Well I guess summer has really started…

…that is except for the fact that I have to go back to school for three more days.  Oh well.  My summer is already being filled with vacations, visits, housesitting, conferences, speaking engagements, and my honey-do list is filled to the brim.  However, I always make the time over the summer for extra reading (along with extra movies.)  I already read a lot.  But with the extra time on my hands, I’m really excited to sink my teeth into these books.  None of these books are any that I’ve plugged before, and I’ve even given you a handy link to order any of them that look good to you!

Jesus Manifesto

I’ve already cracked this one a few times, because the guys over at Thomas Nelson sent me a sweet review copy.  It’s by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola, both of whom are great authors and let me tell you, it’s a good read.  Deep, but not strenuous.  This is one of those books I’ll be skipping around in all summer, reading and re-reading my favorite chapters.  I’d say my favorite chapter right now is “If God Wrote Your Biography.”  The book is actually available starting Tuesday, and on a special discount, no less, of just about ten bucks.

A New Kind of Christianity

Brian McLaren, if you do nothing else, you always make me think.  I’ve got this book sitting on my shelf, only flipped through when it arrived in the mail, then put away until time could be found to read it.  It tempts me, it mocks me.  It beckons me, but I also know that I will only open a huge can of worms by reading this book.  Will I accomplish anything by reading this?  Probably not.  McLaren’s books rarely solve any problems.  If anything, he digs up more problems than we knew we had.  But I’ll be thinking about it for months, and that makes it a successful book.

The Know – It – All

Something about the title spoke to me.  You know A.J. Jacobs as the guy who wrote the book about living ‘biblically’ for a year (by following every Old Testament law to the letter.)  This book came out a few years ago, and chronicles his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica, chronologically, thus becoming the smartest person in the world.  As a guy with similar ambitions, I’m excited to see what came of this adventure.

The Tipping Point

I’m basically reading Malcolm Gladwell’s books in reverse order.  Since discovering him last year at the Catalyst conference, Gladwell has become my absolute favorite non-theological author.  He fills an completely unique niche.  He writes about history, but not the history you know.  He writes about the little stories that made a big difference.  I sound so much smarter after reading a Gladwell book and then busting out a nugget of obscure knowledge at a party.  Buy any of his books.  You can’t go wrong.

What are you reading this summer?  Are you spending your summer catching up on reading, or emptying your Netflix queue, or watching a Lost marathon?

Hey everyone, I’ve got an interview with a really cool blogger today, Rachel Held Evans.  I found Rachel’s blog a few months ago and now I’m a huge fan of hers.  She’s not afraid to talk about tough subjects, speaks bluntly but graciously, and she’s written a book that’s coming out in July that I’m really excited about.  In fact, Rachel is so cool, that she’s letting me give away free copies of her book.  Anyone who leaves a comment on this interview will be entered to win!

Here’s Rachel:

Okay, Rachel, who are you anyway?

Well, I’m from Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. As you may have noticed, my name forms a complete sentence, which I figured made me important enough to write a blog. I’ve lived in Dayton for about 16 years and am happily married to a Jersey transplant named Dan.   I have a Southern accent that only surfaces when I’m really excited or really mad. I’m obsessed with college football, and if eating had no consequences, I’d eat a roll of refrigerated cookie dough every morning for breakfast. I try to follow Jesus Christ, but fail at it most of the time, which is why I am so thankful for God’s grace.

Oh, and my fist book comes out with Zondervan later this summer.  It’s called “Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Used to Ask the Questions.”

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Monday’s post was a huge failure.

Actually, I was pretty blown away by many of the responses as usual to the question of “what makes you feel like a failure.”  Turns out that, as usual, I was right and a lot more people feel like failures than internet chatter would have you believe.  All the boasting and bragging just makes a lot of people feel like they’re the only “failures” out there.

I think failure is such a big topic that I’m going to run with it.  Let’s talk about mistakes and failures and faux pas we make as Christians, ministers, parents, as people. 

Today’s fail topic is this:  Christians love to “hear from God.”  That means we pray to God, we sing songs, and we hope God will speak, tell us what to do, confirm something, “open a door” or give a blessing.  We think God is talking to everyone, because there’s so many people who seem to hear so clearly from Him, just like on Monday we talked about how God seems to be blessing everyone but us.

I’ve already told you that I think God is not giving out life plans like magic beans.  But I also think a lot of us are hearing less from God than we want to admit.  And because of that, we feel like failures.

Well, turns out God told me three things when it comes to hearing from Him.

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The internet is a great thing.

One of the bright spots of the internet is what the global community of Christian bloggers is doing.  (Well, at least the ones I read.)  I can look around and find dozens of pastors, bloggers, twitterers and churches.  I can see that a church in Nashville is reaching out to their flooded neighbors.  I can see a pastor in Atlanta rallying support for missions work in Tanzania.  I can find pastors preaching to Muslims in the UK and missionaries in India and pastors that just baptized a hundred people in their last service. 

It’s all amazing and incredible.  To look around, you’d have to think that God is just flooding churches, pastors and missionaries with wild success stories.  You’d think that because He is. 

But I think there’s something missing.

The internet should absolutely be used to share what God is doing in your church, your city.  It’s exciting to read about the success stories other people have.  It’s a good thing to be happy for what God is doing around the world.  But all this boasting we’re doing over our blogs and twitter accounts is hiding a subtle detail…

We fail more often than we like to admit.

Actually I’ll take that back.  I don’t think you can fail at ministry.  But so often, the results of ministry don’t meet our expectations, either because of our own stupidity or because of…well, God.  And when the result isn’t what we expected, we feel like failures.  And we don’t boast about it on the internet.

I think I know why…

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It’s time for a fun Friday countdown post.

Today, I’m counting down my personal favorite instances of prayer on TV and movies.  We don’t get a whole lot of the God talk from Hollywood.  And I’m not counting things like Touched by and Angel, or any explicitly Christian shows, only because I don’t watch them.  I’m talking about five great, flawed, funny, and outright wrong ways God has been invoked on the silver screen.

Bart Simpson

When the show started, The Simpsons was pretty questionable for most parents.  They were confused by a cartoon that did not seem to be appropriate for children.  Bart’s regular use of the phrase, “Eat my shorts,” was rude and inflammatory to middle class families of the late 80s.  But if children weren’t supposed to watch the show, who was?  Adults?

Then, early in the second season, the Simpsons are at the dinner table and Bart is asked to say grace.  He responds with hands folded, saying:

“Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves.  So thanks for nothing.”

Well that sealed the deal.  Somehow, the fact that Homer and Marge also didn’t approve of the prayer was lost on my parents.  The Simpsons was off limits to my brother and I forever, or at least until junior high school.  By then, we were all desensitized and watching the show was a family activity. 

Could it be that Bart was just saying the prayer that a lot of people are living?  Worst. Prayer. Ever.

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I think my mechanic is ripping me off.

My wife and I just took her car in yesterday.  We can’t seem to get out of there without spending a few hundred dollars.  Last month, I took my car in for an inspection.  An inspection is twelve dollars.  How much did I spend?  Two-hundred…on something that the car “needed” in order to pass inspection.  Funny, I had been careening wildly down the highway in a speeding death trap for a year and didn’t even know it until I spent two-hundred bucks to fix it.

The worst part is, the auto shop advertises itself as being “Christian.”

It got me thinking about something.  Most Christians kind of wish that everyone would become Christians.  Something about a Great Commission or something.  It’d be great to know our kids’ teachers were Christians.  But there’s some groups of people that it’s just really inconvenient if they advertise themselves as Christians…

Four Inconvenient Christians

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