I had the great pleasure last week of meeting Rev Danny Hyde, pastor of Oceanside URC in California (a pleasure enhanced by his introducing me to Flanagan's in Grand Rapids).  Danny is pastor, so he told me, to a whole collection of surfer dude types whom he has introduced to the treasures of the Christian faith, and Dr. Scott Clark, for whom he takes no responsibility whatsoever.   He's also the author of a number of books aimed at educating Christians in the historic essentials.  Of particular interest is his most recent book, With heart and Mouth: An Exposition the Belgic Confession (Reformed Fellowship Inc.).  Along with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dordt, the BC is one of the Three Forms of Unity, the confessional basis of those Reformed churches which look to the Netherlands and Germany for their points of origin.  Danny's book is the first extensive but popular commentary in English on the BC of which I am aware and would make a superb text for any Sunday School class that might be offered.  As usual, the theology is robust and relevant beyond the day before yesterday -- so soul patched girlymen should look elsewhere for materials (I believe Hannah Montana has just put out a work on the Apostles' Creed which may be more helpful to that constituency, available from the Starbucks Foundation).

Here's Danny on `Jesus loves you' bumper stickers, showing how classic Reformed theological formulations undercut some of the sentimental rubbish that passes for theology today: `Although Reformed believers shake their heads at these American evangelical mantras, their existence should come as no surprise.  In the American church's rush to be relevant, it has merely adapted the philosophies and modes of expression of the culture around it.  Our culture is one of therapy, rehabilitation, and positive thinking.  God no longer can be preached as judge but as a father, and salvation can no ,onger be communicated in judicial terms of justification but in the familial sense of adoption....[But] because God is simple, he is a God of love and justice, grace and righteousness, mercy and wrath, and he communicates himself in the categories of the coutroom and the family room.' (pp. 262-63).

Danny's book is available at http://www.heritagebooks.org/bookstore/catalog/product_info.php?products...