Bookwi.se

Takeaway:  Loneliness is often a spiritual disease, which is a profound insight for a country that has more people living by themselves than ever before.

I have been sitting on this book for over a week.  Normally I write my reviews almost immediately after I finish the book, read through them a couple of times and publish them.  But I am not sure how to review this book (and officially the book did not release until today).  It is not because I didn’t like it.  I really did like it.

It is more because I am not sure how to describe the book.  This is not a straight forward memoir, or standard prose Christian Living book.  Parts of it are more like diary entries.  There are chapters that are just a single quote.  It is a book intended to take a while to work your way through.  It is the taking the reader through the arc of pain and spiritual loneliness that the author went through.

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Takeaway: Theology requires history and church tradition. 

I already wrote a summary review on Historical Theology.  But I am still using it as background.  I am getting ready to start working on a series of books on the Trinity.  I started reading one book with some friends and was very disappointed with the opening chapter.  So I decided to go back and read the chapter on the Trinity from Historical Theology to give myself some additional historical context.  That is really what this book is for, more than to read straight through from cover to cover.

The Trinity is an interesting doctrine.  Essentially the vast majority of what the church believes was determined by 600 AD.  The first three major creeds of the church spent a lot of time talking about the trinity and only a little has really been added over the years.  The trinity is one area where there is very little difference of opinion between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

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Takeaway: The stories of women and their views on women in church leaders, backed by statistical research can be powerful.

Women in church leadership is a touchy subject with me.  As I have related in other reviews, I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School for my MDiv.  My small class was more than half women, most of whom had grown up in relatively conservative church backgrounds, felt the call to be a pastor and were often quite harmed by the church on their way to seminary.  Many had left the denominations that they grew up in and sought safer places to pastor.

Unfortunately, even in denominations that officially ordain and recognize women as pastors, the road is often difficult.

Jim Henderson started this project because he was seeing women leaving the church because they were being restricted by the church.

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Takeaway: “We have been told our entire lives that we should be leaders…but the truth is that the greatest way to create a movement is to be a follower and to show others how to follow.  Following is the most underrated form of leadership in existence.”

I am completely convinced of the basic thesis of this book.  The evangelical church in particular, is too focused on leadership, organization and numbers.  What we should be focused on is following, discipleship and modeling faith.

Len Sweet gives a good defense of why our focus on leadership actually counters the gospel (that Jesus Christ is King and Lord of all).  Sweet does not suggest we should have anarchy, but that we need to focus on Christ (and not any other human) as our one true leader.  All others are just ‘first followers’.

One of the metaphors (about how a duck imprints on the first moving thing they see, not necessarily their mother or father) that Sweet uses at the end I think really focuses on the problem of why we need to make sure we are following Christ and not others.

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I read a number of good memoirs this year (Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Ian Cron, etc.) but Surprised by Oxford was my favorite.  A beautifully written book about a student finding God while studying literature in Oxford.  If you like books about books and memoirs that are as much about ideas as timeline, than you will like this.  I also highly recommend Ian Cron’s Jesus, My Father, The CIA and Me.  I had a hard time deciding which I liked better.  Cron’s book was very good and I really recommend it as well.

Summary: Girl finds God at Oxford in one of the most beautifully written memoirs written in recent years.

Memoirs are an increasingly popular form.  Especially since Donald Miller, the memoir seems to have found a new life by showing how a person found God.  In many ways, this is just an updating of the traditional testimony that has been, and in some churches still is, a common part of the church liturgy.  I have read a lot of memoirs over the past few years.  Many of them quite good.   But none were as well written and literary as Surprised by Oxford.

Carolyn Weber grew up in London, Ontario.  Child of divorced Hungarian immigrants, she had to work hard to make it through high school and college while working to support herself and family and making excelling grades.  Caro, as she was known, won a full scholarship to study literature at Oxford.  She eventually received her masters and doctorate from Oxford and now is a professor of literature.

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Takeaway: Basic Introduction to Systematic Theology does not need to be hard to read.

This book has been sitting on my self waiting for me to read and review it for several months.  I have almost stopped reading paperback books except for plane rides.  This was almost exactly the length of the flight from Atlanta to Cleveland to read.  It is a quick read for someone that has a theology background.    Essentially Thoennes is writing a basic guide to systematic theology.  He works through all of the major topics, Revelation, the Trinity, Scripture, Atonement/Salvation, the Church, etc.

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This is probably a particularly good books to highlight on Christmas Day.  Our world is changed by technology and in many ways we look to technology to make us better, give us more, solve our problems.  God created us with the ability to create and use technology, but technology is neither all good nor all bad.  Technology is both shaped by us, but also shapes us in often unexpected ways.  Cell phones give us the ability to leave our homes, go to the park with our kids while we are on-call, but then we often spend the time talking or texting instead of playing at the park.  I have read three books on how to think Christianly about technology this year, without any question From the Garden to the City is the best.
Takeaway: Technology is shaped by its human creators, but also in turn shapes its human users. (This is the book I have been searching for on Technology and Christianity.)

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition

I am a geek wannabe.  I fix a lot of friends computers and my less techie friends often ask for advice.  But my skills pale in comparison to John Dyer, John Saddington, and a bunch of other twitter friends.  In spite of the fact that I am a nanny and not a full time tech worker, I have been thinking a lot about technology and how we as Christians should be reacting.  Over the past couple months I have read two decent books on Technology and Christianity, Tim Challies’ The Next Story and Adam Thomas’ Digital Disciple.  Both have real value, but the book I have been looking for is John Dyer’s From The Garden to the City.

The main theme of the book is that while we as humans create technology (and that is part of our God given role), the resulting technology shapes us in ways that we often ignore.  A personal example happened yesterday.  My wife and I are heavy users of our phones for social media and texting, but we do not actually use them to make a lot of phone calls.  Our smart phones are not neutral devices as many Christians want to say, neither good nor evil.  Yes, we can choose to do good things or evil things with the phones, but the very fact we have the phones affects the way we interact in the world.  Technology is not deterministic; we can overcome natural tendencies.  But without reflection and insight we, often are just unaware of how the technology affects us.

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The King Jesus Gospel has affected my thinking more than any other book this year except maybe The Lost World of Genesis One. While there are weaknesses with the King Jesus Gospel (a bit to much repetition, not enough practical application around evangelism), I believe that McKnight is completely correct in calling the church back to the main focus of the Gospel (Jesus Christ). Salvation is important, but salvation is an implication of Jesus Christ as King. This is an important book, it is one that I think everyone should read, it is written at a popular level and it is fairly short. If I picked one book of the year, this would be it.  It is also on sale right now for $3.99 on Kindle.

Takeaway: The Gospel is about proclaiming Christ as Lord over all, not primarily about personal salvation.

Some books just give words to those ideas that have been floating around in your brain and suddenly you have a way to express what you were not previously able to express.  The King Jesus Gospel is one of those books.

Over the past months, I have been struggling through understanding scripture and the church and the gospel and how it all relates.  Of course, not all of my questions are answered and of course, I am not sure about all of McKnight’s answers, but his basic thesis, that we need to re-orient the way we talk about the gospel I am convinced is one of the most important messages I have heard.

Early in the book McKnight summarized his thesis (which he does a number of times throughout the book).

“Perhaps the most important thing I can say about what this book will argue boils down to these points:
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