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As for Ockenga, parts of Surprising Work offer a straightforward biography, recounting his years as a student and a young pastor in Pennsylvania before his move to Park Street in 1936. Rosell includes a helpful account of Ockenga's influential vision for evangelicalism during the 1940s and '50s, especially in defining its tasks to reclaim the culture, renew the mind, and help build a worldwide movement.

The biographical account extends only so far as Ockenga's story intersects with the story of mid-century revivals. Rather abruptly, the book ends the detailed account of Ockenga's work around 1960, right when his influence was at its height. Readers will likely appreciate Rosell's decision to make the new evangelical movement of the 1950s the dominant story, rather than being led through a prolonged, anticlimactic account of the institutions Ockenga worked with in his later career.

Yet culminating the story with Ockenga's vision in 1960 has the downside of blurring connections with what has happened since. Even when the new evangelicalism was at its height, the picture of a core group of leaders speaking for evangelicalism—leaders who balanced revivalism with broadly Reformed theological orthodoxy and concern for cultural renewal—was something of an illusion.

This observation is perhaps easier to make in retrospect than it was for the leaders at the time.

For instance, in Rosell's portrait of the evangelical world from Ockenga's perspective, Oral Roberts, one of the most popular of mid-century revivalists, is not in view. Yet now it is clear that Pentecostalism was not a marginal movement that would eventually be brought under the wing of mainstream evangelicalism, but an immense force on its own.

Evangelicalism has always been a bewildering mix of traditions and emphases. While leaders like Ockenga and Graham were able to refashion and unite aspects of it and change its directions with innovative programs, there were far too many branches of evangelicalism both in America and throughout the world for just one vision to prevail. The nature of evangelicalism is to continue generating new energies and sub-movements.

Evangelicalism's great strength and great weakness is that it has no central headquarters, no overarching agency to guarantee quality control.

That freedom has allowed evangelicals to be the agents for countless "surprising works of God," often going beyond what the wisest centralized organizers could have anticipated. But the accompanying weakness is that such openness and ad hoc ministries make it susceptible to superficiality and occasional heresies of popular opinion. Such is the reason why evangelicals need history.

Even though Ockenga, Graham, and other mid-century evangelicals could not speak for or control the whole movement, they did provide insights into balancing substance with enthusiasm, a balance often needed in a movement that must be self-correcting.

Rosell writes with this teaching ministry in mind. If the gospel message is not to get lost in superficialities, he suggests, a movement must have thoughtful leaders such as Ockenga who remind popularizers to stay rooted in the wisdom of the past, even while remaining open to new leadings of the Spirit.

George M. Marsden, professor emeritus at Notre Dame and visiting professor of history at Harvard Divinity School, 2008-09

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The Surprising Work of God is available from ChristianBook.com and other book retailers. Baker Academic has more information on the book.

Rosell wrote a 1995 Christianity Today article about Billy Graham's model for handling conflicts and controversies and a Christian History cover story on Harold John Ockenga. The rest of that Christian History issue also examined Ockenga and his influence on early evangelicalism.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8