Donde Esta La Biblioteca?

Jess: Wes decided we need to share the joy of reading with all of our loyal (and not so loyal) blog followers out there on the inter-web. Now that we're both done with class until September, we've been spending quite a lot of our time reading fun books. Our definition of "fun" might be different than yours, but I'm sure you'll enjoy our ramblings anyway. :-D

Recently, I have read:

Blue Like Jazz (Donald Miller)- This is actually the first of three books I am reading by Miller, in a set called Donald Miller Greatest Hits. Wes recommended this book to me, and has been for quite some time, so I guess I needed to read it. The book is about Miller's life--his faith journey, his search to find community, his love life (or lack thereof), etc. The book begins with a short account of Miller's childhood, and his first encounter with true faith. The rest of it goes back and forth between Miller's present interactions and his past--how he met his friends, how he found his church, why he isn't married. It's a difficult book to describe because there isn't really a plotline. It's just Miller's thoughts, beliefs, past, present, and random drawings all mixed together. In the part I just finished, Miller says, "There's not a lot of work in the Christian market if you won't write self-righteous, conservative propaganda. I write new-realism essays. I am not a commodity." That sums this book up better than I could.

I'm not quite done reading this one, so I'm not sure if it's fair for me to judge it or have an opinion yet, but I do, so I'll write about it. This book has been awesome. I've loved reading Miller's work because it's organized like my thoughts are--not well. Each chapter talks about a different subject, bringing in Miller's past, present, friends, family, school, churches, etc. with no regard for a timeline or a purpose. And that's what makes this book great. It's the real story of a real person's unfinished faith journey, and I think that's why it's been so successful. Miller doesn't tell me what to think or believe, but I find myself wondering what his opinion is on certain subjects anyway. He's funny, honest, and fascinating, and I'm excited to read the other two books when I'm not even done with this one yet! Also, who wouldn't love a book with chapter sub-titles like "Living With Freaks," "The Birth of Cool," "Our Tiny Invisible Friends," "The Sexy Carrots," and "Penguin Sex"?

The Search to Belong (Joseph R. Myers)- Wes practically forced this book on me because he read it for his May class and loved it. We owned this book before he took the class, but neither of us had read it (hence my goal to read most, if not all, of the books we own this summer). The main idea of the book is that we all need community, friendships, and belonging, but we need it in four different spaces: public, social, personal, and intimate. We crave relationships in all these spaces, and when one is lacking, we feel unbalanced. Myers then uses this model to explain how congregations can and cannot help people fill these relationship roles. Too often, we try to force people into small groups, aiming for personal or intimate relationships. But these relationships cannot be formed simply on a common life stage or group study. We should not be focusing all of our energy on getting people into "better" relationship situations because all four of these spaces are necessary in our lives and in our faith.

I really liked this book. It was an easy read--it took me about two days of casual reading to get through it. The ideas were simple enough to understand but complex enough to challenge me to take a look at my life and my faith. I would recommend this book to anyone in a leadership position, and pretty much to anyone who wants to take a look at their relationships and our overwhelming desire to be part of something.

The Year of Living Biblically (A.J. Jacobs)- Jacobs is a declared Jew and a practicing agnostic who previously wrote a book while reading the Encyclopedia through in a year. In this new challenge, he decided to follow every single rule in the Bible, beginning with the Torah and eventually using the entire Bible. The book deals with the real-life implications of truly following every command God gives. As Jacobs is performing this experiment, he is also wrestling with difficulty in raising his son, his and his wife's apparent inability to conceive a second time, and his beliefs.

I LOVED reading this book. I think I may have ruined it for Wes if he was planning on reading it soon because I read so many passages out of it. Jacobs is hilarious about the silly things that he does--like when he "stones" a man for being an adulterer, yet brutally honest about his life and his faith. I learned about some laws that I never really noticed before, and spent a good deal of time struggling with my own ideas of faith as well as how I should address this issues. I was impressed by Jacobs' tenacity--he even followed the laws that prevented him from touching his wife, sitting anywhere she had sat, sharing a bed with her, etc. for a week every month. He endured stares, taunts, and general rudeness during his journey, but he definitely learned and taught me a lot in the process.

Wes: Can anyone name the movie that the title of this blog post quotes? Ten stars and a golden panda for anyone who can correctly ascertain the answer.

Before I get in to the books that I've been reading, I wanted to share with the world that as off June, I will be the appointed local pastor to Crosswicks UMC and Ellisdale UMC. Now, since these are the churches that I've already been working at, this is not a move, but a promotion of sorts. For the past year, I've been working as the supply pastor for the two churches--I run the ministry, head the meetings, and everything else a regular pastor does, but I have not have sacramental rights and have had to have a retired elder, Pastor Franz, come in once a month to do communion for us. Now, though, I will be able to preside over communion and baptisms at my churches and do not have to have Pastor Franz drop in every month. Even though I have loved the opportunity to work with Rev. Franz, I am very excited about this transition. Being appointed also means that I am no longer a "hired" worker at the churches. This adds to my job security a little, which is always nice.

So. Books. I, too, read The Search to Belong and I, too, loved it. It is a great book to read for anyone serving in any capacity of church leadership, because it really makes one think about the ways in which the church invites. urges, and sometimes tries to force belonging. The writer gives a wonderful breakdown of the different types of relationships that people engage in (as Jess spoke of above) and relates these to different ministry offerings and opportunities. For him, a healthy church is one that offers a number of different ministries in each space, just as a healthy person is one that engages in a number of different relationships in each space.

The only thing that Jess and I had as a critique was that we think there should be a fifth category, larger than public: Facebook Friends. This book, written in 2003, was based on a world that was just being introduced to social media. Now, I might have a couple people in an intimate relational space, a handful in personal, a good group in social, and a large group in public and still have hundreds of Facebook friends who don't fit in any category. And yet some would say they belong to certain people because of their link with social media. We need to realize the need for ministry at this level too, even if it looks strange to many people.

I just finished reading The Monkey and The Fish, a book about Third-Culture Churches and what it means to have liquid leadership in churches today. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, because it challenged church leaders to discern the ministry needs in their community and to engage them with the majority of their time and energy. The most influential line of the book was when the author, Dave Gibbons, asks why we as a church focus so much of our energy on Sunday mornings and turn our backs on the rest of the week. Even my home church, University, that is so good about doing different types of ministries throughout the week, devotes more effort to that Sunday service time than anything else. Quite a lot more. I do not think this is bad, but I do think that each individual church (and the leaders therein) must discern whether or not the priorities of the church are what they should be, or what they've always been. As Gibbons says, the church must be ready and able to mold itself to the needs of the culture around it. Just as the world needed the Word to become flesh in order that humanity might be saved, the world needs the church to be different things at different times in order that humanity might come face to face with God.

Now, I'm re-reading Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning, one of my favorite books of all time. I'll talk more about this when I'm further in, because it's so quotable, I want to make sure that I do it justice and pull the right parts of it out. I'm sure that if you follow my twitter account, you'll easily see about a hundred quotations from this books posted in the next week or so.

Finally, I am currently in search of a new devotional book. I have been using My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. This is a great book, and some of what he says really hits home, but I find myself pushing back against a lot of what he says in this and a lot of his theology, so I would like to find something else to use for my daily reading. I'm not against reading things I don't agree with, but especially since I've been doing my devotional in the morning as a way to greet the day and greet my God, I'd rather something I can dive into without wanting to engage in a lively theological conversation. Any suggestions you have would be swell.

Well, that's all for now! Come back next week for an in-depth investigation into the doctrine of the hyperstatic union of the Godhead (or whatever Jess decides it is we're writing about). Until then, you stay classy, World Wide Web!

-Jess and Wes