Finally finished the last chapter of this book - I had slacked off on it along with my blogging endeavors.

This was a great book, packed full of challenging and thought provoking concepts. The biggest take away for me was that we often enter spiritual conversations trying to convince people they're wrong and sinful by sharing with them an abbreviated version of the gospel. One of the main challenges of the book is to start the narrative of the bible where God starts it, not in Genesis 3 (the fall), but rather with creation and the wholeness God created all of us for. Ron Martoia suggests that instead of trying to convince people they are sinful and therefore need Jesus, we should start spiritual conversations where there is no argument - the innate things God built into all of us. He calls these core yearnings. The yearning to believe in something greater than yourself, the yearning to hope for a better tomorrow, the yearning to have purpose in life, etc - things that regardless of time, language and culture these yearnings are a part of every person. He suggested, and I believe he is right, that we can better point people to Jesus through relationship and spiritual conversations that allow for process and time.

He also spent a lot of time focusing in on what being created in the image of God really means and what being kicked out of Eden has done to that image. I highly recomend the read.

I also did an interview with Ron a few months back, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

This was my first audio book - which feels a little like cheating, but was a nice change and filled the often silent void of my 2 hour daily commute.

But this was a great book. I initially wanted to read it because I've heard people speak so highly of Ayn Rand and her work and I thought, then I must figure out what she is all about. And though I don't buy into her Objectivism philosophy, the story was very well written and captivating.

What I would love, if there are any Ayn Rand guru's out there, is to find out how the philosophy plays in our current, more postmodern culture. In particular, I'd love to know how Ayn Rand would interpret what Quantum Physics has brought about in recent years - it seems to me that Objectivism has be deconstructed by it.

Anyway - I would definitely recommend it to you - it was a good challenge to me on how I interact with the world and why.

Hooked up with my friends over at Random House to post a review of The Echo Within, by Robert Benson.

This was an enjoyable, short read. There have been a few books related to this issue released in the last few years, a kind of echo of echos - if you will. But it is about learning to listen to the voice of God - deciphering how you hear it.

I love books like this because they have a simple yet profound truth to them. The kind of truth that has value for you today and has value for you to reread in the future.

The part I loved the most was that we do not need to distrust the voice within, though it should be weighed, God often speaks through the internal echo of our hearts. We should learn to recognize the difference and then trust and act in obedience.

I would venture to say that we don't spend enough time trying to hear from God let alone learning to recognize the way in which he speaks to us.

I started reading a new book that I've really been enjoying called Transformational Architecture by Ron Martoia. So far it has been really good. Basically he is setting out to recapture the narrative of God's story and replace the abbreviated version we often live by.

But one of the analogies he uses is that of a gerbil wheel and how the American Dream is always spinning and at work as the background narrative in our lives. He builds a simple, but profound description of how we are always chasing it, but it is never fully reached and is never able to give what it promises. It is interesting to note that despite your religious background, gender, socioeconomic status - we are all affected by it. And like a gerbil on a wheel, we all stand the chance to look back on our life and realize we ran hard but got nowhere. Here's how Ron says it,

The universality of this dream is precisely what makes it so difficult to identify as a motivator of human life. The American Dream is quiet but powerful, an enormous daily motivator and yet hidden from our eyes because its presence is so obvious and accepted as the "way things are."

It took me back to this post, 'Inconvenienced by Convenience' and my struggle to align my life goals with something greater than the American Dream of having and consuming. I'm working hard to be more conscious of what I let define my success and who I seek approval from - but it is a hard thing to get out from under this American Dream. I want the narrative of my life to be written by the hand of God and His faithfulness, not patched together by being someone I'm not in a culture that is so often empty.

Thoughts?

I finally finished The Forgotten Ways yesterday, and not 'finally' because it was horrible, but 'finally' because it was so good I had to read it slow. I spent just over a month plowing my way through it, interacting with it and taking what ended up being pages of notes.

I blogged several posts about it over on the Tomorrow's Church site, but I was really challenged by the book. I actually got to meet Alan Hirsch over this past weekend and had the chance to talk with him a little bit about the book. He said that he feels he was 'born to write this book' and that the #1 thing he hears as feedback, is that readers already feel like they knew it, but just hadn't put it all together yet. That was true for me, most of what the book is about you seemingly already know - there is this profound simplicity about it. It's like God has been stirring this inside so many and He's using Alan as the mouthpiece to package it and to be a catalyst toward change.

What I love most about the book is that it is not about some new 'church model' to subscribe to in a hope to grow a church. What he builds toward in the book is far more open ended and is more of a 'recommissioning' of the Great Commission. I highly recommend this book if you are a lover of the church, a church leader or if you are stimulated by all that is theological - it'll frustrate, challenge and inspire you.

I'm headed to the Nucleus small groups conference tonight and am so pumped. I haven't been to a conference in 4 years - so tonight will be refreshing and challenging and I freaking can't wait.

Alan Hirsch (linked to his blog) is the main speaker throughout the conference and will be speaking from his new book, ReJesus and relating it to small group ministry. I've spent the last month reading through one of his other books, The Forgotten Ways and it has been a great resource, added a lot to the conversation on the missional church and has been really challenging.

I'll be sure to post more about the weekend.

Got a chance to review this market guide for aspiring Christian Writers from Random House Publishing.

This is a great resource for any and all who want there work published. It has been updated and revised to feature the latest on...

• more than 1,200 markets for the written word
• 416 book publishers
• 654 periodicals
• 96 literary agents
• 100 new listings in Resources for Writers
• 226 poetry markets
• 316 photography markets
• 25 African-American markets
  
• and 166 contests

If you want to get your work out into the market, this is a great resource for you.

On another blog tour reviewing this new book by Steven Scott - it essentially is a concordance of all the recorded words of Jesus from the bible. It has been enjoyable to review and add to my library of resources. It is a great tool for study and a cool way to collectively read Jesus' words.

I joined on for another blog tour with Random House publishing for a journal called 'Me, Myself & I AM.'

This was the first time I wasn't able to completely finisth the book before reviewing it - but I am enjoying it. Here's the summary...

A new experience of God comes one question at a time in this fun and provocative journal. Made up entirely of insightful, profound, and occasionally ridiculous questions, Me, Myself, and I AM invites you to open to any page, open yourself to God, and be the author of your own story.

Questions range from spiritually intriguing—

You overhear God talking about you. What do hear him saying?

to thought-provoking—

You are on a long car trip with a close friend who is not a Christian and the conversation turns to faith. What is your biggest fear about what your friend will ask or say?

to challenging—

Do you believe that all of Jesus’s followers have a responsibility to tell others about him?

to just plain fun—

If your life before you became a Christian were a movie, its title would be:

Animal House

As Good as It Gets

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It’s a Wonderful Life

Me, Myself, and I AM will entertain, inspire, and get you thinking about your spiritual life from brand new angles. Whether you use Me, Myself, and I AM as a reflective tool, a way to start conversations with friends and family, or as a spiritual time capsule to look back on years later, their own words will create a powerful journey of self-discovery.

This is a great follow-on to the 'Judged' video I posted earlier this week and is (at least for me) a captivating thought.

So right, we're wrong is the title of a chapter in 'Out of the Question, Into the Mystery' by Leonard Sweet and the thought has never left me. I read it about 3 years ago and it has changed the way I think about the world and my faith. If you've never read it, it is awesome. In a nutshell, Leonard challenges us to stop trying to have all the 'answers' about God and start enjoying the mystery of who He is - I mean think about, if we had all the answers then He wouldn't be God - mystery is a part of faith.

Anyway in the chapter Leonard shares a story about how his neighbor's basketball hoop fell over and hit his car and scratched the door. Naturally, Leonard held the neighbor responsible and asked him to pay for the cost to fix it. The neighbor refused - Leonard [naturally] was frustrated and felt justified.

Then it hit him, what is more important here; the relationship or being right? What's more important getting the scratch fixed, getting legal involvement if necessary and destroying the relationship with a guy who knows he is a Christian, or forgiving and being willing to be wronged for the sake of what is Right?

I think we do this a lot. We forget what is most important, forgetting others and the greater purpose of our lives and seek justification for ourselves and our needs. I think we Christians have spent a lot of time defending how right we are on matters both small and large, that we've become wrong. Our faith calls us to do what does not come naturally, it is unnatural to love like Jesus, forgive like Jesus and be the peacemakers in a world of full of tension.

I'm not saying we are wrong on our stance for protecting life, but we have become so right, so elitist, so righteous that we wrong the name of Jesus, we wrong the greater cause. We have been too willing to sacrifice the life of the one aborting to try and protect the aborted life. They both need our love. We have been too willing to divide, fight and justify on the grounds of 'rightness' - that we've become the wrong voice in our culture.

I hooked up with Random House publishing to do another blog review of a book. I'm not going to lie, I love books and I love receiving free copies even more - so I usually take whatever they offer me.

This book sounded interesting and I would love if someone could actually write a book that laid out for His followers some clear direction - this one didn't do it for me.

• If you are a Christian and a Republican, you'll like the book as it adds a foundation for biblically interpreting where to stand on the 'issues'.

• If you're like me and feel that the Christian vote has been hijacked by the Republican Party, it will frustrate you as each interpretation seems to point to an elephant platform.

• And if you are a Christian Democrat, the book will flat out anger you.

In the end I felt deceived by the book. The book is supposed to be written from a nonpartisan perspective, but if it were written by two African-American Christian leaders, it would have been written quite differently. It should have been co-authored by people on both sides of the issues, working to collectively build a view of how Jesus might vote. In fact, that should have been the title, 'How Jesus Might Vote,' emphasizing the ambiguity of the issues we face in America and not pretending that one interpretation of scripture is the end-all, be-all for followers of Jesus.

If it could, we would not have the multitude of denominations in the Christian faith - would we?
And on that note, Random House may not like me reviewing its books - but they ask for honesty.

I got invited to do another book review with Multanomah Books - this time for the new addition to the researched based 'Only' series by the Feldhahn's.

Julie and I spent our fifth anniversary in Florida earlier this year and used some of the time to read 'For Men Only' and 'For Women Only' respectively. We both enjoyed them and they added not just to our understanding of one another, but also to the understanding of ourselves. It is always good to learn something new, especially when it can enrich your relationship.

The newest book is 'For Young Men Only' and is a guide for all those soon-to-be men trying to figure the opposite sex out. Which is no easy task.

I enjoyed the book and feel like they focused in on the real questions young men are trying to find answers to. And as a part of the series, it utilized research to validate and disintegrate myths about the opposite sex.

My hope for my two little boys is that I can raise them to not just be a gentleman and understand sex and girls better than I did - but help them realize that just because you find a girl attractive, doesn't mean you should date her. So many friends of mine were ruined by the relationship I tried to pursue with them. I want my boys to not waste their time dating and not waste a good friendship by involving emotions and commitments that are beyond their years.

In the end it was a good book and you can pick up a copy up here.

So I received a pre-release copy of Mark Batterson's new book, Wild Goose Chase and here's my review.

It was epic!

Where I've been in the past 3 years of my life and the dreaming I’ve been doing about tomorrow's church (click here) - it was the voice of a mentor calling me to do more and be more.

I don't want to ruin much of the book and Mark has several excerpts of the book on his blog at evolution.com and you can go to the book's site (here) for Mark’s 10 Steps to Setting Life Goals. It is good stuff and I recommend getting a copy.

I also received a 2nd copy to give away on my blog - but after some thinking I decided that everyone who reads my blog can probably afford the 10 or 11 bucks for the book, except my still-raising-funds-home-missionary buddy - Mike McGarvey. So, I'm sending the book to him and encouraging you to read and responded to this!

Alright - so I polished off 'Pagan Christianity?' today and let me just say it wasn't as epic as I had hoped. The opening had me, but as I got further into the book it became too repetitious for me.

In the end I disagree with his basic premise in the book, which is that if it is not biblical we shouldn't be doing it. By biblically Frank Viola means that the early church did it. But that is like saying it is not biblical to go to the doctor's office, since it is not specifically referenced in the bible. While it was never referenced in the bible, the bible isn't a book of all the to-do's and not to-do's of life. It is the story of God's people and His pursuit to redeem them.

It did challenge my thoughts on church and add to the discussion. Wasn't a waste, just wasn't epic.

I got selected to do a review of Mark Batterson's new book, 'Wild Goose Chase,' and I can't wait to read it. I will be posting my review once I recieve and read the book - but I thought I'd post this excerpt.

In the beginning, God made man in His Image.

Man has been making God in his image ever since.

Call it naturalism. Call it anthropomorphism. Call it idolatry. Call it what you will. The end result of this spiritual inversion is a god that is about our size and looks an awful lot like us. And most of our spiritual shortcomings stem from this fundamental mistake: thinking about God in human terms. We make God in our image and what we’re left with is a God who can never surprise us, never astonish us, never overwhelm us, never transcend us.

Thomas Jefferson loved the teachings of Jesus. In fact, the author of the Declaration of Independence once called them the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. But Jefferson was also a child of the Enlightenment. He didn’t have a cognitive category for miracles so Jefferson literally took a pair of scissors and cut them out of his King James Bible. It took him two or three nights. And by the time he was done, he had cut out the virgin birth; cut out the angels; and cut out the resurrection. Jefferson extracted every miracle and the end result was a book titled the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth or what is commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible.

Hard to imagine isn’t it? And something rises up within those of us that believe the Bible is divinely inspired by God. Part of us scoffs or scolds Jefferson. You can’t pick-and-choose. You can’t cut-and-paste. You can’t do that to the Bible. But here’s the honest truth: while most of us can’t imagine taking a pair of scissors to the Bible and physically cutting verses out, we do exactly what Jefferson did. We ignore verses we cannot comprehend. We avoid verses we do not like. And we rationalize verses that are too radical. And we may not cut them out with a pair of scissors, but the end result is the same. We are trapped by our own logic. Our lives are limited to those things we can comprehend with our cerebral cortex. And we end up in the cage of our own assumptions. And the more assumptions we make, the smaller our cage becomes.
Excerpt from Wild Goose Chase

Spiritual Pathways are a cool way of thinking about and identifying the ways in which you connect with God. There are several variations, but the best list of pathways I've ever found are from John Ortberg's book, 'God is Closer Than You Think.'

He lists 7 pathways to God; Creation, Relational, Contemplative, Serving, Worship, Intellectual and Activism. There is no priority to the list but a realization of what best works for you. Some you more easily fit into, others you have to work at. Usually the pathways that are harder for you are the ones you learn the most from.

Creation.

I wanted to start by talking about the Creation pathway - this is the one I most easily fit into. Growing up in Colorado, I love seeing and experiencing God's creation. I love to breath in the early morning air, soak up the view of the wetland behind my house, admire the sunset's display of colors and even just mowing my lawn. I love it. The beauty of the world around me draws me to God and reminds me of how freaking huge, great and awesome He is. Being outdoors just does it for me. I love to camp, rock climb and fish for these reasons. I feel the most disconnected from an atheist while being in the outdoors.

As a last note - it isn't just the natural outdoors that do it for me in this pathway, I also love being in a downtown, soaking up the culture of God's creation, seeing diversity and admiring the work of artist and architects - as they are byproducts of God's creation.

How about you?

I picked this book up yesterday at Borders - I know, shame on me for not supporting an indie book store.
But as I started this book it blew me away. It is asking and addressing the same questions I've been wrestling with for a long time. It is a God-sent book for me. For some reason I have beef with the term Pagan - but as they explain it in the book it makes sense. But the whole premise is how modern Christianity practices religious elements that come from pagan roots - not biblical, early church roots. It is a challenge to the way we do church - I can't wait to finish it.

So I wanted to find out if anybody else would like to discuss it. Whether you already read it or would be willing to - it is a thought provoking book and would stimulate great conversation. It has a lot to offer for relational, organic, third-place community thought.

Yes, I'm still on this 'Church without a box' stuff.

Last night I was reading a book I've been trying to finish for a long time (I occasionally pick it up, and just read random parts - anyway) called 'The Church in the Emerging Culture.' In the opening chapter Leonard Sweet is setting up the analogy for the book and references that sociologist suggest that during a paradigm shift in a culture, everything goes back to zero. The changes in our current culture from Modern to Postmodern, is nothing less than a paradigm shift. People are questioning all that Modernity gave us and redefining every aspect from community to truth. And it struck me, maybe our response as a church, maybe the answer is to return to zero ourselves. Not zero, like disregard church history and all the doctrine it’s given us, but as Leonard Sweet said, return to the origins of our faith to build the answer. Return to the origin of what Jesus was doing and work to cut out all the extra’s we’ve added over the years.

So it is like if we could boil the church, the bible, the mission down to it's most basic elements - what would that be? What are the basic elements that make the mission of Jesus and now the Church? It is easy to get stuck arguing over semantics and the dangers are to grossly simplified the bible and it’s meaning. But, by forcing God's story to us into simple elements, it pushes us to get beyond personal preferences, denominational specific doctrine and come to terms with what is essential to the story of Jesus and God redeeming us.

Returning to origins, to me, means forgetting what we know about church today. Forget buildings, Sunday mornings, Sunday school, worship bands, outreaches and all the other culture constructs we have that make church what it is today. What would be it like if we had no knowledge of church and just came to the story of God and His people, of Jesus in the flesh and the church acting out His mission after his resurrection? How would we see church, community and worship? What would jump out as necessary for being the church in our culture?

I recently returned from a business trip/conference for the company I work for. My job is endlessly challenging and for the most part enjoyable. But at the end of the day, it is not me. As I sat through the conference and listened to discussions about profit, revenue, best practices, professional excellence and many others topics...my brain was busy thinking about my church, the church of today, the church of tomorrow and captivated my life is by God's mission. I'm fully preoccupied by how the church has changed since the time Jesus and by how the church has to change for the future. Money is nice, my job is great, free business trip to Boston is cool - but God's mission is intoxicating. I echo the words of Brueggeman in his article 'Haunted Book - Haunted People.' I'm haunted, captivated, motivate, disturbed and energized by God's words to us.

"We are, all of us, children of the biblical text. We have been conceived and birthed, generated and summoned, given life, by this text and none other. This text keeps having its say among us, by translation and interpretation, by commentary and proclamation, by study and enactment. We must always again, always afresh in every circumstance, come to terms with it. We spend our life struggling with this text, sometimes struggling for the text, sometimes struggling against the text. The text always has its say among us; it will not go away. Its voice is a haunting one, sounding promises, uttering commands, voicing stories, proclaiming oracles, ejaculating pain, authoring hope. The voice of the text haunts us because we know very well it is a human text filled with endless critical problems—and yet we hear in it the very voice of God: majestic sovereignty, awesome holiness, passionate grace, weakness made strong. Because of this text, which will not go away or finally keep silent, we live haunted lives, filled with yearnings for what is not in hand, promises not yet filled, commands not yet obeyed, desires not yet granted, neighbors not yet loved. The old text becomes new text; old story becomes new song. For all those reasons, in gratitude and awe and fresh resolve, we celebrate the new, revised translation, made freshly aware by it that we are indeed haunted children of this haunting text. And because the text will not go away or be silent, we are destined to be endlessly haunted, uneasy, restless, and on the way." (Copyright © 1991 by Word & World, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. All rights reserved)