Book catch-up

Happy New Year...belatedly.

For those who still catch up on the occasional posts that appear here, I thought I'd give a pointer to an interesting post reviewing (mostly in brief) a bunch of books that the reviewer thought worthy of commendation from his past year's reading.

Byron Borger (I think that's the person who's written the post) runs a Christian bookshop in Dallastown, Central Pennsylvania; it's nominally Presbyterian, but like OC Books (which also began life as a Presbyterian bookshop) he's wide open to Christians of all denominations.  However, this isn't a plug for the shop, but for the books he's commending in his post, which has been done in something of a rush by the look of it, as there are a number of typos scattered throughout (!)

Be that as it may, this list is well worth checking up on, because even if you don't go as wholeheartedly for the whole collection as he does.  There are several books in the list that I've either had my eye on for a while or now plan to get - pensioner's finances willing - and I'm sure you'll find something of interest there too.

N T Wright makes the cut (dare I say, of course) as does Rob Bell (though it seems that the study guide to Love Wins may be even more interesting than the original book, given its list of contributors).   Abraham Kuyper gets a look in twice, Richard Mouw is there, Tim Keller, Philip Jenkins, Craig Bartholomew, Walter Brueggemann, Scot McKnight, and Richard Hays.

Then there are a bunch of authors whose names I don't know (I might if I was still running the bookshop!) but whose books look very intriguing, and there's a variety of publishing houses, well-known and unknown.   The range of topics is broad, and there should be at least one book to satisfy every taste - for me there'd be far more than one book.

Here's the link: Hearts & Minds Bookstore

An ex-bookseller dares to speak...

As a Baptist who works with a bunch of people who adhere in their own Presbyterian way to the Reformed tradition (indeed, the catchphrase of the last Moderator was 'Reformed and Reforming') I sometimes have to help them see beyond their Reformed borders. (As, no doubt, they try to help me see beyond my Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist borders.)

Which is why I'm linking to a piece David Fitch has done on the Out of Ur blog in which he asks, Is the New Calvinism really New Fundamentalism? He makes a good case as having some serious concerns that it may be, and indeed even in New Zealand I've heard the occasional piping Presbyterian voice talking about the 'essence of Presbyterianism' with the kind of (dare I say it) smug tone indicating that Presbyterians (Reformed) have pretty much got it right and most others have got it wrong. Whatever 'it' actually is.

Shoot me down as a hybrid Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist-ex-Christian bookseller who's been exposed to far to many different Christian viewpoints. That's fine. At least David Fitch appears to making sense.....

Is the Church acting this way?

From Seth Godin's blog - a post called 'You don't have the power'

A friend is building a skating rink. Unfortunately, he started with uneven ground and the water keeps ending up on one side of the rink. Water's like that, and you need a lot of time and power and money if you want to change it. One person, working as hard as he can, has little chance of persuading water to change.

Consider this quote from a high-ranking book publisher who should know better, "We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that 'digital' means 'cheap.' ..."

Hello?

You don't have the power.

Read the rest of the post (at the link above) - maybe this is something worth considering in relation to the church. Does it have the 'power' to keep on doing the same things it always did, or to stop people from moving forward in a different way? The uneven skating rink is a great picture - like an updated version of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Mental Health Library & NZ's great interloan service

For those interested in issues relating to mental health - a topic that we often post about on this site - you can now access the NZ Mental Health Foundation's library catalogue online.

The layout appears to be pretty simple and you don't have to be a library member to use the search part of the site. There's a login area for registered Mental Health Foundation library members, who can now access their membership details, check current loans and overdues, and reserve titles online.

I'm not sure from the info on the library site how you become a member if you're not already one, but no doubt a quick email to this address will let you know: nfo@mentalhealth.org.nz

An alternative method of accessing the books in the library is by getting them through your own local library's interloan system. At the cost of $5.00 a book (and usually an interloan period of a month) you have access to an enormous range of materials from around the country.

To check whether any book is available anywhere in the country, go to the New Zealand Libraries Catalogue. This amazing resource lets you know which libraries in the country have copies of the book you're looking for; from there it's just a simple step: contact your library and ask them to interloan. The book will usually be available within a few days.

Book photo by Dawn Endico

Leadership's Golden Canon

Leadership is presenting a list of the ten books of 2008 they've decided are most useful for church leaders. They're not all books specifically relating to leadership as such, but rather titles that would help a leader in two areas: The Leader's Inner World, and The Leader's Outer World.

The titles were compiled from submissions by a diverse group of more than 100 pastors from across the country. Leadership's contributing editors then voted to determine the winners in the two categories.

The list is here. Among the titles I'm pleased to see N T Wright's Surprised by Hope, Andy Crouch's Culture Making, and the third in Eugene Peterson's recent series of books on the Christian life: The Jesus Way.

Entering into the mind of others

I'm grateful for Christianity at the Movies' e-letter for alerting me to the following quote, in which C S Lewis basically follows through on Paul's comments about being a Jew to the Jews and a Greek to the Greeks (my rough paraphrase), and shows that the arts can help us understand (but not necessarily agree with) the mind that doesn't have a Christian worldview.
In his book, An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis writes, "We therefore delight to enter into other men's beliefs ... even though we think them untrue. And into their passions, though we think them depraved ... And also into their imaginations, though they lack all realism of content."

[Lewis is writing mostly in the context of reading books and poetry, but his thoughts on criticism apply just as well to film—or any art form, for that matter. He continues:] "This must not be understood as if I were making the literature of power once more into a department which existed to gratify our rational curiosity about other people's psychology. It is not a question of knowing (in that sense) at all. It is connaître not savoir; it is erleben; we become these other selves. Not only nor chiefly in order to see what they are like but in order to see what they see, to occupy, for a while, their seat in the great theatre, to use their spectacles and be made free of whatever insights, joys, terrors, wonders, or merriment those spectacles reveal ...

"This, so far as I can see, is the specific value or good of literature considered as Logos; it admits us to experiences other than our own. ... Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors." [Or, I might add, movie directors.] "We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less of a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. ... In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."