“State of Fear” a double-edged treatise (rated 4 stars)

State of Fear

by Michael Crichton

I’ve always enjoyed Crichton’s work. I mean, the guy who brought us “Jurassic Park” is simply a great storyteller. However, in this work, he pulls back the covers to reveal just how deeply many environmentalist groups have bedded down with political causes.

Not only does he create a page-turning story, but he sheds light with endless documentation on the question of global warming. Turns out, it’s become more politico-science than pure science, and there’s not compelling evidence available to suggest that global warming is caused by the human-industrial factor like the media and lobbyists would leave us to believe.

I appreciated being able to learn while being entertained. Few writers today can pull that one off.

See more about State of Fear

In addition, there’s a controversy stewing around the National Association of Evangelicals and one of its leaders stating the global warming is an issue that evangelicals should count as important to address.

A review of “A Generous Orthodoxy”

A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, … anabaptist/anglican, metho (Emergentys)

by Brian D. McLaren

I enjoyed reading McLaren’s emergent thesis book, but it left me with far more questions than the book could answer related to his actual positions on a few things.

Only one chapter in the book earned a standing O from me, while there were a few others that I would say gained a vigorous nod or two.

The thing that disturbed me in particular was his chapter about why he is “green,” or a Christian environmentalist. He seems to have bought into politico-science without doing any collaborative research related to global warming, species extinction, etc. While I agree wholeheartedly that Christians are called to be gentle and good stewards of Creation, I am not at all comfortable with some of his implications that the earth and ants are just as worthy of salvation as humanity is from God’s perspective. I believe that humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creative effort and the target of His salvation effort.

While others have demolished his chapter on being “incarnational,” I think it deserves a second or third read. I think that there’s an unfortunate knee-jerk theological reflex that occurs at first reading for those who are anxious to hear him proclaim Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life” (he does). At first read, I think one’s hackles arise too quickly to some of his truly challenging reflections on how we are called to be a servant to our Buddhist or Muslim neighbor.

Most conservative Christians seem to be too ready to assign the infidels to a far corner of Hell instead of seeking, like Paul, to “become all things to all men so that in all ways possible, I might win some.”

All in all, it’s a book worthy of chewing up. You decide if you want to spit it out.

See more about A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, … anabaptist/anglican, metho (Emergentys)

Wanted: books to borrow

This is the first time (and perhaps the last, depending on response) that I’m going to attempt this approach. However, in an effort to save money, I’m asking that if you own any of the following books, to consider allowing me to “check them out” from you. Mail them to me book rate, and I’ll read and mail them back. I’ll reimburse you, through Paypal, for your media rate shipping.

In addition, if any of you would like to borrow books, go here to look at my library.

Here’s what I’m currently interested in reading:

A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion

Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity

Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context

If you’re in a particularly generous mood, here’s my Amazon wishlist.

Church organization can inspire… (rated 4 stars)

Elders and Leaders

by Gene A. Getz

Many of you will find this hard to believe, but a book about how to effectively organize your church’s leadership structure can breathe fresh life into your church if implemented.

Few folks stop to consider that the way your church is currently structured may actually be hindering its growth and ministry. It may also be suffocating your leaders, without them even being aware of it.

Getz’s book is, indeed, a primer on New Testament church leadership and structure. I’d encourage it for all new church leadership teams as well as traditional churches who desire to experience a more biblical model of church leadership.

Many times, our churches are structured the way they because it’s “always been that way,” or because they’re simply unaware that the New Testament may, in fact, provide more guidelines for leadership and organization than they’ve considered before.

Our leadership team at Journey is currently reading through this book, and I expect it will continue to reap fruit for us as we seek to lead as servants and shepherds.

See more about Elders and Leaders

Disney corp faced severe excess of ego problems (rated 4 stars)

Disney War

by James B. Stewart

It was a fascinating and disconcerting read at the same time. Having just come back from a week in DisneyWorld earlier this month, this book revealed the “dark side” (as Eisner claims everyone has) behind the magic.

It all boils down to this: Michael Eisner’s 20+ year stranglehold on the Disney Corporation was highlighted by almost a manic obsession with anyone receiving recognition beyond himself. He routinely lied, twisted, and covered truth. As author James Stewart concludes at the end of the book, it doesn’t appear that Eisner even became aware that there was a “truth” – that whatever he said was “truth.”

A legion of amazingly talented folks exited from Disney during his reign of insane, uncontrolled outbursts and character assassinations. Some formed Pixar; others formed DreamWorks, and still others head literally dozens of media and household corporations that you know and love today.

What would Disney be today without Eisner? Who knows? But I imagine it will be years before a culture of openness and creativity without fear are restored. You can’t abuse people for 20+ years and then expect for the dysfunction to disappear overnight.

Name one Disney movie or park or thing that you like, and chances are, Eisner was NOT behind it. In fact, chances are, the folks who were behind were forced out later because of their success.

An interesting omission in Stewart’s book… there is only one mention of “evangelicals” in the book as a passing sentence describes Eisner as “secular” and relates how deeply he hated Pat Robertson. However, there was absolutely NO mention of the Southern Baptist Convention’s boycott of Disney, nor of the numerous evangelical ministries’ call for reform within it.

It’s clear from reading the book that the downward spiral for Eisner began nearly simultaneously with the evangelical community’s call for a return to family-friendly fare. While I knew that a few years following the boycott, Disney’s stock hit an all-time low, I was not aware until I referenced the dates that perhaps there may have actually been some divine intervention, even judgment taking place within Disney, far from the eyes of those praying for it.

See more about Disney War

Med student reflects on death and the medical profession

Tim does a great review over at his blog today on a new book that’s out. Profound reflections. Might be worth picking up for some of us.

She found that her vocation, which is premised on caring for those who are ill, also systematically depersonalizes dying. Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality, another book I found on the New York Times list of bestsellers, represents her attempt to come to terms with this brutal truth of the medical profession.

In a profession made attractive by the power to cure, it is rare to find the young medical student who dreams of caring for terminal patients. But in a society where more than 90 percent of us will die for a prolonged illness, physicians have become the final guardians of life, charged with shepherding the terminally ill and their families through the intricacies of the end. Most patients and their families fully expect physicians to be able to comfort and provide that support. For doctors, this care at the end of life is, as this book’s title implies, our final exam.

Chen’s next words are revealing. “Unfortunately, few doctors are up to the task.” The problem is that most doctors quickly learn to suspend or suppress any shared human feeling for dying patients, as if this is the key to being a successful physician. Chen found that these lessons in denial and depersonalization began as early as her first encounter with death in the gross anatomy dissection lab where she spent weeks dissecting a cadaver, and that they continued through her residency and practice.

Challies Dot Com: Book Review – Final Exam

Blogged with Flock

On reading Christian books…

Jim has been posting quotes from Organic Church, and Mark raised an interesting point in a comment he made there:

In our contemporary culture of fast-paced, attention-deficit, multi-tasking life, unfortunately a lot of people feel the need to cut corners. One of the ways I see people shortchanging themselves on a daily basis is in turning to a cheap summary of information instead of bothering to delve into the murky details of true experience…so often we settle for life’s Cliff Notes instead of taking in and enjoying the artistry of the epic adventure that life offers.

This quote supports a criticism I’ve often made about the so-called “Christian Living” books that flood the market. Reading them is like opting for Cliff Notes instead of diving into the actual “classic” book: the scriptures themselves. We can’t expect to really know and understand any book unless we have the vital experience that comes with sitting down and actually engaging it. This reminds me of that milk/meat metaphor…where was that again? :)

This echoes the admonition given by the Puritan Richard Baxter:

Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church . . . but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings.

There is an excellent post over at challies.com titled, By Our Books Shall We Be Known that I encourage you to read.

So what are you reading?

In But Not Of

Taking his cue from Jesus’ revolutionary teachings about how His followers are to engaged with the world without being absorbed by it, Hugh Hewitt written a book that falls into my recommended “must-read” list for Christians today. In, But Not Of is full of deeply insightful and immensely practical advice, Hewitt writes this book as “a guide to Christian ambition and the desire to influence the world.”

The chapters are remarkably short and an easy, though profound read. Hewitt writes as an influencer par excellence. Having served with Nixon and now a regular commentator on news shows and the host of his own show (The Hugh Hewitt Show), he is also a professor law at Chapman University School of Law.

Just a few of the chapter headings will give you insight into just how helpful and direct his writing is:

Assemble the Right Credentials
Learn How You Got Here
Master at Least One Area of at Least Passing Interest to Powerful People
Know What You Don’t Know
Disclose the Weak Points in Your Argument and Deal with Them
Fill the Gratitude Gap

If you have any influence over high school students or collegians, buy them a copy of this book! Today! It will be a valuable source of encouragement and insight, especially for the Christian young adult who is serious about being used by God to be salt and light in our world.

A must read… 1

I have a shelf for "must-read" books in my house. If I ever get an office again where people can find me (I work out of the home predominantly, and there’s not room for my stuff at Journey), it will be moved there. These are books that over the years have deeply impacted my thinking, character, philosophies, and ministry.

Let’s add one today. The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges.

One of our small groups at church is currently going through it, and as I mentioned before, I just finished reading it with Ryan.

It’s a short read, but a powerful one. In fact, I would even say that in this day of reading, it’s a book that every believer needs to not just read, but digest.

It’s not about church trends, fads, emergent this or that. It’s about holiness. Holiness is a concept far removed from most of our experiences, yet the Lord says, "Be holy as I am holy."

It is holiness that marks us from our corrupted world and society. Church attendance or membership does not ensure your holiness. Neither does naive hype or hand-raisin’. Bridges says that we fundamentally misunderstand holiness.

"Our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered," he says. (p16) In other words, we are more concerned about conquering sin for our own benefits and self-worth than we are because our sin offends God. Because we see our struggle with sin as a success-failure game, we strive for "success" or "victory" over sin, which results in our attitude toward sin being mainly about us rather than about God. There are few tears of confession and repentance in our churches and lives these days over our sin because we see our sin mainly as personal failure rather than divine rebellion.

In addition, Bridges comments that "we have misunderstood ‘living by faith’ to mean that no effort is required on our part." I agree wholeheartedly. After teaching for many years, first to youth then to collegians, and now to folks of all ages, I see that as 21st century believers, we appreciate good exposition and application of God’s Word, but we fail to go home and match what we’ve heard with personal, disciplined effort. There’s a disconnect between our ears and our hands. It requires much sweat, effort, decision-making, resolving, and scheduling to change our habits, attitudes, and lifestyles to be in accord with the teaching of Scripture. We will not be holy without change. Change requires effort.

He also adds that "we do not take sin seriously enough." If every sin we committed incurred immediate, divine wrath, then perhaps we would begin to conceive how hateful God is toward sin. However, it is His grace and wisdom that stays His hand. His grace cost the life of His Son that we might not incur his immediate wrath, while His wisdom allows us to experience the consequences of our sins so that we will realize with distaste how unhealthy our selfishness is.

We pick and choose what sin we will consider unacceptable. Sexual immorality in the church is greatly frowned upon; however, pride is not. Yet it is pride that is preeminently hated by God. We whisper about embezzlers but laugh with gluttons. We fail to take sin seriously. We cannot choose what parts of God’s Word to obey and what parts to fudge on. "We cannot categorize sin if we are to live a life of holiness," says Bridges.

I’ll be reading this little book regularly for the rest of my life. It has immense value because we live in continual spiritual compromise.

Order your copy today, or be the first to comment and commit to read the book, and I’ll order you a copy as a gift.

Scandalous church

Just finished reading The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience by Ron Sider. It’s definitely not a warm fuzzy. In fact, the first chapter pretty much wanted to make me go bang my toe with a hammer.

In it, Sider decries the fact that in poll after poll, researchers are discovering that the behavior of those claiming to be Christian in America is no different from those outside the church. In the areas of divorce, materialism and the poor, sexual misconduct, racism, and physical abuse in marriage (need we go further?), he cites results that show no significant statistical differences between nominal Christians and larger society. Ouch. In fact, in the Bible Belt some of the statistics were actually higher among “Christians.”

Sider then proceeds to offer a brief account of the church’s fall from grace in the past 200 years and gives some beginning thoughts on how to counter the disconcerting compromise of the church with the world.

Some of his conclusions are:

• Recover a biblical worldview
• Practice loving, consistent church discipline
• Embrace salvation of the soul and the body
• Reject privatized, individualistic faith that excludes accountability to the church and society
• Engage in deeply loving, authentic relationships with other Christians rather than superficial ones
• Work hard to establish new social structures that will meet practical needs in societies and communities

It’s a short, quick read that will result in a long, hard think.

Book Meme 1

Mark didn’t tag me, (thanks, Mark!), but I’ve been wanting to post a book meme for some time, and his latest motivated me.

1. First book to leave a lasting impression?
While I can’t remember which came first, it would have to be either Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia or Tolkien’s Rings Trilogy. I read them all as a young teen and fell in love with books. Of course, mom being a librarian certainly didn’t hurt.

2. Which author would you most like to be?
John Grisham.

3. Name the book that has most made you want to visit a place?

Deadline. A great, engaging Christian fiction book. Alcorn’s account of heaven in this book made me want to go there. It describes heaven in a way that is alluring, captivating, exciting, adventurous, and awe-inspiring.

4. Which contemporary author will still be read in 100 years?
I’d have to say John Piper for theology and George R. R. Martin for his Tolkien-esque fantasy epics.

5. Which book would you recommend to a teenager reluctant to try ‘literature’?

To Kill a Mockingbird.

6. Name your best recent literary discovery.

It’s not deep, by any means, but I’ve enjoyed Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt books. Add to that G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.

7. Which author’s fictional world would you most like to live in?

I would agree with Mark here – The Stand. It’s an intense, page-turning read. I’ve read it 2-3 times. Love it. If not that, count me in as Knight Noble in the days of King Arthur.

8. Name your favorite poet?

Uh… poet? I don’t know it.

9. What’s the best non-fiction title you’ve read this year?
OK, I’ve already mentioned Chesterton, so I’d add Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian.

10. Which author do you think is much better than his/her reputation?

Anybody that can make me laugh while I’m pondering theological or spiritual concepts has got my vote here. John Ortberg.

Not Even a Hint

My buddy and fellow Journeyman, Taylor James, loaned me a book recently. It’s Josh Harris’ latest installment, Not Even a Hint. (The name of it has recently been changed to Sex is Not the Problem; Lust Is.)You remember Josh – he was the guy that kissed dating goodbye and then got married. My wife has also encouraged me to kiss dating goodbye. That was one principle that was pretty easy for me to practice after marriage.

I say all that tongue in cheek, because Hint is really a good book. If you’ve read similar books before, you’ll find that much is a repeat of some time-honored principles for combating lust in your life. The refreshing thing about Hint is that it doesn’t create lust by describing in lurid detail instances where the author has erred before. (I found this to be the case of Every Young Man’s Battle, and eventually put it down in disgust. You can see my review there on amazon.com.) Don’t put the book down until you get to the best chapters of the book, beginning with “Half a Poison Pill Won’t Kill You.”

Harris urges the reader to quit trying to fight lust with the “diet approach.” You simply can’t fight lust with prohibitions alone. He says one of the keys to defeating lust is first of all to realize that it is a perversion of a legitimate drive in your nature. God created pleasure for us to enjoy, but lust seeks to use that pleasure for one’s own self benefit and glory. In lust, we seek to have what is not given to us, when we want it, on our own terms.

Quoting John Piper…

We must fight it {lust} with the massive promise of superior happiness. We must swallow up the little flicker of lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction.”

Ultimately, this means that we will enjoy sexual pleasure all the more when our primary pleasure is rooted and found in the God who gave it to us…

Continue reading »

Sixteen Blocks

I watched Sixteen Blocks tonight, with Bruce Willis. (He was in the movie, not in my living room.) I’ve got to say for those that like cop flicks, this is a great movie. The ending is absolutely fantastic. If you rent it, you can also watch the alternate ending. Both are good, but I prefer the one that was released to theaters.

People can change. That’s the ultimate message.

Perhaps you’re one of those folks who are just past the point of wanting to change or even feeling like you can. There’s great news. People can change. Or rather, people can be changed. You see, I’m one of those folks who have been changed. I know.

The only earthly way for a life to be transformed is with a heavenly intervention. If you’re needing a change, and you feel like you’re past hope, you’re not. Watch the movie, and learn from Eddie and Jack.

I’m older than God… Part 1

If you’ve ever begun to read a book that dozens of folks have recommended to you and delightedly discovered that they were right, you will connect with my current experience of reading G.K. Chesteron’s Orthodoxy. I hope to bring you more observations from this gourmet feast for the cerebrum, but let me spoon feed you one thought at this point.

Chesteron elaborately makes a stunning point about how boring scientific explanations for everything is. Call it magic, mystery or the divine, the point is still the same. Because we witness things happening over and over and over again, we assume that there are laws behind that event’s continuous recurrence. Throw an apple off a bridge and it falls down… every time. Ah! The law of gravity. Witness a boiling pot of water long enough and voila, the law of thermodynamics.

Although a determined and dynamic Christ-follower, Chesterton arrived there through intuition and later logic. It was this intuition that suggested to Chesterton that perhaps natural laws were not so natural. He believed that just because something consistently happened in one way does not necessarily legitmize the existence of a law. Rather, he felt that perhaps there was a will behind events of constant recurrence… a will of magnificent innocence,creativity, and power.

Let Chesterton’s words speak for themselves:

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; adn the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that
God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity {natural law} that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

Chesterton advocates a return to being baffled by life rather than trying to explain it away. He advocates appreciation of fantasy and curiosity. I no longer much play "Pretend Like" as an adult. As a child, I was Superman, Batman, a fireman and a policeman – all in the span of a single day. I climbed mountains between meals and swam oceans before bedtime. It reminds me so much of the bell gift in The Polar Express. (if you haven’t seen it or read it, go now!) It’s silent for those who cease to believe. I want it to keep ringing.

Update: Read Part 2 of the series…

A New Kind of Christian…

To fully grasp the import of this "Parchment Review," you’re going to have to realize that I’m doing a little word-eating here. With relish. Back in September, I wrote about the emerging church wondering if it is a "self-described movement or a protest." I still stand (one legged) on what I said in that post. However, in the meantime, I’ve completed McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian. I must say that I agree wholeheartedly with Andy White’s review of it at servantblog.com when he said,

"I am not exaggerating when I say that it blew my mind.  I thought my thinking was fairly well out of the box until I read this. It?s a very easy read, and there is not a single redundant page in the whole book.  It is insightful, challenging, frightening, liberating and should probably carry an Advisory Warning that would probably read ‘This book will shake the foundations of your world.’" 

Continue reading »

A blook anyone?

I am a starving writer. OK, I’m a writer. I just got back from Baskin Robbins demolishing a double dip mint chocolate chip waffle cone.

Anyway, others are doing it, so I figure, why not? It’s called a “blook.” It’s a blog/book. It’s an opportunity for writers to unveil projects they’ve done or are working on and get input from their massive bloggin audience. In my case, I just want feedback from the two of you.

I’ve got several manuscripts/books/projects that I’ve done over the last few years and am just looking for that opportunity to submit them to a publisher. In the meantime, I want to know if any of you are interested in reading a blook, a chapter at a time, here, at Notes from the Trail?

The one I’d want to share with you first is a little different. It’s targeted at preteens/young adults. It’s basically a story about growing up/adolescence with some adventure/mystery/shenanigans thrown in. It’s called “Small Pebble.” Comment here if you would like to see the first chapter.

Born Fighting…

More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England’s Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled skills as frontiersmen and guerrilla fighters. Their cultural identity reflected acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy and a military tradition, and, over time, the Scots-Irish defined the attitudes and values of the military, of working class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself. From the Random House summary

It’s just a must-read for those wanting to understand Southern culture better. Why does my state and my neighbors’ states consistently rank below the national average in, well, everything? Well, everything except things like teenage pregnancies, alcoholism, etc.

James Webb’s amazing book, Born Fighting, is a wonderful cultural analysis first of all of the Scots-Irish people whose immigration patterns have made the south what it is today, but moreover the book is revelatory for even a southern native like myself.

My aunt has apparently traced my family lineage all the way back to Magna Charta times, placing an ancestor at its signing. But I’ve never read and digested a book that explains compelling why things are the way they are in the south today.

If you don’t want to get bogged down in the history of the Scots-Irish peoples, just pick up in Part 6 – Reconstruction, Disaspora, and Reeducation.

It’s a great read.

I think I’m going to go buy a kilt.

Kingdom Authority-Adrian Rogers

This is a synopsis of The Incredible Power of Kingdom Authority, Adrian Rogers, Broadman & Holman, 2004; Summarized by: Jeff Noble, June 2004

•  Why are we fighting a battle already lost when we could enjoy a victory already won?
•  The Trinity of Evil: the world, the flesh, and the devil
•  The flesh is like software programming the hardware of our brain and body. And it has a virus called sin.
•  If Satan didn’t exist, you would go on sinning without his help. He comes to obsess, depress, and defeat you. He is called the deceiver, a liar, a murderer, the accuser of the brothers, the tempter, the prince of the power of the air, the destroyer, and the evil one.
•  Two Greek words for “power” – dunamis (ability and strength) and exousia (the right to use power). When Jesus gave them the power to tread on snakes (Luke 17.10-19), it was dunamis. The “power over the enemy” is exousia.
•  Charles Spurgeon: “If we let passion take the place of judgment, and self-will reign instead of scriptural authority, we shall fight the Lord’s battles with the devil’s weapons, and if we cut our own fingers we must not be surprised.”
•  Have you ever thought that you may be asking God for what you already have
•  The cleverest lies of Satan sound almost like the truth. Remember, a broken clock is still right twice during the day! Jesus used God’s Word to defeat Satan’s temptations. Know the truth!
•  Difference between commitment and surrender. We love to ask people to make a commitment. They will respond. But surrender Americans love commitment because they are still in control. They made the commitment. But the key word in Christ is surrender.
•  You cannot be over those things that God wants you to be over until you learn to be under those things that God has set over you. The principle of authority in our lives. Americans hate authority. When you are willing to be to Jesus what Jesus was in His humanity to the Father, then Jesus will be to your humanity what the Father was to Him. (67)
•  Learning to be a slave to God actually sets you free. “The slave to the compass has freedom of the seas. The rest must sail close to the shore.”
•  We will not have what He gives until we accept who He is. Charles Spurgeon: “If the convert declares that he knows the Lord’s will but doesn’t’ mean to attend to it, it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. Don’t imagine that the Gospel is magnified, or God glorified, by going to worldlings and telling them that they may be saved at this moment simply by accepting Christ as their Savior, while they are wedded to their idols with their hearts, and their hearts are still in love with sin. If I do so, I tell them a lie, I pervert the Gospel, I insult Christ, I turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.”
•  My great need is not more authority for myself but more intimacy with Jesus so I can coordinate my will to His.
•  The popular idea of the church being a democracy (the rule of the people) is not found in the Bible. The spirit of rugged individualism and autonomous selfhood is not to be the motivating power of a New Testament church.
• Everyone’s opinion is not equally correct.
• The opinion of the majority is not necessarily right.
• All in the church are not basically the same. (We all have equal value before God, but we have different gifts and functions)
•  The priesthood of the believer does not refer to authority, but to the fact that each believer has direct access to God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
•  The pastor’s task is to help the members discover, develop, and deploy their spiritual gifts, and to let them serve at Jesus’ command.
•  About the pastor’s leadership, Oswald Sanders said: “It should be authoritative, because people love to be led by one who knows where he is going and who inspires confidence. Spiritual, because a leadership that is unspiritual, that can be fully explained in terms of the natural, although eligible, attractive, and competent, will only result in sterility and moral and spiritual bankruptcy. Sacrificial, because modeled on the life of the One who gave Himself as a sacrifice for the whole world, who left us an example that we should follow in His footsteps.”
•  The pastor who is always available is not worth very much when he is available. (Even Jesus modeled a life of drawing away to spend time with the Father.)
•  Sin in the heart is like an enemy behind the lines.
•  Satan cannot keep God from answering, so he tries to keep us from asking.
•  Joseph T’son, pastor in Romania, told the communists, “I know what you can do. Your chief weapon is killing, but let me tell you what my chief weapon is. My chief weapon is dying. And I want to warn you that if you use yours, I will be forced to use mine.”
•  Authority is not a means to get earth’s will done in heaven. It is a means to pursue heaven’s will performed on earth.

Key Thoughts from “A Long Obedience” by Eugene Peterson

First of all, anyone named Eugene that can write a book like this AND translate the entire Bible into what we now have as “The Message” Bible is worth reading!

I’ve basically gone through the book and typed up everything that I underlined. I hope some of these “thought bombs” help you process the book’s message and encourage you to read it!

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
Eugene Peterson (Intervarsity Press, 1980, 2000)
Notes compiled by Jeff Noble – June 8, 2004

•  World is an atmosphere, a mood. It is nearly as hard for a sinner to recognize the world’s temptations as it is for a fish to discover impurities in the water. There is a sense, a feeling, that things aren’t right, that the environment is not whole, but just what it is eludes analysis. – 15
•  It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. -16
•  There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations for Christians called holiness.
•  Religion in our day has been captured by the tourist mindset. So many have a “bent” for religious entertainment.
•  Two biblical designations for people of faith: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple (mathetes) says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. We don’t learn in a school, but at the work site of the craftsman. We seek not to acquire information about God but skills in faith.
• Pilgrim (parepidemos) tells us that we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ. – 17

Continue reading »