Book Review: Empowered for the Call

A Fair Trade Book

Title: Empowered for the Call

Author: Tim Bagwell

Author's web site: http://www.wolcc.net/

Publisher: McDougal

Date: 1998

ISBN: 1-884369-73-1

Length: 158 pages

Quote: “I realized that just as God was moving me personally into a new level of anointing and effectiveness, He wanted to do the same for my congregation.”

This book about spiritual vocation was endorsed by Oral Roberts, so you can expect it to take a very charismatic, very dogmatic, “we sense and know that God wills this to happen” approach that some Christians will endorse and others will dispute. This is the main thing you need to know about this book. It's reasonably well written; the position it takes is what you'll love or hate.

Bagwell explains how some individuals may receive a sense of vocation before they reach the level of maturation at which they can effectively carry out their vocations. Although sins people can simply stop committing might interfere with their vocations, it is the “relationship with God” that breaks the “bondage” to these sins; “It is only when your desire for holiness in your life is based on your relationship with the Lord and your desire to deepen that relationship that you will succeed.”

Christian books should be used with discernment; the more personal their teaching, the more discernment. Some people will find Empowered for the Call helpful. Others might feel the emphasis on “thou...shalt be turned into ANOTHER MAN” (isolated from the story in 1 Samuel 10) as just another brick in a wall of verbal abuse that separates them from the church in which they may have tried, or be trying, to form a “relationship with God.” If you buy this book, buy it for yourself, not for someone else.

Bagwell is alive and active, so Empowered for the Call is a Fair Trade Book: $5 per copy, $5 per package, out of which we will send $1 to Tim Bagwell or his church or any other charity of his choice. It's a small enough book that up to a dozen copies could fit into one package--that'd cost $65, of which Bagwell or his charity would get $12.) Payments may be sent to either address at the bottom of the screen.