There is a review of Tim Challies’s new book “The Next Story” over at my other blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Like many of us who are not true digital natives, Challies is a fully assimilated digital immigrant struggling to manage the limitless opportunities this new digital world provides.

I have read a lot about technology and social media. From Neil Postman to, more recently, Nicholas Carr to Marshall McLuhan’s seminal works, I’ve read a lot.

I have also been a user of social media for close to 20 years, stretching back to the early 90s and that wonderful forerunner of the Internet known as the BBS. I even do some consulting and speaking on the topics of technology and social media.

I mention all of this to make a point: I have read a lot about technology and have long embraced the technologies that Tim Challies writes about in “The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion” and I still learned a lot from this book.

_____________________

Read the rest here.

The “other blog” that features only my longer pieces of writing, some of which have been published in print and others that are waiting to be published. The post frequency is about once a week. So, if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for…

Go and take a look at the new site here.
You can subscribe by email by clicking here.
You can subscribe by RSS by clicking here.
The Facebook group for the new blog is here.

Enjoy!

I have a review copy of this book coming in the mail. Can’t wait to dig in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KCply-HqWM&feature=player_embedded

An interview with author Eric Metaxas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GHHg0QsclA&feature=related

I don’t mind naysaying; in fact, on occasion, I engage in it. There is certainly plenty of it going on and in this series of three posts I want to (1) examine how it works, (2) make some observations about  the “anti-book”, and then (3) offer some principles or rules of engagement for dealing with books and authors that fall into banned or naysay status.

Part 1 : How It Works

Naysaying is not inherently bad, but second-hand naysaying is. This unique breed of herd mentality causes those who engage in it to buy into the following line of reasoning when asked about certain books: “Someone I trust has read this and they say it’s bad so I don’t need to waste my time reading it. I can say it’s bad with confidence. I can even quote the bad parts of it in order to deter others from reading it.”

An entire culture has grown around this mentality with it’s own industry of blogs and books and speakers.

Here’s how it works:

1. Send a Scout

One or more trusted scouts read the source material. These are sometimes seen as heroically risking their sanity and spiritual well-being in the process. They return as heralds to report their findings. If as expected in the view of the scouts, the book contains some error, then everyone else is warned not to read it – which may indeed, it must be said, be very good advice.

This has some authority when the scout is a rank-and-file blogger or Pastor, but near absolute authority when he is one of the mini-popes of today’s evangelical culture.

Caveat: Scouts are important. You can’t read every book that’s published and sometimes must rely on reviews to shorten your stack of “must read” books. (Caveat 2: Some of today’s mini-popes achieve that status despite their efforts against it.)

2. Inform the Shepherds

These mini-popes are usually more than willing to take up the task, claiming to be “protecting the flock” or doing the hard work of discernment. They may in fact be doing this, but too often it is an effort to create a system of reliance in which they acquire more power and influence from Pastors and other church leaders who are increasingly willing to forsake their own study and thinking; they make disciples, but whether these disciples are their own or belong to Jesus is sometimes in dispute.

Caveat: Informing other shepherds is necessary. Being a Pastor can be a solitary experience, but surely in some way we are in this together and should assist each other in avoiding error whenever possible.

3. Inform the Flock

Usually the scout will publish his findings on a blog and that writing is passed around among the second-hand naysayers as damning proof against an author they themselves have never read.  It is also passed around as a sort of gospel tract, ensuring the recipient that reading the scout’s report will correct their misguided theology. A chorus of condemnation soon follows comprised mostly of people who haven’t read the book but want to appear as if they have.

Caveat: Informing the flock is also necessary, but I do question how much influence a remote shepherd should have over a local flock. Rather than co-opting the criticisms as your own, at least point people toward the review of the trusted scout, if not to the source material itself.

4. Publish a Book

In the next step of naysaying evolution a book  appears (like this one for example) – a scrapbook of sorts – that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the one(s) who have been issued “nay” status. I call this the “anti” book. This book is seen as “the One Book to rule them all” and is used to surgically dissect current candidates for heresy.

The problem is, the book contains only the most inflammatory quotes from the other books and arranges them in such a way that all context is lost.

Caveat: Keep the book to yourself. It’s a cheap way of profiting off the work of others and is, in too many cases, outright deception.

Implications

I’m not buying into this practice. If you’re going to tell me about the content of a book and then tell me not to read it, two things will happen: (1) I will ask you if you have read the work itself. If you haven’t, come back and talk to me once you have. If you have read it, and you’ve given trustworthy advice in the past, I might just not bother reading the book.  However, even if that is the case, (2) I will not affirm or pass along your observations until/unless I have read the book for myself. I may point others to your review but I will not co-opt your objections.

Fair enough?

Granted, this is difficult to do. It is also hazardous if you are determined to continue as a member in good standing of a second-hand naysayers club. The moment you begin to read source materials instead relying solely on the scout’s report your friends begin to murmur, wondering why the word of the trusted scout is good enough for them but not for you.

You may hear whispers in the foyer at church: “Does he doubt his faith? Why is he playing with fire? Is he still a Christian?”

This is uncomfortable enough, but when you return from the source material reading excursion and draw attention to numerous good points in the source material that the scout neglected to mention… well, it’s enough to get a man’s soul prayed for quite earnestly.

Tomorrow: (click here to read)—> Dealing With the “Anti-Book”

A pattern is emerging: every time I read a book by Rob Bell I’m reminded of other books that tackle the same subject matter but in a more complete and engrossing way.

Bell’s latest is no different. Drops Like Stars is an art book about suffering and creativity that leaves you wishing he’d say more about each subject – that he’d use some of that white space to say something. Yes, I understand the white space is a statement in itself…

But Drops Like Stars takes Bell’s proclivity for white space to a new level. He has finally reached the tipping point and released a book with more white space than print space. The next book might be a collection of completely blank pages. He could be the John Cage of the book world…

Bell’s weakness (which masquerades as strength) is that he says things and presents himself in a way that communicates depth while saying and writing things that aren’t actually that deep. This seems impressive at first but eventually becomes a bit tedious. And it may work in person, as a performance (no negative connotation intended) but on the page it just comes off as shallow – or worse, as false depth.

The book is visually beautiful and this is par for the course with Bell. You can read this book in about 30 minutes, but if you have 30 minutes to invest in a book about art, pick up Madeleine l’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art and read the first few chapters.  Bell’s book might act as a good trailer for Walking on Water, but standing alone it has very little to say.

I never read other reviews of books I intend to review until I’ve written my own, but I always read a few after I’m done to see if other reviewers saw the book the same way.

From Publisher’s Weekly:

“While Bell’s books Velvet Elvis and Sex God received generally strong reviews, this effort to understand the relationship between suffering and creativity feels superficial and overly self-conscious.”

“Bell’s spare prose lacks original insights into age-old theodicy questions. Although the design and layout are first-rate, $35 is a lot of money for a 160-page book that is mostly white space.”

Customer reviews at Amazon:

“…you’d think, with the size and price, you’re going to get a lot of Rob Bell goodness…think again, the pages are so large but the words are only printed in the middle – thus wasting entire forests of paper.

Which is ironic seeing as Bell’s last book was all about how we abuse this planet and need to take care of God’s creation.”

I stand with the crowd on this one.

In my quest to immerse myself in the life and teachings of Christ I intend to read and watch a few works that don’t synchronize with the Gospel accounts.

One such work is The Gospel According to the Son by Norman Mailer. As you can guess from the title, this is a fictional first-person account of Jesus’ own life. The Jesus who narrates this account is attempting to correct falsehoods, exaggerations, and half-truths included in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in order to enlarge their own folds.

After such a start, there is not much to be said for the rest of the book. The Jesus offered in Mailer’s narrative is a doubting, sinning, slightly above-average human with some suspicion that he might be divine. The Jesus offered us here is in many ways the opposite of the one presented in the synoptic Gospels; he has traces of the divine but is mostly human.

God is pictured as limited in His love, and if superior to Satan at all, only in that he is slightly more cunning.

The book was a bit if a labor to finish. It is certainly undeserving of the accolades included on its cover: “A staggering work”, Bold… daring”, “A triumph”.

It is none of the above – not in craft or literary quality. It is rather some parts of the Gospel texts interspersed with Mailer’s conjecture about what happened before and after.

And I suppose that not really unique; we all do this to an extent. What we fill in with conjecture merely betrays our biases.

Reading “A Million Miles…” is like talking to an old friend, one you used to love and spend a lot of time with but for whatever reason haven’t seen for a long time. This friend used to captivate you and you would enjoy being in their presence so much you wondered if you were smothering them (sometimes you probably were). But in the years between then and now you’ve forgotten just how warm and exciting being with them was.

When I sat down to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life I had fond memories of Donald Miller’s surprise best-seller from a few years ago, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (see my blog posts about it here). By the time I was 20 pages in, I remembered BLJ as that old friend, one that I forgotten I loved so much. One that made me laugh out loud in public places, despite my best efforts to appear completely sane. One that had changed my life in a few ways.

Review continued below…

And it makes sense that I was so reminded of BLJ because “A Million Miles…” is mostly about BLJ. It’s about the book, and how Miller’s life was changed by the success of the book and how – which is most exciting for an artist – his life was positively affected by his own art.

The best thing about this book and BLJ is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation. There are no commands here, no guilt trips, just Don Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it. And somehow this inspires us to do the same. We see the character making progress, we see his life improving as he very intentionally crafts his own story and we know that this is also possible for us.

“Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve avoided having a clear ambition is that the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.” – Donald Miller

Searching For God Knows What

Memoirs are such fun to read, and when Miller is writing in memoir mode he is among the greats. When not in memoir mode, however, he can come across as simply another disgruntled Evangelical, as was clearly evident in Searching for God Knows What (blog post here).

In truth, the same theology runs through all of his writing, but in the form of a memoir it seems less agitating. Much like any other friend who has theology I disagree with, in conversational form it is so much more tolerable – actually, it’s enjoyable. It’s like we’re sitting in a room together discussing our differences, each willing to hear the other, each convincing the other on some points, and being convinced on others.

I was pleased to read on p222 Don say “I didn’t say these things, and I’m glad I didn’t, because those are the things people who have never been married say.” Another issue with “Searching For God…” was that he kept saying unwise things that were exactly what only an unmarried non-parent would say. In the margins of my copy of that book I wrote things like “Hey Don, get back to me once you have children and let me know if you still think this is true…”.

A Million Miles…

I digress… “A Million Miles…” is not just an entertaining read, it calls you to a brutal honestly about your life. In the language of the book itself, it calls you to write and then live a better story with your life, while acknowledging that there is a Writer above you also writing your story:

“So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what they wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me. So I started listening to the Voice, or rather, I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer. I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.” – Donald Miller

Fellow writers/authors will love this book because so much of it is about the process of writing. Others may find his analogies of God as a writer/literary being a bit of a stretch. They are a bit of a stretch, but often, as in this case, the stretch makes the art more powerful.

If you enjoy Miller’s writing and would like to read more in the same vein, his writing is reminiscent of authors like Anne Lamott (read: “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith“) and Madeleine L’Engle (read: “Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage” or “The Irrational Season“) in all the best ways.

One other byproduct of reading Miller’s work: it inspires me to write, which is why this review is getting so long! Well, I reviewed BLJ in six lengthy posts, so one post for this book is actually pretty short.

***SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU INTEND TO READ THE BOOK***

I have been a fan of Douglas Coupland’s books for a long time. The first one I read was “Girlfriend in a Coma”. In that book, I learned about and began to love the Couplandisms that define his novels.

Then there was a period of 5 or so years where I read none of his books. Having read two in the last 6 months, I am left to wonder if the quality of his writing has taken a turn for the worse or whether I’ve simply grown out of a phase. I will probably need to re-read “Girlfriend in a Coma” to figure this out.

The main weakness evident in The Gum Thief is that all of the characters seem to be too much like the author himself. Coupland’s insights about the modern age are indeed witty and interesting, but they seem to surface on the lips of all his characters.

In The Gum Thief, this could be passed off as a weakness of the Roger, the narrator and amateur writer we later find out has written the book. But if you’ve read more of Coupland’s work you’ll see that those similarities originate with the author who is pulling the strings of the amateur writer who narrates much of the book.

Five minutes later: after reading a review of “The Gum Thief” in the NYT. I am pleased to see that reviewer detected the same thing:

“While ‘The Gum Thief’ aims for a polyphonic effect, its characters often sound disconcertingly similar. The prose and arch banter of ‘Glove Pond’ are distinct, but outside it the characters’ voices and preoccupations tend to blur. ‘I woke up every morning with my stomach clenching. Why? Because I felt like a useless member of society, and I could feel the ghosts of the people who built the Brady Bunch suburb surrounding me.’ That’s Bethany’s mother, DeeDee, writing, but her tone of hip, cosmic weariness… could belong to virtually anyone in these pages.”

As always,  there are a number of quotable sections in the book:

Upon first meeting the woman who would become his wife (and later ex wife) Roger says:

“She was the same age as me, but without the mileage. She looked like Jane, from the Dick and Jane books, grown up, apple-cheeked, healthy and itching to correct my grammar.”

Bethany describing her family:

“Imagine a group of people even more annoying than mimes, with the added bonus of loud, grating speech and no sense of manners or propriety. That would be us.”

There are some musings about body-snatcher movies and the realities of DNA on pages 230-232 that are worth reading but are too lengthy to quote.

Structure

This is a book within a book… within a book. It is revealed on the final pages that the only purely flesh and blood character in the book is Roger, the main narrative voice of the story. But even then we’re not told how much he is fictionalizing himself within his own novel.

We’re led to believe we’re reading a series of letters written between Roger, his co-worker, her mother, Roger’s ex-wife, and a few other characters. In reality, the whole thing is a fictional narrative  written by one person (Roger), who is imagining what all the others might say. The only person who is not speaking from within the fictional narrative is Roger’s writing instructor, for whose class Roger has produced the fictional exchange you’ve just read.

Confused? Surprisingly enough, it doesn’t seem that confusing when you’re reading the book and to be honest I wasn’t very impressed with it while I was reading. But now, thinking about it and trying to articulate the intricacies of the plot, I’m finding great value in its ingenuity.

Two More Layers

Within the story in which Roger has cast himself, he is writing a novel that his other fictional characters are reading; within this novel, two other authors exist who are also writing novels, both of whom are mining the details of their lives for fictional material. So Roger is mining his own life for fiction while Roger’s fictional characters are mining Roger’s fictional life for their own fiction.

Again, this seems more confusing now than it did when I was reading.

Conclusion

“The Gum Thief” is an interesting tale, but in the end not compelling enough for me to recommend that you read the book yourself. The fascinating parts of the book are realized after having finished it, in discovering that things were not as they appeared to be. After this is revealed, the words, actions, and longings of the characters in the book take on greater significance.

This started out as a very poor review, but I now think the book a little bit brilliant. And that’s me saying that, not the fictional narrator from whose perspective I wrote the beginning of the review.

Let’s review:

In Part 1 Naysaying and the Naysaying Naysayers Who Naysay we looked at the practice of naysaying and second-hand naysaying and examined how it works

In Part 2 The “Anti-Book” we looked at the “anti-book”, which is a scrapbook of sorts that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the one(s) who have been issued “nay” status.

In Part 3 I offer the following advice for dealing with widely naysayed materials:

1. Go ahead: read the scout’s report

If it’s a report from a scout you trust, by all means take his advice. A trusted scout is one whose reviews you usually agree with after having read the same books yourself. You may both be completely out to lunch of course, but at least you know you think the same way and will probably process future books in a similar way.

2. Seek balance

Read at least one positive review of the naysayed book, especially if you can find one from an unexpected source. An unexpected source is someone who usually falls in line with the naysay posse but occasionally breaks away.

3. Don’t pretend

Go ahead and warn others off of reading the book if you’ve chosen not to read it based on a trusted scout’s report. But make sure you point them to a review by someone who’s actually read the book – DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE BOOK AS IF YOU’VE READ IT YOURSELF. This is dishonest and misleading.

4. Obey the rules of context

You may quote passages from the book if you have at least read the entire chapter from which the quote is taken.

5. Never, never, never publish an anti-book

If you have that much time on your hands, spend it telling people what you’re for, not what you’re against.

6. Don’t be a sycophant

No one, regardless of his status among those you trust, is infallible. Absolute trust in any man leads very quickly to cultish devotion. And that goes for Piperettes* as much as McLarenites**.

* A Piperette is someone who puts more faith in John Piper than in Jesus Christ

** A McLarenite is someone who puts more faith in Brian McLaren than in Jesus Christ

In yesterday’s post I focused on the common practice of second-hand naysaying. I also mentioned something that serves as a the naysayer’s source book: the “anti-book”. This book (an example here) is a scrapbook of sorts that claims to be authoritative on all matters relating to the one(s) who have been issued “nay” status. It is seen as “the One Book to rule them all” and is used to surgically dissect current candidates for heresy.

Part 2 : Dealing with the “Anti-Book”

Here’s a rule of thumb when encountering such a book: if you haven’t heard of or read anything by half of the authors you’re reading about, STOP READING, PUT DOWN THE BOOK, and most certainly do not distribute the book to others with an encouragement to read it.

Reading this type of book can lead to the type of heresy hunting that causes us to reject biblical ideas because those we accuse of being heretics have adopted them. For an (unfortunately real-life) example: Rick Warren uses the word “reconciliation”, therefore reconciliation is part of the heretic agenda, and therefore we shouldn’t speak of it.

Some folks are so naively over-protective of their doctrine that they occasionally reject what they actually believe because it is taught by one they consider a heretic. This is usually evidence that the person is spending more time reading anti-books than the Good Book they claim to be protecting.

You Can’t Quote That…

Another attack mode is source assassination. In this practice, the truthfulness of a quote is judged not on its own merit, but on its source. This is done in an effort to expose the sin of association. Regardless of the length or content of the quote – it could be the most biblical statement this side of scripture – if the messenger is on the naysay list, the quote is rejected outright and you get closer to making the naysay list yourself.

The general idea here is to make you mindful of whom you quote, regardless of the content of the quote. You may get away with the quote if you leave it unattributed, but attributed to a certain name, it will be rejected simply on the basis of its source.

I once sent a very conservative friend a great quote about the mission of the church, which he wholeheartedly endorsed and agreed with. He was not pleased to learn shortly thereafter that the words were actually uttered by the newly minted Pope Benedict XVI.

As I remember it, he accused me of trickery, and I confess that he was half right.

Tomorrow: (click here to read)—>Rules of Engagement – what should you do with naysayed materials?

I’m no historian. You probably aren’t either. Fortunately, this fact probably won’t serve as a handicap when reading this short book of history.

“The Great Emergence” is a book that makes sweeping generalizations about large swaths of world history. Many conclusions are drawn from these generalizations, which leaves us non-historians in a bit of a bind: in order to accept Tickle’s conclusions, we must first accept her version of the events. Without extensive knowledge of these historical events, it is difficult to refute or agree with either.

But before this really becomes a problem the book shows itself to be an exercise in unintentionally amusing hyperbole. Likewise, the concerns with historical accuracy subside, inversely proportional to the level of – again, unintentional – humor that accompanies the escalating hyperbole.

Pretending to be a short but concise assessment of current events, the book is more like an impressionist painting than an accurate portrait. The subtitle sets the goal of answering “How Christianity is Changing and Why,” but it is a small book with too few pages (165) in which to accomplish the task. In many places, the historical flybys leave so much unsaid that regardless of your level of historical knowledge it’s pretty easy to tell that too much of the story is missing. At other points in the book, inordinate amounts of space are spent on tangential developments at various historical junctures in church history.

Tickle sees the current period of upheaval as an event in significance equal to the Great Schism and the Great Reformation. What we are living through, by her estimation, is the Great Emergence – and this is a cause for great elation.

In one particularly effusive section, Tickle pictures the movement itself as a great healer:

“One does not have to be particularly gifted as a seer these days,” she says, “to perceive the Great Emergence already swirling like balm across that wound, bandaging it with genuinely egalitarian conversation and with an undergirding assumption of shared brotherhood and sisterhood in a world being redeemed.” (p29)

A sentence of greater utopian delusion has seldom been written.

It is little wonder that those who are leaders of emergent Christianity call Tickle a friend and ally. Of Doug Pagitt she says he is “one of emergent Christianity’s most influential and brilliant thinkers.” She calls Brian McLaren “the symbolic leader of the Great Emergence… in the same way that Martin Luther became the symbolic leader and spokesman for the Great Reformation.” It’s all a bit much, regardless of the contributions these two may have made.

Sola Scriptura

Tickle chooses as a common thread for the book the metaphor of a rummage sale, and though the metaphor appears at regular intervals, it is never quite explained or successfully coaxed into a relevant illustration of historical upheavals. We’re not sure what is being sold at the rummage sale or what the current one has in common with past one, etc.

A third of the way through the book 46, Tickle goes to work on the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, claiming, “Even many of the most die-hard Protestants among us have grown suspicious of ‘Scripture and Scripture only.’” She goes on:

“We begin to refer to Luther’s principle of ‘sola scriptura, scriptura sola’ as having been little more than the creation of a paper pope in place of a flesh and blood one. And even as we speak, the authority that has been in place for five hundred years withers away in our hands.”

Her evidence: Paul’s injunctions against women, the one-time acceptance of slavery, and flat-earth theology. For her, this evidence is damning evidence; she leaves no room for other options. Paul says one thing (women must keep quiet in the assembly), we do another (women are allowed to speak), therefore sola scriptura is an illusion and scriptural authority is eroded. This narrow view of Sola Scriptura is laughable. Occasional doctrinal corrections cannot be used as indicators of future change, as Tickle proposes on the following pages.

Tickle also makes parallel comparisons between the current and historical hegemony. Hegemony is leadership or dominance, esp. by one country or social group over others. In the 16^th century, the ruling hegemony was the Roman Catholic Church. It is pretty difficult to draw a modern parallel of a uniform hegemony against which Emergents are protesting or which they are attempting to reform.

In short, her parallels are too labored to be convincing, and too weak to maintain their connection to their supposed historical equivalents. Just who or what constitutes the current hegemony? We’re not told.

Grandma, Tin Lizzie, and the Decline of Protestantism

On pages 86-87, she proposes a line of social theory involving grandma (yours), Norman Rockwell, and the automobile that defies reason. Of Grandma, Tickle claims that “When the Tin Lizzie took away her kingdom of influence, it was Protestantism more than Grandma that came untethered and was diminished.” This attempt at a two-page synopsis of a wide range of events ends up looking more like the work of Salvador Dali than Norman Rockwell. Like Dali’s paintings, Tickle’s words are fun to look at but making sense of them is an arduous task.

Shortly after (91-93), in what seems to be another attempt at a “Dali Word Picture”, Tickle claims that pastoral authority was singlehandedly supplanted by Alcoholics Anonymous. Huh?

In another episode of incoherent and unfounded “fact-stating” Tickle claims that, “In the hands of the Emergents, Christianity has grown exponentially, not only in geographic base and numbers, but also in passion and in effecting belief in the Christian call to the brotherhood of all peoples.” Is there some evidence of this of which none of us are aware?

Tickle’s penchant for hyperbole is, if nothing else, amusing. I quote the following (p135) at length for your amusement:

“There is enormous energy in centripetal force, especially as it gathers more and more of its own kind into itself. Centripetal force, though, is usually envisioned by us as running downward, like the water in a bathtub drain. The gathering force of the new Christianity did the opposite. It ran upward and poured itself out, like some bursting geyser, in expanding waves of influence and nourishment. Where once the corners had met, now there was a swirling center, its centripetal force racing from quadrant to quadrant in every widening circles, picking up ideas and people from each, sweeping them into the center, mixing them up there, and then spewing them forth into a new way of being Christian, into a new way of being Church.”

Gathering… running… pouring, bursting, expanding, nourishing! Swirling! Racing! WIDENING! SWEEPING! MIXING!!! SPEWING!!!!!!

If you want to know what reading The Great Emergence is like, imagine your newest married-in relative attempting to write your family history. She may have something to say and plenty to add in the future, but hearing a few of Uncle Joe’s stories hardly qualifies her to write a definitive history of your family – or a map of its future for that matter. Tickle may well be truthful to a mainline perspective on historical events, and she may even have something to offer in predicting the trajectory of mainline denominations, but this book’s target is primarily Evangelicals, with whom, as far as we now, she has little affinity or experience.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the book is more an exercise in poetic impressionist prose than historical analysis or prophetic utterance. It is a short read, but in the end not really worth the time. This much history deserves a more thorough treatment than 165 pages in a small book.

Are we on the verge of some significant shifts in the Western Church? It’s pretty safe to say that we are. It would be difficult to name another period in history where so many questions and debates and trends and issues were at play.  But to draw a parallel between this time and the periods of upheaval of the past is a bit overblown.

I have not read any of Tickle’s other books, but I’ve heard they’re quite good. I have heard numerous interviews with her and enjoyed them. Tickle’s thoughts, analysis, and prescriptions for our current age of upheaval are far narrower in scope than the book purports them to be. There is plenty of revision here masquerading as synopsis.

I am shamefully behind on book reviews. Here is what’s coming up in the next month or so:

Books I’ve read and need to review:

“The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction”
by Eugene Peterson
This will be more of an engagement than a review, and it will be very long. This book profoundly moved me.

“Basic Christian Leadership: Biblical Models of Church, Gospel And Ministry”
by John R. W. Stott
This was not a very large book, but it was packed with insight. Expect a short review.

“The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship”
by Robert Woods and Brian Walrath (ed.)
This was one of the two texts used in the congregational singing course I just finished. It is a fascinating study of the top 77 songs on the CCLI charts over the 15-year period between 1989-2005. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the songs, from lyrical content to singability. This is a must-read for music leaders and music team members (see how I avoided the word “worship” there?)

“The Great Worship Awakening: Singing a New Song in the Postmodern Church”
by Robb Redman
This is the other text for that course. It is sub-titled “Singing a New Song in the Postmodern Church”

Books I’m reading that I will review when I’m done:

“Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God”
by Bob Kauflin
Actually, I’m not sure I’m going to finish this one. It is not long but it is too long for Kauflin’s content and it drags on. Since I got this sans dinero from Crossway, I probably should trudge through.

“The Jesus You Can’t Ignore: What You Must Learn from the Bold Confrontations of Christ”
by John MacArthur
I have read plenty of MacArthur but I’ve never read an entire book of his. It is exactly what I expected: good content with too-frequent helpings of arrogance.

“Drops Like Stars: A Few Thoughts on Creativity and Suffering”
by Rob Bell
I received this one from Zondervan last week. It is a beautiful “art book” with lots of white space. I’m looking forward to spending some time with it.

“Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt: A Novel”
by Anne Rice
This is my bedtime reading so it may take a while to finish. So far, it is an interesting look at the life of Jesus with Jesus as the narrator, looking through his 7-year-old eyes.

Books I’m going to read next:

“Great Emergence, The: How Christianity Is Changing and Why”
by Phyllis Tickle

“Cross and Christian Ministry, The: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians”
by D. A. Carson

“Humility: True Greatness”
by C. J. Mahaney

“The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor”
by John R. W. Stott

In other writing news….

I’ve landed a gig with Christian Week to write a bi-monthly column for them on contemporary worship issues from a Pastor’s perspective. Christian Week will also be publishing my review of “The Blue Parakeet” by Scot McKnight

I am adding to my review of “Vintage Church” by Mark Driscoll and it should be appearing on Scot McKnight’s blog “The Jesus Creed” when its done.

Yesterday I submitted a 55-page musical ethnography of my congregation… which is the reason the rest of this writing is so far behind.

I’ve had some good post ideas lately but no time to flesh them out. Here are some titles at least:

A Cyber-theology of Engagement
A Primer on Google Wave
The Error of Over-Correction
Taking Pride in “Heresy”
Falses, Fakes, and Nots – Satirical Twitter Identities
The Controlled Burn: A Metaphor For Doubting Safely

And then there are the questions that readers submitted when I told them to “Ask Me Anything” and then kindly proceeded to leave them unanswered. I will get to them.

Cheers

I’m not entirely sure how to start this review. I could start by telling you that I have been aware of Kevin Abell for a long time. We went to the same high school. But that wouldn’t tell you very much about his book and you might think I am reviewing this book because we were old high school buddies. That was hardly the case.

Kevin was one of those guys I wasn’t going to go anywhere near. He was a little creepy. I remember a certain Alice Cooper lip sync performance that cemented my opinion of him at the time.

I didn’t reconnect – or should I say connect – with Kevin until a couple of years ago when we were at the same church. Somehow, I don’t remember exactly, we were connected by someone who knew that Kevin was a writer and that I was into writing as well. I asked Kevin if I could see his writing, fully expecting it to be a caliber of writing I could look over and then give some pointers to its author. That wasn’t the case.

In my arrogance I was surprised to learn that Kevin already was what I aspired to be – a real writer. How could HE (Alice Cooper guy) have surpassed ME (wasn’t allowed to listen to Alice Cooper guy) in a discipline that I have work pretty hard at?

But that’s kind of the point here. Kevin Abell has been given a gift, one in addition to the grace of God in his life. That gift is writing. I say this because the writing is good, and it’s not good because he spends time at writing conferences or at a booksellers conventions or even in bookstores for that matter.

Kevin is a mechanic. Kevin is a father of four. Most of his time is spent on those two things.

The genesis of The Edge Of His Cloak is a series of letters (in the form of email) written to his church youth group – and anyone else who was willing to read – a few years ago. In these letters he writes about a range of things, but they all have the common thread of an author whose life has been transformed by meeting and deciding to follow Jesus Christ. The letters are pep talks in a way, but not the type that ignore reality and always end with “Everything is going to be OK.” These pep talks go something like this: “Life is tough. And not just for you – FOR EVERYBODY! Here’s the only thing I’ve found that actually helps me get through life and gives me real joy.”

“And one request-” Abell asks, “if you don’t intend to live for Him, please don’t identify yourself with Him. There are few things as distasteful as a believer who insists on living a life of disobedience… Perhaps for some of us, the most spiritual thing we can do is tell our friends that we are serious idolaters.”

Abell possesses a strength of faith and a clarity of thought that is not only endearing, but also admirable. The book is a remarkable testament of a faith that is both simple and profound; it is a glimpse into the everyday life and extraordinary faith of a mechanic, father, writer, and ordinary Christ-follower. But most of all this is the glorious autobiography of someone who has seen the risen Savior, been wrecked in his gaze, and embraced the only source of true healing.

“I don’t hate myself anymore,” Abell says in a chapter titled “Ongoing Counseling”, “I’ve graduated from self loathing to merely having an inferiority complex. Who knows for sure? Perhaps in 20 years or so I might begin to toy with self confidence.”

Humor is prominent in the book and Abell’s sense and placement of it is good. Dry wit is a strength, both in real life and on the page. Like Donald Miller, he is more willing than most to recognize his own shortcomings and then make light of them. In Abell’s own words,

“I like being this mildly reclusive sarcastic individual who uses his sardonic wit to keep people at bay. Because if I tell people what I actually think and if I say it in a straightforward manner, they might not like what they see.”

From a professional publishing perspective, there are things about the book that need some work. The grammar is not always perfect; the punctuation is odd at times.  Despite those things, this is the most professional looking self-published book I’ve seen. In fact it doesn’t look self-published at all.

Despite these few shortcomings, Kevin’s book succeeds at this: (to paraphrase Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets) it “makes me want to be a better man” – and in this case, a better writer as well.

And just so you don’t think Kevin traded a free book for a good review… I paid my $15 bucks for this book, and so should you. It will be well worth your time. Buy it here: Amazon.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a journalist named Jessica Clark for a quote on Donald Miller’s new book. Here’s the piece she wrote:

Million Miles author stops in LR

JESSICA CLARK ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

A New York Times bestselling author says he knows the ingredients to a meaningful life and he’s sharing them Tuesday in Little Rock.

Recently, Donald Miller hit the road to talk about his newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, which chronicles Miller’s discoveries. The book tour will span two months and tens of thousands of miles, during which Miller will visit 65 cities.

Miller will make a stop in Little Rock at Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas to share what he says makes a worthwhile life, which he learned from screenwriters while working on turning Blue Like Jazz into a movie which will premiere in 2010.

“Screenwriters have discovered what makes life meaningful because they have to put it on-screen in a movie. I’ll share what it is they’ve discovered and how I applied those principles to my life and what happened because of it,” he said.

Mosaic Church was contacted by Miller’s executive assistant with the idea of being a host for the book tour. Mark DeYmaz, Mosaic Church’s directional leader, said it was a good fit because the church and Miller have a “missional mind-set” and live out their faith.

“It’s not about attracting people to the church, it is about motivating the church to go to people where they are in bars, college campuses or wherever,” DeYmaz said. “Miller lives out a missional lifestyle and is authentic with people that wouldn’t step into a church.”

Miller, 37, had been writing since he was a child, he said. His first book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance, was published by Harvest House Publishers, but it wasn’t until he wrote Blue Like Jazz that his writing career took off. Published by Thomas Nelson, a Christian book publisher, Blue Like Jazz has sold more than 1 million copies and made The New York Times best-seller list 45 weeks since it was released six years ago. It is a book made up of essays about spirituality and his reflections about Christianity.

Miller says his new release offers readers a different perspective. “In other books I was asking a lot of questions, in this book there is more hope,” he said.

“His early stuff is like unedited journal writing, but he gets more controlled and precise as he goes,” Christianity Today freelance writer Patton Dodd said. “He expertly and naturally captures the young evangelical zeitgeist [spirit of the age], but he pushes on its borders.”

“The best thing about Miller’s books is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation,” said Michael Krahn, a Canadian minister and blogger. “There are no guilt trips, no commands, just Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it and somehow this inspires us to do the same.”

In his new book, Miller adapts the elements that make a good movie into his own life to make it more interesting.

“In studying the elements of a screenplay and editing a movie based on a memoir [Blue Like Jazz], I was editing a fictional version of myself. I wanted my own life to be more like the fictional version of me so I made some changes in my own life and rode my bike across America.”

Miller spent seven weeks riding his bike across the United States raising money for Blood: Water Mission. He also found his biological father whom he hadn’t heard from in 30 years and he hiked the Inca Trail in Peru just to impress a girl.

“A Million Miles is probably Don’s most mature book, yet it is classic Don Miller in that it offers readers an entertaining, one-of-a-kind experience,” his publisher, Brian Hampton, said.

The focus of Miller’s book tour is to get people to realize that “we can live better stories, and when the credits roll in our lives we can have a sense of fulfillment and meaning because of what we’ve experienced,” he said.

After the tour, Miller will work with his nonprofit organization, The Mentoring Project. The Portland, Ore.-based group mentors children growing up without fathers.

“We’ll be releasing a revised edition of Searching for God Knows What next spring and further down the road there will be another book,” Hampton said.

“I believe my best stories are ahead of me. I don’t think I’ve told many good ones so far,” Miller said. “Since I’ve understood the power of a story, the power of a good protagonist wanting something noble and overcoming conflict to get it, I haven’t been able to go back to a normal life.”

“An Evening With Donald Miller” will be 7 p.m. Tuesday at Mosaic Church, 6420 Colonel Glenn Road, Little Rock. Tickets are $15. More information is available at amillionmiles.com.

Reading “A Million Miles…” is like talking to an old friend, one you used to love and spend a lot of time with but for whatever reason haven’t seen for a long time. This friend used to captivate you and you would enjoy being in their presence so much you wondered if you were smothering them (sometimes you probably were). But in the years between then and now you’ve forgotten just how warm and exciting being with them was.

When I sat down to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life I had fond memories of Donald Miller’s surprise best-seller from a few years ago, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (see my blog posts about it here). By the time I was 20 pages in, I remembered BLJ as that old friend, one that I forgotten I loved so much. One that made me laugh out loud in public places, despite my best efforts to appear completely sane. One that had changed my life in a few ways.

And it makes sense that I was so reminded of BLJ because “A Million Miles…” is mostly about BLJ. It’s about the book, and how Miller’s life was changed by the success of the book and how – which is most exciting for an artist – his life was positively affected by his own art.

The best thing about this book and BLJ is that they throw you into a torrent of self-reflection with the strangest of motivation. There are no commands here, no guilt trips, just Don Miller taking a brutally honest look at his own life and writing about it. And somehow this inspires us to do the same. We see the character making progress, we see his life improving as he very intentionally crafts his own story and we know that this is also possible for us.

“Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve avoided having a clear ambition is that the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.” – Donald Miller

Searching For God Knows What

Memoirs are such fun to read, and when Miller is writing in memoir mode he is among the greats.  When not in memoir mode, however, he can come across as simply another disgruntled Evangelical, as was clearly evident in Searching for God Knows What (blog post here).

In truth, the same theology runs through all of his writing, but in the form of a memoir it seems less agitating. Much like any other friend who has theology I disagree with, in conversational form it is so much more tolerable – actually, it’s enjoyable. It’s like we’re sitting in a room together discussing our differences, each willing to hear the other, each convincing the other on some points, and being convinced on others.

I was pleased to read on p222 Don say “I didn’t say these things, and I’m glad I didn’t, because those are the things people who have never been married say.” Another issue with “Searching For God…” was that he kept saying unwise things that were exactly what only an unmarried non-parent would say. In the margins of my copy of that book I wrote things like “Hey Don, get back to me once you have children and let me know if you still think this is true…”.

A Million Miles…

I digress… “A Million Miles…” is not just an entertaining read, it calls you to a brutal honestly about your life. In the language of the book itself, it calls you to write and then live a better story with your life, while acknowledging that there is a Writer above you also writing your story:

“So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what they wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me. So I started listening to the Voice, or rather, I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer. I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through.” – Donald Miller

Fellow writers/authors will love this book because so much of it is about the process of writing. Others may find his analogies of God as a writer/literary being a bit of a stretch. They are a bit of a stretch, but often, as in this case, the stretch makes the art more powerful.

If you enjoy Miller’s writing and would like to read more in the same vein, his writing is reminiscent of authors like Anne Lamott (read: “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith“) and Madeleine L’Engle (read: “Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage” or “The Irrational Season“) in all the best ways.

One other byproduct of reading Miller’s work: it inspires me to write, which is why this review is getting so long! Well, I reviewed BLJ in six lengthy posts, so one post for this book is actually pretty short.

Mark Driscoll, the fearless and sometimes controversial founder and Pastor of Mars Hill church in Seattle, writes books the way he preaches: . In fact, his recent books are transcribed from earlier sermon series’. Sure, there’s some editing and polishing, but if you’re familiar with his preaching, the content of his books is no surprise.

In Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods, Driscoll attempts in each chapter to address a question about the church, including what it is and how and by whom it should be led. (see table of contents below).

In all, the book is a great resource for church leaders and planters. Aside from the bits of humor, the book reads very much like a course text, with Driscoll, who has “been there and done that” and lived (barely) to tell about it, as it’s narrator. He is also aware of his church’s status as a “megachurch”, which puts it in a vast minority of churches on the planet. Rather than focusing too much on “here’s how we do it”, he focuses on “here’s why we did it this way”. His insights and recommendations are based on principles more than particulars.

Driscoll’s penchant for humor usually works well live from the stage, but in print it serves more as an annoyance than a useful distraction. In addition, he uses the same humorous anecdotes too often. New comedic material is the lifeblood of a good comedian and since he has studied the great comedians, he should see that his current crop of quips needs a makeover. (For example, the joke about Mars Hill starting “at about the size of Mormon family” is getting difficult to chuckle at.)

At one point he relates a story about someone giving him a sermon on tape, even though, as he points out, he has not seen a tape player since “the days when Michael Jackson was male.” While Jackson’s recent passing (after the book was published) makes this seem extra offensive, it is still unwarranted. The Gospel is often offensive by nature; comments like this, I would argue, offend people for the wrong reasons.

In one sense, you could say that Driscoll is trying to augment the offense of the Gospel with his own form of offensiveness. It requires no such assistance.

Whether speaking or writing he delivers a lot of facts – straight up. Delivered without humor, they lack life; delivered with the same tired anecdotes he’s been using for years, these facts become tiresome opportunities to take a jab at an easy target.

Those who have Driscoll pegged as simply an old-school pastor with a new-school mouth will find a few surprises here. For example, he endorses the active participation of non-believers in the life of the church.

As someone who is quite familiar with his writing and preaching, I have watched him mature as a leader, teacher, and preacher, increasing in humility along the way. Here’s hoping that trajectory continues so that more people will be drawn to his teaching than are repelled by his sometimes necessary crudeness. (Yes, that means that I believe that some of what he says that is counted as “crude” is actually appropriate.) If you can get by the instances of unnecessary crudeness – and you should be able to – there is much to be learned. At heart he is a caring and, according to current demographic data, young Pastor who, like the rest of us, is seeking to grow in godly maturity.

Driscoll’s passion for the local church – yours, mine, and his – is undeniable. His ability to accept criticism and wisdom is surprising for a man of his personality type, and this makes him rare. I have benefited greatly from his teaching in my own journey as a Pastor.

Vintage Church is a good read, packed with resources and wisdom. You will not agree with it entirely, but that’s true of any book. If you are a church leader of any kind who is concerned with both relevance and unchanging truth, I recommend you read this book.

You can read a sample chapter of Vintage Church here.

You can find previous posts at The Ascent to Truth about Mark Driscoll here.

A couple of weeks ago, a few hundred bloggers received a free copy of Max Lucado’s new book, “Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear“. In exchange for the free book (which we find impossible to refuse), we agreed to read the book and post a review of it. Fair enough – it’s a deal I’ve made a few times in the past. What’s different this time is that I am completely unfamiliar with Max Lucado. Not unfamiliar as in “Max who?” but as in “Oh, that guy who writes a lot of books with nice covers that I have no interest in reading. The ones that seem very comforting, in a shallow sort of way.”

So give me one point for reaching out to Max. He’s not the type of writer I usually read.

Were my preconceptions true? Partly. Lucado falls far too easily into cute turns of phrase and tear-jerking stories (which are not all bad).  For example, in one section Lucado does a good job explaining a cycling strategy, but then abruptly and awkwardly attempts to parlay that into a spiritual truth. It doesn’t work, except maybe as a bumper sticker. Another example, comparing the cheap rivets that sunk the Titanic with the the bolts we use to construct our lives, does seem to work a bit better. This probably has much to do with personal metaphorical preferences – for me, boats work, cycling doesn’t.

In addition, each chapter ends a bit too tidily like it began. I suppose this is good practice for a writer of this genre, but it gets a little tiresome after a while. This creates a weakness in the book in that it is much longer than it needs to be.

I know that repetition is the key to memorability, but it can also lead to episodes of hypersomnia.

But enough about that. Around those weaknesses are a lot of strong ideas about a radical Christ. In its best moments, Fearless gives us strong pictures of Jesus as the firebrand prophet he was seen as by the people into whose lives he came. Some received his message; others plotted to kill him. Lucado is at his best when when he’s giving us fresh eyes for Christ. Several passages do this as effectively as Yancey’s work in The Jesus I Never Knew.

The best chapter in the book is probably the one on doubt. Lucado goes bare knuckles with his doubts, revealing a faith that overcomes, even in the face of improbability. “Sometimes in the dawn-tinted, pre-pulpit hours,” Lucado admits, “the seeming absurdity of what I believe hits me.”

And aside from one three-line section of rhyming questions, he seems to suspend his affinity for cuteness.

In the end, this book hasn’t made me a fan, but I do have a greater respect for Lucado’s writing. There are many sections worth quoting, equally for the clarity of the ideas expressed as for the quality of the writing. Bottom line: Cut the fluff Max, you’re an excellent writer. An entire book of these quotable sections would open a new audience for Lucado. But there are other authors who convey the same message more efficiently and with equal potency.

Verdict: recommended with one reservation. If you are used to reading more distilled, academically oriented books, you’ll find Lucado a bit tedious and unfocused. However, anyone who sees Jesus as Max Lucado does and fearlessly writes about it is OK in my books. (How’s that for a tidy, cute, and clever ending?)

Upsidedn (read: upside-down) is a book about community, honesty, humility, and authenticity. Considering the relative brevity of the book, author Tim Bailey manages to go deep with these ideas. He describes the book as “not a self-help book,” unless it “helps you fail miserably at being selfish.”

Throughout the book Bailey speaks in the voice of a caring and compassionate – and passionate – Pastor. But his is also the voice of a normal believer excited about the counter-cultural nature of the life of Jesus and the seemingly odd, upside-down promptings of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. This upside-down thinking is the theme of the book. “The upside-down kingdom where Jesus is Lord,” he says, “demands that we view others as better than ourselves…  This is a total rearrangement of the social system of the world.”

Bailey leads his readers to the truths he’s discovered with the excitement of a gold-digger who has stumbled upon a vast vein of new treasure. The difference here is that rather than hide and horde the wealth, he seeks to share with anyone who will come and take some of it, knowing that the source of this treasure is limitless.

The style of writing is at once reminiscent of Donald Miller, Rob Bell, and (in an odd twist of combination) John Piper. It’s a combination that somehow works and his balance of certainty, doubt, faith, and a love for mystery is refreshing. But above all, the tone of the book is an urgent compassion. He WANTS you to see what he’s seen and to taste what he’s tasted in Christ.

Like so much of the writing by Christians of this (my) generation, there is an undercurrent of pleading with people to take another look at Christian faith. Bailey doesn’t go as far as Donald Miller did in Blue Like Jazz (where Miller set up a confession booth to confess FOR the sins of Christians rather than accept confessions from sinners), but the same appropriate apologetic tone is there.

“There is a disturbing trend in the evangelical world,” he says, “of people who are more interested in feeling good about being right, rather than perpetually seeking truth. Their goal is to find conclusions to every question and answers for every confusion, rather than live in the mystery of NOT being God.”

We (Donald, Tim, and I) want you to know, dear readers, that not all Christians are ready grab, judge, and slap you into the kingdom. Authenticity, by Bailey’s definition is, “revealing the ‘you’ that God knows – mess and all… [it] isn’t avoiding hypocrisy – it is admitting it.”

Although there is not a weak chapter in the book, the chapter on worship stands above the rest. God is the center of our worship and, “the idea that we are the center of what is happening in creation has seriously warped our understanding of worship.” He continues, “Maybe we should be more interested in how God is experiencing His creation rather than being consumed by whether we are experiencing Him to our satisfaction.”

Due to its rather short length and the inclusion of discussion questions at the end of each chapter, the book is ideal for small groups and new believer discipleship. However, the content and presentation is compelling enough that the book would have been a joy to read at twice the length. Here’s hoping Bailey expands the content in subsequent printings.

You can order the book here or, if you’re local, drop in on the congregation that Bailey pastors in London, Ontario.

Something has gone very wrong in America and in Eric S. Wyatt’s opinion manufactured fear, corruption, and excessive partisanship are to blame. “Facing the Coming Storm” is one citizen’s impassioned plea for a return to the fundamentals of the American experiment. Power, he says, needs to be removed from the hands of a class of political elites and returned to the hands of the American people.

In “real” America, it seems, politicians are considerably less virtuous and self-sacrificing than you might believe based on an average episode of The West Wing. In real life, too many politicians are like Barney Frank, who “cares not a wit about the public good, as long as he can scare up enough votes for reelection.”

Apathy and fear are the enemies here. The author’s passion is one that we assume he hopes will become the norm in American society. If anything good can come of this current crisis and political climate, at least apathy seems to be waning. But an uninformed involvement is no less destructive. “It is my desire,” Wyatt writes in the introduction, “to ignite a passion for further consideration in my friends, family, and anyone else who stumbles across these words.”

Wyatt’s writing is strong enough to get the point across without the moments of sarcastic cynicism but this cynicism is not without merit considering the many clear recent examples of the type of problems he examines.

And as an author, he passes where others fail by being equally critical of both the left and the right. The book is not an Anne Coulter-style screed against anyone who is a Democrat. Neither party is spared it rightful blame here for the state of the current ideological war in today’s American society.

He sees flaws in the current administration’s handling of the financial crisis, yes, but he wisely balances that by pointing out the many mishandlings by the previous administration as well. It is the political system itself, as well as the individual parties that have lost their way and caused the crisis we are facing today.

Government is most effective, he says, when it does less. Quoting Mark Skousen, he makes the point that, “Government should only do those things that private citizens can’t do for themselves.”

Whether or not you live in the same country the author does, “Facing the Coming Storm” is worth your time. Non-American citizens will gain a better understanding of the American political system and everyone will benefit from the chapters on protecting yourself from the financial disasters running rampant in today’s crisis.

Purchase at Amazon.com

I was given a book recently called “Faith Undone: The emerging church – a new reformation or an end-time deception” by Roger Oakland. This is an “anti” book. By that I mean its sole purpose is to tell you, with a good amount of hyperbole, about the many, many things the author is against.  In this case, all of those things are related to what the author sees as the “Emerging Church” (EC).

I have actually seen this book before, and I did a deep skimming of it and saw it for what it is: a tabloid-style, pick-and-choose hatchet job on people who, while not executing perfectly, are valuable leaders in today’s North American church.

Books like this are basically supermarket tabloid gossip rags without the pictures. To put it more bluntly:

This is a strange sort of theological pornography for people who see their calling as hunting heresy by identifying leaders with theological weaknesses (some perceived, some real) and telling others about what they’ve found.

That itself is not an unbiblical pursuit, but taken to the level of out-of-context tabloid journalism it becomes sin.

This is not to say there is no truth in Oakland’s book. I can agree with and affirm many of the things in the book; the problem is that there is page after page after page of short quotes followed by commentary. There are even quotes of reporters who say something about somebody and these are taken as damning evidence against the person who is the target.

Rick Warren in particular (not surprisingly) takes a beating throughout the book. As a side note, in the way that Oakland perceives the EC, grouping Rick Warren in with the EC  is a bit ridiculous, kind of like claiming that John Piper and Joel Osteen are kindred spirits and are going to be sharing a pulpit at some point in the near future.  Rick Warren does big; the EC is mostly about regionalized, contextualized solutions.  Rick Warren works on a global scale; the EC is about incarnational witness. The EC is (mostly) anti-megachurch; Rick Warren IS the megachurch.

But I’m with Ed Stetzer on this; we need both. We need big solutions and big churches and small solutions and small churches. Which is why in one sense the EC can be very broadly defined as every church that is not dying due to lack of activity.

Even Dan Kimball, who apparently committed the sin of asking non-believers what their perception of “church” is is mocked for daring to suggest that the American church might be able to have a more authentic testimony. Gasp. How can he say this?!?! I can’t think of any examples of American Christian leaders who have disgraced the name of Christ in very visible ways. This is the type of behavior, mostly on a smaller scale, that Kimball explores.

I’ll close with a quote from C.S. Lewis. In Mere Christianity (p. 118):

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out.

Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?

If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

I think that a book like this is exactly what the Lewis quote above is about.

I think Donald is one of, if not THE brightest of “our” writers. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality deserves a place on the highest shelf of that genre… I’m thinking of Madeleine L’engle and Anne Lamott here… and maybe a bit of P.J. O’Rourke. Honestly, Blue Like Jazz changed a few parts of my life, and that ain’t hyperbole.

However, I was equally disappointed with Searching for God Knows What. You know how musicians who are Christians are saying things like “Hey, I’m not an authority on stuff. I just write and sing about living my life as a Christian. Don’t hold me up to be higher that you.”? I feel like Don turned that around in SFGKW. He’s a great writer, but in that book he tried to be a theologian and the effect was just the opposite of BLJ. He came off as an arrogant, left-of-liberal theologian instead of the regular guy reflecting on life experiences he was in BLJ.

I can tolerate a lot of theology that doesn’t match my own in a work like BLJ, or Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, or any number of L’Engle’s books. What I find hard to stomach is a writer like Don trying to be definitive on matters in which he is not an expert. I’m not either, BTW.

“Write what you know”, right? Either that or explore what you don’t know humbly and with an open mind.  Don repeatedly uses analogies about marriage, raising kids, and to a lesser extent sports to make his theological points. In those first two categories he has no experience on which to draw – which isn’t to say those categories are completely off-limits for him.

So I found myself writing in the columns of the book a number times – writing things like “Hey Don, try this line of reasoning again after you’re married and see if it still rings true to you” and “Hey Don, get back to me once you have some kids and have thought through this in real time.”

I guess the annoyance was exacerbated by the fact that I loved BLJ so much.

Sorry for riffing on Don so much. Its been a blog post sort of waiting to happen so I guess this was my rough draft.