Youth Ministry and Me

Another day, and another book review! I read this book a while ago. In Reformed Evangelical circles old Eugene gets a lot of flack, or at least I’ve heard him get some and I think I’m in those kinda circles. Anyway, mostly the flack relates to his paraphrase of the Bible (The Message). The gripe is something to do with it not being literal enough. As far as I’m concerned though those who have a problem with this have an actual problem with how people use it, not with Eugene and The Message itself. He’s a smart guy and he’s trying to make the Bible more accessible. Why don’t we slam Kel Richards for writing the Aussie Bible? Maybe it’s because he has Sydney Anglican links? Or maybe it’s actually because no one in Australia understands the Aussie Bible and therefore it isn’t misused much by the larger Christian population?

Anyway, I digress from the actual topic which is The Contemplative Pastor. I enjoyed this book, and I found it challenging to my ways of thinking about ministering and pastoring. He slams Pastors for promoting themselves as being busy and unavailable to their flock and to God. He gives some great advice about appealing to our schedules and makes a compelling case for diarising prayer time and family time and making them as immovable as that meeting that’s taken you 3 months to set up!

He reminds us that Pastors are subversive like a revolutionary even though many will think of us as they do their local green grocer or milk bar man. He tells us to remember God is God and we are not, even though some will act and think like we are their god. He challenges us to be cautious with our words, to live in the mystery of God and the mess of people, to teach people the language of prayer (willing to participate in what is willed – willed passivity) and reminds us that we aren’t just Pastors of Sunday (or Friday in a Youth Pastor’s world).

There are some awesome quotes, like this one Peterson quotes from Annie Dillard:

Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?… On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does not one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares: they should lash us to our pews. Explores unmindful of conditions died. Why don’t similarly unprepared worshipers perish on the spot?

Or this one:

Most people’s lives are not spent in crisis, not lived at the cutting edge of crucial issues. Most of us, most of the time, are engaged in simple routine tasks and small talk is the natural language. If pastors belittle it, we belittle what most people are doing most of the time and the gospel is misrepresented.

In other words, Pastors need to do small talk.

There was also a great bit about seeing people as sinners:

To call a man a sinner is not a blast at his manners or his morals. It is a theological belief that the thing that matters most to him is forgiveness and grace… If people are sinners then pastors can concentrate on talking about God’s action in Jesus Christ instead of sitting around lamenting how bad the people are. We already know they can’t make it. We already have accepted their depravity. We didn’t engage to be pastor to relax in their care or entrust ourselves to their saintly ways.

Finally the book finishes with Peterson’s story about how and why he had a sabbatical (year long) from his parish. I thought that was a great story of how he and his parish lived out what he said in the book as a whole. And the sabbatical was to great effect both for his soul and the maturing of his parish. Perhaps if people are to do long stays in one place, long (year?) breaks should be made a requirement?

I read this book in Warbuton. It was a great book to read as I was taking time out to think, pray and reflect on my ministry. This book encouraged me in that, and challenged me to be more open to people and more open to God. For that I am grateful. I didn’t agree with everything he said, nor with some of his arguments, but the challenge and the Spirit of the book are much needed for those of us who have a tendency to glory in our business for the Gospel and seek the praise of our followers for doing so.

I really like Seth Godin. He’s a smart guy and very adept at figuring out the way society is and where it’s going. I hope and pray he gets to know Jesus.

Anyway, I’ve just recently finished reading his book Tribes with Jono (we read books together to direct our discussion in supervision meetings when we catch up). I thought this book was excellent.

The book is not traditional. It has no chapters, and reads somewhat more like a series of blog posts linked to a central idea.

The idea, is that in today’s world everyone is organised into Tribes. But unlike in ye olden days when they were based around race or geographical area, Tribes are now based on interests and causes and the internet frees them from geographical constraints. Godin says Tribes are all about communication, and a Tribe leader is the person who allows a group of people communicate about an idea or interest that they share.

Godin encourages us to be heretics. That’s sometimes an uncomfortable thing to read when you’re a Christian, but rather than encouraging us to say Jesus and Budda are all the same, what Godin means by his heretic encouragement is that we need to get over our fear and buck the system. We need to believe in our ideas and move forward with them, go against the pre-existing and often prohibiting structures and organisations we find ourselves in. This will led to great success and we have nothing to fear because nobody kills heretics anymore, either they ignore you, sack you or you led a great revolution by getting people talking about your dreams and ideas (essentially a Tribe).

There is much the church can learn for Seth Godin, and I think many pastors should read this book and Godin’s blog. Over the next little while, I will be going a little bit more in depth with some of Godin’s ideas and why I think the church needs to listen to this secular prophet.

Part of my TV and Internet free life has meant time for books.  I’ve just finished (took me a little under a week) this book about Jonathan Edwards.  There were a few reasons I wanted to read about him.  Firstly, he has inspired John Piper and I’ve heard Piper talk about Edwards many times.  So I wanted to get a better understanding of the man who has influenced Piper so much, as Piper has influenced me.  Secondly, Ridley is about to have some sort of Jonathan Edwards partnership with Yale going on, so I figured I was probably going to end up learning something about him in the future.

The book is pretty good.  It’s engaging and interesting and very easy to read.  The only real criticism I have is that it implied way to much knowledge of colonial America and the American Revolution.  I knew nothing really of these events and so it was obvious as I was reading I wasn’t getting a full picture of some of the important things that Edwards did.  (For example the book talks a lot about Edwards in contrast to Benjamin Franklin, I really don’t know much about Franklin at all, except that he is some important old American dude).  So I’m at least inspired from this book to go out and read some more on the history of Colonial America and Franklin.

Edwards himself was a very interesting person.  He was involved in revivals (aka Awakenings) that sounded to be very much like some of the more Pentecostal gatherings (eg. Toronto or Lakeland) we hear about, lots of physical and deep emotional response to the Gospel.  Edwards recognised that these big displays of emotion could be used for ill, but defended them in general because it was a big deal for someone to realise that God had saved them a terrible sinner and why shouldn’t they feel a weight of emotion?  I thought there was probably a rebuff to many of us who can tend to be hard nosed no emotion evangelicals.  Edwards lived by his convictions and never apologised for that.  Even if, as it did, cost him his job and therefore his security.  I felt sad when Jonathan Edwards died in this book.  It was like my new friend had just died, and all too soon.  Edwards died in is 50s not long after becoming Principal of Princeton.

If you’re interested in famous smart old Christians (like I seem to be) then I would definitely recommend reading this book.  There is a bigger longer one by the same authour (Marsden) called Jonathan Edwards: A Life, which is probably also worth reading, though I haven’t.

This is an awesome book. It's about marriage, but more than that, it's about living with our focus on God and living for Him - which many of us do, or are about to do, in the context of a marriage relationship. The book is excellent theologically but eminently practical in it's outworking of that. It is a few simple ideas about how a wife needs to be loved and a husband needs to be respected and that by unconditionally doing one the other will increase.

Bill Hybels is pastor of the American mega-church Willow Creek. Recently Jono and I read his book Courageous Leadership for our professional development as church leaders.

I found the book to be very good! Hybels has many great tips and much wisdom from his many many years as the leader of his church.

Particularly interesting to me were his Chapters on turning vision into action and the art of self leadership. His chapter on different ways to grow and nurture your walk with God was also encouraging and I have since bought the book he recommends by Gary Chapman - Sacred Pathways.

There was only one weakness and that was the chapter on characteristics a leader should have (Ch 10 - A Leader's Prayer). In it he gives different characteristics a leader has by telling stories about Bible figures. I thought he needed to go the other way, give the characteristics and then give biblical and other examples. So it's a minor fault really.

I definitely think even though this book is pretty old, and no one seems to care about Hybels and Warren these days (it's all about Driscoll and Chandler and Piper) all of us involved in some sort of church or church ministry leadership should give this book by Bill Hybels a read!

A new ebook by Nick Arnold with 43 ideas for getting youth ministry to happen beyond the walls of your church is now available here. Best of all, it's FREE!

I found it very helpful and also made a very small contribution prior to it's release. While you're over there, why not check out Nick's blog Ministry Allies too.

If you want some fresh ideas for reaching youth in your community beyond the walls of your church, then this is a great starting point!

Note: I received this book from Thomas Nelson for free for the purpose of reviewing it (see here). However, I am still going to be completely honest! I guess it's good the first book they sent me was, in my opinion average.

Rick and Bubba's Guide to the Almost Nearly Perfect Marriage is a book about two American Christian Radio personalities (I've never heard of them being from Australia) who are writing about their Marriages and essentially how much they aren't perfect. The book basically lists of a range of different experiences a couple will go through when they are married, and gives some tips on what to and not to do.

First up, I only finished reading this book because I had to review it. Generally I found it to be very much the same from page to page. I think there are much better books out there which deal much better with what the bible says about marriage and gives better tips etc. Having said that however, the book is littered with humour (albeit that kinda occasionally funny American humour that no one else gets), and the chapters are short and easy to read. So perhaps if my friend wasn't into reading I might consider this to be a good entry level book for them to read on the subject of marriage.

As you can tell by the title, the book is trying to be realistic. Sometimes however, I felt that the book was a bit to blase about how our sin can cause us to be poor partners, and I felt sometimes it just accepted the fact that humans are bad at being married. I understand that sometimes this was for the sake of humour, but I felt like sometimes it was inappropriate.

There was however some really great stuff in this book, that was presented in a simple way. these are few and far between at the beginning of the book in chapters like, Things like "Three sides to Every Story" (p45), and "Why couples fight" (p51) giving good insights into the underlying reasons behind fights. However, the last 6 chapters made for quite good reading. Here they outline how marriage is built on respect and love (although I take issue with their exegesis of Eph 5 where they seem to overlook the whole submit thing and jump right to respect) and tell a very moving personal story about how life can throw some curve balls at you and you really find out what it means to love each other in hard times.

The book is easy to read, it could probably be read and understood by reading the chapter heading and the first paragraph of each chapter, it never goes any deeper than that. There is some good stuff in it, but a lot of stuff has to be waded through to get to it. The book is sometimes amusing and would be good for someone who is not used to reading. 2.5/5


Here is a YouTube video where they massively oversell this book:



And here is a bit of a preview of the book.

Buy		Read

I bought this book, Going the Distance by Peter Brain (a Bishop somewhere in Australia) last week.  I've started reading the first couple of chapters and it seems pretty good so far.  It's about 'going the distance' in paid ministry, and dealing with let downs and periodic depression and juggling priorities.  Probably a must read for anyone in ministry.

So about 3 or 4 weeks ago I sat down on a really really hot Melbourne day (it was definitely 40 or more degrees!!!)... anyway, I turned the fan on, sat with a big glass of icey cold water and read this book.

In a nutshell it is all about how this guy ran his church, from small beginnings, to much bigger times now. It's a really great read, very honest, scary and also funny. I read it in a day so that must make it good!

I've just started to listen to his sermons occasionally from his church website. His church is currently doing this series on tough questions. Which he mentions in this book that he is about to start doing.

http://www.marshillchurch.org/