If you follow my blog regularly you’ll know that I read an excellent book by Maggi Dawn during Advent last year. Maggi has just posted about it’s availability this year and if you’re looking for something to read in the lead up to Christmas it is well worth getting.
Tag Archive for 'books'
For the last year I’ve spent my Friday nights out doing the pubs with the War Cry, something I personally don’t really enjoy, so last Friday it was nice to get a chance to go and do something different. So it was that I found myself at a church in Peckham which I remembered from my days living in the area, listening to Tom Sine.
Sine describes himself as a futurist, which apparently means that he looks into what trends will do in the future, which sounds like quite a cool job! Anyway he was in Peckham to plug his new book, which I had found on the shelves of the Christian Bookshop in Godalming about 4 months ago!
The book is basically about the new trends in church, emerging, missional, mosaic (what is that I thought until I realised that this actually meant multi-cultural) and new monastic. Its about what these 4 new(ish) streams of renewal can actually offer to the wider church. One of the things that I discovered is that I’ve been involved in these sorts of churches for the last 13 years or so without ever really realising I was!
There was some good conversation, often sparked by the sizeable college contingent, and Sine himself raised some good points. Two quotes that stood out and which were on his Powerpoint:
“Rediscovering the kingdom - not only is it theology for Sunday, but a new reason to get out of bed on Monday.”
That these new streams offer an “opportunity to rediscover the good life of God is found not in seeking life but in losing life in the service of God and others.”
The only problem with the whole evening is that I felt Tom Sine could have spoken more and given a few more answers. Then again despite the fact that he is a really nice guy and it was great to get to speak to him directly, this was about promoting his book so he couldn’t give too much away! So I better get the book off the shelf I suppose!
Well, I finished ‘the uprising’ last night and would again say that it’s the best book I’ve read on the subject, possibly because it is written in a fresh, up-to-date style. It make not be a Brengle or Coutts type tome but it is full of no-nonsense, in your face, holiness teaching. It’s aimed at young people, but this 39 year old felt challenged by its call to holiness. I just wish I’d read something as accessible as it 20 years ago!
Thanks Stephen and Olivia for a great book!
If you want to read one book on Holiness but can’t face the thought of reading Brengle or Coutts or even Wesley, then my suggestion would be ‘the uprising’ by Olivia Munn and Captain Stephen Court.
It is, quite simply, the best book on the subject that I’ve ever read, and I’ve not even finished it yet! The chapters are short and snappy and at the end of each are some quesitons you can work through to ask yourself or in a cell-group!
Some of my favourite bits so far are:
“…what needs to change is our view of normality. Normal humanity is looking out for yourself. Normal Christianity is living for the good of others, and doing anything for Jesus.”
“The holiness to which God calls us and for which he empowers us includes a perfection of intention and motivation that makes us blameless.”
“unless the Bride of Christ is holy, no one else in the world will meet the Lord. Without our holiness, they won’t see the Lord.”
The above are just a taster, to read more you’ll have to get the book yourself!
By the way, Stephen, if you don’t already know, blogs over at the armybarmy blog and Olivia does the same on her own blog.
The book is published by Australia Southern territory of The Salvation Army and should be available from wherever you buy your TSA stuff.
I’ve mentioned before that in my Google Reader I get a daily quote/thought from a sight called inward/outward. The quote that is provided is not always great and sometimes I disagree fundamentally with them. However, this morning’s is a Thomas Merton quote, and whilst I’m not in agreement with it, it did make me think. The part I want to share with you is this:
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’ so to speak, to God’s creative love. … This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.
Merton goes on to say that every being gives glory to God by being the thing that He created them to be. In my opinion this is definitely a thought that shows Merton’s Zen influences, but I do think he has a point.
The problem though comes with us humans. Do we reflect God’s glory simply by being human? I would say that we don’t because in actual fact the majority of humanity are not ‘consenting’ to God’s creative love. We are not actually being who God created us to be and we’re certainly not obeying God.
As I said in my last post I’m currently enjoying reading Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. There are numerous passages highlighted already, with quite a few scribbles in the margins, but here is one that I feel is pertinent to this post:
[loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength] means a reorientation of our lives towards learning to love God and learning to love other people, rather than the sef-indulgent and self-oriented lives we’re used to.
This is the message that I’m trying to get across in our morning meetings at the corps at the moment. We are working through the various Fruit of the Spirit and I’m trying to explain how these are the real signs of spiritual maturity, rather than what we do in church. For me the real test of an individuals holiness is the manifestation of these fruit. In my mind it doesn’t matter how much an individual expresses their love for God; it doesn’t matter how much they do in church. What matters is whether their lives are increasingly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled.
This is how we, as humans, give the glory back to God. As we grow in the fruit of the Spirit, as we allow the Spirit to work within us and convict us of sin and shape us into holy people, then we become more like the people God intended us to be. So Merton has a really good point, but we have to allow the Holy Spirit to shape us in order to really reflect God’s glory.
When we think about being provocative I would guess that a lot of people would see this as a negative thing. I suppose this is mainly because provocation is one of those words that seems to be a bad thing. We think of people being provoked into an argument or of someone hitting someone else after being provoked. So when a book suggests that the church should be provoking a response from people it could well get assigned to the spiritual dustbin, along with terminology such as ‘getting out of comfort zones’ and ‘taking risks’.
However, a few months ago a book that does exactly that was recommended to me. At that point I didn’t get it, but then as I was browsing the shelves of my local Christian bookshop about a month ago there it was simply begging me to buy it!
On Sunday night I finally got round to starting to read it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed. Its actually a book about evangelism, although I suspect that some reading it might not agree with the methods it suggests. What is refreshing though is that this is not a book that consigns verbal evangelism to the scrap heap, but instead elevates it to its rightful position within the church, front and centre.
By the way the book is Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. The basic premise is that unless an individual, or a congregation, live their lives in such a way as to make people start asking questions about the way they are living no amount of evangelism is ever going to make an impact. One quote that stood out on the first page of Chapter 1 was,
Sometimes Christians assume that people ‘out there’ are eager to listen to what the Church has to say. The only problem is learning how to say it louder and more clearly.”
It immediately made me think of the stereotypical ‘Brit abroad’ picture. We have a reputation for talking to people who don’t speak English ‘loudly, slowly and clearly’ so that they will understand what we are saying. Of course the real problem is that we aren’t speaking their language. The same mentality still exists in some circles of the church, including The Salvation Army. It doesn’t seem to matter that people no longer speak our cultural language. All we have to do is say the same things louder, slower and clearer and everything will be ok.
As someone who has never felt entirely comfortable in traditional evangelistic methods this book is really speaking to me and I’ve been thinking in depth about possible efforts that we could get involved in here in our location. I’m well into chapter 5 and have numerous thoughts coming out of it, so I’ll probably be posting more on this.
For the first time in a few months I’ve been reading a novel. I saw the book on the shelves of Waterstones and simply felt that I wanted to have a read. The book is called The Last Gospel by archaeologist turned novelist David Gibbins. The story is actually quite an interesting read, but I suspect that we could be looking at the next Da Vinci Code once some Christians pick up on it.
The idea is that the Roman Emperor Claudius met Jesus before he started his ministry and Jesus gave him the only text he actually wrote. So potentially traumatic was this ‘Last Gospel’ that Claudius hid it from view and the book revolves around an archaeologists attempts to recover the text. As always in this type of book the main protagonist is the Roman Catholic church, some members of which will not hold back from murder to protect it from potential scandal or alleged heresy.
Whilst the book is a good read it must be remembered that this is a work of fiction. Unfortunately, if that group of Christians who seem to be more interested in lambasting anything that remotely threatens the ‘truth’ of the faith pick up on this it is likely to become the latest in a increasingly long line of books, films etc that are deemed to be detrimental to our faith. Personally, I couldn’t see anything remotely threatening in it. It simply attempts to perpetuate some of the ridiculous ideas that have been trumped before, including the one about Jesus & Mary Magdalene having a baby!
One positive note is that the book ends with the alleged last words of Christ himself and actually these have some value:
“The kingdom of heaven is on earth.
Men shall not stand in the way of the word of God.
And the kingdom of heaven shall be the house of the Lord.
There shall be no priests.
And there shall be no temples…”
Maybe if we weren’t so caught up in the structures of church, in perpetuating a temple and priestly order; maybe if we concentrated more on being the kingdom then maybe, just maybe the books and films that threaten the established order wouldn’t offend us in the same way.
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