Blogger Review Books – Page 8

The Radical Disciple: Some Neglected Aspects of Our Calling by John Stott

June 30, 2015 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Discipleship is about following Christ in non-conformity. Hearing from an elder who has lived the life is a great encouragement to continue on.

This is John Stott‘s last book. He decided to retire several years ago and now has said he will no longer write (update: he passed away in 2011 at the age of 90). So I think it is interesting that he is intentionally writing a book about discipleship and concentrating on areas that he thinks are often left unaddressed.

The book ends with a poignant chapter on death, similar to the last album by Johnny Cash. Both Cash and Stott knew they were not long for this world. The afterward says goodbye to the reader and discusses his will and legacy. In many ways, I wish he opened with this. Because it gives more weight to the rest of the book.

However, if he started with death it might overwhelm the general theme of the book, Non-Conformity. The title of the first chapter, he is calling us to be different as Christians. Not just different from the world, but different because we were created to be like Christ. There is a good quote about the fact that we cannot live like Christ, unless we have Christ live in us. And I think that the living with Christ in us as the only way to achieve Christlikeness may be more counter cultural to the church than anything else in the book. We all know that we have transformed, but to really be transformed we not only have to strive after living like Christ, we have to submit to the Spirit that guides us.

How to Be Rich: It’s Not What You Have. It’s What You Do With What You Have. by Andy Stanley

June 16, 2015 by Adam Shields

I am reposting this review from early 2014 because the Kindle Edition is on sale for $3.99 on Jan 3 and 4. The audiobook is discounted to $2.99 with the purchase of the kindle edition
Summary: A short book focusing on how to be Rich (and we are all rich) by being generous.

If you are are a regular reader of this blog you might know that I am a member of Buckhead Church, one of the Northpoint Community Church campuses where Andy Stanley is the senior pastor.

I have read and reviewed a number of books by Andy (see below). Where Andy shines as a writer is when he is focus on leadership, vision or talking about our churches. How to be Rich is one of the later type of books.

How To Be Rich is based on the teachings found in an annual sermon series that Andy has preached since 2007. These sermons focus on 1 Timothy 6:8, “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”

The point of the series is not how to GET rich but how to BE rich. The book starts by trying to convince the reader that they are rich. If you have a household income of $37,000 a year, you are among the top 4% of earners in the world. Andy later talks about the top 1% as a way for those of us that are not that rich to understand wealth. But then continually comes back to the concept that whether we are top 1% of top 4% we are still rich in the eyes of most of the rest of the world (and God.)

Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem

May 8, 2015 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: God wants us to be focused on what God wants us to do, not everything else.

Crazy Busy is a book that I enjoyed and got a lot more out of than I thought I would going in. I am a fairly low key guy. I don’t enjoy high stress situations. I usually start feeling stress when my to-do list has more than a handful of things on it. I do not view myself as ‘crazy busy’ and I am not by the standards of most people.

But this ‘mercifully short’ book on busyness was still helpful. I think it fits well with my unintentional book focus this year, that it is the normal, mundane every-day things that are really important in the long run.

DeYoung is the pastor of a large church, author or co-author of more than a dozen books, father of 5 under 10, husband, and well understands busyness. As he says, this is one of those books by someone that sees a problem through personal experience, not because he has solved the problem of busyness.

So he uses 3 things to avoid, 7 diagnosis of the problem and one thing you must do, to try and overcome busyness. This is not so much a ‘how to’ book as a ‘here are the important things’ book.

If I could summarize the argument it would be 1) God has created you with limited time, 2) In order to make best use of the time you have to prioritize around what you must do and what you are gifted with and who is around you, 3) do not get distracted by the less important things (or your own pride that thinks you can do more than you can) and 4) God has to be first and central.

A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France by Miranda Richmond Mouillot

April 23, 2015 by All Old Users

Home is the center of Miranda Richmond Mouillot’s book A Fifty-Year Silence; a memoir about the author’s quest to learn what happened to her grandparents during World War II, why they separated, divorced and refused to speak to each other for over 5 decades. Mouillot grew up with very little factual information about her grandparents. She knew they escaped Nazi-occupied France and lived in refugee camps in Switzerland. Her grandmother was a psychiatrist; her grandfather a UN employee who was a translator at the Nuremberg trials. It was also family lore that one day, Mouillot’s grandmother packed up the children and left her husband without a word. The couple had never spoken to each other since.

Beyond these scant facts, the lives of these two people were a complete mystery to everyone in their family. As the author grew older and attended college, her desire to know what exactly transpired in her grandparents’ lives grew as well. Mouillot’s determination to uncover family secrets became a dominating force in her life.

Ruby by Cynthia Bond

April 7, 2015 by All Old Users

I have no idea how to review Ruby by Cynthia Bond.

Ephram Jennings is the adult son of a deceased backwoods preacher and has been in love with Ruby for as long as he can remember. Ruby Bell has recently returned home to Liberty, Texas. She lived a horrific life being sexually trafficked and abused since childhood.

Upon returning from New York City, sharply dressed and epically groomed, Ruby begins a long descent into madness as her past begins to quite literally haunt her. Voodoo runs deep within Liberty, even permeating the faith of the Christians in town. Now living in filth and wandering the streets in tatters, Ruby is openly shamed and once again, used by the men in her hometown. Ephram begins his long, slow courtship of Ruby; the only man who treated this woman with respect, kindness and expecting nothing in return.

Ruby is the debut novel by Bond, a writing consultant and therapeutic writing teacher. This novel is many things: a love story, a survival story, a horrific story, maybe even a ghost story. Bond is a fantastic writer and brings the reader immediately in, lock stock and barrel. The scenes between Ephram and Ruby feel beautiful and full of hope and sharply contrast with the main characters backstories as well as the evil they face together as adults.

The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?

March 25, 2015 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Anxiety is real emotion. Allow God to use it to help you and do not allow it to control you.

I have followed Rhett Smith on twitter for several years as moved to Texas and started a counseling practice. I have read his blog as he thoughtfully talked about issues of technology, theology, marriage and faith.

I was not surprised when Moody approached him about writing a book. I knew it would be good and well worth reading.

But when I heard it would be about anxiety, I thought it would be a good book for me to pass on to friends and family. Because I have a particular understanding of anxiety. Anxiety is rooted in fear, fear is something that as Christians we should not have. Therefore the best thing to do with anxiety is to reject it as sin.

Thankfully, that is not the thesis of this book. Autobiographically, Rhett Smith works through how he dealt with fear and anxiety through the early loss of his mother (and much of his extended family to cancer), his problems with stuttering, school and the normal anxiety of growing up, finding a career, and relationships.

America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation by Grant Wacker

March 17, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: An evaluation of Billy Graham’s place in history.

I have been reluctant to read biographies of living people recently. Sometimes it just feels like we need more distance to be really able to understand a person’s contributions, and when that person is beloved, their weaknesses as well.

So I was not planning on reading America’s Pastor. I have read Billy Graham’s own, way too long and detailed without being all that interesting autobiography(-ish), Just As I Am. And I figured that was probably enough for the next decade or so. But after two pretty positive reviews by Mark Noll and Ted Olsen and then the same day being offered a review copy, I decided to pick it up.

And I am glad I did. America’s Pastor is not a biography. There is a fairly short overview of Graham’s life at the beginning, but the rest of the book is chapters focused on different aspects of Graham’s work, image or legacy. The eight chapters are: Preacher, Icon, Southerner, Entrepreneur, Architect, Pilgrim, Pastor and Patriarch.

It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell

March 11, 2015 by All Old Users

The tough part about reviewing a memoir is not to critique the author’s story but to review how they told it. A memoir is an account from a real person so a different set of eyes is needed compared to reviewing fiction. Most of the reviews I have read of Andie Mitchell’s It Was Me All Along treated this work as fiction. Many amateur reviewers commented on the choices Mitchell made much as they would when reading a fictional piece. I understand how easy it is to do so but I feel that’s unfair to the author and I’ll strive to avoid the same path others have chosen in their reviews.

Andie Mitchell is the blogger for Can You Stay for Dinner. Mitchell has chronicled her weight loss story and offers helpful advice and recipes for her online audience who are pursuing a healthier lifestyle. It Was Me All Along is a more in depth account of the obesity which has plagued Mitchell most of her life, her journey to lose well over 100 pounds and learning to develop a healthy relationship with food. Mitchell’s story is a good one. I appreciate her story is one of striving to make healthy decisions, avoiding fad diets, and using tried and true methods such as healthy portions and exercise to achieve her goals. It many ways, primarily on her blog, Mitchell is a great example of how the average person can achieve and sustain weight loss with a healthy mindset.

Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren F. Winner

March 10, 2015 by Adam Shields

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.

You Don’t Understand the Bible Because You Are Christian by Richard Gist

February 9, 2015 by Adam Shields

Summary: We as modern Christians miss a number of nuances of scripture because we do not understand ancient Hebrew culture.

The title of this book is intriguing. I rarely accept review copies any more because I just prefer picking my own books and the prospect of a free book is not all that enticing. But I accepted a review copy of this book by the author after he emailed me.

The overall point of the book is important and I think useful. There are a number of things about scripture and the Christian faith that we miss because the bible was not written directly to us as 21st century Americans. It was written to people of a particular time and place (although that time and place varied throughout scripture). And while we can trust that the message of scripture is not completely lost to us as 21st century Christians, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, the tradition of the church and research by academics, there is real value in exploring ancient culture.