I’m such a slow reader. That does not mean I actually read slow, while others read fast. It means that I will read a chapter of a book and then I won’t get around to reading another chapter until a week later. I have a bad habit of doing that. I don’t just sit down and read through a book in a day, or a few days. I read a little here and then I read a little there until a month or two later (sometime 3 or 4 months later) I finish the book. I want to do a better job of being a disciplined reader. OK, enough about that. What am I reading right now?
I’m currently in three different books. I have been reading through Philip Yancey’s book entitled Prayer for quite a while now. I’m really really enjoying it. He writes with such honesty, and this book on prayer is an honest portrayal of wrestling with prayer. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in prayer (which should be all christians!).
I am also making my way through Mike Erre’s book, Death by Church. It is a powerfully written book about the Kingdom of God, and the churches mission to live Kingdom lives. The back cover of the book reads:
“The early church was a vibrant counterculture – an ‘outpost of heaven.’ These fledgling communities lived in contradiction to the world around them and saw themselves as an entirely new expression of humanity. But today, much of the Western church is merely an increasingly irrelevant and powerless reflection of society’s values and priorities. The church has ceased bearing witness to the dynamic and all-encompassing kingdom of God and has instead become an end to itself.”
This book does a wonderful job (my opinion) of explaining the “already/but not yet” aspect of the Kingdom. And Erre tackles the question, “Is the church the Kingdom?”
The third book I am reading through is by Larry Osborne. It is called 10 Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe. It is a simple read and very practical. Osborne deals with what he calls “spiritual urban legends.” He hits myths like: faith fixes everything, God brings good luck, God has a blueprint for my life, and forgiving means forgetting. I’m thinking about using it as resource for a future sermon series.
Is anyone else reading anything good right now?
I’m reading a book by Michael Frost called “Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture”. The basic premise isn’t too far off from what you’ve described in “Death by Church”. He’s definitely hit the nail on the head with the present-day issues of the western church, without condemning individuals. A bit left leaning, but he reminds us that our first duty as a church is to be a reflection of our groom, that is, Christ. We are called to live as Christ lived. His specific commands (love one another, love God, create disciples, baptize) are simply reminders and bullet points of what Christ did his entire life. His sacrifice paved the way and opened the door for us to live for God fully, not in fear of death and Hades, but creating a better world for the sake of Christ, through whom this world was created in the first place. I highly recommend it as a “point of view” type of book.