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The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun by Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway

Adam Shields —  January 11, 2012 — Leave a comment

The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun

Takeaway: The Christian world outside the US is much more important than what we usually acknowledge

Christian biography and autobiography is an important part of any spiritual growth.  Whether you are a reader or not, you need to hear about what others have lived before you.  This does not need to be in book form; movies, radio interviews, podcasts, conversations all can be part of the way that we hear from other Christians about their own spiritual lives.

Christian autobiography from non-western Christians is desperately needed to round out a vision of the church that is concerned with more than small bits of theological difference or differences in cultural engagement.  Christians around the world right now are being imprisoned for their faith.

I first heard about Brother Yun (as I have about so many good books) from John Armstrong’s blog and I went back and read them as I finished up this book.  It has been nearly 4 years since I first heard about the book, but I just recently got round to reading it.  I should have read it much earlier.

This is a biography unlike I have read.  It is reminiscent of the autobiography of Brother Andrew (the bible smuggler) I first read as a comic book as pre-teen. Brother Yun, starting when he first became a Christian at 16, was fervent in prayer.  He prayed and fasted for 100 days to receive a bible (illegal and very rare in the early 1970s in China) and after 100 days a man brought him a bible.  He did not just read it, he memorized large passages of scripture.  Within months of receiving the bible he was asked to come preach to a nearby village.  He went, but did not know what to say, so he just recited the whole book of Matthew and then the parts of Acts that he had started memorizing.

His story proceeds to tell of how he became a preacher in the underground church movement of China and how he was repeatedly imprisoned, tortured and eventually escaped out of China.  Brother Yun now lives in Germany with his family and works to support the church in China.

Continue Reading…

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Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard

Adam Shields —  January 28, 2011 — Leave a comment

Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with GodTakeaway: Classics are classics for a reason.  If you are serious about trying to follow after God, this is a book that will challenge you no matter what your maturity.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Finding God’s will is a common desire.  Often people can be paralized because they are afraid of not finding God’s will.  Hearing God is a classic.  This is the third copy of the book I have owned (one given and two purchased) over the years but the first time I am actually reading it.

I like that Willard starts by moving the pressure down a notch.  He has a good illustration of the fact that no parent wants to tell their children everything that they should do.  Parents want to teach their children how to do something, and expect that they will do it.  If they are supposed to make their bed in the morning, they should make it every morning.  Children complaining that the parent did not tell them this morning to make their bed will only incur the parent’s wrath.  So Willard starts telling us we should listen to what scripture says and do that.

Another good point that I have never really thought of, is that we should always read scripture assuming that the people of scripture were much like us.  They were not particularly special people, they were sinful, afraid, made bad decisions, etc.  If we see them as much like us, then we can assume that we to should be hearing from God and seeking to follow God’s will in relatively similar ways as the biblical characters.  Since reading that section, I have been more aware of the large number of Christians that actively resist thinking of biblical characters as ‘like us’.  I think it shows one area that we have far to go to move Evangelicals into historical Christian Orthodoxy.

There is a good illustration about what it means to live in Christ and hear from the Holy Spirit.  My shortened, weakened version is that Cabbage is alive.  But Cabbage is dead to the world of movement and play.  A rabbit might be able to move and play in some form, but it is dead to the world of art and ideas.  It is not that Christians that do not hear from the spirit are dead in Christ (not saved), but rather are some are blinded to the plane that the Holy Spirit is speaking to them on.  He spends several pages developing it and it is much more impressive than my few lines makes it seem.

Overall what I am most impressed by, is the biblical balance that Willard attempts to strike.  When you discuss hearing from God there are lots of places to veer into shaky ground.  And I know that some are of the opinion that even discussing hearing from God goes too far.  But Willard attempts to keep the desire to hear from God, the ways we hear from God, the reality of the power of God, and the limitations of our own understanding all front and center.

This is not a new book, but I think it would be good to read along with Bill Hybels’ Power of a Whisper (my review).  Hybels spends more time talking biographically (and telling other people’s stories), which I think is helpful to put hearing from God in context of a life lived.  And Hybels probably is a bit more directive in how to hear from God.  But Willard is more theologically and philosophically oriented.  I think the balance between them is useful.

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Mere Churchianity by Michael Spencer

Adam Shields —  January 3, 2011 — 1 Comment

Takeaway: Moving the church and Christianity away from polemics means moving toward Christ.  This a great book about being a Christian, not just looking good in Church.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition

The late Michael Spencer wrote this book with the many who have already left the church clearly in mind.  There are…”Millions of people who could no longer believe in the God of American churchianity — whether Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, Pentecostal, charismatic or evangelical.”

The key for him is not fixing the organization of the church, but the rediscovery of Jesus.  He is well aware of some of the others that have also gone down this road.  But I also think he starts with an assumption that is very important.  “I need to make it clear that no one, and certainly not me, knows all there is to know about Jesus.  Neither is there complete agreement about everything that is known and everything that is true about Jesus.  At the same time, it’s a ridiculous misrepresentation to imply there’s not a remarkable consensus among Christians on what we can know about Jesus.”

Spencer is after the person that is Jesus, not our own projections (the Dr. Phil Jesus, the Che Guevara Jesus, similar to what Imaginary Jesusis talking about.)  “Jesus wastes no time letting you know he’s not Protestant or an American.  The more time I spent with him, the clearer it became that he didn’t seem to have a strong opinion on card playing, movie watching, dancing, or other demonized “worldly” influences.  I’m still somewhat in shock to know that the wine Jesus made in John 2 wasn’t Welch’s grape juice.  At age twenty-one, I had to admit that my church-shaped faith wasn’t always a dependable guide to Jesus.”

At the same time Spencer is not against the church.  He just knows that churches can move us toward being a ‘good Christian’.  But being a good Christian is not really what we should be after.  “The exhausting effort to be a good Christian denies Christ.  If you insist on securing your own holiness and acceptability, you disqualify yourself from receiving anything from Jesus.  He came to earth to save sinners, not good Christians.”

“We need our brokenness.  We need to admit it and know it is the real, true stuff of our earthly journey in a fallen world.  It’s the cross on which Jesus meets us.  It is the incarnation he takes up for us.  It’s what his hands touch when he holds us.”

The major weakness of this book is that most of the time is spent diagnosing the problem.  I think most of us agree there is a problem.  The question is what to do about it.  In many ways this is a very similar book to Eugene Peterson’s Practice Resurection.  But they have very different results.  While Peterson pretty much says there is no spiritual growth apart from the church.  Spencer’s focus is on why the church often causes people that want to grow to leave.  I think the books can be read together and harmonized.  But it would not be easy.  Peterson says no church is perfect, but the church is what God gave us to be his body on earth.  So find a church, commit to it, live with the people there, serve them and grow with them.  Spencer says the church often detracts from Christ.  So find Christ and when Christ and the church differ go with the Christ.

I think the problem is that for Spencer too many people focus on hearing what the church has to say and not hearing what Christ and the Holy Spirit say through scripture.  For Peterson, he seems to think the problem is that too many people want to avoid messyness and try to do church on their own.  I think both are right, but it is not easy to try to walk the narrow line of seeing church as a place to serve, build community, listen to scripture and still not become enamored by the organization and activity of the church.  Both agree the purpose of the church should be about discipleship, not building an organization.

Both are fairly skeptical of large churches because the lack of personal relationship.  Neither says you should not be in a large church, but they suggest it might be harder to work through the pagentry and buracracy that accompanies the large church.

I think this is well worth the read.  And I would encourage a read in fairly close proximity to Practice Resurection.  I think they are both made better with the flavor of the other.

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I received a copy of this book from the publisher for purposes of review.

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

Adam Shields —  December 27, 2010 — 3 Comments

Great Emergence, The: How Christianity Is Changing and Why (emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)Takeaway: Many stories can be told about the changes that have been going on in Christianity.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

I have admired the work that Phyllis Tickle has done with fixed hour prayer and other spiritual disciplines for a while.  So when I saw another book of hers was free on kindle I snatched it up.  (It is no longer free on kindle, free books are usually short term, so pick them up quickly.)

I really was not expecting this style of book from someone that I have come to associate primarily with spiritual disciplines.  It is essentially a narrative history of Christianity over the past century or so.  It has a clear thesis, that Christianity is changing and the Emerging (and Emergent) church is the next step in the church’s reformation process (a process that occurs about once every 500 years according to Tickle).

She mounts an interesting argument, but in the end I did not really buy into the argument.  I am of the age and probably of the sociological and tempramental and theological categories to be a part of the emerging church movement, I see much value in the rest of the church, and only limited value within the emerging church.  Those within that movement that I respect have been distancing themselves from some of the claims (and even more from the terminology) for several years.

In the end I think that the emerging (or whatever you want to call it) church reaches a particular type of person that will not be reached by many other church expressions.  The role of the church is to gather people and lead them to Christ, while being Christ to others.  Necessarily churches will look different in order to reach different people.  I am glad that the Emerging church exists.  I just do not think it is a major departure from the current church.
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I recently purchased a new android phone.  I have had a blackberry for the past couple years.  (Roughly since the time I first bought a kindle.)  I have not been reading much on my blackberry and do not think I have finished any books completely on the blackberry.  But with the larger and much better screen of the android phone I finished this book within a few days of first buying the phone.  It is a reader that I will continue to use.

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Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Adam Shields —  February 24, 2010 — 4 Comments

Cover of "Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Re...

Cover via Amazon

Takeaway: Life according to God’s purpose for us, may seem radical to others, but it should be more about obedience than an attempt at radicalness.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook, christianaudio.com Audiobook

My wife and I read a few pages every night before we go to sleep.  Crazy Love was our most recent book.  Francis Chan is a captivating speaking and author. And the book is a fairly serious one.

A ton of people have written really good reviews of this book and I am not sure how to add to them.  Francis Chan starts with the glory of God.  If you have heard Louis Giglio speak often there is some overlapping themes and style with the first couple chapters.

But then Chan moves into an assessable, modern call to live a radical life for Christ.  He challenges the reader to inspect what they claim to believe.  And if you believe what you say, then why aren’t you living with the type of radical devotion that shows that we really believe what we say.

There are several sections of examples of real life people trying to live a life devoted to Christ.  If you want your faith challenged.  This is a good place to start.  Fairly short book, 192 pages.

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