Filed under: Book Reviews
My brother works at a Half Priced Bookstore in the Chicago area and for Christmas this year I reaped the benefits of his job. One of the benefits I received was my 4th book of the year called The Yes Man by Danny Wallace.
So here’s the whole concept of the book. When Danny’s commute home gets messed up he finds himself on a bus sitting next to an elderly guy who asks him how his life is going. Danny says that things have been kind of boring because he finds himself doing nothing, always staying in, not hanging out with friends much. So the old guy on the bus says “say yes more.”
So that’s what Danny does. He decides to say YES to everything for one day. On that day he winds up winning $25,000 (and loosing it), volunteering to help a peace activism group, going out with friends, responding to a spam e-mail, and almost getting in a fight with a guy at a party for answering yes when the guy asks him “are you looking at my girlfriend?”.
After a pretty positive first experience he commits to a week of YESES and then a month and eventually into an entire year. A ton of CRAZY stuff happens to the guy along the way (lots of trips, promotions, a new job working on TV, a girlfriend, hanging out with a crew of people who believe in UFO’s and what not, putting his phone number all over London, trying to help the son of a murdered sultan he received an e-mail from, and falling in love). In most of the book Danny seems to be experiencing a much better life because of YES, but every now and then in looses it’s appeal. He wonders if it’s the dumbest thing he could ever be doing and contemplates if he should finish it out. It’s interesting to see a person wrestle with doubt on a pretty light hearted scale.
The best thing about this book is that it made me think about how often I say no and all the things that I could be missing by saying no. When Ian, a friend of Danny’s, is trying to understand why he would do something like this Danny asks him what the best thing that ever happened to him was. Ian said that meeting and falling in love with his girlfriend was the best thing that happened to him. Danny asks how they met and then proves that Ian’s relationship with his girlfriend was a result of a series of yeses… but if he would have said no at any point along the journey he would never have found her. It makes me wonder what I could be missing by saying no and it made me want to say yes more.
The Yes Man is not a classic by any means, but it was a fun easy read that just might inspire you to say yes more.
Every week Meri and I watch American Idol (every single minute of it… it doesn’t matter if it’s 1, 2, or 3 nights of the week). I know… I know… it makes me one of the coolest 40 million people in America.
At any rate here are a few thoughts I had while…
I would like to create another reality show called “American Bridal” where America can pick it’s very own wife out of thousands of contestants. In the season finale the winner could actually marry the country (it could say so on the marriage licence). All of the other 6 finalists could be the bridesmaids (remember Fox put on “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire” “The Littlest Groom” & “Temptation Island” so this wouldn’t be much of a strech). I don’t know… it seemed brilliant in the moment… but now… it seems even more brilliant.
Second thought. How do we get Paula Abdul to leave America alone. I’ve decided that whatever presidential candidate can promise me this I will spend EVERY DAY until the election campaigning for this person (even if it’s Hillary Clinton). Please, somebody fix this country’s biggest problem. Free America from the grips of Abdul (and this perverted cat)
Filed under: Politics
I don’t know what it feels like to be the target of racism. I’ve been around conversations where someone was expressing some sort of racist thought and just being around them makes me uncomfortable. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a minority and here someone express such horrible thoughts or to be the recipient of these hateful words.
This country has a sad history of racism, espeically in regards to slavery. I’ve been a part of conversations where someone would say, “it’s not my fault that there was slavery, I wasn’t even alive then. What am I supposed to do about it.”
While it’s true that there is nothing one can do to change the past but to act like that’s a reason not to do anything is ridiculous.
The state of Virginia did something incredible today (from cnn.com)
Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery.
While this resolution does not carry the weight of law it is an important step to recognize the evils of our past and to say “that was wrong.” The resolution also expressed regret over the “exploitation of Native Americans”.
My question is why has it taken so long for something like this to take place. It’s obvious that you can’t go back and change the past, but why hasn’t our government taken steps like this already. To ignore the past and act like if we give it no attention all the problems caused by these actions would go away is foolish.
I think this is a picture of true humility. Here’s hoping that this is just the beginning.
Filed under: Music
Here’s what’s been added to my iPod recently…
Records
Beach House:: Beach House
Beyonce:: Irreplaceable
Bloc Party:: A Weekend in the City
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah:: Some Loud Thunder
Corrine Bailey Rae:: Corinne Bailey Rae
Explosions in the Sky:: How Strange, Innocence & The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place
John Mayer:: Continuum
Norah Jones:: Not Too Late
Of Montreal:: Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer
Sam Cooke:: Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964
The Shins:: Wincing the Night Away
The Six Parts Seven:: Casually Smashed to Pieces
Youth Group:: Casino Twilight Dogs
Fridays are my favorite for multiple reasons. The first of course is because it’s my day off and since it’s my day off it gives me a chance to go for long runs. It’s be so stinking cold around here so I’ve been doing treadmill runs and today was 7 miles on a treadmill. That equals NO FUN. So I shuffled through my iPod quite a bit looking for anything to take my mind off of how long I was running in place.
The best thing I listened to was the first installment of The Fermi Podcast. The Fermi Project is a pretty new idea that, according to their website…
is a broad collective of innovators, social entrepreneurs, entertainers, artists, church shapers, futurists, scientists, historians, environmentalists and church leaders experimenting with ways to recapture the church’s role in shaping culture.
I’m going to a conference that they’re putting on called Q that is designed for church leaders who are passionate about understanding culture, its future, and how the church can better reach people with the gospel in the years to come. They’ve got a killer line-up of speakers that include Rob Bell, Rick McKinley, Donald Miller, Andy Stanley and Rick Warren. The list goes way further to include key people who are shaping culture like Susan Grant who is a VP from CNN, Mark Rodgers who is a political strategist, Kevin Kelley who is an editor from Wired magazine and Catherine Rohr who heads up the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.
The brilliance of Q is that it’s not just a bunch of presentations by big wigs. Here’s what they say on the conference website.
The setting of Q will create a constant flow of imagination, dialogue, and experience. Each speaker will be forced to share their big ideas in 20 minutes, so you can stay engaged in their thoughts, hear only their most thought-out concepts, and learn from myriad thought leaders in a shorter timeframe. When a story or thought is truly compelling, you will have the opportunity to seek out the presenter and dialogue in a smaller collaborative setting or Q&A.
If your church has a budget that will send you to a conference like this I’m telling you that you should be there. We’ll hang out.
OK, back to the podcast.
The first installment featured an interview with Chuck Colson. I was BLOWN AWAY. I had a pretty ill informed impression who Colson was. I remember a few years back Colson had some sweet exchanges with McLaren and I guess I kind of just assumed he was an old school guy who hated the emergent movement (he wouldn’t be the first).
Boy was I wrong.
Aside from all of his work in the Prision Fellowship Ministry Colson has been passionately informing Christians that there is much more to following Jesus than just getting saved. They spent a great deal of time talking through his book How Now Shall We Live and the implications that a Church in motion would have on this world. It was a great conversation centered on the Kingdom of God here and now.
I think there is a real temptation for me to read and listen to the young hip guys who are doing “new” things but listening to this interview showed me that these things aren’t new (which is good) and I should be looking for more guys like Colson who have a great deal of wisdom behind their explanation of what the Kingdom is all about.
I would encourage you to go and download the podcast, especially if you’re like me and have no idea who Colson really is.
Filed under: Following Jesus
I hang around a lot of Christ followers throughout the day and recently I realized something that was a bit disturbing.
There is a whole lot of condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
I wonder how healthy it is to always walk around and feel guilty. To always think of yourself is no good. To constantly focus on “sin”.
I am guessing that there is a reason that Paul said what he did in Romans 7 & 8. I don’t think it was just to help people feel better either. I think that living under constant condemnation results in something far less than abundant life.
What kind of people would we be if we lived like Romans 8 was true? What kind of impact would those people have on the world around them?
Bob Roberts is a pastor and an author. He’s got some great ideas on how the church get’s outside it’s walls. I just read an amazing interview with him over at Christian Vision Project. Here’s a list of things he’s learning and unlearning…
I’m learning … that mission begins with Christology not ecclesiology. Following Jesus leads us to mission, which leads to churches gathering.
I’m unlearning … my assumption that starting churches naturally leads to mission. It doesn’t. Churches default to self-focus unless a commitment to be like Jesus in the world comes first.
I’m learning … that being glocal means decentralizing power, decision making, information, all of it. The kingdom of God means ministry opportunities are available to almost everyone.
I’m unlearning … the American church’s traditional focus on a super-star speaker, worship leader, educator, and shepherd, which serves mainly to attract spectators rather than igniting the power of everyone else.
I’m learning … that we serve not to convert but because we have been converted. We serve because Christ has changed us and made us servants to people who are hurting and lost.
I’m unlearning … the assumption that “Christian” is defined primarily as acknowledging a moment of conversion. Becoming a follower of Jesus depends on what happens after that.
I’m learning … to love people, which means to see them healed, educated, and given the same opportunities that we have.
I’m unlearning … that the Christian faith is all about heaven. I believe the church has denied the future by just waiting for the Second Coming. We need a story that includes the future.
I’m learning … the kingdom will be established not by human power or entertainment, but by realizing God’s concern for humanity and the whole of society.
Read the rest of the article here.
I’ve finished my third book of the year already. You may have noticed that this is only the 2nd book review, and to that I would say… uh… yeah, so.
Actually I’ll probably only write reviews for the books that I feel have some sort of value to people who would read this blog. Doesn’t everyone read books that are guilty pleasure books? It’s like watching VH1 Celebreality shows. You love doing it, you’ll set your DVR to make sure you don’t miss them, but there’s no way you would want other people knowing you’re doing it. Yeah… those books I won’t be reviewing here.
Ok… now onto Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus.
I picked this up when I was in Fort Wayne last October. I have heard him speak at a few conferences and really enjoyed what he’s had to say. He’s always been very insightful in ways that are uncommon for the “mega-church” scene. Because of those conferences I make it a point to try and check out what he’s writing about. I have enjoyed his books written to church leaders but have not really enjoyed the things that he has written for “everyone” (ie. Uprising & The Barbarian Way), but I still wanted to give this one a chance.
McManus wrote this book in a very different way. The basic concept is that each of us has similar soul cravings that cry out to be fulfilled. So McManus broke the book into 3 different categories; Intimacy, Destiny & Meaning. He then wrote about 20 “journal entries” for each topic that basically build off each other.
I read through this book with my buddy Nate and we decided to read through the first 7 entries of the Intimacy section and I must admit that I was real disappointed with what was there. It was really light and fluffy, not really saying a whole lot. We decided that since we both paid good money for the book we were going to read it anyway, so we decided to try and finish the section for the next time we met. That’s when I realized that the sections build from “light” to “heavy”. Essentially McManus takes you on a conversational journey in each of the 3 areas that goes from a very basic understanding of the idea and walks with you to the depths of your soul’s cravings.
McManus is a master of pop culture references. I would guess that no less than 20 movies were referenced as well as 20 pop songs or bands. In the Destiny section he explores other religions and to be honest pretty much blows them up. Throughout the book he weves personal stories that illustrate what he’s trying to say, even though at times they seem to extend the journey.
This book succeeds where McManus’ other books have failed in this. I truly believe this book could be read by anyone and be provoked to examine their lives. Obviously the person would need to be open to this idea, but I think that someone who is just trying to figure out what’s going on in the world around them and someone who has been following Jesus for decades could read through this book and gain insight. Not only would they gain insight, but I think there would be movement on their spiritual journey as well. The book ends with a “Seek” section that pretty much talks about what it means to respond to these soul cravings we all experience. Here McManus basically walks us through his journey and then invites others along.
I was more than pleasently suprised by how much I like this book and how much I got out of it personally. If you’re looking for an “easy-ish” read that could push you along on your spiritual journey I would highly recomend reading this (especially with a friend).
So… I’m guess that means this book would get my Sikora Seal of Approval.
Filed under: Book Reviews
I have embarked on a journey for 2007 to read more. In the past I have set some goals as to the number of books that I hoped to read in the coming year and I would end up blowing it big time. This year the idea is to read more books, and the hope is that I’ll read all sorts of books.
The first book I finished this year was Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs:: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman. I remember picking this book up off the “new arrival” table at Borders about a year or two ago and thought it looked interesting, but I wasn’t about to pay the cost for the hard cover so I put it back and forgot about it. My brother gave me his copy over Christmas and told me that he really enjoyed parts of it and told me he thought I’d like it as well.
According to Wikipedia Klosterman is a pop culture critic, journalist, and essayist who has written for SPIN, ESPN’s Page 2, and Esquire. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is basically a collection of some his best works that takes close looks at some of the most important pop culture standards of my young life.
Klosterman covers topics from Lakers Fans v. Celtics Fans (which was very interesting what with Celtic fans chanting Kobe’s name the other night), how the Sims video game became such a cultural phenomenon, and how Billy Joel is cool (even though there’s nothing there to make us really think he’s cool). 2 of my favorite 3 essays focus on TV shows that were a huge part of my high school years.
Klosterman talks about how The Real World has ruined everyone that we’ll ever meet under the age of 35. Klosterman recounts how much he loved watching the first season, but as the seasons went on they all started to seem the same. The same characters showed up in each season just played by different people. As time went by though he started noticing that everyone he met started to fill these roles even though there were no cameras around. It’s interesting to think of the cultural impact that a show like this can have on young impressionable teenagers and how it impacts the way they live.
There’s also another great essay about Saved by the Bell. Klosterman states that the reason people were so in love with Saved by the Bell was because it was so predictable and unreal. You always knew that there was some kind of lesson that we were all supposed to learn and that no one, will EVER get in any sort of trouble no matter how bad the hair brained scheme they just pulled off was. It’s interesting because the same reason we loved the Real World is the reason we loved Saved by the Bell. It was the predictability of the two. Even though we didn’t know what was going to happen on The Real World… we knew in much the same way we knew.
The best essay in the book was about the Left Behind book series. Klosterman is not a Christian nor does he have any real religious background. He mentions that he grew up Catholic, but makes very little reference to this and I think that’s what makes this essay the best in the book from my perspective. There’s a very interesting Christian culture that most pastors and Christians intereact with on a regular basis that the rest of the world would not understand and it’s rare that we would ever get to hear what a person outside the Christians circle would say about that culture. He makes a lot of great observations throughout the essay (many are complimentary to people of faith) but the best is regarding the conversion of one of the main characters from the book…
Rayford can’t do this until his life is destroyed, so his conversion isn’t all that remarkable (it actually seems like the most reasonable decision, considering the circumstances). In many ways, this is the book’s most glaring flaw: It demands blind faith from the reader, but it illustrates faith as a response to terror. And since Left Behind isn’t a metaphor – it presents itself as a fictionalized account of what will happen, according to the Book of Revelation – the justification for embracing Jesus mostly seems like a scare tactic.
Klosterman is witty, insightful, and cynical all throughout the pages of this book. I can often get trapped in only reading ministry books or personal spiritual growth books so for me this was a refreshing change that I really enjoyed.
Book Reviews Coming Soon::
Organic Church by Neil Cole
Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus
Just Walk Across the Room by Bill Hybels
I’ve spent the last 8 to 10 hours preparing the sermon that I’ll be giving at 707 this Sunday night and the primary text that I’m working out of is Acts 17.16-34. These 18 verses talk about Paul’s time in Athens while he waited for the rest of his crew to catch up with him. This may be my favorite thing that happens in the life of Paul because there are so many interesting things happening while he’s in Athens.
I get the impression that Paul wasn’t really planning on being in Athens at all, but since he was there he thought he’d take a look around at all that the city was known for. It says that his spirit was “provoked” because he saw that the city was full of idols and so he ends up talking with whoever wants to talk about what they believe and what he believes. Somehow he ends up in front of the Areopagus and shares some amazingly brilliant stuff about how God has given us life and breath and everything else. He ends up quoting their own poets and an old creatan philosopher and then tells them about the death and resurection of Jesus.
This entire encounter blows my mind because it’s so outside the box. This guy Paul is randomly in Athens, sees the sights, learns the culture (or already knew it), and in some supernatural way opens a door from what they believe to the Truth. I especially love the idea that it’s in God that we live and move and have our being. Paul’s talking to a group of people who don’t know Jesus and don’t even believe in the God that Paul is preaching and yet he says that we are connected to this God just by living. Just by moving. Just by being.
Man. I love the Bible.
So I find myself sitting here in our spare bedroom that also acts as an office at times and I think about how much I wish I could go and watch this whole exchange go down. I found myself wishing that time travel was possible so that I could go and see Athens in it’s prime, watch Paul befriend a bunch of Athenians and then blow their mind with this Truth.
Oh well.
I guess until I get myself one of those flying deloreans I’ll have to settle for pictures from my buddy Josh’s trip to eurpoe this last summer.
picture courtsey of “to write with light”
