Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer. New York, NY: Crossroads Publishing Company, 2003. Richard Rohr, A Franciscan monk who writes and teaches in the field of Christian spirituality and men’s ministry, has made a real contribution with his work, Everything Belongs. The primary thesis of the book is that the “egoic-operating system,” which is simply a reference to a person who operates chiefly out of the personal ego, must be dealt with in order to be transformed... Read more

Phyllis Tickle, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008. Phyllis Tickle says about every 500 years the church has a giant rummage sale. What she means is that every 500 hundred years or so, the church structures and strictures are formed into an intolerable chain which must be broken for the church to continue to be faithful to the gospel. She cites the Council of Chalcedon (451) as the beginning of one... Read more

William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008 William Cavanaugh is, quite simply, brilliant. He’s a prolific writer. He’s one of the very best I’ve ever read in Political Theology and Social Ethics. Torture and Eucharist is one of the greatest works of Ecclesiology I’ve ever read. But for folks who are not theology geeks, he can be hard to read. Being Consumed fixes that. This short book is accessible to the masses but... Read more

Over the years I’ve struggled to maintain my status as music appreciator. It’s weird because I’ve played music as long as I can remember. I’ve written hundreds of songs, played in bands and even made my living as a musician for the better part of a decade. I usually like what I’m playing, but even my own stuff doesn’t really inspire me all of the time. It’s a rare thing when I get really excited about a band or musician.... Read more

N.T. Wright. Evil and the Justice of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006. . N.T. Wright tackles the problem of evil with his usual brilliance. He argues that evil is real and powerful. Evil is more than the sum of individual sin and cannot be understood in dualistic categories. By misunderstanding evil we have react to it in immature and unwise ways. He engages the Old Testament to show that Israel is, albeit ambiguously, God’s answer to evil –... Read more

Robert E. Webber. Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2003. In Ancient-Future Evangelism, Robert Webber explores the nature of evangelism in the ancient church hoping to discover patterns and analogs to our current social and cultural situation which might help to inform an evangelism strategy for the 21st Century. He asserts the rites and practices of the church were corrupted by Constantine. After that they were meant chiefly to serve the state. The... Read more

Walter Brueggemann. Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993. Brueggemann’s vision for evangelism consists of helping people to switch narratives from the world of consumerism, individualism and violence to the narrative of the people of God. He proposes a simple schema and method for evangelism as this imaginative telling/re-telling of the story of God, applying it to several texts and audiences. The schema is: 1) the victory of Yahweh in the conflict between... Read more

John A. Berntsen. Cross-Shaped Leadership in the Rough and Tumble of Parish Practice. Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2008. John Berntsen is a new author to me, but this book is a real find for those who are tired of hearing about “church” leadership from Collins, Dupree & Maxwell. With an MDiv. from Yale and a Ph.D from Emory, he’s got an incredible pedigree and he writes well. Berntsen’s starting point is that qualification for leadership is not really about... Read more

A woman who was disabled, I think she has Cerebral Palsy, struggled to ask a question from the mic. She said she read “a crucified God” in 1975 and for the first time in her life, she actually owned her identity as the image of God and not something less than a full human being. She asked him, “How to people with disabilities who are both a burden and a blessing to the church find their life in the church.”... Read more

These are just a few notes from yesterday: THE NATURE OF ATONEMENTChristology of solidarity: he suffers with us.He suffers for us – for us the guiltyThose two sides go together. That he suffers for us is the reconciling part. He was given up for our sins and raised up for our justification. One the one hand the payment for sins, on the other hand our justification through the resurrection. Forgiveness of sin is a negative act which clears the negative... Read more