Missio Alliance Essential Reading List

Hearts Minds Bookstore's Best Books

RELEVANT's Top 10 Books

Englewood Review of Books Best Books

When Soong-Chan Rah planted an urban church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his first full sermon series was a six-week exposition of the book of Lamentations. Preaching on an obscure, depressing Old Testament book was probably not the most seeker-sensitive way to launch a church. But it shaped their community witha radically countercultural perspective.

The American church avoids lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challengesthe status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices.

Soong-Chan Rah's prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church's relationship with a suffering world. Itcritiques our success-centered triumphalism and calls us to repent of our hubris. And it opens up new ways to encounter the other. Hear the prophet's lament as the necessary corrective for Christianity's future.

A Resonate exposition of the book of Lamentations.



Brenda Salter McNeil is a dynamic speaker, an author, and a trailblazer with over thirty years of experience in the ministry of racial, ethnic, and gender reconciliation. She is an associate professor of reconciliation studies in the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University and is also the author of Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0 and A Credible Witness.







Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah (ThM, Harvard; DMin, Gordon-Conwell; ThD, Duke) is Robert B. Munger Professor of Evangelism and Church Renewal at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books including The Next Evangelicalism, Many Colors, and Prophetic Lament, and he is the co-author of Unsettling Truths. Rah has extensive experience in cross-cultural preaching and has been a main stage speaker at the Urbana Student Missions Conference, the Congress on Urban Ministry, the Urban Youth Workers Institute Conference, the CCDA National Conference, the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary National Preaching Conference, the Fuller Missiology Conference, the Justice Conference, and Verge, Catalyst, and Calvin Worship Conferences.



Foreword by Brenda Salter McNeil

Series Introduction

The Resonate Editorial Team

Introduction: A Call to Lament



Lamentations 1

1. The Reality of Suffering:The Historical Context of Lamentations

2. The Funeral Dirge: The Genre of Lament

3. Silenced Voices of Shame: Lamentations 1:1-22



Lamentations 2

4. God Is Faithful: Lamentations 2:1-8

5. Lament Over a City: Lamentations 2:1-9

6. Privilegeand Exceptionalism: Lamentations 2:6-9

7.All of the Voices Are Heard: Lamentations 2:10-22



Lamentations 3

8. A Structure for Lament: The Use of the Acrostic in Lamentations

9. All of It Is Personal: Lamentations 3

10. A Glimmer of Hope: Lamentations 3:21-60



Lamentations 4

11. Persisting in Lament: A Recapitulation of Lamentations

12. A Broken World: Lamentations 4:3-16



Lamentations 5

13. A Lament for Themselves: Lamentations 5

14. Ending in a Minor Key



Conclusion

Epilogue: Ferguson

Acknowledgments

Notes