New Year, New Goals

Last year, I set a goal to read 50 books from January 1st to December 31st. I was able to complete my goal in the last few hours of 2011. Over the course of the year, I read a lot of different books and enjoyed most of them.

The book that I enjoyed the most was Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien. I've seen the movies so many times, but had not finished the books. Challenged by a friend to finish it, I read it and then had the most enjoyable time discussing it over coffee with friends. I would highly recommend the entire series to anyone. The books are so much better than the movie. With the Hobbit coming out this year, I will at least be reading that again this year.

Also, for the first time in 2011 I read an in depth biography. Through the booksneeze review program, I received the Bonhoeffer biography by Eric Metaxas. It was like running a marathon to get all the way through it, but it was well worth the journey. I also highly recommend this book if you have the time. Some of Bonhoeffer's works are on my reading list for this year and I cannot wait to dig into them now that I know more about his life.

2011 also saw some controversy. I normally like to keep my nose out of controversy, but I decided to review Rob Bell's book Love Wins. This was the most popular blog post that my blog has ever seen. It was an easy book to read and an interesting one as well. Bell stirred up a lot with this short little book and I think some people went a little overboard criticizing him. I enjoyed the book and was challenged by what he wrote. In the end, though, I still disagreed with him at a few points.

There were a bunch of other books that I read this past year, but this year I'm changing my focus. This year instead of pushing for more books, I'm going to try to read longer books. I'm not saying that longer books are alway better, some of the best books I have read have been some of the shortest books. This year I'm going to shoot for 30 books instead of 50. I'm going from an average of 4 books a month to 2.5 books a month. On my list are books like the 2 volumes of Justo Gonzalez's Story of Christianity, The Brothers Karamozov, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, and Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien.

I know that this is not the most exciting of blog posts, but it's important to make and share goals. I would encourage you to make a reading goal for this year. An easy way to do that is to use Goodreads and create a goal. It tracks it for your and lets you know if you are behind. Good Luck!

2012 Reading Challenge

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Merry Christmas

May God bless you this Christmas and may we never forget that we have a God who came to be with us.

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.


But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”


All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”


Matthew 1:18-23

Should We Be Leading or Following?

In his new book I Am a Follower, Leonard Sweet poses this question with a fairly obvious answer. Early on Sweet argues that we have bought into the myth that to be effective in ministry we need to be leaders. He believes that we should not be trying to be leaders, instead we need to work on being the best followers that we can. In last few decades, the emphasis in ministry is been on how you can be a better leader and how being a better leader will make your ministry better. Sweet, however, thinks that we need to work on being better followers. The life that Jesus called us to was a life of "followership" not a life of leadership. There is only one leader for Christians, that leader is Jesus. We should not be leaders leading Christians, we are followers following Christ and helping other follow him, too.

Sweet breaks down his book by structuring it around Jesus' statement that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. At first, I thought that Sweet was stretching Jesus' words to make this argument, but the more I read the more it made sense to me. You could break down Sweet's basic argument like this: Jesus' followers are called to be just like Jesus. Jesus says that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Therefore, Jesus' followers should be like Jesus pointing to him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We cannot be those things, but we should be living in such a way that we fully embrace and live out the fact that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The book is divided into 4 parts: Introduction, Way, Truth, and Life. In each portion Sweet explains how a Christians needs to be a follower of Christ and not a Leader of people.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I would recommend it to anyone who holds a role of leadership in the church. My one warning is this: Sweet seems to overstate things in the beginning that make you question where his is going. Then a few paragraphs or pages later he rationalizes what he says. So while he argues against leadership, I don't think that he would say there are no "leaders" in the church. There are people who fill the role of leader in the church, but they need to fill it as a fellow humble follower and not as a extremely well-qualified and potentially prideful leader. Read this book, let it challenge you. There are some places that I disagreed with a little, but overall I found that this  book that challenges me not to try to make myself better, but instead to make myself more like Jesus.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Putting the Spirit Back in Christmas

It’s the most wonderful time of year. The countdown to Christmas has begun. It is the season of advent. This means that, other than presents, most people have one singular focus: Jesus. For the most part, that’s not bad. I would never stop someone from focusing on Jesus, especially at Christmas. I do, however, think that one person gets the short end of the stick when it comes to this season: The Holy Spirit. He did so much work at the “first Christmas” and is ignored by many at this time of year.

I just finished reading Francis Chan’s book Forgotten God and was very challenged by what he had to say. Christians are supposed to be living by the Spirit, and yet we ignore him so much. We have let ourselves forget what he has done and is still doing in the world, and yet he is probably the most important part of a believer’s life. Even though Chan doesn’t talk about Christmas, I was struck by the fact that Christmas is yet another one of those times when we have forgotten or at least failed to acknowledge the work of the spirit.

Matthew records twice within a matter just a few sentences that Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit. The very incarnation of Jesus, the event that we celebrate each year at Christmas, was done through the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, as we remember the time of waiting for Jesus to come and we wait for Jesus to come again, we can’t forget what the Spirit is still doing. When Jesus was preparing to leave, he promised to send another counselor to be with us, the Holy Spirit. Thankfully, Jesus did not abandon us, but instead the Holy Spirit lives with us and in us as we wait for his return.

It may seem odd that I would write about the Spirit before the celebration of the Incarnation of Jesus, when the spirit has his own Church Holiday, Pentecost. But it is terrible to forget the entire work of God in this time of year. When you thank God the Father for sending his son Jesus, don’t forget to thank the Spirit for doing his work. I pray that we never forget or ignore the work of God any time of the year.

Happy Thanksgiving

I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation. The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes. The Lord has done it this very day;
let us rejoice today and be glad. Lord, save us!
Lord, grant us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
From the house of the Lord we bless you. The Lord is God,
and he has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession
up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will praise you;
you are my God, and I will exalt you. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever. (Psalm 118:21-29 NIV)

Thanksgiving and the Eucharist

If you've read my blog at all, you probably know of my appreciation for the church calendar. I think that it is a fantastic way to create regular spiritual rhythms throughout the year. The church year is actually about to begin with the first Sunday of Advent on November 27. Before Advent begins, however, there is another holiday that is not a church holiday. This Thursday is Thanksgiving, a day packed with food, football, family, and afternoon naps. It is supposed to be a day of being thankful for what we have and what we've been given. Thanksgiving is not a church holiday, but I believe that it ought to be.

Since Jesus instituted it, the church has had it's own Thanksgiving feast. This feast, however, is not celebrated only once a year. Many churches celebrate this thanksgiving every week. The celebration that I am talking about is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is now know to many as the Lord's Supper or Communion. The name "eucharist" is a from Greek word and means "thanksgiving." The celebration of the Lord's supper includes a time of giving thanks to God for what he has done for us.

I find it oddly appropriate that before the church calendar begins, millions celebrate a day of thanksgiving.  Before we begin the church holiday cycle again, it seems providential that we set aside a day of thanksgiving and give thanks one more time for what God has done this past year. I would encourage you to be intentional about what you are thankful for this thanksgiving. I'm not saying that everyone should celebrate communion on Thanksgiving day, but we should be remembering what we should be the most thankful for, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus on the Cross. No matter what has happened in the past year, we can thank God for Jesus' sacrifice. We should regularly give thanks like we should regularly discuss Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. But just like Christmas and Easter, the church should set aside a day to throw a large party to give thanks to God for what he has done. So before we enter the season anticipation, give thanks to the Lord for what he has done.

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever." Ps. 106:1

Scripture as Story: A Review of The Voice New Testament

This semester I have been teaching Principles of Bible Study 1 at LCU. One of the things that I have been trying to emphasize to my students is the fact that God's revelation comes to us through the medium of story. There are letters, laws, poems, proverbs, and prophetic visions, but the overwhelming sense of Scripture is that it is a story. God's story of how he created the world, we broke creation, he sent his Son to fix it, and how ultimately he will come to restore the world and live with us. This new Bible, simply called The Voice, aims at helping us see scripture as a story. It is a new approach to scripture that combines the efforts of Biblical scholars and Christian writers and musicians in an effort to give us a more dramatic and story like version of the Bible. They have taken great care to translate the Greek as best as possible to communicate the meaning of the text. This is done in conjunction with artists who give the words some depth to engage the reader. Simply, The Voice is a dynamic equivalent translation of the Bible that aims as presenting the Bible artfully.

There are a lot of things that I like about this translation. First, I believe that it is more useful than a paraphrase like The Message. While the Message has been helpful to many, it is the work of one man, while the Voice is a collaboration of many scholars, artists, and pastors which adds to the strength of the translation. Also, when reading sections of the Voice, I was struck by how similar it was to typical Bible translations and yet at the same time it was easier to read than many translations. While it is easier to read like a paraphrase, it doesn't read like a typical paraphrase. It still feels like it is using language that would be familiar to someone who has read the Bible and yet easier to understand for those who do not have much experience with the Bible. In the way that it is written, it would be a great translation to read on a Sunday Morning, especially if you want to "dramatize" the Bible. It has been translated with the help of writers and musicians, it makes for an already dramatized version. The dialogue in the voice even appears in play like format. Since I am on a team that plans Sunday morning worship services, I will be adding readings from the Voice translation when a more dynamic reading is needed.

For those who are worried about the of translation from Greek to English, I think the Voice offers one of the best paraphrase/dynamic equivalents thus far. The majority of the text comes from the Greek text. On occasion they will add in phrases that either aid in understanding or emphasize something in the text that may not be in the Greek text. These additions are in italics so that it is easy to see when these additions have been made. As far as how it has been translated, there were times that I wonder why they changed from the typical wording (like John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Voice"), but so far I have not found anything that concerns me about the way it has been translated.

Overall, I think that this is a fantastic addition to anyone's Bible reading. I, personally, cannot wait for the entire Bible to be released next year and I hope that it will be available for Logos so that I can have it in that form. I even purchased their translation of the Psalms because I think that it will be helpful in worship planning. This Bible is useful for anyone new to Scripture or just trying to get a fresh artistic look at the Bible. If you are eager to read it, they have John available on their website www.hearthevoice.com. I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to wait until the whole Bible is available, but I would encourage you to purchase it at some point.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”