Adam Shields

The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck–101 Extraordinary Solutions for Parents and Teachers by Ron Clark

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The End of Molasses Classes: Getting Our Kids Unstuck--101 Extraordinary Solutions for Parents and TeachersTakeaway: If children are not succeeding in school, you are not trying hard enough.  And that ‘you’ includes means, parents are not trying hard enough, teachers are not trying hard enough, administrators are not trying hard enough, kids are not trying hard enough.

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My wife is a teacher; I work part time with an after school program.  My Mother-in-Law just retired as a principal in June and my Mom retired as a teacher last year.  Many of my friends are related to education in one way or another.  Personally, I spend a fair amount of time reading about and thinking about education theory and practice (at least for a non-educator).

School reform is a hot topic, but the largest problem, in my mind, is scalability.  There are many very good solutions to the problems of education, but very few of them really scale because they are so dependent on either the people or the cultural context where they are working.

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The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning

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The Furious Longing of GodTakeaway: Brennan Manning is the greatest communicator about the radical grace of God that I know.

I often hear complaints that a church or particular stream of Christian faith only preaches grace, with the implication that they are not preaching the whole gospel.  Manning clearly believes that the gospel is grace and anything other than grace is something that is either being added to the gospel or it is something that should be taught that is a result of the gospel, not the gospel itself.

I mostly agree.  I understand both sides of the argument.  I know that there are people that preach grace in a way that is not the gospel.  They preach a grace that has no sense of holiness or weight to it.  The result of this type of gospel is that their is no sense of what it is that grace has done.  It may seem like grace is the center of this type of message, but the power of grace is missing because there is nothing that the grace of God is doing in our lives.

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Saying Yes to No: A Biblical Approach to Disagreement Among Christians by Patrick Webb

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Saying Yes to No

Takeaway: If there are people, there will be disagreement.  Avoiding disagreement, or insisting on a ‘be nice’ Christianity does not solve the problem.  Instead, we need to focus on disagreeing in love and with purpose.

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I am on a personal investigation of books about how to disagree as Christians. I am giving a talk in September on the subject. But the main reason I am giving the talk is because I am trying to force myself to think a bit more deeply about how we as Christians can disagree and still fulfill Jesus’ John 17 prayer “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. (NASB)”

It is pretty easy to look around at the Christian world and see lots of people being examples the opposite of this prayer. It is not all that easy to find really good examples of how Jesus’ John 17 prayer is being fulfilled. I think in large part it is because movements toward unity are a lot harder than disagreements. It is often very slow gradual steps toward unity, but breaks in unity are often loud and well publicized. One of the best books I have read on the reason for this unity is John Armstrong’s Your Church is too Small. I have read it and plan on reading it again very soon.

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A ‘Down and Dirty’ Guide to Theology by Donald McKim

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A "Down and Dirty" Guide to TheologyTakeaway: A unique, and useful overview of what theology is about.  More of introduction to the study of theology and Christian thought than introduction to theology itself.

It is a rare book on theology that includes a section on theological jokes. I have to admit that while I thought some of them were fairly funny, my wife and some friends that I told a couple of the jokes to, were not as amused. It was probably that I am the world’s worst joke teller.

This is a very unique introduction to theology. There is nothing in this short book that I thought was extra or could have been cut, but it was not what I thought of when I thought introduction to theology. This is a quick book. I read almost all of it on a plane ride. In the end it is really about 100 good pages of content with a little bit more in the appendix and introduction. When I think of an introduction to theology I primarily think of a short systematic theology. That is probably not the best way to introduce someone to theology, but that is what I think of.

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The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson Book 5)

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The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 5)Takeaway: The Hero is often the hero in a way they do not anticipate.

Percy Jackson, in the last book of the series, is sure he is “the one” of the prophecy.  He is going to have to save Olympus and defeat Kronos.  So he debates undertaking a dangerous task to prepare himself.

Of course, there is always a problem with his love life (since Hera cursed him).

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The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4) by Rick Riordan

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The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4)Takeaway: The difference between friends and enemies is sometimes difficult to discern.

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This is a classic penultimate book.  The bad guy gains power. A new character (potential love interest) is introduced. There is some tension between the main characters. And a character seems to be sliding between the good guys and the bad guys.

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The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance by Randy Alcorn

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The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike BalanceTakeaway: We cannot be 50 percent truth and 50 percent grace.  We have to be 100 percent truth and 100 percent grace.

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I am trying to read about how to properly disagree as Christian (I am giving a talk about this in September).  I have several good short resources.  The introduction to John Piper’s The Future of Justification (Free PDF download) is one of the best short articles about how to disagree as Christians that I have read.  (I did not like the rest of the book that much, but I keep telling people about the introduction.)  I keep running across short sections of books that also are good.  But I have been struggling to find longer works that are focused on disagreeing properly as Christians.

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A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age by Alan Jacobs

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A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age

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I do not often read books of essays. Frankly, I do not frequently read essay length works. I read a lot of blog posts and I read a lot of book length works. But the essays are difficult for me. Jacobs is a very good essayist. And that is why I wanted to read the book. He was (and is) a professor at Wheaton College when I was there, but I did not have him (and do not remember meeting him.)

Over the past couple years I have follow his blogs and writings fairly closely, but this is the first book of his that I have read. I bought it a bit over a year ago to take to the beach (found it for $3 including shipping on Amazon.) Unfortunately it ended up in my Sister-In-Law’s beach books and I forgot about it until I went to the beach this year.

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