This book is book four in the "Walking with God" series of group studies. The series focuses on what the Bible has to say about friendship with God, and its implications in your life and your world. Rather than studying the Bible for itself, the series uses the Bible to help small groups and their members study themselves and their relationships with God. The series is non-denominational, and we have used it in a Roman Catholic setting.

This book addresses the Biblical concepts of church. As in the other books of the series, the emphasis is on Christ, what it means to live as a Christian. Old and New Testament alike are used to explore and expand concepts of church, service, the role of individual believers, and as part of the body of Christ. The book is change and action oriented rather than intellectual or simply insprational.

Readings, questions, a few exercises, and memory verses form the elements of each of the 12 studies or chapters. Each could be covered in a single evening, although our group frequently finds it profitable to extend a study over two or more evenings.

The accompanying leader's guide (number two, ISBN 0-310-59213-5) covers this and books five and six of the series. The study guide not only amplifies each study, but contains very practical useful information on small group studies.

This is very rich material and desrves serious consideration by groups seeking to change thier lives, moving deeper into the real meaning of the Christian life.

I read "Bird-Self Accumulated" nearly 7 years ago and proclaimed it brilliant. When will we see another work like this from Judson? To the author: please don't let this be a one-hit-wonder. Please, please....more!!

Judson's minimalist poetic prose leads the reader to a sucking black sinkhole in which we find our common selves exposed. His characters repulse, yet we recognize ourselves in them. A brilliant read. What's next from this author?

Only Dostoyevski on his bad days approaches the profound despair that illuminates this book. It asks fundamental human questions, and the answers are always those of nihilism. Yet the characters of the book flame with life, are real and hungry and lusting. They are "workers in the realm of death"just as are the soldiers in Ernst Junger's STORM OF STEEL, the great novel of WW I. But these are just hoods, punks, scum. Though they live, breathe, and want as do the rest of us. The moments pass by like heavy, leaden sentries that guard a secret no one wants to know. But Judson draws us ever nearer the secret in a brilliant, lyric prose that would seem to be totally alien to such a world, yet expresses it perfectly. Hell is a poem. And the wretched, deranged, violent, and angry, are the poets. There are very few books like this in American literature, and it really does take genius to create such a book. We are such stuff as nightmares are made of, and we know it.

Don Robbins¹ no-holds-barred description of the route from SELF-centeredness to genuine fulfillment grows out of his personal spiritual journey. He opens the Scriptures that enlightened and liberated him to convince his readers that what happened to him can happen to us. He leaves no doubt that, in Christ, the cycle of defeat can and will be broken. Dr. LeRoy Lawson, Senior Minister, Central Christian Church, Mesa, Arizona.