Blogger Review Books – Page 12

Hungry for God: Hearing God’s Voice in the Ordinary and Everyday by Margaret Feinberg

June 28, 2013 by Adam Shields

So how do you review a book that you were supposed to review 2 years ago? I received a copy of the book from Amazon with my first Amazon Vine review. And I put it aside to read later. (It is one of my problems that I tend to have a problem getting to actual physical paper books that I am supposed to review. I am much better about reviewing books if I have a kindle version.)

Eventually I gave away the paperback and bought a kindle version when it was on sale. But it still took me over a year to read it.

And once I have read it? It is a perfectly good book. It is short, well written and about hearing from God and orienting yourself to hear from God.

It is good. There isn’t anything particularly original about it. There are lots of books that are essentially about spiritual disciplines, trying to focus on God, in the end, how to be a Christian.

Plastic Donuts: Giving That Delights the Hearts of the Father

June 17, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: Quick read about the things that are important to think about when we think about Christian giving. Giving is something that church staff fear talking about and most Christians have at least some guilt about. On the staff side, no one likes to fundraise or ask people for money (although some are good at … Read more

Jesus is Lord, Ceasar is Not: Evaluating Empire in the New Testament

May 23, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: Jesus is Lord does not necessarily mean that early Christians were also saying Caesar is not.

Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not sounded like a great book that I desperately wanted to read. In the end I found it was a good book that I probably could have read a review of instead. That is not to say it isn’t worth reading. Just to say it was not worth reading for me.

You see I have previously thought that thinking about Christianity in terms of Empire or Anti-Empire could be useful, but either way often put more emphasis on the writer’s political views than on the actual biblical evidence.

Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works by James KA Smith

May 10, 2013 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Worship, Spiritual Development, Discipleship, all are based on what we do, not just what we think. Plans for growth and worship based primarily on knowledge break down and leave Christians ill prepared for actual life as a Christian.

It has been six weeks since I have finished Imagining the Kingdom and I am still not sure how to write the review. But I finally decided that the review is not going to get better the longer I think about it, it is going to get worse. So I need to just write and apologize for not having fully processed this book.

Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works has a deceptively simple premise. Growth is based on practice.

Early in the book is a memorable illustration. Smith, having being influenced by his his wife to read more about eating healthy looks around for a pen to highlight a passage from one of Michael Polen’s books. As he is looking around he realizes that he is sitting (and eating) in a Costco food court.

Through the Eye of a Needle by Peter Brown

May 8, 2013 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: The variety of ways that the Christian church understands wealth and economics has a long history.

One of the reasons that we should read Christian history is because it can give us context for our own modern issues.

Because there are limited sources for late Roman history, Brown uses a variety of historical methods. Most interesting for me was the personal narrative of Christians, Augustine, Ambrose, and a number of people that I had no knowledge of prior to this book.

Culture has always influenced Christianity. So late Roman culture expected those of great wealth to give gifts to the city either through the games and circuses or through community building projects.

Enemies of the Heart: Breaking Free from the Four Emotions that Control You by Andy Stanley

April 29, 2013 by Adam Shields

April 30th is the last day to get Enemies of the Heart free as an MP3 Audiobook from Christianaudio.com

Takeaway: Emotions can harm us. Spiritual Disciplines can help us overcome harmful emotions.

I did not realize this when I started, but Enemies of the Heart is a revision of It Came From Within. I have not read It Came From Within, so it is a new book to me, but I know many people have.

This book covers four emotions that damage us: guilt, anger, greed, and jealousy. In each case he has a method of how to combat the unhealthy emotion. With guilt, we need to seek forgiveness, not just from God, but from the actual person we wronged. With anger, we need to forgive the people that wronged us, not just generally, but specifically and explicitly. With greed we need to get over the fear that makes us be greedy by being generous. With jealousy we need celebrate those things we might be jealous of in those around us.

The Quest for the Trinity by Stephen R Holmes

March 21, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: An important look at the historical development of the Doctrine of the Trinity and how modern language drift has changed the historical definitions.

I have been looking forward to reading the Quest for the Trinity ever since I first heard about it in the middle of last year. Consistently it has been well reviewed and it certainly deserves the accolades. Holmes know his historical theology, he is very well read and no other book on the trinity I have read so far has been as well documented.

But I intentionally was holding off on reading this because just by reading the description and I knew he was reacting against the modern theological work around the trinity. And it was the more recent (primarily social focused) theology of the Trinity that drew me toward investigating the trinity more.

The basic thesis is that the modern focus is fundamentally different from the Patristic understanding of the Trinity. This is not actually all that hard to capture. One of the things I most liked about Dunzl’s Doctrine of the Trinity is that he clearly showed that doctrinal development is at least partially dependent on language and culture of the time. You cannot move beyond the current ability to describe the theology you are trying to document into a doctrine.

The Catholic Church: What Everyone Needs to Know by John Allen Jr

March 11, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: A well written succinct account of the Catholic church. Primarily concerned with the workings and practice of the church. Written in a question and answer format, which is wearing after awhile.

Over the past year or so I have been reading to understand more about the Catholic church. I have read several accounts of conversion from Protestant to Catholic. I have read Robert Barron’s Introduction to Catholicism and Scott Hahn’s 40 Catholic Customs and their Biblical Roots and Richard Rohr’s Why Be Catholic. I have read Mark Noll’s evaluation of the state of the Catholic church and Evangelical/Catholic Relations. I even have read (but not yet reviewed) the first of the Pope’s books on Jesus.

But all of these books have been either primarily theological or primarily personal accounts of the Catholic church. John Allen is the senior Vatican correspondant for the National Catholic Reporter and Vatican analyst for CNN. This new introduction to the Catholic church (very conveniently released just as the conclave gets under way to elect a new Pope), is clearly the work of a journalist.

The writing is clear and punchy. It gets straight to the point and it covers a wide swath of material.

Operation Screwtape: The Art of Spiritual War by Andrew Farley

March 5, 2013 by Adam Shields

Summary: A modern take on CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.

I remember reading CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters when I was pretty young. I am not sure, but I think I was probably 12 or 13.

It was just enough humor and story for me to be able to read, while at the same time absorbing some good theology. I think that is what Matt Mikalatos is doing with Imaginary Jesus and Night of the Living Dead Christian (Bookwi.se Reviews), but there are not many other books that are trying to mix a light story wrapper on good theology.

Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture

February 26, 2013 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: The hard work of building community and developing others has to start with a commitment to stability. If we are serious about changing the world, making a commitment to a specific geography may be the best way to do it.

When I was in college I had a respected mentor of mine pray Jeremiah 29: 4-6 over me (Jeremiah tells the exiles to go ahead and settle down, stay awhile and make Babylon’s concerns and needs their own concerns and needs.) I took that seriously. I expected to stay in Chicago for the rest of my life. I did for 15 years, but then moved to Georgia in order to be closer to my wife’s family. While in Chicago for the last 10 years, my wife and I were members of church near the University of Chicago. In a five year period, there were 27 different people that were a part of our small group. At the end of the five years none of the people still attended the church and only one couple still lived in Chicago. We live in a mobile society (especially those that live in urban areas), even if mobility is down a bit over the past few years.

One of the first things I noticed in this book is that Jonathan Hargrove-Wilson speaks of stability and community in similar ways that Rhett Smith, Shane Hipps and others do. All of these authors fear that people get just enough community, stability, intimacy from their online or short term relationships to keep them from going deeper and getting what they are really looking for. There is an anecdote about a parishioner complaining to the pastor that they were not finding community the church they had been attending for almost a year. The pastor responds that they had only had one year worth of community. The type of community that the couple was looking for requires 30 years of investment. In many ways, this is similar advice and focus as Eugene Peterson‘s Practice Resurrection and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.