Offsite Review: Imagining the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith

James K.A. Smith

I am about 1/3 of the way through Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works by James KA Smith.  It is not an easy book to read, (fortunately for me according to this review it is about to get easier).  However, I think this is a book that is worth struggling through.  There was a blog post a while back that I read about how Pastors need to read above their ability occasionally   And this is one that I think that a lot of pastors should struggle through.

Worship is important, but we often do not think through worship.  Smith is trying to get, especially those of use in the Evangelical world, to think clearly about how the non-intellectual parts of worship work.  He opens the book with a story about how his wife had introduced him to several book on the importance of thinking through our habits of eating and food more deeply.  At one point he was looking around for a pen to highlight a passage of one of Michael Pollan’s books while sitting in the food court of a Costco.  He realized that intellectual awareness of the right things to do are not enough to actually do the right things.  So it is with worship.  Thinking the right things about God is not enough to actually live the right things.

My own review of Imagining the Kingdom will probably go up toward the end of next week.  But until then you might be interested in reading the new review by Jasmine Smart at Englewood Review of Books.

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