MORE Book Awards: Best Read in 2008, Part 1

Awarded by Walt Mueller

I’m long overdue in answering Derek’s request for a list of my favorite books of 2008. Choosing the best is a difficult task as most of the books I read I consider to be good books. Since I have this thing about always finishing any book I start (weird, I know), I’m very careful about the books I pick up in the first place. I read a lot of good books during 2008. Now I’m tackling the task of naming the 10 best.

Like Derek, I came up with some criteria. Since Derek beat me to the punch by getting his list together first (see part 1 & part 2), I decided that my list can’t contain any books that Derek had on his list. Yes, Derek stole a couple of my top 10. . . . and I’m not telling which titles those are. Other questions I asked are these: Is what I’m reading teaching me something new? Is this a book that gets me excited about God’s redemptive work in the world and His graceful invitation to me to enter into His story? Am I recommending this book to others? Do I find myself wanting to tell others about the book? Is the book timely in the sense that it has something profound to say to God’s people living in today’s contemporary culture? Has this book taken me deeper in my knowledge of God and understanding of His mission in our world?

So here goes. . . . no particular order. Not all of these books were written in 2008, but I read them during the year. You might be surprised by a couple of my choices.

The Culturally Savvy Christian, by Dick Staub. I was terribly disappointed when Dick’s great book Too Christian, Too Pagan was taken out of print. The blow was softened by the arrival of The Culturally Savvy Christian. I love Dick’s strong foundation of Biblical understanding and the earnestness with which he applies that knowledge to matters of faith and culture. I value Dick as a friend who has a timely prophetic message for the church about how to live faithfully in today’s world. If I were to be given a chance to write the syllabus for a required course that all humans would have to read on what it means to be fully human, this book would be required reading. Okay. So that will never happen. But I just finished teaching a week-long seminary course on Youth Culture and the students were required to read this book. They loved it. It shook them up. It challenged their thinking. Hopefully, what they read will bear great Kingdom-fruit in their ministries.

A Better Way: Discovering The Drama of Christ-Centered Worship, by Michael Horton. Oh boy. Another book on worship. Not a problem. This is one of the most well-reasoned and Biblically-sound treatments of worship I’ve ever read. Horton’s love for Christ, His Word, and the Church is exemplary. Good voices like Horton’s have been lost in all the noise coming from the battlefield of what’s become known as “the worship wars.” It’s time to stop firing and start listening. Then, we need to make readjustments. Horton knows that worship must begin with God. We look to Him to learn more about who He is, who we’re called to be, and how He desires us to worship Him. Horton knows that Christ must regain His rightful place at center-stage in our worship. This is a great call to neither settle for dull routine or perpetual innovation. This is a meaty book. . . . so I’m fearful that those who would benefit most from it might never pick it up. Take the challenge and give it a thoughtful and prayerful read.

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, by Cornelius Plantinga. Okay. I’m embarrassed that this one’s on my list of books read in 2008. It’s embarrassing because it’s been out since 1995 and I just now got around to reading it. Just like we’ve lost our understanding of worship, we’ve also lost our understanding of sin. Why don’t we endeavor to know more about the chapter of the unfolding Biblical drama titled “The Fall?” Can we really understand and begin to appreciate God’s justice, mercy, and grace if we don’t understand sin? This summary of sin is outstanding. You will get to the last page, and rather than closing the book, you will go right back to page 1 all over again. Yes, it’s that good.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, by Timothy Keller. What? You haven’t yet read this book? Shame on you! There’s not much more to say about this one other than I would have it listed as required reading on the aforementioned syllabus.

Scattershot: My Bi-Polar Family, by David Lovelace. One of my favorite professors at Gordon-Conwell Seminary was Dr. Richard Lovelace. His Dynamics of Spiritual Life had become a classic among young, thinking Christians who were involved in doing ministry back in the early 80s. As a professor, Lovelace was warm and eccentric. The stories of his eccentricity that circulated in the seminary community became legendary. We loved the man. Little did any of us know what was going on behind the scenes as our beloved professor and several members of his family were battling bipolar disorder. This memoir from his son takes readers on a whirlwind journey into issues of mental illness, faith, and family. The book is both riveting and heartbreaking.

Part 2 coming soon...

Mary Poplin on Finding Calcutta

Mary Poplin (MP) is a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University in California. Her book Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service won a 2008 CPYU Bookshelf Book Award.

CPYU: What motivated you to take a sabbatical to work with Mother Teresa?

MP: In November of 1992, after a vivid dream of Christ, I began to consider Christianity. By January of 1993 I had begun to follow Christ. Later that same year I saw a documentary of Mother Teresa where she said their work was “religious work not social work.” Since my own work had often focused on educating the poor, I felt this understanding might help me see both my work and my faith in new ways. I believed that if I was really to understand it, I would have to do the work day in and out, side by side with them. So when it came time for my sabbatical in spring of 1996, I sent a letter and asked if I could come and work with them. At some level, I naively was thinking of the experience as a sort of anthropological study of the question of how religious and social work differ.

CPYU: Early in your book you mentioned that you struggled for many years to write about your experience. What were the challenges? Why was it such a difficult book to write?

MP: The challenge for me was I wanted to write about her in a way that would make her understood by a large group of people (secular, Christian or other religious). But I found in trying to make her understandable and attractive to everyone I had to distort her – I was either leaving things out and/or distorting what she really believed. It’s odd now thinking back on it – here I was going to understand the difference between religious work and social work and now I was trying to reconvert it. So when I really understood what I was doing and that she could not be understood except from a Biblical Christian worldview, I stopped all that. Once I did, the whole book seemed to write itself. Ultimately, the sort of climax of the book is toward the end when I confess that from any of the worldviews currently taught in the university (naturalism, humanism, and pantheism) Mother Teresa is completely incomprehensible.

CPYU: What surprised you the most about Mother Teresa?

MP: I was surprised by how radically they followed Scripture, how absolutely faithful they are to Jesus, how austere they live their lives, how peaceful and contented they are, and how hard the work was in terms of just physical labor in a hard place.

CPYU: The title of your book comes from a quote by Mother Teresa: “You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have eyes to see.” How have you found “your Calcutta” working in an American university?

MP: The title comes from a brief conversation with Mother Teresa when she said to me – “God doesn’t call everyone to work with the poor or to live like the poor as he has called us, but God does call everyone to a Calcutta, you have to find yours.” Yes, I found mine. My Calcutta is to discern and teach all the worldviews, including the Christian one as it relates to whatever content I am teaching. All worldviews (secular or sacred) begin with foundational principles that have to be accepted on faith; Christianity is no different than secular worldviews in that respect. But for many years, the secular experiment has become increasingly narrow and ultimately has limited, rather than expanded, what gets taught. For example, Christianity has a completely different approach to solving psychological problems that cannot be mimicked by secular psychology. To leave these principles out of the options taught to students is to limit their education.

CPYU: The book is full of interesting and insightful quotes by Mother Teresa. Do you have a favorite?

MP: I think it was her insistence that God has called us not so much to great things, but to do “small things with great love.” It is such a great description of what God asks from all of us and look at what He did with it – she ended up developing a great thing – a new order in the Catholic Church – a worldwide, multiethnic compassion ministry to do small things with great love!

Related Links:
A review of Finding Calcutta can be found on page 17 of CPYU’s Engage journal.

Listen to Mary Poplin’s lectures for the Veritas Forum, university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life.

January Resource of the Month: Christless Christianity by Michael Horton

You can purchase Christless Christianity at the CPYU Online Resource Center.

Is it possible that we have left Christ out of Christianity? Are the faith and practice of American Christians today more American than Christian? Have we allowed the church to be taken captive to the prevailing culture? These are the provocative questions Michael Horton addresses in this thoughtful, insightful book. His analysis should give us pause as we consider the current state of Christianity - even evangelical Christianity - in America. Christians have always had their differences, but never in church history have there been so many statistics indicating that many Christians today are practicing what can only be described as "Christless Christianity."

Christless Christianity guides the reader to a greater understanding of a big problem within the American religious setting, namely the creeping fog of countless sermons in churches across the country that focus on moralistic concerns and personal transformation rather than the theology of the cross.

Michael Horton's analysis of the contemporary church points believers back to the power of a gospel that should never be assumed.

Related Links:
Read a review of Christless Christianity by Derek Melleby on p. 16 of Engage (CPYU's FREE online journal)

Read Walt Mueller's recent blog entry about Christless Christianity

Book Awards: Best Books (Read) in 2008, Part 2

Awarded by Derek Melleby

Now the hotly anticipated Book Awards Part 2! (Read part 1 to learn a bit more about how the books were selected.) Remember, they are listed in alphabetical order by the author’s last name and for no other reason. Here are the concluding 5 books of the top-ten read in 2008.

Awakening Youth Discipleship: Christian Resistance in a Consumer Culture, Brian J. Mahan, Michael Warren, & David F. White (Cascade Books). Coming in at just under 130 pages, this small book packs a powerful punch. It is composed of three sections. In part one White summarizes the creation and history of adolescence, illustrating how youth have been marginalized in society. He then offers a challenging critique of comfortable Christian parents who don’t really want to see their kids radically transformed by the Gospel. In part two, Warren explains how much of today’s youth ministry is shaped more by the techniques and assumptions of marketers and entertainers than the Gospel. And finally, in part three, Mahan directly challenges youth ministers (and himself) to consider how they have conformed to the patterns of this world by not inviting kids into the story of the Gospel, but rather into the story of the American Dream and consumerism. There is also a concluding interview chapter where each author has an opportunity to ask and answer questions about the essays. This book is challenging to say the least and should be taken seriously by those who wish to get at the root of issues facing Christian youth.

Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers, Eugene Peterson, (Eerdmans). This is Peterson’s fourth installment in his five-volume series on spiritual theology. Tell It Slant focuses on our language and the language of Jesus, particularly in his parables and his prayers. Peterson writes, “Every time we open our mouths, whether in conversation with one another or in prayer to our Lord, Christian truth and community are on the line… I want to insist on a continuity of language between the words we use in Bible studies and the words we use when we’re out fishing for rainbow trout.” There’s nothing better than Peterson explaining and reflecting on a biblical text. Here he is at his best, and this one gets an extra award: the most underlined book of the year!

Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service, Mary Poplin (Intervarsity Press). I like to give a book to everyone in my family for Christmas. This year I chose to give Poplin’s account of her time with Mother Teresa. There are so many elements to this fascinating book: it is a story about Poplin’s later-in-life conversion to faith in Jesus; it is a moving account of what it is like to serve the poorest of the poor; it is a handy collection of insightful sayings of Mother Teresa; it is a good example of how to integrate a meaningful, intense experience back into “normal,” everyday life. Ultimately it is a story of hope. God is still intimately involved in our lives and in His world, calling us to service right where we are. I couldn’t put this one down. You should pick it up! (Be on the look out for a CPYU Bookshelf Exclusive Interview with Dr. Poplin coming soon!)

The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor, John Stott (Intervarsity Press). There is one thing about the contemporary church that I have been noticing: more and more young people seem to have the strongest voices in determining its direction. This isn’t everywhere, and certainly, we should listen to younger opinions, but I wonder if too many parts of the church are failing to acquire wisdom from the older generation. In The Living Church, long-time pastor, evangelist and biblical scholar, John Stott offers reflections on the church. Stott brings clarity to the confusion that often surrounds “emerging churches” and suggests ways that the church can adapt to contemporary culture without losing the heart of the Gospel. As he suggests, a “living church is a learning church” and this book greatly assists the learning process. (Click here for a fuller review.)

The Shack, William P. Young (Windblown Media). Okay, I’ll admit it. I was almost too cool to include this New York Times bestseller. I mean, come on, everybody is talking about The Shack, declaring it the best book they’ve ever read, telling everyone else to read… Oh, you just gotta read The Shack. You haven’t read The Shack? The Shack this, The Shack that. The Shack, The Shack, The Shack… getta hold of yourself. Okay, here’s the deal: I read The Shack before it was popular. My copy does not say New York Times Bestseller on the top and I didn’t buy it at Costco. Yes, I am that cool. So there. But, truth be told, it sucked me right in. I devoured the book. I fought back tears. I told others about it. And, for the doctrine police who are reading: I did suggest that I wasn’t thrilled with all of its theology. Like every book, it should be read and tested against scripture. But let’s not forget what it is: a novel. It is a powerful story attempting to make sense of a loving God in the midst of tragic events. It is worth reading and discussing even if you don’t agree with every word. (Click here for a fuller review.)

That concludes the CPYU Bookshelf Book Awards. Thanks for reading. Feel free to add your own 2008 favorites to the list. It would be good to hear from you. Happy reading in 2009!

Book Awards: Best Books (Read) In 2008, Part 1

Awarded by Derek Melleby

I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. But two surprising things happened when I sat down to award the first annual CPYU Bookshelf’s “best books of the year.” First, I came up with an interesting criterion to determine the winners. As I stared at my bookshelf, I reflected on the past year and thought: What books did I recommend to friends? What parts of books did I read aloud to my wife? What books did I quote from in writing? What books did I give as gifts? Basically, what books were on my mind the most over the last year? Second, and this is remarkable, after thinking through those questions, I started to pull books from the shelf. Guess how many I pulled? You guessed it: 10 books. How perfect!

The following books receive a CPYU Bookshelf Best Book of 2008 Award. This post will be in two parts, five books each. The books are listed in alphabetical order by author’s last name. Enjoy the list and feel free to add your own!

(Drum roll please.)

Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places, L.L. Barkat (Intervarsity Press). On a number of occasions, I heard my good friend and Hearts & Minds Bookstore owner, Byron Borger, rave about this memoir, but it took me a few months before I finally picked up my own copy to read. I’m glad I did. I read it devotionally during a summer family vacation. I seemed to be always reading paragraphs to anyone who would listen. Barkat has a painful and powerful story to tell and she does so gracefully. This is perhaps the best written book on the list. Each chapter concludes with a biblical reflection connecting the main ideas to Scripture. She doesn’t “proof text,” but rather eloquently inserts her story into God’s story without saying that that is what she is doing. Truly a masterpiece. Simply Beautiful.

Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life, Colin Duriez (Crossway Books). This biography was inspiring. I knew the basics of Schaeffer’s life: pastor, missionary, apologist and founder of the L’Abri Community in Switzerland. I have a few friends who met him or were mentored by him and their stories helped to fill-in bits and pieces of his life. But Duriez’s book lays it all out there, filling in gaps and painting a clearer picture of this 20th Century prophet. Most importantly, Schaeffer was a humble, honest man who cared deeply about others and who spoke truth with love and compassion. Click here to read my fuller review.

Sex & The Soul: Juggling Sexality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses, Donna Freitas (Oxford University Press). It’s no surprise that many college students experiment sexually during this season of life. Freitas, however, was curious to know if students connected their spirituality with their sexuality. The short answer: no. The majority of college students, even those that claim to be “spiritual” say that their faith has little to do with how they navigate the “hook-up” culture. There is one exception: evangelical students want their faith to make a difference in all areas of life. What is lacking, for many of them, is a safe-place to discuss sexuality openly and honestly. Freitas’ statistics and interviews are sobering. This book is for anyone who cares about college students and about those heading off to college. It paints a realistic picture of the college cultural landscape and offers solid advice on how to help students connect their spirituality with their sexuality. Click here to read a fuller review.

Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don’t), Michael J. Gerson (HarperOne). I started reading this book at the end of 2007, but didn’t finish it until early 2008. So, it makes the ’08 list. And, it was an election year, so I felt compelled to include something I read about politics. Gerson was a speech writer for much of George W. Bush’s presidency. Here he tells many of the behind-the-scenes-daily-grind-business of being a speechwriter and president. Learning about the work and craft of speech writing was fascinating and worth the price of the book. But it’s about much more. This book is not just for people who are right-of-center politically. Ultimately it is about casting a vision for the Republican Party (and country) that gets us past the red/blue, win-at-all-costs, political climate and pushes readers to think more deeply about the crucial role America’s government should play domestically and abroad. Gerson’s argument needs to be heard by both those on the right and left.

The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, Timothy Keller (Dutton Books). Keller published two books in 2008 and both of them are very worthy of the award. But, I was so excited when I realized that I had chosen 10 off the top of my head and didn’t want to mess it up! His first book, The Reason for God (a New York Times bestseller), is certainly award-worthy, but this second book gets the coveted prize. Here Keller takes a closer look at Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, revealing its radical message that speaks directly to both irreligious and religious people. Click here to read a fuller review.

Part 2 coming soon…

Book Related Reading Links

It’s hard to believe that it is Christmas time again, already. Where does the time go? Well, time flies when given good things to read, I guess! In this last post of 2008, I would like to highlight some book related weblinks and let you know of some new things coming up ahead.

There is a link on the sidebar highlighting the Hearts & Minds Bookstore of my good friend, Byron Borger, but I don’t think I have mentioned him directly in a post before. Please visit his Booknotes Blog. He updates it regularly featuring books that we all should be aware of… and he often offers “Blog Specials.” Although you may never have a chance to visit his store in Dallastown, PA, you can still order books online. The staff at Hearts & Minds are as reliable as any “internet bookstore.”

Don Opitz and I have a website for our book The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness: AcademicFaithfulness.com. We try to update it regularly and are currently featuring an Advent Sermon preached by Don a few Sundays ago. Enjoy!

CPYU’s Winter 2008 edition of Engage is now available for FREE. Along with articles helping parents and youth workers navigate the often confusing world of teenagers, we also provide a well rounded review of books to consider. Of special “book interest,” in this issue we have an excerpt from John Stott’s excellent book, The Living Church.

And COMING IN 2009…

Be on the lookout for CPYU Bookshelf Book Awards in early January!

Looking for a chance to win FREE books? Well do I have news for you! Coming soon: CPYU Bookshelf Question of the Week. Spread the word. You won’t want to miss it!

David Naugle on Reordering Our Loves and Lives

Reordered Love, Reordered Lives: Learning the Deep Meaning of Happiness, David Naugle (Eerdmans, 2008)

David K. Naugle (DN) is chair and professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University. He is also the author of Worldview: The History of a Concept (Eerdmans), selected as a 2003 Christianity Today Book of the Year.

CPYU: What motivated you to write about love?

DN: Over the years, I have become convinced that people don’t necessarily do what they say they will do, or behave according to their beliefs, or act on the basis of their thoughts or ideas. However, at the end of the day, people will do what they love!

Augustine put it like this in his book Enchiridion: “For when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves.” We are motivated to do what we do by the things we love, care about and desire. Our lifestyles follow our loves; our loves lead to our lifestyles.

It seems to me that this has been the missing element in various Christian programs of moral and spiritual formation. We can’t just impart biblical information and expect much to happen. Our deepest loves, affections and desires must be reordered for lives to change in a Christ-like way.

But our loves and lives remain severely disordered, especially because of cultural influence. No one knows this better than CPYU! In light of the biblical teaching on love which is the nature of God, at the heart of the greatest commandments, and is the chief of virtues (1 John 4; Matthew 22; 1 Corinthians 13), a book on love and the necessity of reordering our loves, seemed like a good idea.

CPYU: On the surface, it does seem obvious that love is related to happiness, but what is the deeper meaning? Where do we often get love and happiness wrong in our culture?

DN: If we follow the main outline of the biblical story, we discover that God intended for us to enjoy the deep meaning of happiness (or shalom, as it’s called in the Hebrew Old Testament) rooted in rightly ordered loves for God and for everything else under and in Him.

When we sinned, however, we lost this deep meaning of happiness found in God and in his good creation, rightly related. However, we did not lose our love or longing for happiness; in fact, it may have even deepened, even if it was distorted and disordered.

As extraordinarily needy and ignorant people in search of a fulfilling life in a deeply fallen world, we attach our loves in intense ways to whatever we think will make us happy, whether it be people, places or things.

But these people, places or things that we love for happiness’ sake fail us every time. They promise the satisfaction we have been longing for, but they fail to keep their promises. They simply are not made to do so. We end up frustrated once again. As Bono famously sings: “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for!”

Out of this disordered love in search for happiness, our lives become a mess, a wreck, especially because of our idolatries, vices, habits, and addictions. We will turn to crime, violence, and even warfare, if that’s what we think it will take to get what we want, since our deepest sense of self and overall well-being depends on it. See James 4:1-2, for example.

Not only our own ignorance, but the false, misleading messages of our culture through music, TV, films, and advertisements also misdirect us and lead us into a big, ugly ditch (to put it mildly) … all in search of happiness! As Augustine once said, “… what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?”

This is precisely where the Christian gospel enters the picture. When we believe in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us in His life, death, and resurrection, our sins are forgiven and we are reconnected to God. He then enables us to love God and everything else in God in reordered ways. We don’t reject the world, but worldliness; we don’t reject creation, but its corruption. In other words, we seek to love the created world in a reordered and right way in God as its creator and redeemer.

This, I believe, is the key to discovering the deep meaning of happiness both now and forever! Reordered love and reordered lives and the discovery of the deep meaning of happiness are the primary benefits of the Christian faith and God’s good news about Jesus Christ!

Thus, the connection between love and happiness, as I try to develop it, follows the major points of the overall biblical narrative, and I can summarize the story like this:

- The deep meaning of happiness in God as He intended at creation rooted in rightly ordered loves and lives;

- Happiness lost in the fall of humanity into sin and replaced with devastating ignorance and disordered loves and lives;

- The deep meaning of happiness already redeemed and one day fully restored in Jesus Christ who graciously reorders our loves and lives through the Christian gospel.

CPYU: This is from the review of your book in Publisher’s Weekly: “Many Christians will enjoy this book and be renewed in their quest for true happiness. Others will not, given the author's insistence that accepting Jesus is the only way to real happiness. In a religiously pluralistic world, the wisdom of Christianity can be shared with everyone if presented correctly.” How do you respond to this?

DN: Well, actually, though PW (Publisher’s Weekly) didn’t intend it as such, I take their criticism as a compliment. I DIDN’T CAVE INTO POLITICALLY CORRECT RELIGIOUS PLURALISM!

Furthermore, my goal was to do what PW said I should have done, namely to show how “the wisdom of Christianity can be shared with everyone if presented correctly.”

PW thinks I failed at this, but I think I succeeded (Lord willing), especially by appealing to various expressions of popular culture that show how our disordered loves can disorder our lives and make us miserable. For example, Alan Jackson’s C&W song — “Everything I love Is Killing Me” — hits the nail on the head! And Johnny Cash’s return to faith shows how his reordered love for God reordered his life, and brought him into an experience of the deep meaning of happiness. And what happened to Cash can happen to us as well.

In this sense, then, my book is a form of cultural apologetics, showing how Jesus Christ is the sweet fulfillment of our deepest longings and desires as we search and find the genuinely happy life in Him (I am employing Charlie Peacock’s thoughts from his endorsement on the back of the book).

CPYU: What are some practical ways that parents and youth workers can help teenagers “reorder” their loves?

DN: In many ways, this is what the seventh and last chapter in the book are all about. There I point out that the deep meaning of happiness we experience now is not perfect and never will be. Presently, we live between the cross and the consummation, at the “hyphen” between the “already” but the “not yet.”

Consequently, at this time in God’s narrative plan for history, we must enroll in the school of Christ for the ongoing mending of our hearts. In Christ’s school of followership, the Christian practices make up the curriculum for life change and consistency. It’s unnecessary to reinvent the wheel on this subject of the Christian practices since so many good books are already available by authors like Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. I recommend them highly.

However, what may be of particular interest to parents, youth workers, and students is my own autobiographical description of “The Disciplines and Me” on pages 193-203. Here I talk about the Christian practices I learned from my mentors early on as a student that have served me well over the years. I talk about the Bible and books, church and community, prayer, the enemies of the christian life, virtue and vice, thinking, loving and doing, and so on. Hopefully a portion of my own story may be of inspiration in the “how to reorder our loves” department.

Related Links:
Reordered Loves, Reordered Lives website

David Naugle’s website (full of great information and articles)

Learn more about David Naugle’s award winning book Worldview: The History of a Concept

The Fine Line Blog Tour with Kary Oberbrunner

The Fine Line Teaser (HD) from josh franer on Vimeo.

The Fine Line: Re-envisioning the Gap Between Christ and Culture, Kary Oberbrunner (Zondervan, 2008)

Kary Oberbrunner (KO) is the Pastor of Discipleship and Leadership Development at Grace Church in Powell, Ohio.

CPYU: What motivated you to write The Fine Line?

KO: I grew up in a Christian home. I did the whole Christian school, Christian college, and Christian seminary gig. One day I guess I woke up and said, gee, I have nothing in common with anyone in the world. In fact, I don't even know many unbelievers. I found myself extremely judgmental toward culture and I knew God wasn't impressed. Jesus told his followers he wanted them to be in the world and not of it. But here I was, removed from the world, isolated in my little Christian subculture.

I knew my problem, but I didn't have a solution. And believe me I looked. Everywhere! CD's, seminars, conferences, you name it. Sure there was the book Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr, but that was written well over fifty years ago when times were different.

Niebuhr, a genius faculty member of Yale Divinity School, named the Sterling Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics, attempted to describe the variety of ways in which Christians interact with culture, and make sense of it. His book was profound, for its time. Many classify it as one of the most influential Christian books of the past century. No other book has dominated an entire theological conversation for so long.

But as a twenty-something at the time, I wasn't impressed. It's not that I didn't like the topic of a believer's role with culture—I was fascinated by it—but I couldn't understand Niebuhr's book. Even though I'd been a pastor for years, graduated from two seminaries, and have a doctorate in ministry, I couldn't grasp Niebuhr's style. It's written for the elite within the academy not for the masses within the church.

You see, in 1951 the world was very different. Homosexuality was considered a mental illness. The divorce rate was less than half of what it is today. Prayer was still allowed in school. Abortion was illegal. There was no Internet or cell phones. And attending movies was considered a sin by many.

A book about Christians transforming that type of culture is a little bit different than today. One might argue that our culture back then was much more Christian. On some levels it was easier. Even though culture has changed God hasn't. Our generation needs to re-envision what it means to live in the world and not of it. Christians today want to know how they can transform culture not separate from it or conform to it. We need a new paradigm for a new time.

CPYU: How do you think this book will benefit parents and youth workers?

KO: I've seen enough of the next generation leaving the church. According to some estimates, fifty-eight percent of young adults who attended church at 18 no longer attend by age 29. This number accounts for more than 8,000,000 twentysomethings who are simply "missing in action."

Why is much of this generation voting on spiritual matters with their absence? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is little difference between the attitudes and actions of believers and unbelievers. Rather than drawing people to Christ, many Christians are pushing people away because of the disconnection between what we say and how we live. That cannot continue.

Christ followers are supposed to be the most liberated, grace-filled people on earth. We're supposed to have what people want—a message so powerful it will cause the dead to rise and the blind to see. We're supposed to have the Living God, living inside us. We're supposed to know how to live in the world but not of it.

Most believers I know don't know. Most are either out of the world or they're of the world. No wonder Christians have so little impact, so little relevance. Now more than ever, we need understand how to live in the world but not of it. And that's exactly what this book will do: discover the fine line.

You see, Christians fall into one of three camps: the Separatists, the Conformists, and the Transformists. Only one camp is relevant. The other two have alienated themselves from the conversation. Separatists reject culture. Conformists embrace culture. Only Transformists change culture.

The Fine Line explores the meaning of relevance. Many teens think it has to do with externals like the clothes you wear or the music you listen to. But ironically relevance has little to do with externals.

The Fine Line shows how we all lean tend toward irrelevance. Separatists think they love God and end up failing to love people. Conformists think they love people and end up failing to love God. But only Transformists love God and people. They're the Christians who walk the fine line and they're the people who are re-envisioning the gap between Christ and culture. Each generation of people who follow Jesus must wrestle with the question- how does one live in the world and not of it. Each generation must emerge with some kind of answer. This question of relevance is, as Michael Joseph Gross puts it, "arguably the most basic ethical question of the Christian faith."

Teens don't want to be sold a product. They don't want to hear a sermon or handle a Gospel tract. Teens want to see a changed life. And that's exactly what this book does. It is changing their lives because it puts words to an age-old mystery. It is our generations' answer on how to live in the world and not of it.

CPYU: If churches took the central message of your book seriously, what changes do you think they would need to make?

KO: Many Christ followers for many years have misunderstood what being in the world, but not of it truly entails. For fear of being of the world, the Separatists (in the book "deceived God lovers") have forever attempted to escape the world. Their motives are correct, wanting to be righteous, but their outcomes are always skewed.

Sometimes the Separatists have built a Christian subculture -a cheesy, vanilla flavored, sanctified copycat version of pop culture. Other times Separatists have done some fairly epic, but irrelevant acts, like a guy named Simeon Stylites a monk type figure alive in the 400's who lived on top of a 50 ft. pillar for over 36 years, in order to escape the wicked world. The plan backfired and he became a rock star in his own right, only attracting more "worldly" fame.

For fear of going out of the world, the Conformists (in the book "deceived people lovers") have forever become of the world. Their motives are correct, wanting to be relevant, but their outcomes are always skewed too. Many Conformists become church haters and hypocrites. Conformists want to change the stereotype of Christians being lame, but they cross the line and the limits by simply conforming to the world, instead of transforming it.

If churches took the central message of my book seriously, they not only would need to make changes, but so would the people in the church, including the pastor. Let me give you a few concrete examples from my own world.

My church (Grace Church) has started a free medical clinic called Grace Clinic (check out the video clip). Doctors, nurses, and volunteers show up every Wednesday night to offer free health care to those who have no insurance. We offer prayer first. Some people accept it and some refuse.

We give people a taste of the Kingdom and some want more. Some just want a prescription. We now have several people in our church who started out as Grace Clinic patients. Although initially unbelievers, they made the decision to follow Jesus. Some of these people are hardened people: ex-convicts, drug addicts, and people wanting sex changes. Still Jesus has freed them from their addictions and given them holistic peace in this life and the next.

Because not all readers can do a "Grace Clinic" I'll share a less glamorous story. A few months back I'm at the YMCA doing my routine workout. I see a man next to me obviously struggling with his mp3 player. I asked him if he needed help. Turns out Bob, a 71 year old, African American, needed an introduction into the technological age.

After several encounters and several lessons with iTunes, Bob started attending our church. Just last month he stayed after the service and informed me that he wanted to give his life to Jesus. Evidently, the light he saw in his mother's eyes before she passed was the same light he saw in people's eyes at our church and he wanted it.

Related Links:
Kary’s website

Recent media coverage of the book

David Wells on The Courage To Be Protestant

The Courage To Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, David Wells (Eerdmans, 2008)

David F. Wells (DW) is the Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

CPYU: What motivated you to write The Courage to be Protestant?

DW: What I tried to do was to make the substance of my four previous books more accessible to people. So, this is a summary of what I have been writing about for the last two decades. The bottom line to this is that Christianity is having a hard time sustaining itself on contexts like our own which are highly modernized—urbanized, linked by technology, consumer-oriented. Statistically speaking, Christianity is leaving the West. This is less evident here in the U.S. and much more evident in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. So, what’s the problem? Why is biblical Christian faith now so weakened and confused? I travel quite a lot outside the U.S. Christians in other parts of the world all see this but it is hard for those of us living in the U.S. to see ourselves as others are seeing us.

CPYU: In the book, you write about the "inside God" and the "outside God." What is the distinction between the two? And what is the end result of embracing each?

DW: This distinction is simply my way of trying to make a point that is crucial to understand. What happens in contexts like our own—though the reasons for this are quite complex—is that people are living only within their own self and only see the world from within that self. They process all of reality in psychological ways. They therefore look for therapeutic benefits from Christian faith. This is not unnatural because living in our culture today is extraordinarily difficult and stressful and so many know the consequences such as broken homes and marriages. Nevertheless, God is not simply there to make up for what I don’t have in myself. He is not a fix for me. He is not there to be accessed on my terms, when I want, in my own way, as if I were a consumer and he a product. On the contrary, he stands over against us. He is not a part of our self, not an extension of it, but separate from it and, as such, in his character of total goodness and purity, he calls us to come before him on his terms and in his way.

CPYU: You equate "bottom-up spirituality" with paganism. What can parents and youth workers do to battle this trend while fostering a top-down Christian spirituality?

DW: Yes, the bottom-up spirituality—the spirituality I am here describing—is indeed what paganism was about. It was about sensing meaning inwardly. We miss this today because the way this kind of spirituality works is the way consuming works… and we are all consumers! In Christian faith, however, we cannot come before God as consumers! Why not? Because consumers all define their own needs and choose their own solutions. Before God, we do neither. He defines our need and only he can provide the solution. We come empty-handed to receive it.

CPYU: You tend to be critical of the seeker sensitive and emergent strains of Christianity that are so quickly embraced in today's world. Why is that?

DW: The market-driven churches—like Willow Creek—are now imploding. Hybels’ own study, “Reveal,” itself demonstrated that this approach had failed and, in fact, it could never have succeeded. It took the model of consuming and put Christian faith into that: the gospel is a product, the pastor is the sales person, the people in the audience are the consumers. The whole approach undercut biblical truth, however unintentionally. The emergents have recognized the failure of marketed faith but they are thinking that instead of casting Christian faith in consumer terms, they will do so more in generational terms, specifically Gen. X and the Millenials. Both approaches are producing a kind of cultural Christianity which really is the explanation as to why biblical faith is not sustaining itself in the West.

CPYU: If you were to address a room full of youth workers and you had the opportunity to communicate one message to them, what one message would you communicate?

DW: It is time to get brave. Let’s stop the pandering. Kids see right through it. Let’s give them the real thing. They are looking for it. No one has demanded anything of them; let us tell them that if they come to Christ, he bids them die. No one has told them that they can know truth as something other than their own private perspectives; let us tell them there is Truth and those who know it, lose their lives. No one has told them that there is a different way of life. What many churches have done has been to run after the kids fearing that they will be lost irretrievably to MTV, rock, sex, and drugs. So, better to give them small, undemanding doses of Christianity that won’t interfere too much with their lives and which they will be willing to accept, than none at all, we think to ourselves. Wrong! If we tell them that they can have Christ on their own terms, we are selling them down the river. They instinctively know that. So, let us not make fools of ourselves anymore.

Related Links:

Walt Mueller's Review of The Courage To Be Protestant

More books by David Wells in this series

Recommended Reading for Advent

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas, edited by Nancy Guthrie (Crossway, 2008)

Reviewed by Derek Melleby

Watching the news on Thanksgiving Day quickly reveals the often uncomfortable tensions in which we live. The lead stories are always the same: homeless shelters serve Thanksgiving meals to the poor and people campout in tents to receive deep discounts on Black Friday morning. The homeless are thankful to be inside, enjoying good food and company, while others take to the streets, sleeping outside, fighting the cold and crowds, in hopes of paying less for things they don’t really need. And then the bad news on Black Friday: gun shots at a Toys R Us, a Wal-Mart employee trampled to death, fights breaking out at outlet stores. What’s going on here?

And then in a blink, it’s the first Sunday of Advent. A candle is lit, parts of the Christmas story are read, and if you’re lucky, you get to sing a Christmas carol at church. Blink again: you’re at home, eating leftover turkey, watching football and commercials, hoping for “good news” later on 60 Minutes.

This is not meant to be an anti-consumer diatribe. I’m not trying to sound overly pessimistic. Here’s the truth: I desperately want Advent and Christmas to mean more. And the reality is that I’m included in any indictment on our North American culture. I long for the poor to fed, but do very little to help make that happen. I have so much stuff that I don’t need, but I still bargain shop with the best of them. My hunch is that I’m not alone in these struggles. Here’s what I’m learning: recognizing and acknowledging the tension and frustration of the Holiday Season is what Advent is all about. We will only be ready for the Messiah when we come to grips with how much we need His salvation.

Helping me to remember the true meaning of this season, yet again, is a splendid new collection of Advent readings edited by Nancy Guthrie: Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas. The 22 readings include works from classic theologians (e.g. George Whitefield, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards) and contemporary pastors (e.g. John Piper, Tim Keller, J.I. Packer, Randy Alcorn). In the preface, Guthrie explains that she wanted to put together a book of short readings from writers that “reflected a high view of Scripture and that put the incarnation in the context of God’s unfolding plan of redemption.” This is a magnificent, one-of-a-kind collection that challenges and encourages readers to remember Jesus’ arrival and long for his return. Read it after the nightly news for maximum benefit! And, of course, I’m sure you can find it at a discounted price somewhere!

Related Links:
More about Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus and see the full list of contributing writers

More about Nancy Guthrie and her ministry