Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Feb
06
2012

Writing for Children Is Harder than It Seems

Sally Lloyd Jones is one of my favorite children’s book authors, mainly because she wrote the Jesus Storybook Bible, which creatively tells the big stories of the Bible while pointing each to Jesus. I highly recommended it an review here and I had the opportunity to interview Sally here.

Recently she shared a guest-post on Ed Stetzer’s blog where she wrote about the challenge of writing for children. I thought it was keen insight on what many think is an easy thing to do:

People have approached me, holding up one of my children’s books, flicking through it backwards–awful for a writer because it implies the order of the words don’t matter–and cheerfully announcing, “I’m going to do one. I mean. REALLY. How hard can it be?”

How many of us would dream of going up to a surgeon and saying, “I’m going to do an Angioplasty. I mean. REALLY. How hard can it be?”

That people feel free to say this about children’s books tells you a lot–not so much about what they think of children’s book writers. That’s not important. It tells you what they think of children.

The whole post is worth reading here: Ed Stetzer – Thursday is for Thinkers: Sally Lloyd-Jones.

Jan
27
2012

Friday Five: Laurie Alice Eakes

Today I’m honored to feature the talented novelist, Laurie Alice Eakes. She is a fellow client of my agent, Tamela Hancock Murray and an award-winning author. Her books have won numerous awards, including The National Readers Choice Award. She was also a Carol Award finalist. In the past three years, she has sold six books to Baker/Revell, five of which are set during the Regency time period, four books to Barbour Publishing, as well as two novellas to Barbour Publishing and one to Baker/Revell. Six of her books have been picked up by Thorndike Press for large print publication, and Lady in the Mist, her first book with Revell, was chosen for hardcover publication with Crossings Bookclub. She also teaches on-line writing courses and enjoys a speaking ministry that has taken her from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast. She blogs regularly here. Here latest book is  A Heart’s Safe Passage. 

Today Laurie was kind to take time out of her writing day to chat with me about the writing life: 

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Jan
20
2012

Friday Five: Ed Welch

Edward T. Welch, M.Div., Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and faculty member at the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF). He has counseled for over twenty-five years and is the best-selling author of some of the best, gospel-centric counceling books, including When People Are Big and God Is Small; Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave; Running Scared: Fear, Worry and the God of Rest; and When I Am Afraid: A Step-by-Step Guide Away from Fear and Anxiety.

His latest book is What Do You Think of Me and Why Do I Care?, Today, Ed was kind enough to stop by and chat for today’s Friday Five.

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Jan
13
2012

Friday Five: Matthew Lee Anderson

 

Matthew Lee Anderson is the founder of the popular blog Mere Orthodoxy as well as the author of  Earthen Vessels, Why Our Body Matters to Our Faith   He was featured in Christianity Today’s Who’s Next column in December of 2009.  Matthew sits on the editorial board of The City, and has been quoted on FoxNews.com, in the Wall Street Journal, and by the Associated Press.  He is a frequent contributor to publications such as First Things, Christianity Today, and The Gospel Coalition. He is a Perpetual Member of the Torrey Honors Institute and a graduate from Biola University (2004).

You’re part of a wave of young evangelical intellectuals. Scholars like Mark Noll have lamented the lack of evangelical scholarship in the past, but do you sense a new renaissance in evangelical intellectual pursuits? 

I hope so, but it’s very difficult to tell these sorts of things with anything approaching accuracy.  I know we have made incredible advances in a number of disciplines, particularly philosophy, psychology and sociology.  And I keep running into really intelligent Ph.D. candidates in political philosophy, which gives me hope for the future.  But if we are experiencing a renaissance, it will only be because of the work of Noll and others in the generation previous.  They were the true trailblazers, and my generation is simply lucky to stand on their shoulders.

In your famous paper, “The New Evangelical Scandal“, published in The City, you cautioned young evangelicals who tend to dismiss everything they learned from their parent’s generation. Why is this tendency so dangerous? 

“Famous” is probably overstating it, but it was a fun piece to write!  I think when the default mode of cultural engagement is that our parents were wrong and we’re out to fix it, we risk inoculating ourselves against any form of self-criticism.  Myopia breeds only more myopia:  if we don’t have the vision to see both the good and the bad of what we’ve inherited, we’ll never learn to truly see both the good and the bad of what we’re contributing.  Chesterton once wrote something to the effect that love is blind–it’s bound, and because it’s bound, it sees more clearly than anything else.  I think the same sort of thing is true of our cultural engagement: if we recognize the ways in which our lives our bound up in our parents, for both good and ill, we’ll see ourselves and the world more clearly and act more effectively in it.

Earthen Vessels is a thorough treatment of the intersection of the human body and faith. What inspired you to write this book? 

A moment of insanity!  Seriously, I have been ruminating on issues related to the body for a decade.  I first realized that there were depths when I listened to a lecture on Plato by John Mark Reynolds.  I also happened to be binging on the Apostle Paul and reading Dallas Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines  The result was the realization that the Incarnation changes everything, and that the problem that Christianity solved in the ancient world (which is pretty close to the problem it solves today) is the problem of the body.

Why do evangelicals need a more robust theology of the body? 

For lots of reasons, not least of which is that it will help chasten the tacit secularism that many evangelicals have unwittingly adopted.  Secularism isn’t always and everywhere bad, but it’s impossible to sift properly without pre-existing theological categories that will filter things out.  Seeing how the Gospel shapes (and doesn’t shape) bodies is imperative for living in a world that has reduced the body to a question, and evangelicals are currently woefully equipped to do that.  Developing a more robust theology of the body will help us know what shape our practices should take, see how those practices will affect our bodies, and help us resist and affirm the counter-practices of the world with greater wisdom and discernment.  If it’s not my book, it has to be someone else.  And I’ll sell their book as much (if not moreso) than I’ve tried to sell mine.

Lastly, I appreciate the lack of straw men in your writing. You really aim to present both sides of an argument fairly in a way I don’t often see even in people whose arguments I agre with. Has this always been a feature of your writing? 

Well, that’s very kind of you to say.  I don’t know if it’s always been a feature of my writing, but I’ve always tried to make it one.  It’s a practice I take very seriously.  My motivation has two sides to it.  On the one hand, I want to be charitable to people, to represent them at their best because that’s what I want for my own work.  But on the other hand, if we’re going to ultimately disagree on something, I want to really disagree–fairly, honestly, out in the open, and preferably over a good meal that you’re buying.  It’s no fun having arguments when one side has been misrepresented:  it’s a lot more fun when the disagreement’s over the substance of things, and that’s always the level to which I’m trying to reach.

Jan
02
2012

Permission to Pursue What You Love

I’ve just finished reading two books which have cemented in my mind an often neglected biblical doctrine. We often call it the doctrine of “vocation” but I think this doesn’t speak to the totality of it. The first book I finished was Work Matters by Pastor Tom Nelson (Christ Community Church, Leewood, Kansas). The second was The Cure for the Common Life by best-selling author and pastor, Max Lucado.

While both books are different–Nelson fully fleshes out a theology of work while Lucado beautifully illustrates the uniqueness of every human being created in God’s image–they both arrive at an important conclusion: God has uniquely gifted, wired, called, and shaped every human being for a specific purpose on this earth, to glorify Him.

This may seem like something we always hear in church or a tired Christian clique, but I don’t think we fully articulate two powerful ideas that come out of our uniqueness: work was ordained by God and is a form of worship and that God implants in us certain unique skills, passions, and gifts that make our lives unique.

I want to expand on this concept today because I think its powerfully important. Embracing God’s unique design involves pushing back against a cultural lie about ourselves and a church lie about ourselves.

The Cultural Lie

On the one hand, you have the cultural expression that “you can be whatever you want to be, whatever you set your heart to do.” This has been echoed in Disney movies and other pop culture seemingly from the beginning of time. But we all know that this isn’t really true. Supposed I really wanted to play in the NBA as a center. Well I could work extremely hard, harder than everyone else. Like Larry Bird, I could shoot thousands of shots a day and still, after all that, I likely wouldn’t get invited to a scout camp. Heck, I’d be lucky to make the team on the worst Division III college team. So I can’t actually be whatever I want to be, can I?

The Church Lie

But the opposite of this cultural lie is a church lie. It’s a pushback against the Disney fantasy dreams that tell us to follow our hearts. It’s the equal and opposite idea that because our hearts are so wicked, we can’t trust them and therefore what we like to do, what we’re good at doing, what we have a passion to do–this can’t possibly be what God wants us to be. This lie might go something like this: You can’t be anything you want to be. In some ways, this may be more dangerous than the first lie in the sense that lots of Christian kids grow up forced into a mold set by parents or pastors or others. Every young boy must aspire to be a pastor or in “full-time” Christian service, otherwise he’s not serving God. Every girl must aspire to be a pastor’s wife or in some kind of acceptable full-time ministry or she is not serving the Lord. The guilt goes like this: How can you pursue a career in law or business or entertainment when across the world people are dying and going to Hell? 

And so you have a lot of people who feel they are supposed to ignore their gifts, their skills, their passions and they plunge into full-time ministry when they really have no aptitude for it. And as a result, not only do they suffer, but God’s people suffer. You’ve taken a skilled man out of the environment where he might have had the most impact (law, business, medical field, etc) and you’ve placed him, like a square peg in a round hole, in ministry where the people are suffering under the leadership of someone who wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place.

The Biblical Third Way

So is there an alternative to the world’s false “You can be what you want to be” fantasies and the church’s “Don’t dream, don’t trust your passions and skills” consignment to certain acceptable callings? I believe there is and it’s to dive more fully into a biblical theology of work. Here’s a few important points we need to consider when it comes to calling:

Every kind of work is honorable to God. I’ve heard the phrase, “There is no divide between secular and sacred” for all of my life and yet we in the church still create that divide, mostly unintentionally. This is where Tom Nelson’s book, Work Matters really shines. It shines because it pushes back against pastors and missionaries and so-called full-time ministry staff elevating their callings above that of lay people. The truth is that if we believe work itself is good and worthy and honorable to God as a form of worship, then we should consider the skilled plumber or the top salesman or the doctor as worthy a ministry of the gospel as a pastor or missionary. The work lay people do from Monday to Friday is important, not simply so they can be a witness in the workplace or they can make more money so they can tithe, but because the work itself is important to God. 

God has uniquely wired every single person with specific skills and gifts. Max Lucado beautifully brings out the important message of Psalm 139, where David describes the intricate design behind every human soul. You are who you are because God made you this way. The things you are gifted at, passionate about, the things others see in you as strengths–these are given to purposely by God. Why? For a purpose. To occupy a space in His plan for His glory. This is comparisons are so damaging and, dare I say, evil. You wanting to be live someone else’s life is actually against God. Someone forcing you into their mold is against God. The life God wants you to live is the life of Christ lived through you in a unique expression.

A Redeemed Person Can Trust Their Hearts. Now before you send me angry emails with Jeremiah 17:9 in it, let’s look at the totality of the Scriptures teaching on our hearts. Ephesians 2:10 says that God created us as a “masterpiece” designed to do certain good works. But something happened, right? We chose sin and sin has corrupted our hearts, thus Jeremiah 17:9 which describes our flesh as place of desperate wickedness whose depravity we don’t even fully realize. But, the promise of regeneration, rebirth, transformation offered in Christ gives us a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26).

So, if we are followers of Christ being transformed by His grace, we can listen to our hearts. Psalm 37:5 urges us to commit our ways to him and in doing so, he’ll give us the desires of our hearts. What happens in salvation is this: God restores us (His masterpieces) from the corruption of sin. He implant in us a new heart. And as we die to ourselves, He reveals to us His original purpose for us. As you walk with the Lord, your calling will become clearer and clearer. But it’s not because you are ignoring your gifts, your passions, your skills, but rather you are seeing them more clearly because the Holy Spirit is removing the residue of sin.

So, this means you can’t be anything you “want to be” but you are free to be who you are supposed to be. What you die to in following Christ is not your skills and passions and gifts, but to the sin-soaked desires that were a distraction from God’s original design of your life. You begin to enter, as Max Lucado calls it, your “sweet spot” where your gifts, your opportunities, and your impact all meet.

I think is is especially important for Christian young people as they survey their lives. High-school seniors and college freshman. I do this routinely as I counsel them. I ask them simply: What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? Where do you think you can have the most impact in the world? What do others say you are good at?

What I try to help them realize is that “every good and perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:17). It’s no accident that I enjoy writing, studying, and engaging with people. God equipped me with those gifts, not for me to show off my skills but to reflect His glory. It’s no accident my father is perhaps the most skilled craftsman I know. He’s a terrific tradesman who does great work. It’s no accident that one of my best friends has the mind of an entrepreneur. God knew what He was doing when He designed us this way.

Gifted plumbers shouldn’t preach. Gifted preachers shouldn’t plumb.

No, you can’t be what you want to be. But you are freed by Jesus to be what He designed you to be. And it’s a whole easier to figure out what that is when we reject both cultural and church myths.

 

Dec
29
2011

Mini Reviews #9

Thanks to my new NOOK, I’ve been on a reading tear lately. So here are two more mini-reviews:

The Cure for the Common Life  by Max Lucado

I appreciate Lucado’s unique gift at taking difficult concepts and making them easy for lay people to understand. In The Cure for the Common Life, Max shares a winsome, wise, and thoroughly biblical case for living a life of maximum impact. He encourages people to discover how God has gifted them, skills, abilities, opportunities, background, and leverage that for maximum Kingdom purpose. He grounds it in God’s desire to see His glory revealed in each of His children. He also uses specific examples of people who found their “sweet spot”, where their gifts, callings, and opportunities align with God’s purpose. What I like is that Lucado pushes replaces the cultural idea of “you can be what you want to be” and replaces it with “you can be what and who God wants you to be.”

Growing Up Amish by Ira Wagler

I have wanted to read this book for some time and finally downloaded it to my Nook and read it during this holiday break. It’s a unique book in that it is a memoir of life in the Old Order Amish. Anyone who fantasizes about the seemingly simple and idealized life of the Amish will quickly discover the frustrations and heartbreak that occur when living under a legalistic, closed system.

What I particularly enjoyed about this, more than most recent memoirs, is that this is not self-serving and it is very fair. Wagler is honest about his parents shortcomings and the problems with the Amish faith, but he’s also very complementary about some of the noble and good things about their community. While we may reject their theology, there are many things to admire about the Amish and Wagler points those out. He’s also very honest about the disappointment and hurt he caused in his relationships. You might expect him to blame all of his troubles on the Amish way, but he really doesn’t.

I found it fascinating to learn how real Amish live. I was surprised at how different various communities can be from each other, in terms of their rules and ways of life. I was also surprised at how plugged in some of the youth are to pop culture, even though they are sequestered in the community. Perhaps the most poignant part of the book is the struggle Wagler (and most Amish youth) had in leaving the community and coming back. It was only when he found true salvation in Christ by grace did he realize there was a third way between the life of the Amish (which he perceived as the only way to God) and the outside world.

The only weakness I see in this memoir is that it seems unfinished. He ends abrubtly with the last time he left the community. I would have loved to known about how the next twenty years went outside, how he adjusted to modern life, how he met his wife, built his career. I saw on his bio that he attended Bob Jones University for a spell–how did he get from Amish to BJU? Perhaps the editors felt the book was too long, but I was waiting for more.

All in all, though this is a wonderful memoir worth reading.

 

Dec
27
2011

My Favorite Books of 2011

I had the opportunity to read quite a few great books in 2011. Not quite as many (101) as my friend, Aaron Armstrong, but I read quite a few. Here are my top ten books. You’ll notice they are not necessarily all books that were published in 2011, but books I had the chance to read this year.

Unbroken by Lauren Hildenbrand

Lou Zamperini’s His life as told inUnbroken is a powerful story, a reminder of the sovereignty and grace of God in the life of one man, lived during one of the most ominous periods of world history.

Bonhoeffer by Erik Metaxes

Bonhoeffer is a book I highly recommend. It is a weighty, important biography of a man used greatly by God. Bonhoeffer was unsuccessful in taking down Hitler, but his life has become an inspiration for Christian boldness, faith, and cross-bearing in the many decades since he was martyred.

I have a feeling that this is the book Eric Metaxas will be always be known for. His painstaking work has given us a great gift.

Also, I conducted a very interesting interview with the author here.

Just As I Am by Billy Graham

I’ve always wanted to read this book. I’m intrigued by the biographies of well-known evangelical leaders.This book gave me a newfound appreciation for God’s work in his life. I’m amazed at how God took the son of a dairy farmer and used him to bring millions to Christ, influence world leaders, and help usher in this era of evangelicalism.

The God Who Is There by D.A. Carson

This is a great book for those who wonder how the Old Testament fits into the New. Carson clearly presents the “one big storyline” of the Bible.

The Next Story by Tim Challies

 I highly recommend this book for those who live and work in the digital world. I suspect it will be a texbook in Christian colleges. 

Dug Down Deep by Josh Harris

This may be the most readable book on doctrine available. It’s at times funny, honest, and personal. I would highly recommend it.

Spiritual Rhythm by Mark Buchanan

 I find myself soaking this book in a chapter or two at a time and then thinking deeply about each section. Mark talks biblically and with doctrinal precision about subjects such as sin, repentance, and the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, and church involvement.

Bloodlines by John Piper

 This is a brave and important book, tackling head-first the issue of race.

Lions of Kandahar by Rusty Bradley and Kevin Maurer

For someone who knows little about military lingo or strategy, this book was a delightful read. The authors were explanatory of situations, protocol, weapons, etc. It gave me such an appreciation for the men and women who risk their lives in places like Afganistan.

Deliver Me From Evil by Kathi Macias

Reading Deliver Me From Evil gave me a disturbing, up-close look at the horrific problem of human trafficking. Kathi Macias weaves a story of a young girl who was kidnapped from her San Diego area home and forced into sexual slavery; a girl in the Golden Triangle in Thailand. In this novel, Kathi shares the awful exploitation of young girls in excruciating, but appropriate detail. These are girls whose innocence and freedom and self-worth are bought and sold to the highest bidder by the most evil of men.

 Honorable Mentions:
These books were as great as the other ten, so I wanted to put them here:
Work Matters by Tom Nelson
Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson
King Solomon by Phillip Ryken
A God-Sized Vision by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge
Dec
27
2011

Mini-Reviews #8

Just finished another great batch of books:

Work Matters by Tom Nelson.

This is a terrific book on a subject not explored fully enough in contemporary evangelicalism: a theology of work. As usual, Nelson (pastor of Christ Community Church in Leawood, Kansas), shares a comprehensive, balanced, biblical view of the doctrine of work.

A Christmas Journey Home by Kathi Macias

Kathi Macias, a friend, is a gifted writer. The last few years she has devoted herself to writing what she calls “bold” fiction. She tackles a thorny social issue and weaves a story around it, opening up the reader’s eyes to issues of justice and suffering. I recently read and reviewed her novel, Deliver Me From Evil which puts a face on the scourge of human trafficking. It so disturbed me that I’ve renewed a committment to help in this fight.

A Christmas Journey Home tackles the subject of illegal immigration, something that provokes heated debate on both sides. What Kathi does is share the stories of two widows about to collide. One is the wife of a slain border agent. She and her son struggle in the year after his death, wondering why God allowed it to happen and taking her anger out on the illegals that cross the border. In her anger you can hear the frustration of those who wish the border was more secure.

The other story is one of a young pregnant Mexican wife who, with her husband, fled the violence in her hometown. Their once quiet neighborhoods were now racked by violence, the indiscriminate murder of innocent women and children. Her father gives the couple his life savings and urges them to try to cross the border. In their story you see the struggle to find a better situation for their growing family.

The two stories collide in a setting not dissimilar from the humble conditions of Jesus’ birth. It is the story of the Nativity that calls the border agent’s wife to find the forgiveness and grace to engage the wife of the illegal. This is not a book that offers bullet-point solutions to the issue of illegal immigration, but readers will put a human face on a problem, pushing past the stereotypes, posturing, and politics that plage the immigration crisis.

This is a great book first for church staff, pastors, and missionaries. Quite often we either send a message to the lay people in our congregation that their day job is less important than that of a ministry leader. We don’t preach often enough on the important doctrine of vocation, of work not simply as a means to an end (tithing, evangelism), but as a form of worship itself. Nelson covers the full orbit of work in a pastoral, encouraging way.

This is also a terrific book for lay leaders. Often you feel as if you’re “secular” work is sort of secondary to church involvement, as if what you do on Monday-Friday has no connection to worship on Sunday. Nelson will shatter that myth with biblical truth and give you a solid foundation from which to glorify God in your vocation.

After reading this book, I’m thinking of doing a future Sunday morning series on the theology of work. We pastors often fail to properly spiritually equip our people for their chosen calling in this world. Work Matters will go a long way toward helping us do that.