Your Every Day. It’s by Mike McKinley, pastor of Guilford Baptist Church in Virginia. As a pastor who wishes he could write a book, I’m marginally jealous of Pastor McKinley, but I’ll try not to be too picky in my review.

Passion is focused on Luke’s account of the last days of Jesus’ life, going from the Last Supper through the Resurrection. I will not give you all the details of that. Grab your Bible or kick over to BibleGateway and read Luke 22. Do that and come back.

McKinley has taken a sermon series and converted it into book form. This is the first strength of the text. Passion reflects not a cold academic parsing the nth degree of the Greek verb, though there is value in that, but instead the concern of a pastor who stands before a congregation every week.

The pastoral influence in Passion runs throughout the book. McKinley is concerned with the implications of the final day of Jesus for our life as Christians today. It is easily readable on the vocabulary and grammar front, though it can be challenging on the spiritual side.

Further, the text is short enough to be read through devotionally on a daily basis. No, not the whole book, but a section at a time.

If I had to find a fault, it would be the focus on Luke without spending much time on the parallel accounts in other Gospels. This is, honestly, a by-product of being a sermon-in-print, and it really does not harm the content of Passion.

In all, I liked this book. If you are looking for a good Passion Week study, grab a few copies and discuss this book.

Disclosure: book provided by Cross Focused Media in exchange for the review.