Books I have been reading (Since late fall!)

Good Fiction:

Fahrenheit 451 (again!)
Catcher in the Rye (again!)
To Kill a Mockingbird (amazing, again!)
Rushdie: Midnight's Children (long, convoluted, interesting about India)
Lahiri: The Namesake (great story of Indian immigrant)
Diamant: The Red Tent (women's centered fictional retelling of Biblical story)
Verghese: Cutting for Stone (wonderful story, heavy on medical surgical detail!)
Paolini: Eragon (fun youthful fantasy story!)

Nonfiction:

Countess of Caravon: Lady Almira and the Real Downton Abbey
Isay: All There Is: Love stories from Story CorpsBooks on the gospel of Mark:

Books on the Gospel of Mark:

Plachar: Mark Commentary
Barclay: Gospel of Mark
N.T. Wright: Mark 20 Studies
N.T. Wright: Mark for Everyone

Church Development:

Hotchkiss: Governance and Ministry
Malpurs/Mancini: Building Leaders
Olsen: Transforming Church Boards
Hawkins: Building God's People
Morris: Yearning to Know God's Will
Schwartz: Natural Church Development
Schwartz: Color Your World with NCD

Why Jesus came

"Jesus did not come to reveal God's power, God's might, God's victory. Rather, Jesus came. . .into the pain, the passion, and the wonder of creation itself. Jesus accepted the vocation of being truly human in the image of an enigmatic God." ---Carter Heyward

Spiritual but not religious

You hear the phrase all the time these days from people who are not part of a faith community: “I am spiritual but not religious.” I wonder if part of the reason they say this is because they feel we (those in a faith community) are “religious but not spiritual.” It could be that, and it certainly can also be that they simply wish to have nothing to do with God or Jesus or other people who call themselves “Christian.”

It is precisely because we are so prone to create religion in our own image, we need the corrective community of others. God works through the community to strengthen our love of Christ and to bring that love into the realm of action.

Left to our own devices we would never do this, we at least 99.9% of us wouldn’t.

This is one of the major reasons why religion is failing in our country, why church membership in mainline churches is declining drastically, why young people are not interested in religion. They can smell hypocrisy and lip service a mile away. They can smell it a mile away and they want no part of it.