In the Coracle

Bookmark and Share This Page

“The Gospel in a Pluralist Society” (Lesslie Newbigin)

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Grad School |
2 Comments »

Remaining Books for Overture I

PatMay 10, 2008

I’ve finally caught up! I’ve written summaries of all the books I’ve already read. Here’s the remaining to-read pile (one of these might go away - I don’t need to read all of them for the class’s total page count), but I want to read them all. So upcoming are these:

“Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series, No. 16)” (David Jacobus Bosch)

“Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition” (Robert K. Greenleaf)

“United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation As an Answer to the Problem of Race” (Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, Karen Chai Kim)

“Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for Making a Difference in Your Community” (Robert C. Linthicum)

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Faith, Grad School |
2 Comments »

Book Summary: Missional Church (ed. Guder)

Pat

Part of my doctoral program’s learning model includes reading and summarizing a large number of books. I’ll blog the appropriate ones here.

Missional Church
ed. by Darrell Guder
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (1998)
280 pages

Description of the Book
The church in North America is in crisis. The culture is no longer Christian, and is again a mission field. The church must change its theologies, structure, practices and identity in order to be missional, recognizing that it is sent into the world as an expression of the Trinitarian God.

The church must move from “church with a mission” to “missional church”. It must “take particular form, shaped according to the cultural and historical context in which it lives.” (14).

Missional Church establishes the need for this shift and then devotes sections to the church’s interaction with its cultural context and the state of the current church, then establishes the vocation of the church to be an apostolic witness to the world, and then the role of the Holy Spirit in the church’s mission.

The book then moves to structural discussions, first describing missional leadership, then structures for missional community, and finally the community of communities on mission.

Interpretation of the Book
The authors of this book establish the need for a shift in two ways. First they describe the current dynamics between church and culture, wherein both sides are largely entrenched and separated from one another. The culture has no need for the church, and the church often believes itself to be above or outside culture. Neither are true. Second, the authors establish theologically that the church’s ongoing role is to engage with culture from the perspective of being agents of God’s goodness – not being transformed by culture, but not hiding from it either.

Application
On my many bookshelves are perhaps a dozen books that I want to return and reread regularly. Missional church is at the top of this list. I read it at first when my church plant began, have read it twice since then, and it’s given me excellent language for what I feel called to do. It has also given me encouragement specifically in the chapters on leadership and structures. Its understanding of coventant is a significant “a-ha” for me. And it lines up well with my understanding of the central focus of the Biblical story: that the Trinitarian God is on mission to expand the Kingdom of God, and that humanity’s role is to partner with God in the work of the Kingdom. This book, in addition to Bosch’s Transforming Mission, will continue to be the key resources for me in this area of study.

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Faith, Grad School |
No Comments »

Book Summary: Street Signs (Bakke/Sharpe)

Pat

Part of my doctoral program’s learning model includes reading and summarizing a large number of books. I’ll blog the appropriate ones here.

Street Signs
by Ray Bakke and Jon Sharpe
New Hope Publishers (2006)
285 pages

Description of the Book
Cities are important to God, who is at work bringing people to urban environments across the globe as well as at work among people who are in those urban environments. Christians can recognize these shifts and learn to identify the work of God in the city so that they can participate with the God of hope. Bakke and Sharpe host city consultations in order to read a city and teach Christians to recognize the work of God in the city.

The two authors trace their own journeys from rural Washington to cities: Ray Bakke from Acme to Chicago and then to Seattle; Jon Sharpe from Index to Seattle. Each uses half of the book to tell their story and to give their perspective on city-based ministry and city consultations.

Interpretation of the Book
A sociological shift is underway in cultures across the world. As the population is more urbanized, worldviews change. With culture and worldview shifts, our models for pastoral care and for understanding the mission of God must change as well.

Application
The challenge to listen to the city and learn from God’s work in the city has transformed me. My parents emigrated from Los Angeles to Trout Creek, Montana when I was two. I grew up on 10 acres of land in rural Montana and moved to Spokane, Washington for college, and then to Seattle after I graduated. I find myself comfortable in small towns and rural areas, but I love cities. I love Seattle, the metropolitan area in which I live, and I love the suburb of Seattle that I live in. I know I’m in the place that God has for me. This is one of my greatest learning experiences at BGU: I love the city.

Street Signs gives me a way for me to understand Seattle. But I find that the process of consulting a suburb or a neighborhood within a larger city is perhaps more complex, and certainly more targeted. I need to learn more about finding signs of God’s activity in my suburban neighborhood, and not just in the broader metropolitan Seattle area.

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Faith, Grad School |
No Comments »

My Beautiful Idol - Pete Gall

PatMay 2, 2008

A short while ago I was happy to hear that I’d “made the cut” into a book review group with The Ooze. It’s a very nice setup - I get books sent my way, I read and write reviews here, and it’s free. Free books, and all I have to do is write about them? Sounds pretty sweet to me, even though my time for reading something that’s not grad-school driven is pretty narrow. If there’s a catch, it’s only on this point, but perhaps it’s a big point for my circumstance.

So when the first book arrived a week or so ago, I felt bittersweet. A bit guilty, actually. I’m behind on my school reading, but sometimes it’s fun to read without a highlighter and pen in hand.

When I opened the package that contained “My Beautiful Idol” (Pete Gall), I took a few minutes to familiarize myself with it. I stopped about 50 pages later. For the past week, I’ve stolen away half an hour here, an hour there, enjoying this page-turner as it meanders through Gall’s life.

My Beautiful Idol is a spiritual autobiography by a young man who communicates the painful truth of honest faith lived through an imperfect life and a self-critical nature. From the first chapter, I know that the author knows himself well - perhaps too well. Driven by a passionate need for an authentic life, he leaves corporate success as a writer in an advertising agency and a broken relationship and pursues his own path. A downwardly mobile path, at least for a good while.

That path deals with important issues: success, leadership, integrity, sex and relationships, family. Gall’s theme is that we make ourselves out to be important, helpful, good to others, as a way of idolizing our own selves - or our idealized selves, any way. God uses the experiences of Gall’s life to tear down these idols and reveal himself as he wishes to be known - a God who loves, without expectation. Gall struggles with the need to be liked, to be wanted, to be known as “a good Christian”, a holy man, a great man of God. His struggles are those of so many of us.

The flavor of the book is tense: as I read his story, I see much of myself in it. I get frustrated that he sees so clearly the faults that he describes, but seems resigned to them, even as he’s battling with his entire life against being irrelevant. The story is deeply moving, deeply passionate, and the stuff of real life. There’s no fairy tale beginning or ending here, and there’s really no grand “a-ha” moment that the reader is expected to take away. And that’s the point, really. Life, and a life embedded in Christian faith, is a constant draw toward a deeper reality.

Like Donald Miller’s “Searching for God Knows What” or “Plastic Jesus: Exposing the Hollowness of Comfortable Christianity” (Eric Sandras), when I’m reading I’m called to a relational understanding of my life with God. I’m called to go deeper, to recognize myself in full relationship with my God, and I’m called to chase the life that makes sense to me, as difficult as it is, but as much as I now that God leads me. The call is beyond that of the normal evangelical path - it truly is a post-evangelical story - but instead is an example of living fruitful life amidst the grey areas of life, all the while striving for more.

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page