Worship: Reformed According to the Scripture by Hughes Oliphant Old

I read a fair number of books on worship and many of the quote this guy, now I see why.  This short book intelligently explains from the Bible and from history why we do the things we do in church.  Every chapter brilliantly lays out its subject.  Being married to a closet reformed Baptist I did a lot of the classic reading on covenant baptism.  Mr Old's 16 pages on Baptism both explained covenant baptism better than all of them combined, it made me see my need to start catechizing Elena, my 9 year old.  Why we worship on Sunday, why we sing what we do, what's up with communion, why is the preaching so long?  All these questions are concisely and expertly answered. 

Story Thru the Bible by Chris Tiegreen

For the last year or so, I have been fascinated by using the stories of the Bible as a discipleship tool.  The concept is pretty simple.  Tell a story from the Bible to a group or a person and then talk about it.  Simple, but very effective.  I have been trying to learn more and more stories from the Bible to have them available both to use as devotions for my family and have them to share with others when useful.  I admit it, I am a terrible verse memorizer, but a story sticks with you better. 
All that said, Story Thru the Bible is an amazing book full of 52 stories chronologically presented from Creation to Pentecost.  More than a storybook, though, it also gives valuable information on how to introduce the stories as well as questions to discuss them afterward.  This book would be a great introduction to storying and a great place for fathers interested in shepherding children of all ages.

Reternity by Neal Wooten

A little change of pace after a long hiatus.  Reternity is a Christian Science Fiction book.  The book is set in the present where a midwestern preacher's kid heads off to Bible College.  Max is bright, hard working, devout and has been very sheltered.  He is living at home and driving to Bible College 30 minutes away.  At school he meets some new friends, including a girl, a gender he apparently has no experience with whatsoever.  He is fascinated by a physics professor who every semester gives his students a nearly impossible task for extra credit.  Previous events have included walking on water in a pool, and next semesters is making lead magnetic.  He gets invited to a Bible study led by that professor and so decides to attend.  At the Bible Study the book descends into a soapbox for the authors somewhat heterodox views on salvation and end-times using a character named "Clavin" as a stand in for a Calvinists Straw Man views. 
Wait a minute, didn't I say this was a science fiction book?  Yep, half way in and no sci-fi at all.  Max his first semester does battle with the Calvinists, get a girlfriend, gets his first kiss, but does no science fiction.  That happens the second semester where his Almost Impossible Task accidently creates a time machine. 
This book was free on kindle a few weeks ago.  All in all it wasn't great.  It was neither a great Christian book nor a great sci-fi book.  There were some interesting thoughts on Heaven at the end and the ending was good, but not really worth wading through the rest of the book.

Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups

Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups by Nelson Searcy and Thomas Kerrick is not a book for everyone.  The last few months I have been devouring books on small groups.  I certainly haven't read everything there is to read but I've had a pretty good sampling.  This book is really a nuts and bolts kind of book about how to oversee a small group church ministry.  Like any good church publication they have a catchy alliterative hook: Focus, Form, Fill and Facilitate.  Their small groups fun in semesters and very little of it was applicable to the church where I serve.  What I did like about the book was how detailed their administrative approach to small groups was.  Ideally every church member had a small group leader, each small group leader had someone they were accountable to, and each of those folks was accountable to the small group minister, the only paid staff member of the bunch.  I also liked how each level of the small group system only had four responsibilities.  They weren't trying to overload anyone in the system with tasks.  So.....if you share my passion for the logistics of small group ministry, maybe worth a read, if not, not.

The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer

As promised, I finally finished The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer.  This was a really tough read.  This book is part of Schaeffer's work that looks at a Christian view of Philosophy and Culture.  It was written in 1968 so it does feel a little dated.  The book is primarily about how Christianity is different from post-modernism.
It begins by examining philosophy, art, music and general culture and showing how they have progressed to a place where there are no absolutes anymore.  In postmodernism the opposite of right is not necessarily wrong.  Schaeffer then looks at how postmodernism has effected theology and the liberalization of theology.  Next he points out how historic Christianity looks nothing like "postmodern" Christianity.  That historic Christianity actually has answers to people's questions about the meaning of life and what people are for.  That people's questions like these are where we meet people as we "pre-evangelize" them.  He describes taking people's roofs off and exposing how their relativistic philosophy does not match the reality of God's world around them.  Finally, he explores what Christian's demonstrating the character of the God who is there should look like. 
A difficult read.  I'm going to keep reading the rest of the complete works, but unless you are particularly interested in philosophy I might pass on this one

Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian

This short book by Tullian Tchividjian was written as he was recovering from taking over D. James Kennedy's pulpit in Fort Lauderdale.  Dr. Kennedy was a giant of a pastor, very politically and theologically conservative.  Mr Tchividjian is a much younger, hipper pastor who had recently started a church plant in FL.  Coral Ridge convinced him to combine the two congregations and things went sideways fast.  This book is what came from that experience.  For any of us who think anything but Jesus is important, this book has much to say.  By making Jesus everything, we have everything that we need.  I've read several books recently that try to unpack the gospel, I think this was the best of them.

A Scandalous Freedom by Steve Brown

Very rarely does a book just upend your view of God and the Christian life.  This is one of those books.  A Scandalous Freedom is about just that, freedom in Christ that much of the world is going to find scandalous.  Dr Brown's thesis is that we are truly free in Christ and that Christian leaders and plain old Christians spend a lot of their time stealing other Christian's freedoms.  The point of freedom is not "freedom, but... " If there is a but, it's not really freedom. 
How many of us have heard we need to limit our freedom to safeguard weaker brothers.  Yeah, I know Paul said it, but he said it for a particular situation.  If I know my brother is on a diet I shouldn't scarf down a sundae in front of him, but that doesn't mean I can never eat sundaes because someone around me might be on a diet. 
Through the whole book I kept saying to myself how bad I want this to be true.  43 years of teaching kept whispering in my mind that this was antinomian.  At the end of the book I was confused, but you know what, I felt a little free-er.