Book review: Sacraments and Discipleship

Information about the book

Sacraments & Discipleship: Understanding Baptism and the Lord's Supper in a United Methodist Context by Mark W. Stamm. Published by OSL Publications, 2001.  The book can be purchased from Amazon or Cokesbury (and probably other places).

Summary

From Amazon: The primary task of the Christian life is to respond to God’s gracious initiative by loving God and our neighbor, that is, the people God puts in our path. The sacraments help us do that. They hold up a vision of new life, and they make that life possible. This book discusses how such sacramental grace comes to us and how we might open ourselves to it in a more complete way. It emphasizes the work of God’s grace, yet insists that there is a human side of the covenant, the work of receiving grace. Dr. Stamm helps us discover once again that to talk about the sacraments is to talk about the entirety of human life and Christian discipleship.

Impressions

I have such mixed feelings about this book. I picked it because I wanted to enhance my understanding of the sacraments as I lead the Conference CLM class. I always bring in elders (actually, the Bishop, if she is available) to talk to the class about the Sacraments, but I wanted to grow my own understanding, too.

At first, I really liked the book, but the more I read, the less I liked it, so that after the first couple of chapters, I DNFed (marked the book "did not finish").  A couple of months later, I picked it up again and did complete it.

There are enlightening portions of this book, but there are also portions that felt - I don't even know how to explain my experience of reading it. Parts felt less than grace-filled and legalistic.

I'm not sure if I would recommend it or not.