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.

Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread: Taking Aim at Everyone

Fools Rush In Where Monkeys Fear to Tread: Taking Aim at Everyone is a book I almost didn't review.  It is a series of essays by Carl Trueman, a British professor at an American Reformed Seminary.  I almost didn't review it not because I didn't enjoy it but it's difficult to explain what it is about.  The subtitle Taking Aim at Everyone sums it up about as well as I am able.  The essays "take aim" at emergents, celebrity pastors, those who get their feelings hurt easily and so on and so on.  The first third of the book was amusing but after essay 12 or 13 or so the negativity started to feel just that. Negative.  I think he has some great things to say, and while I disagreed with very little in any of the essays I think it may have been better enjoyed slower where all the criticism didn't add up to such a bad taste.  I enjoy Dr Trueman's essays singly on the Reformation 21web-site and in the future I think I'll just enjoy them there one at a time.  The Francis Schaeffer book is a slow go, hopefully have it done this week. 

Francis Shaeffer

Just started the complete works of Francis Schaeffer that has been sitting on my bookshelf for a decade or so.  I'll review the books one at a time until something shiny comes along and I get distracted.  The God Who is There should be up first in a few days.

Alistair Begg's Preaching for God's Glory

Just finished reading Alistair Begg's Preaching for God's Glory.  First admission, I don't preach.  I'm not really even crazy about any public speaking.  I am an elder, so I listen to my pastor preach and I am called to critique said preaching as necessary.  With that admission out of the way, I enjoyed the book/pamphlet very much.  The book begins with a reiteration of the concerns that preaching in the 21rst century evangelical church is more style than substance.  It then goes on for 50 pages or so of very winning text to lay out how that substance can be regained bu listening to what God has to say in His word rather than saying what the culture wants to hear.  The book is very short, very practical and I believe would be a profitable read for any teacher of God's word.

Robert W. Godfrey's John Calvin:Pilgrim and Pastor

Just finished reading Robert W. Godfrey's John Calvin:Pilgrim and Pastor.  This book was written for JC's 500th birthday.  It is unabashedly pro-Calvin, but so am I so I enjoyed it a lot.  It is an interesting amalgam of a biography and an introduction to his thought.  For example, it tells briefly about what is known of his early years and his journey that led him to Geneva, but that information is generally brief and fairly superficial.  If you are a big biography fan there will probably better choices with more details of his life.  Where this book really shines is when it combines those biographical details with his writings on various theological issues.  Unlike dry details of his life long quotes from his copious writings really made me feel like I got to know the man better.  Especially helpful to me were his thoughts on the sacraments of baptism and communion.  My denomination has struggled recently on communion for children, and his writing really clarified why pedocommunion is different from baptism.  I would recommend this book to anyone with any interest in John Calvin.  It is a short and profitable introduction to a great man who has influenced the modern world in so many ways.  Even if you disagree with his views on predestination, hearing his arguments first hand will make you appreciate a really amazing mind.

starting off

I have been trying to figure out where to keep track of what I have read for some time now.  As I was reading reviews on Amazon I ran across a site called Booksneeze that gives advance copies to people who agree to blog about these books with a review.  So that got me thinking about blogging as a way to keep track of my reading.  My hope is to write a short review of most of the books I read.  My reading taste is about half and half theology and science fiction.  So if either of those are of any interest to you, keep reading.  I am almost finished with a biography of John Calvin so I hope to have that up in the next week.