Tag Archive - book

Three More Books

September 30, 2010 in Reviews with 1 Comment

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Because I posted my review of Free Book* yesterday, I was eligible to request another book from BookSneeze, Thomas Nelson’s book review program for bloggers. The setup is pretty simple: I request an available book, they send it (FREE), I read it and then post a review on my blog and a consumer purchase website (Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million or ChristianBook.com) and then I’m eligible to request and receive another book. Sometimes the selection is slim (in my opinion). But then there are times like last night…

So I logged into my account at BookSneeze, provided the links for my reviews and then clicked on “Available Books”. All I could say was WOW. It’s one thing when there’s only one book that looks interesting, but they had three!!! How do I choose from three that I’ve heard about for awhile now and want to read?

The first book listed was Andy Stanley’s latest, The Grace of God. If you’ve spent any time browsing through this site, you know I love Andy Stanley. He is definitely in my top three preachers I enjoy listening to, but I haven’t (regrettably) read too many of his books. So the chance to get one sent to me for free was definitely appealing. Not to mention the fact that I just recently bought three books and received three others as gifts around my birthday, so my budget for buying more books has pretty much been put on hold, at least until I finish reading the ones I already own.

The next book that caught my attention was Transforming Church in Rural America, by Shannon O’Dell. I’ve never heard of O’Dell, but the title is what caught my attention. If you’ve stepped foot into a Christian bookstore or the Christian section of a mainstream bookstore anytime over the past decade, you’ve probably seen dozens upon dozens of books aimed at “new” ways of doing church. Whether it’s resuscitating a dying church or transforming a traditional church or starting a missional church, if you are looking to “do church differently”, there’s a book for that. However, many of those books seem to have one thing in common: they’re all focused on churches in large metropolitan areas. Don’t get me wrong – I love guys like Mark Driscoll, Ed Stetzer, John Burke, etc. But the majority of books I’ve read on church transformation, church planting and church growth are centered around churches in large, sprawling metropolises. It’s the same argument I hear about many church conferences as well. And I get why guys like Mark Driscoll, Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel are mainstays at many church conferences – they’ve been there and done that. Buckhead Church (Atlanta, GA) likes to use a certain statistic to create a sense of urgency amongst their members when it comes to sharing the Gospel: there are approximately 300,000 unchurched people that live within a 10 mile radius of Buckhead Church. That gets me excited, and I don’t even live there. But here’s the thing – I don’t live in a metro area. I live in West Monroe, LA, which is located in Ouachita Parish. According to the U.S. census website, the 2009 population estimate for Ouachita Parish is 151,502 people. If you break it down by city, the two major cities are West Monroe and Monroe, with 2009 population estimates of 12,910 and 51,640, respectively. My point is not that there isn’t a mission field in Ouachita Parish – quite the contrary, I know there are many young, unchurched seekers in their 20′s and 30′s, who have been both completely turned off by the church and, in large part, neglected by the church. I know this because I see them every day I’m at work, hang out with them in my spare time and, to be quite honest, have more in common with them than with the Church in Ouachita Parish, seeing as how I’ve yet to find a local church home since moving back to Louisiana two years ago. My point is, there are so many people in a metro area that reaching people is not the problem. When I lived in Atlanta, I remember my pastor, Brent, telling us, “Getting people into church won’t be a problem. Keeping the church on mission will be the problem.” And he was right. We had no problem attracting people to our church plant (which is about to celebrate it’s second birthday this weekend!!), but for every unchurched person that came out, there seemed to be a disgruntled Christian who had just left their church, and it’s people like that who hijack the mission of the church. Being in a smaller environment is one of the reasons O’Dell’s book intrigues me. Many of the unchurched people I encounter have a history with the Church and Christianity. And for most of them, it’s not a good history. As Dan Kimball would say, “they like Jesus, but not the Church”. Yet I believe the local church, in one form or another, is part of God’s plan for redeeming communities and bringing people to Christ. Whether it’s a traditional church that meets in a building on Sunday mornings or a home Bible study that meets on a Thursday night, it’s church. So Transforming Church in Rural America intrigues me because not everyone is called to move to a big city to start a church from the ground up. Some are called to start churches in smaller towns and cities, while others are called to work in existing churches and be used of God to transform those churches and get them back on mission.

The third book that caught my attention was The Gospel According to Jesus, by Chris Seay. I’ve always heard good things about Chris Seay and the church he pastors, Ecclesia Houston, and the synopsis by BookSneeze sounded rather interesting as well.

True Christianity is about restoring what is broken.

Surveys indicate that 84 percent of Christians have a misunderstanding of the true meaning of the word righteousness. Referring to God’s restoration of our sinfulness and not personal piety or some code of moral purity, pastor Chris Seay offers that Jesus came to breathe life and light into the depths of all darkness.

This gospel that lives according to the ways of Christ is the true Christianity. It gives us a new way to see the world and brings God’s restoration to marriages, to the sick and diseased, even to the environment, and he offers a deeply personal spiritual transformation for all followers of Christ.

Whether it’s building a park bench at a bus stop or bringing groceries to the sick, the gospel of Jesus restores the heart, the mind, and the body.

So I finally decided to go for Andy Stanley’s book, The Grace of God. But when I clicked on the request button, I was greeted with a message which said, “This book will not count toward your total of one book request allowed at a time.”

SWEET!!!

The catch? I have to post my review of the book on October 19. Not before, not after, but on October 19.

I then moved on to Shannon O’Dell’s book, Transforming Church in Rural America. Shockingly, I got the same message, except the review date is October 11. That may cut my time to read somewhat short, depending upon how long it takes them to get the book to me.

So I then clicked on Chris Seay’s book, The Gospel According to Jesus, and thankfully, no due date on it. So sometime within the next 2-9 days I should be receiving these three books, which means throughout the month of October you’ll be getting three more book reviews.

Free Book* – Review

September 29, 2010 in Jesus, Religion, Reviews with 0 Comments

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Several months ago I received a copy of Brian Tome’s book Free Book* to review. I must say, I’m torn.

Brian’s writing style is very conversational and easy to understand, yet, it’s taken me months to read a book that should have finished in a few sittings. I don’t believe it has anything to do with Brian Tome or his style of writing – instead, the content itself is the problem. You see, the more I read, the more I realize that I’m already experiencing the freedom found in Christ. I don’t need a book to tell me to do what I’m already doing.

But then, maybe I do. Maybe Free Book* serves as a confirmation that I’m on the right track, not living in bondage to sin or religion or a mindset or an attitude or anything else.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve always found it difficult to read when being “forced” to read. Not that anyone has a gun to my head, but being asked to read and then review a book is different than browsing through a store and picking something out that looks interesting.

As for the book itself, it is a good book, especially for those who are seeking God, whether they’re unchurched and skeptics or grew up in church and are in bondage to religion. It would also be a good read for anyone who has friends that are seeking, as it will help you answer some of the questions they may be asking. Like I wrote earlier, Brian’s writing is very conversational, which makes for a quick read (under normal circumstances). You feel as if you’re reading a letter he wrote specifically to you, which is a good thing. He’s able to take rather complex Biblical ideas such as the trinity, demons, spiritual strongholds, the Holy Spirit, etc. and explain them in a very easy to understand way, without dumbing things down.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I am a member of Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Bloggers program BookSneeze, and as such, was provided with a free copy of the aforementioned book in exchange for reviewing it on this website. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Books Are My Heroin

September 9, 2010 in Religion with 2 Comments

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So I was browsing through Lifeway this afternoon and almost dropped a nice bit of coin in there. Unlike Books-A-Million, Lifeway usually has what I’m looking for (and am not in the mood to wait for Amazon to ship), and often they’ve got several books I didn’t know about but end up wanting to read after skimming through. I ended up ordering John Owen’s Mortification of Sin, but here’s a list of others I found that I now want to read:

Zondervan Counterpoints (there’s others in the series, but these stuck out to me)

  • Who Runs the Church?: 4 Views on Church Government
  • Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond
  • Three Views on the Rapture: Pretribulation, Prewrath, or Posttribulation
  • Remarriage after Divorce in Today’s Church: 3 Views

B&H Perspectives (again, there’s others but these are the ones that stuck out to me)

  • Perspectives on Church Government: Five Views of Church Polity
  • Perspectives on Election

Sadly, I’ve already got so many books to get through I don’t know when I’ll find the time to tackle those listed above. I just got Church Planter by Darrin Patrick and Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, and I’ve got a dozen more sitting in my room. Oh well. There are worse habits. And who knows, if I actually do end up going to an online seminary, maybe I’ll have all the required reading knocked out!

se7en

August 8, 2010 in News, se7en with 0 Comments

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It’s that time of the week again – time to run through my favorite news and noteworthy posts from the past seven days. Hope you enjoy!

Is “negotiated infidelity” good for your relationship? Author and former mistress Holly Hill thinks so. But only as long as there’s boundaries. Christian author & blogger Jason Boyett gives the best response to Holly Hill that I’ve read.

“The Jesus kind of love, the love that speaks the truth and yet does not try to control, is supernatural. It is a very confident position and it comes from God. Will it always win? No, but the point is not to win, the point is to love, even to our deaths.”

Instead of asking God to clean out the cobwebs in your life, try asking him to kill the spider.

Lucy is back, this time writing about what sickness taught her about love and the one thing many fear the most – death.

Have we exported a dangerous gospel to our brothers and sisters in Africa?

James 3:17 says: “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.” Tony Morgan analyzes this verse in The Wisdom Test.

“Perhaps the people who should praise God the most are the people who can praise Him for what He has kept them from.” – Steven Furtick on Grace Redefined

Sharing our stories, or testimonies, is important, but Anne Jackson makes a great suggestion – let’s also begin sharing the story of now.

“As Christians sent into our respective cities, we are called to be the very best citizens of that city.” – Tim Gaydos on Missional Activism

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, and 42% of college graduates follow suit. I blogged about this earlier this week but here is Donald Miller’s original post which inspired mine.

In light of the judicial overturning of Proposition 8, Carl Trueman makes some insightful observations concerning the generational divide amongst Christians. Mike Foster also has a very insightful observation on the Prop 8 situation and the lack of grace being shown from both sides.

How are Christians supposed to relate to the ten commandments? John Piper gives his answer in the latest Ask Pastor John.

Reading… or Lack Thereof

August 6, 2010 in Culture, Family with 0 Comments

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I grew up in a reading family.

My mother read often, my father read often, my grandmother read often, so, it was passed down to me. I read a lot.

Not as often as I did when I was younger, but I still tend to average one book a month. And while I enjoy fiction (Stephen King is my favorite), the past few years I’ve leaned more and more toward non-fiction. Specifically, religious non-fiction. Theology, methodology, Christian living, etc. – you name it and I’ve probably either read it or, at the very least, own it (I’ve got a few stacks of books to work through).

But I digress.

Back to my childhood and teen years.

I thought I was the poor kid in school, because we shopped at Walmart instead of the mall; because I wore Levi’s, Lee and Wrangler’s instead of Girbaud, No Fear and Mossimo; because I was still using a cassette Walkman when everyone else had a CD Walkman.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was actually privileged.

I had a mother who hounded me on my grammatical and spelling skills and pushed me to read everyday. She would limit how much time I could watch TV, forcing me to do things that actually stimulated brain activity (reading, writing, playing guitar, having discussions, etc.). It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I realized just how privileged I’d been.

Do you remember, in grade school, that kid in class who, when called upon to read aloud, would act like they were having problems reading? And yet we all knew they could read just fine?

There were several of those in my English 101 class at ULM.

Or so I thought.

It wasn’t until our professor tried a little experiment that the truth came out. Our professor split us into groups of four or five and had us exchange rough drafts of a paper we’d all been working on, so we could grade each other. I and three other students in our group were graduates of local high schools. The fifth student in our group was an exchange student from a country in Eastern Europe (I can’t remember which one). After class our professor pulled me aside and asked about the papers I’d read. All I could tell her was, “The exchange student, who can barely speak the English language, has a better understanding of writing it than the others in that group.”

I’m not joking.

The guy who could barely speak English could read and write better than several “English as a first language” students in our class. What’s worse is I couldn’t even finish one paper because I literally could not decipher what words the student had attempted to spell, and it wasn’t a handwriting issue! HOW DO YOU MAKE IT TO HIGH SCHOOL, LET ALONE GRADUATE, IF YOU CAN’T READ OR WRITE YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE!!!

Why am I harping on this subject nearly ten years later? Because, sadly, things haven’t improved. I know teens who actually believe leet speak (the version of shorthand originally used in instant messaging programs, AKA text speak) is part of the English language!

On top of that, I’ve seen some reports and statistics lately that were a bit intriguing. Some were good…… and some were downright scary. Here’s some to read over:

  • Long-term studies have shown that mentally stimulating activities (reading, writing, crossword puzzles, board & card games, group discussions, crafts and playing music) lead to a 30 to 50% decrease in the risk of developing memory loss compared to people who did not do those activities. Those same studies show that participating in mentally stimulating activities at least twice a week leads to a much lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s. – from Preventing Dementia: Mental Stimulation
  • Delays in learning to read result in delays in the accumulation of reading volume. This places the child behind his or her peers in developing cognitive skills such as vocabulary, background knowledge, and familiarity with complex syntactic structures. – from Can Reading Make You Smarter?
  • “In studying reading volume over against more general abilities such as IQ, it was found ‘that even when performance is statistically equated for reading comprehension and general ability, reading volume is still a very powerful predictor of vocabulary and knowledge differences. …and is not simply an indirect indicator of ability.”’ – from Can Reading Make You Smarter?
  • “Students who get off to a fast start in reading are more likely to read more over the years, and, furthermore, this very act of reading can help children compensate for modest levels of IQ by building their vocabulary and general knowledge. In other words, IQ is not the only variable that counts in making a child smarter. Those who read a lot will enhance the IQ that they were born with; that is, reading will make them smarter.” – from Can Reading Make You Smarter?
  • Reading books is an active mental process, improves your vocabulary, concentration, focus, creativity and memory. – from 10 Benefits of Reading!
  • “The educational careers of 25 to 40 percent of American children are imperiled because they don’t read well enough, quickly enough, or easily enough.” – Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children of the National Research Council
  • “It is estimated that more than $2 billion is spent each year on students who repeat a grade because they have reading problems.” – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  • “Since 1983, more than 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level. In the same period, more than 6 million Americans dropped out of high school altogether.” – A Nation Still At Risk, U.S. Department of Education, 1999
  • “Over one million children drop out of school each year, costing the nation over $240 billion in lost earnings, forgone tax revenues, and expenditures for social services.” – McQuillan, 1998
  • “It is estimated that the cost of illiteracy to business and the taxpayer is $20 billion per year.” – Illiteracy: A National Crisis, United Way
  • “More than three out of four of those on welfare, 85% of unwed mothers and 68% of those arrested are illiterate. About three in five of America’s prison inmates are illiterate.” – Washington Literacy Council
  • “Approximately 50 percent of the nation’s unemployed youth age 16-21 are functional illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.” – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  • “44 million adults in the U.S. can’t read well enough to read a simple story to a child.” – National Adult Literacy Survey, U.S. Department of Education
  • “60 percent of America’s prison inmates are illiterate and 85% of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.” – U.S. Department of Education
  • “U.S. adults ranked 12th among 20 high income countries in composite (document, prose, and quantitative) literacy.” – Educational Testing Service
  • “More than 20 percent of adults read at or below a fifth-grade level – far below the level needed to earn a living wage.” – National Institute for Literacy
  • “Children who have not developed some basic literacy skills by the time they enter school are 3 – 4 times more likely to drop out in later years.” – National Adult Literacy Survey, U.S. Department of Education
  • “46% of American adults cannot understand the label on their prescription medicine.” – Journal of American Medical Association
  • “21 million Americans can’t read at all, 45 million are marginally illiterate and one-fifth of high school graduates can’t read their diplomas.” – Department of Justice
  • 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. – Para Publishing
  • 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. – Para Publishing
  • 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year (2007) – Para Publishing

HT: Donald Miller and Kari Calhoun

Free Book*

March 10, 2010 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

I’ve only read one chapter of Free Book* by Brian Tome and can already tell I will love this book.

Any book where the author writes,

I’m also pissed that I’ll have to fight to keep the word ‘pissed‘ in this book because the publisher will want to cave to more conservative types who want to keep everyone boxed into a specific type of language.

is an awesome book.

That is all.

Sucks or Stinks?

June 2, 2009 in Church, Culture with 34 Comments

I came across a Twitter conversation where people are debating whether or not the slang word “sucks” is inappropriate. Anyways, it got me thinking: who determines what is evil? Sure, the Bible is very clear on a lot of things that it deems evil (sex outside marriage, murder, lying, lusting after someone who isn’t your spouse, etc.), but what about those things that it doesn’t talk about?

When my grandmother was my age, “humbug” was just as bad as “bullshit”.

What about other things that, even within the church, spark arguments as to whether or not they are evil?
Music, video games, alcohol, tobacco, violent sports, movies, books, TV shows, etc.?

The one argument church people keep throwing at me is 1 Thessalonians 5:22 which some translations say to avoid every appearance of evil, while others leave it at avoid evil (click here for more on the translation differences).

But who is making the determination of what is or is not evil if the Bible is not explicit in the matter?

Some people deem Halo 3 to be evil because it simulates murder; others argue that because it is simulating war, the killings are no more murder than when an American soldier defends himself by killing an enemy soldier.

I actually heard one person say that “drinking is not a sin, but as Christians we are supposed to ‘Abstain from all appearance of evil’, so to drink would appear evil in the eyes of the world.”

WHAT?!?!?

So drinking alcohol is not a sin, but because the world (in this person’s eyes) sees it as evil, we shouldn’t do it?

It’s the same with language; the church doesn’t deem what is or is not appropriate – the world does.

Personally speaking, you won’t offend me by using cuss words in my presence, but at the same time, I view words like “idiot” and “loser” (used in a derogatory way) to be just as demeaning as “bitch” or “asshole”.

But that’s just me.

I could keep going with topics like music, movies, etc., but you get the point.

Any thoughts?