Total Church

One of my responsibilities at church is to lead a quarterly reading group.  It's a bit self-indulgent, I'm afraid.  It started late last year when I mentioned to a friend or two the desire to read D. A. Carson's The God Who is There with some other folks.  We ended up formalizing the group, and HTC Readers was born.

Last week we held our second meeting to discuss the book Total Church:  A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.  Chester and Timmis are British pastors at a network of house churches called The Crowded House.

This was my second reading of Total Church.  I had first read it a few summers ago under very different life and church circumstances.  Perhaps those differences account for some mixed feelings about the book.

Let me be clear:  this is a great book and deserves wide reading.  There is much that I find very helpful.  Chester and Timmis contend that the local church should be both gospel-centered and community-centered.

The authors love the gospel, and that's the book's greatest strength.  By gospel-centered they mean both word-centered ("because God rules through his gospel word," p. 24) and mission-centered ("because God extends his rule through his gospel word," p. 28).  Everything the church is involved in--evangelism, social involvement, church planting, missions, discipleship, training, pastoral care, spirituality theology, apologetics, and ministering to children and youth--is in some way or another centered upon the good news of Jesus Christ's perfect obedience, substitutionary death, and resurrection from the dead.

I love how this plays out in specific ways.  For example, Chester and Timmis come down strongly on mercy ministry and prioritizing church planting in poor neighborhoods, but they're not in it simply for community development or meeting people's temporal needs.  No, "The most loving thing we can do for the poor is to proclaim the good news of eternal salvation through Christ.  It is by no means the only loving thing we can do for them, but it is the most loving thing we can do" (p. 78, their emphasis).

Their arguments for the centrality of community are also generally compelling.  My favorite was their view of evangelism.  Evangelism is a community task rather than an individual task.  So it's not just that a Christian is obligated to share the gospel with the person sitting next to him on the airplane.  (Excursus:  Why are so many discussions about evangelism fixated on this single scenario?  Do we have to purchase plane tickets to engage in evangelism?  And can't I just read or take a nap while in flight?  Soapus Boxus Finis).  Rather, believers should work to introduce their unbelieving friends and neighbors into the church community.  This exposes them to natural "Jesus talk" and also allows the different members of the community to exercise their different gifts.  Some might be good at bringing people into the community, others might be good at explaining the gospel in a conversation, still others might be good at leading someone through a month long evangelistic Bible study.  We're not all gifted at evangelism in the same way; thinking about evangelism in terms of community rather than as lone rangers takes account of these different gifts.

But the second time around I was not as uncritically enthused as after the first reading.  The authors tend to overstate their case at times, at least in my view.  For example, I'm not sure if I can fully endorse comments like these:  "Too much evangelism [apart from introducing people into your community] is an attempt to answer questions people are not asking" (p. 59).  Didn't Paul just go into the synagogues and public squares and start preaching before there was any community?  "It is not enough to build a relationship between one believer and one unbeliever" (p. 61).  Really, no exceptions?

Similarly, the text is interspersed with personal stories of people who are part of The Crowded House.  Sometimes these gave me the impression that unless you have several people who were not members of your own family living in your house on a permanent basis then you really aren't doing community.  I'm all about hospitality, but I still think I can be hospitable and have real community even if my guest room is unoccupied some nights.

These reservations aside, I affirm the general thrust of this book and hope to work to make my own church family gospel-centered and community-centered.

Wasted energy?

So I've slacked on my posting the past few days.  Work, Cubs game (Go Sox!), sermon preparation, and being the world's greatest dad pushed blogging to the wayside.  I still hope to write a review of Total Church within the next day or two.  Till then, the first paragraph of Trevor Logan's review of Alan Jacobs' new book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, the contents of which might mean that all my hard work creating my list of classics was wasted energy.  

It seems a rare accomplishment that a book on the pleasures of reading could actually pull off being pleasurable itself. But Alan Jacobs’ newest book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, does just that. It is a marvelous manifesto of sanity in an age of jeremiads about the modern predicament of attention loss on one hand, and those proud champions of distraction singing the hallelujah chorus of a world devoid of long-form books on the other. “Read at Whim” is Jacob’s advice and motto for a new generation of readers. Read, Jacobs proclaims, for the sheer pleasure of reading; simply for the hell of it. And by all means, don’t get bogged down by the authoritarians who smugly look down their noses at those who aren’t reading the “right” books on the “list.” 

Read the whole review.  By the way, I've read three other books by Alan Jacobs (The Narnian:  The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, Original Sin:  A Cultural History, Shaming the Devil:  Essays in Truth Telling) and thoroughly enjoyed all of them.  Jacobs is an English prof at Wheaton College (heads up Ann Curry:  the one in IL not MA) and a native Alabamian.  He's practically my cousin or something.

Thursday Three

This week's Thursday Three has a history theme, particularly Nazi Germany.  They all look more interesting than the Dr. Pepper commercial I'm watching now.

Richard D. Phillips and Gabriel N. E. Fluhrer, These Last Days:  A Christian View of History (Phillipsburg, NJ:  P & R Publishing, 2011).

This is a book about an evil age. Specifically, it is about "the present evil age" that we live in right now. For many Christians, the expression "these last days" refers to the time right before the second coming of Christ - but according to the apostles, the last days started with the first coming of Christ and continue even today.

How do we biblically understand our time as the final age of world history? What does this mean for our faith?

Reformed Christians have often avoided the field of eschatology - but it was the doctrine of history that thrilled the first disciples. They realized that with the coming of the "last days" they had entered the time of the kingdom, and this understanding will strengthen our faith too.

Maurice Possley and John Woodbridge, Hitler in the Crosshairs:  A GI's Story of Courage and Faith (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2011).

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist teams up with a university scholar in this compelling, untold historical tale of a young man's courage at a critical time in United States history, and the saga of a dictator's pistol that continues today. The time is World War II. Young soldier Ira 'Teen' Palm and his men burst into a Munich apartment, hoping to capture Adolph Hitler. Instead, they find an empty apartment ... and a golden gun. As the authors trace the story of the man and the gun, they examine a time and place that shaped men like Palm and transformed them into heroes. They also follow the strange journey of Hitler's pistol. Readers will discover: * An imaginative historical adventure in the tradition of Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers (over one million copies sold). * New, previously untold information about World War II events, including an uprising of German soldiers and citizens against the Nazi regime and a never-before told account of an assassination attempt on Hitler in Munich. * Inspiring, motivating, and entertaining storytelling by award-winning authors that will keep the pages turning!

Eric Larson, In the Garden of Beasts:  Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (New York:  Random House, 2011).

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance—and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming--yet wholly sinister--Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

Reading, Tortoise Style

Helpful advice for slow readers from John Starke:

1. Read in 15 minute segments.
2. Get up 40 minutes earlier.
3. Use the odd times to read.
4. Read widely and more than one book at a time.
5. Work hard to finish a book.

Read the explanations for each point here.

The List

Here is my official list for my Quarterly Classics series.  They're a hodgepodge from the reading lists of Torrey Honors Institute, Great Books of the Western World, and other books I think are worthy of the list.  I've done a bit of editing so as not to be overwhelmed with philosophy and decided to limit the original list to 92 books.  I couldn't think of the last 8 books to make it a full 100, but who cares?  Honestly, this is all rather arbitrary, but you've got to start somewhere.  If I read four of these books per year this will only take me 23 years.  Without further adieu, the list:

1. Homer, The Iliad
2. Aeschylus, The Oresteia
3. Euripedes, The Bacchae 
4. Aristophanes, Lysistrata
5. Herodotus, The History
6. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
7. Plato, Meno
8. Plato, Symposium
9. Plato, Phaedo
10. Aristotle, Metaphysics
11. Aristotle, Rhetoric
12. Virgil, The Aeneid
13. Plutarch, The Lives of the Grecians and Romans
14. Tacitus, Histories
15. Horace, Odes and Epodes
16. Livy, The History of Rome
17. Ovid, Metamorphoses 
18. Quintillian, Institutes of Oratory
19. Cicero, On the Orator
20. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
21. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
22. Plotinus, Enneads
23. Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
24. Dante, Divine Comedy
25. The Song of Roland
26. The Song of the Nibelung
27. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
28. Machiavelli, The Prince
29. Francis Bacon, The New Organon
30. Isaac Newton, The Principia
31. Michel de Montaigne, Essays
32. Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote 
33. Edmund Spencer, The Faerie Queene
34. Shakespeare, King Lear
35. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
36. Shakespeare, As You Like It
37. Shakespeare, Othello
38. Galileo Galilei, Two New Sciences
39. Jon Donne, selected poems
40. George Herbert, Selected Poems
41. Blaise Pascal, Pensees
42. John Milton, Paradise Lost
43. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
44. John Locke, Treatise on Government
45. Alexander Pope, An Essay in Criticism
46. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
47. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
48. The Federalist Papers
49. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
50. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
51. Hegel, Reason in History
52. William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, selected poems
53. S. T. Coleridge, selected poems
54. William Wordsworth, selected poems
55. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
56. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
57. Thackeray, Vanity Fair
58. Charles Dickens, Hard Times
59. Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
60. George MacDonald, At the North of the Back Wind
61. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
62. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
63. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
64. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
65. Goethe, Faust
66. Charles Darwin, On the Original of Species
67. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto
68. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
69. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
70. George Elliot, Adam Bede
71. Henry David Thoreau, Walden
72. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
73. Frederick Douglass, Narrative
74. Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
75. Edgar Allan Poe, selected poems and stories
76. Abraham Lincoln, selected speeches and writings
77. Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
78. G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday
79. T. S. Elliot, The Four Quartets, The Waste Land
80. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University
81. John Dewey, How We Think
82. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
83. Robert Frost, Collected Poems
84. James Joyce, Ulysses 
85. Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics
86. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
87. Jacques Maritain, Freedom and the Modern World
88. Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
89. John Paul Sartre, Nausea 
90. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle
91. John Updike, Rabbit
92. Philip Roth, American Pastoral

The Future of Publishing?

For several years now we've heard how the internet has stirred up the music industry.  First Napster made downloading mainstream (albeit illegal), while iTunes has since taken up the reins of this cherished and now legal (though no longer free) pastime.  The big music companies are struggling with plummeting CD sales, but music itself is thriving.  Certain websites now serve both the listeners and the artists by providing free downloads of select songs and giving the artists widespread exposure.  Radiohead has bypassed the major music labels altogether for their last two albums by making them available online for as much or as little as the buyer chooses to give (and selling out their live shows in return).  


What about the book industry?  The internet has made ebooks mainstream, yet the parallel with the music industry isn't synonymous.  Major publishing companies dominate the ebook market just as much as the print market.  An author can't publish his or her book in print by Print Company A and then publish it as an ebook by Internet Company B.  The same company publishes the book in both formats--and in any other format (e.g. audiobook) as well.


But an article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal suggests things might be changing, at least in that genre most intrigued by technological change:  science fiction.  Author Cory Doctorow is releasing his latest work With a Little Help, a collection of short stories, entirely online.

The book is what Mr. Doctorow calls an "experiment in publishing." You can buy a trade paperback—choosing from one of four covers—through Mr. Doctorow's own website (craphound.com), through the print-on-demand service lulu.com or through Amazon. You can purchase a handbound, limited-edition hardcover for $275. Or you can download it, free, as an e-book, leaving a donation of whatever you wish. For a price, presumably fairly high, Mr. Doctorow will even write a story to order, on your premise. What then? You could have a personalized copy, or (we guess) you could order 50 copies for your friends.

This unusual business model makes more sense when you understand the author's artistic vision. For Mr. Doctorow shares the master-belief of science fiction, which is that technology, not ideology, is the agent of change. And he is determined that the direction of that change should be toward devolution of power—away from publishing companies and every other centralized authority. 

Mr. Doctorow's novel "Little Brother" (2008) contradicted Orwell's thesis—that centralized state power would become beyond challenge—by showing a bunch of kids with computers and cellphones and video-links defeat the great organs of state. In "Makers" (2009), the great manufacturing corporations go down before micro-businesses empowered by cheap, computerized machine tools.

Read the whole article here.  I don't know if this is good or bad for book lovers.  Cheaper books is good, but will the quality of the writing cheapen as well?  Still, I'm intrigued, and I for one might download With a Little Help.

Quarterly Classics

C. S. Lewis, in his famous introduction to Athanasius' On the Incarnation:

"It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.  If that is too much for you, you should read at least one old one to every three new ones."

This is a good rule that I don't follow.  Last year I read maybe one old book for every ten new ones, and only one of those, Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (though a book published in 1929 isn't really that old) was a non-theological book.

I want to change my reading habits.  I don't think I can aspire to Lewis' one old book per every 1-3 new ones, but I think I can manage a more modest one classic per quarter.  If I get the hankerin' to read more than that then I will.

But which ones?  Several book series and anthologies have provided a sort of "essential reading" (in the editors' eyes) for Western literature, such as Great Books of the Western World and the Harvard Classics.  My list will be a hybrid.  I'll start with the reading list for Biola University's Torrey Honors Institute.  Some of those books I've already read and some are theological works which I plan on reading otherwise.  For these I'll replace with books not on Torrey's list, perhaps from categories and time periods that don't have as much representation on Torrey's list (e.g. non-theological medieval literature).  In a later post I'll publish my official list.  I'll be happy to take suggestions.

For my summer classic reading I'll start at the beginning with Homer's The Iliad.  Anyone want to join me?

Thursday Three

Three new books you might be interested in (with the publishers' descriptions):  one pertaining to a perpetually controversial biblical doctrine, a collection of essays on early American history, and a young adult book that reminds me of The Hunger Games Trilogy.

John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011).

“We need a real Adam and Eve if we are to make sense of the Bible and of life,” argues C. John Collins. Examining the biblical storyline as the worldview story of the people of God, Collins shows how that story presupposes a real Adam and Eve and how the modern experience of life points to the same conclusion.  


Applying well-informed critical thinking to common theological and scientific questions, Collins asserts the importance of a real man at the beginning in God's plan for creation, a plan that includes "redemption" for all people since sin entered the world.  


Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? addresses both biblical and Jewish texts and contains extensive appendices to examine how the material in Genesis relates to similar material from Mesopotamian myths. Collins’s detailed analysis of the relevant texts will instill confidence in readers that the traditional Christian story equips them better than any alternatives to engage the life that they actually encounter in the modern world.

Gordon S. Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011)

More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American identity is so fluid and not based on any universally shared heritage, we have had to continually return to our nation's founding to understand who we are. In The Idea of America, Wood reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the revolution remains so essential.

In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution-from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment-and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy. As Wood reveals, while the founders hoped to create a virtuous republic of yeoman farmers and uninterested leaders, they instead gave birth to a sprawling, licentious, and materialistic popular democracy.

Veronica Roth, Divergent (New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2011).

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

Wizard Self-Help

Merlyn, the wizard, to Wart, the future King Arthur, on the cure for sadness:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something.  That is the only thing that never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only one thing for it then--to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

From T. H. White's The Once and Future King, 185-86.

Where we buy our books

Blogger Tim Challies has conducted a survey on where (mainly young Reformed) people get there books.  Check out the whole survey.  Here are his conclusions:

First, Christian bookstores are barely competing with one another; they are competing together against Amazon. Even in a relatively niche market Amazon is dominant. Of course books are popular and even a small share of the market is significant, so those Christian bookstores can still make a go of it. But they need to fight this perception that Amazon offers the best prices. 

Second, if we are truly committed to good prices, we should shop carefully and compare pricing before hitting the “checkout” button at Amazon. Unless there are other reasons to buy from Amazon (we are Prime members; we want to buy other items at the same time), we should look carefully at the Christian e-commerce stores to see if they offer better pricing. 

Third, Christian bookstores need to maintain (or increase) their commitment to ebooks. The market is heading in that direction and the stores will need to be certain that they do not miss their opportunity. The big challenge, of course, is that Kindle owners will almost always get their books from Amazon; the most popular device has pretty much guaranteed that you will also use it to buy your books.

Short answer:  Amazon is king but doesn't have to be.

Reformed Dogmatics

Warning:  the contents of the first paragraph are hearsay.  Some details may be incorrect due to the imperfections of my memory.

Back in the middle of the last century the young seminarian Robert Howard Clausen was finishing up a paper but found to his dismay that the library was closed.  So he did was any sensible student would do:  he invented a theologian to cite in a footnote.  At that time the theological world was dominated by German men whose names began with the letter "B" (Barth, Bultmann, Bruner, etc.).  So he named his fake theologian Franz Bibfeldt.  Eventually the ruse was exposed, but the joke caught on.  You can even find the book The Unrelieved Paradox:  Studies in the Theology of Franz Bibfeldt.

But there was a real life 20th century theologian named Herman Bavinck.  His last name began with a "B," but as he was Dutch rather than German, orthodox rather than liberal, and most of his works were not quickly translated into English, he spent decades under the radar.  In the last few years, however, his masterpiece four volume Reformed Dogmatics has been translated into English.  It has since become clear that Bavinck was one of the greatest theologians of the last hundred years.

I've made it through one and a half volumes so far.  They are dense and demanding but well worth the effort.  Bavinck reminds me of my teacher Henri Blocher:  thoroughly competent in systematic theology, biblical exegesis, and contemporary philosophical trends (to say nothing of personal godliness).  Look no farther for the best of Reformed theology.

But if 3008 pages is a little much for you, you miserable lightweight, there's now a one volume abridged version coming at a more family friendly 912 pages.

You are without excuse.

Gospel Coalition Videos: Conrad Mbewe

Conrad Mbewe preached on the second night of The Gospel Coalition National Conference from Jeremiah 23:1-8.  His sermon was titled "The Righteous Branch."

Mbewe pastors Kabwata Reformed Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, and is organizing ten church plants of Reformed Baptist congregations in Zambia and Botswana.  He also edits the magazine Reformation Zambia.  He's known as the African Spurgeon (though rejects the nickname himself), and I hope that his ministry expands beyond the southern tip of the continent to places like Uganda, of which I have personal fondness.


The Righteous Branch - Conrad Mbewe - TGC 2011 from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Straight Man

A few years ago a friend introduced me to the novelist Richard Russo.  In some ways I shouldn't like Russo.  His books tend to fall into the character-based modernist category rather than the fun plot-based novels I often gravitate to.  But I do like him--a lot.

I just finished his 1998 work Straight Man, a very funny yet sometimes sad account of William Henry Devereaux, Jr. ("Hank"), the interim chair of the English department at the fictional West Central Pennsylvania University.  Much of the novel lampoons university life, particularly the absurd personalities who call themselves professors.  This year, as every year, the state legislature is threatening budget cuts, to which everyone routinely freaks out.  The English profs all hate each other anyway, and it falls to Hank to either assure people that they're not getting fired or to choose who has to be fired.  Only his personality is such that he could hardly care less.

Straight Man is a lot funnier than the other two Russo novels I've read, Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs.  At one point Hank grabs a particularly troublesome goose (whom he has named after a particularly troublesome colleague) by the neck and threatens to kill a goose per day until he gets a budget.  All while wearing a fake nose and glasses.  And being filmed by the local news crew.

Yet Straight Man also shares much of the theme and tone as Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs.  Each novel takes place in a dying industrial town in the mid-Atlantic/New England region.  The death of the town in some way parallels the decline of the characters, who are often haunted by the past.  This point is made explicitly at the end of Straight Man when one of Hank's colleagues says, "Most people are one way or another. . . .  They either want to confront the past or escape it" (389).  In Hank's case this past revolves around his philandering father, the famous literary critic William Henry Devereaux, Sr.  The return of his father after years of absence and infidelity towards the end of the novel supplies what I think is the best and saddest scene from the whole book.  I want to quote it in full:

"You may find this strange," he says, "but I've recently started rereading Dickens."

 Clearly he imagines he's paying the author a compliment by returning in his final years to a writer whose mawkishness he's derided over a long career.  "Much of the work is appalling, of course.  Simply appalling," my father concedes, genuflecting before his previous wisdom on the subject.  "Most of it, probably.  But there is something there, isn't there.  Some power . . . something"--he searches for the right word here--"transcendent, really."

It would be pointless for me to offer an observation, I know.  This conversation he's ostensibly having with me he's really having with himself, and the truth is I can never remember having a conversation with him that wasn't this way.

"I feel almost," he says, "as though I had sinned against that man."

This statement, it must be said, brings me to the brink of powerful emotion.  It must be a hybrid of some sort, since sorrow and hilarity seem equally justifiable  in this circumstance.  "Dad," I finally say, when I locate my voice.  "This is what you feel guilty about?  You feel guilty about the way you treated Dickens?"

He nods without hesitation.  "Yes," he says, then again, "yes."

I think it's me he's looking at as he says this until I realize his focus is somewhere behind me, on the abandoned carousel, perhaps, or maybe he's with Pip and Joe Gargery at the forge.  At which point something happens to his face.  It seems almost to come apart, and then tears are streaming down his cheeks, exactly as Mr. Purty described.  "I wish . . . ," he begins, but he's unable to continue.  He's too overcome with grief. (346)

This scene, with a father's refusal to see whom he's actually sinned against and a son's inability to forgive and move one, is deeply insightful into the human heart.  I can't help but think of 1 John 1:9:  "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  Because of the gospel we don't have to be haunted by the past.  We can move on both from our sins and sins committed against us.

Christianity Explored

At the Gospel Coalition National Conference I had the privilege of attending a breakout session for Christianity Explored, a DVD and book course that very clearly and effectively explains the gospel.  The course walks through the Gospel of Mark in seven sessions and addresses three points about Jesus:  Identity (Who is Jesus?), Mission (Why did he come?), and Call (What does Jesus demand?).

I'd love to start a Christianity Explored class at church.  The material is extremely well done, and I like that the participant is required to engage with the actual text of Mark.  No gospel bait-and-switch sales pitch here.  Check out the trailer for the latest addition:

Right now Westminster Seminary Bookstore is offering course packets at 18-25% off.  Also check out Christianity Explored's two websites, one for leaders and one for people exploring what the gospel is all about.

Dikembe Mutombo in my brain

In his long NBA career from 1991 to 2009 Dikembe Mutombo (and let me parenthetically pause to cite his full name for the simple pleasure of it:  Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo) collected 3,256 blocks.  Only his contemporary Hakeem Olajuwon has more total career blocks, though for whatever reason in my memory Mutombo stands out as the dominant shot blocker of his era.  Maybe it was his finger wagging or the shameless, brilliant catch phrase, "Not in the house of Mutombo!"

Since his retirement Mutombo has learned to separate his spirit from his body.  His spirit now haunts me.  He has entered my brain and swats my potential blog posts into the stands.  Yes, the point of all this sports trivia is to bring me to the point of this post:  writer's block.

At this year's Band of Bloggers conference, held in conjunction with the Gospel Coalition National Conference back in April, one of the speakers (can't remember who) said that the way to build up readership for your blog is to post everyday and even several times a day.  And I can personally testify to this.  There are plenty of blogs about topics of interest to me, but the ones I follow are those that give me daily reading.

This blog is ostensibly about books and reading.  But I can't post a book review everyday because I don't finish a book everyday.  Some days I just can't think of anything to say.  The spirit of a 7 foot 2 inch Congolese man is wagging his finger, taunting me, "Not in the house of Mutombo."

That's where I need your help my faithful readers.  What should I post about (within the set limits of course)?  I need you to help me do this.

Do books have to come from trees?

When my wife and I moved to Chicago last year we downsized our living space and added another human to the family.  A lot of books now lie ignominiously in my parents' basement.  But what if space wasn't an issue?  What if you could have all the books you could ever want in your home?  I see two options.  Either increase the space to put books or decrease the size of the books.

The first option isn't feasible for our family or for those whose last names aren't Gates, Zuckerberg, or Ochocinco.  The second option is much more doable.  You can own books that exist as 1s and 0s in their most elemental form and thus take up no physical space whatsoever (not counting the storage device).  Amazon's Kindle and the iPad and other technologies have made ebooks mainstream, accessible, and hip.  One can store a whole library in a device that fits in a (man)purse.  And no trips to the bookstore.  Instant downloads of virtually every book anyone's heard of, many of them, particularly older ones, free of charge.

We own a Pandigital Novel, which in price and quality is like a poor man's iPad.  Hence our nickname for it, the PoorPad.  Still, it's a decent machine.  The touchscreen isn't as magically responsive as an iPad, but for flipping electronic pages it gets the job done.  Last year I read Ted Kluck's Hello, I Love You:  Adventures in Adoptive Fatherhood on the PoorPad right before the climax of our own adoption adventure in Uganda.  I've also made it my medium of choice for the online theological journal Themelios.  Toria's also read a few books on it.  Overall, it's a good reading experience.  The battery life isn't so great (which isn't a problem with better devices) but I enjoy it nonetheless.  The only reason I haven't read more books on it is that I've been reading library books or books I've received as gifts for various occasions.

Who knows, maybe in a few years I'll look back on print books like I do today on beepers and gimmicky electronic back massagers from Brookstone.  I'll tell my kids, "You young 'uns don't know what it was like.  We used to read on something called paper.  And some people wore skinny jeans.  Now where's my lightsaber?"

But, I confess, there's something about a paper book that I don't think an ebook can ever replace.  Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote back in December 2009:

There is something special about most books and the experience of reading them. The physical reality of the book, including its cover, paper, typeface, and design are part of its charm. Books are wonderful to behold, to sense, to hold, and ultimately to read. As a technology, books have survived the test of time. They do not need batteries, they hold up well with a minimum of maintenance, and, unlike a computer, they never crash. Books are almost perfect as a combination of design and purpose. Who could ask for more?

But then he answers his question:

I do. The printed book is superior to almost every imaginable technology in any number of respects, but not in all. The digital revolution has reached the world of books, and things are forever changed. I was an early adopter of the Kindle, Amazon.com’s almost iconic electronic reader. My first Kindle was bought soon after the technology became available. I purchased a few books and intended the Kindle to operate as a supplement to my library of printed books. I did not expect to spend much time with it, but I saw the advantage of instantly-available books that could be carried in my briefcase by the hundreds.

Read the whole post (which was written a few months prior to the release of the first iPad).  And this from a man with the largest personal library I've ever seen (alas, the video of his library tour is no longer public).  I heard a rumor back in college that he sleeps 3 hours a night and reads 20 books a week.  Some estimates put his collection at 30,000 volumes.

One day, Edwards family.  One day.

A Rejoinder to Tolkien vs. Joyce

A few weeks ago I posted on the discrepancy between the reading tastes of the literary elites and regular people as typified between James Joyce's Ulysses and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.  I sided with the people on this one.

Chelsey Franks, my sister-in-law, has a different view.  She has a degree in American Literature and has a distinct taste for such authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway.  Here is here response:

Let me preface by saying that I have yet to read Ulysses. I have read other Joyce novels , but was actually inspired by your original post to finally go and get the book (at the glorious Strand bookstore, nonetheless). I’ll report back in 80 years when I slay the beast. 

My response to your post is really just a clarification. I don’t think you can compare critic’s choice with popular choice in a fair way, as the criteria is completely different. The critics are looking for new forms and techniques, and voices that have never been heard before. The common reader wants accessible and entertaining. 

Now, I will concede that Tolkien is one of the few that can walk that fine line of being both critically good and widely read. And I will also admit that, for whatever reason (another post, perhaps), the literary canon has largely ignored the fantasy and sci-fi genres.

The real question I think you’re asking, though, is what makes a book good? Is it that millions of people read it over and over, or that highly educated scholars declare it so? Again, I think we’re talking about two kinds of good. I would say that Tolkien and Joyce are both sound representations of each kind of good – one would read Lord of the Rings and declare it good because it transported them to another world of lively characters and magical happenings, while one would declare Ulysses good because in it, Joyce pioneered a new writing style and took the very format of the book to new heights and meanings. 

I think a healthy reader should consume a regular mix of both “goods.” Too much of one or the other can be too safe or too depressing, and I think we know which would be which.

Visit Chelsey's blog here.

Gospel Coalition Videos: James MacDonald

James MacDonald, pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel in suburban Chicago, opened the second day of the Gospel Coalition National Conference with a sermon from Psalm 25 titled, "Not According to Our Sins."


Not According To Our Sins - James MacDonald - TGC 2011 from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

Thursday Three

New blog series for Thursdays:  three new books that have come out recently to keep your eye out for.

Here to kick off the cyber festivities are two offerings from Crossway Books and one from New York Times Columnist David Brooks.  I've included the publishers' descriptions.

David Brooks, The Social Animal:  The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (New York:  Random House, 2011).

This is the story of how success happens. It is told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica—how they grow, push forward, are pulled back, fail, and succeed. Distilling a vast array of information into these two vividly realized characters, Brooks illustrates a fundamental new understanding of human nature. A scientific revolution has occurred—we have learned more about the human brain in the last thirty years than we had in the previous three thousand. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind—not a dark, vestigial place but a creative and enchanted one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, genetic predispositions, personality traits, and social norms: the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made. The natural habitat of The Social Animal.

Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus:  Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission Around the Table (Wheaton:  Crossway, 2011).

Meals have always been important across societies and cultures, a time for friends and families to come together. An important part of relationships, meals are vital to our social health. Author Tim Chester sums it up: 'Food connects.'  Chester argues that meals are also deeply theological--an important part of Christian fellowship and mission. He observes that the book of Luke is full of stories of Jesus at meals. These accounts lay out biblical principles. Chester notes, "The meals of Jesus represent something bigger." Six chapters in A Meal with Jesus show how they enact grace, community, hope, mission, salvation, and promise.

Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre, Our Triune God:  Living in the Love of the Three-in-One (Wheaton:  Crossway, 2011). 


How are we to relate to a three-personed God? The idea of the Trinity may initially seem too abstract to understand, but the truth is that a deeper knowledge of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has daily importance. Convinced that many Christians "have some level of awareness that God is triune...[but] are virtually Unitarian," the authors have written a practical and theologically robust resource to help readers "grow closer to the Triune God."  Read More.

Gospel Coalition Videos: Alistair Begg

Alistair Begg, pastor of Parkside Church outside Cleveland, preached from the book of Ruth.  His sermon, showcasing his finest Scottish brogue and wit, was titled "From a Foreigner to a King."


From a Foreigner to King Jesus - Alistair Begg - TGC 2011 from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

A Great Time to be Stuck in Traffic

Following yesterday's post I'd like to mention one more anecdote about The Trellis and the Vine.  A few weeks ago I had the extreme pleasure of picking up Colin Marshall, one of the book's authors, from O'Hare Airport after his flight from Sydney.  Click here to find out more about him.

Besides waiting for 30 minutes in the wrong terminal (wouldn't you have gone to the international terminal if you were picking up someone arriving from Australia?) I finally met up with Colin and had a delightful time as we made our way in Chicago rush hour traffic on the extreme northwest side of the city to the south side of the city.  Colin was in town for the Gospel Coalition National Conference to conduct a breakout session with his coauthor Tony Payne.  Luckily he also worked into his schedule a visit to our church's intern meeting the Monday before the conference convened.


At the meeting Colin gave some counsel which I don't think I'll ever forget.  He was speaking about the ministry being vine work (i.e. people work), yet people can be exhausting.  Therefore, and I think I'm quoting him pretty closely, "We have to pray that God gives us a greater capacity for people."  This, I think, is essentially the point of The Trellis and the Vine.

May the Lord give all disciple makers greater capacity for people.

The Trellis and the Vine

One book above all others (excluding the Bible, but this goes without saying [yet I still feel compelled nonetheless to say it]) has influenced me in how I think about gospel ministry.  Today I finished my second reading of Colin Marshall's and Tony Payne's The Trellis and the Vine:  The Ministry Mind-Shift That Changes Everything (Kingsford, NSW:  Matthias Media, 2009).  I read it for the first time a year ago shortly after its publication.  This time I read it with another intern at church.

The book made a huge splash when it came out and so has been mentioned and reviewed in the blogosphere over and over and over and over and over again.  So rather than a full review I want to give a general overview followed by a few thoughts on how I've found it personally helpful.

Now, some explanation of the title (I get the impression that Australian backyards have more trellises than American backyards).  The trellis is the latticework that supports the vine as it winds up and through the trellis.  Metaphorically speaking, the trellis refers to all the structures in church life and church ministry:  committees, programs, denominational meetings, and all the events that make churches run.  The vine, on the other hand, is the people.  The vine needs the trellis to grow, but what really matters is the vine.  So it is with ministry.  Ministry is all about people--seeing them converted, growing in godliness, and being trained to make new disciples.  Yet many if not most churches become preoccupied with the structures--maintaining programs that have long ceased being effective, developing evangelistic events rather than going out and doing evangelism, and the administration of churches which for all intents and purposes are (religious) corporations.  The Trellis and the Vine is thus a call to vine work.

The final chapter lists ten propositions that helpfully summarize the gist of the book:

1. Our goal is to make disciples 
2. Churches tend towards institutionalism as sparks fly upward
3. The heart of disciple-making is prayerful teaching
4. The goal of all ministry--not just one-to-one work--is to nurture disciples
5. To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker
6. Disciple-makers need to be trained and equipped in conviction, character, and competence
7. There is only one class of disciples, regardless of different roles or responsibilities
8. The Great Commission, and its disciple-making imperative, needs to drive fresh thinking about our Sunday meetings and the place of training in congregational life
9. Training almost always starts small and grows by multiplying workers
10. We need to challenge and recruit the next generation of pastors, teachers and evangelists

Now for some personal reflections.  First, the idea that ministry is about people not structures was a liberating mind-shift.  In the past I've seen church structures stifle ministry, and indeed my own tendencies in my present ministry at Holy Trinity Church is to start developing structures (even good ones like Sunday School classes) rather than to disciple individual people.  

Second, the "Gospel Growth Process" (ch. 7) has been extraordinarily helpful.  The authors identify four stages in a person's growth in the gospel.  The first stage is Outreach, the time before someone repents and believes the gospel.  This stage is divided into two subcategories:  Raising Issues, before the gospel has been shared; and Gospel, referring to a time after someone has shared the gospel with a non-Christian but before that person has been converted.  The second stage is Follow-Up, after someone has become a Christian yet is still in need of instruction along the way to maturity.  The third stage is Growth, which is divided into Needs Help (for someone is struggling in some way) and Solid (a mature Christian).  The final stage is Training, although this isn't distinct from the growth stage, since no one ever stops growing.  Training is divided into General Training (those skills which every Christian needs to know, such as how to share one's faith) and Specific Training (how to preach or lead a Bible study).  The chart on page 87 lays it out quite nicely and shows that this is much simpler than I've been able to describe it.  All this is to say that thinking in terms of gospel growth stages is very helpful in determining how to minister to particular people.

Third, the huge emphasis on training--from developing a core group of "vine-growers" and "co-workers" serving alongside the pastor or pastors to a two year ministry apprenticeship prior to seminary--was likewise stimulating.  In some of my past experience the emphasis was more on testing than training.  The thinking in many American evangelical churches seems to be, "The ministry is so important that we're going to do everything we can to keep the wrong people out of it."  For Marshall and Payne, on the other hand, the thinking is, "The ministry is so important that we're going to do everything we can to recruit and train as many qualified people as we can for it."  I think they make a strong biblical case for their position.  

If you want a great plug for the book check out this clip from Mark Dever, which has probably been posted on all the blog posts about this book:

Please get and read this book!