Reflections of the Kingdom

When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation by Andrew Root My rating: 4 of 5 stars There are a lot of theories to explain the decline in participation in mainline christian churches. One common idea is that struggling churches just aren’t doing enough to keep their memberships actively involved. Today we see any number of activities that compete with the church for our time and church is simply getting prioritized last (symptom 1 of the secular age). The other two “symptoms” are variants of the same theme (churches simple have less influence and our belief has simply changed/evolved and church hasn’t left up). The success of Mega Churches seem to highlight the truth of all this; however, this book strikes a different tone. Doing for the sake of doing doesn’t work and just leads to burn-out. What is needed is the patience to wait for God’s action instead of acting on our own. This is a particula...

Triumph Over Trauma: Find Healing and Wholeness from Past Pain by Gregory L. Jantz My rating: 5 of 5 stars Written in three (3) parts, this book looks at how we experience trauma, how trauma affects us and how we can recover from trauma. Each chapter is fairly short, introduces a single concept clearly in easily understood/common language that is generally supported by some research or study and a brief reference to scripture and/or faith in God. It is not as heavy handed as many religious self-help books that I have encountered, but for readers that generally eschew any spirituality, it might be distracting or otherwise difficult to get by. I thought it stuck a good balance. The chapters ended with a “Your Personal Healing Steps” that seemed to be very pointed and practical … making the over all book very well organized. The author was clearly able to comfortably cover holistic/non-traditional medicine such as aromatherapy, acupuncture, biofeedback,...

Words with God: Trading Boring, Empty Prayer for Real Connection by Addison D Bevere My rating: 4 of 5 stars Prayer in three (3) parts. Part one looks at recognizing the Voice of God vs the Voice of the Adversary. While the concept of the quiet voice is fairly de rigueur the analogy with a Canyon Echo was a bit of a stretch for me. There were a few interesting observation though, such as life on the canyon wall switchbacks, our tendency to want answers immediately (just can’t wait) and the role of pain/suffering in spiritual growth (a common Catholic view point) Part two tries to give us a useful definitions of the Kingdom of God and our place in it (aka there should be no separation of secular and sacred), as well as the need to practice being good. No new revelations for me here; however, I will acknowledge that for most it might be. Part three seems to look a basic characteristics of prayer, presumable to make prayer better. There is no formula or...

Godbreathed: What It Really Means for the Bible to be Divinely Inspired by Zack Hunt My rating: 4 of 5 stars The principle concept presented by Godbreathed is the idea that the literal interpretation of the Bible, largely attributed to fundamentalists, has been toxic to the christian faith and the author is calling for a return to complex and rich exegesis that mines the spiritual truth of the stories that doesn’t depend on the inerrant historical facts there in. This is pitched as a return to Hebrew scriptural tradition … presumable something like a midrash … and may make the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura problematic. If the reader subscribes to a tradition that mandates a literal reading of an inerrant Holy Bible, this book is not for you and is unlikely to change your mind. However, if the reading is struggling with resolving all of the apparent discrepancies and contradictions that a literal interpretation creates, this book provides some...

Paradoxes of the Highest Science by Éliphas Lévi My rating : 3 of 5 stars Performance : ** Story : **** The narration was a bit laconic for my taste and I found it a little difficult to stay focused. This seems to be the favored style for spiritual/mystical books, where this definitely sits. Organized in 10 unlabeled chapters over 4.5 hours, the first 7 cover the advertised paradoxes (aka oxymorons) that were fairly interesting given the confluence of christian theology and occult magic (not normally grouped together). In that respect, it really comes across as a pseudo-gnostic text that tries really hard to pivot away from literal translations of the christian new testament to provide a more allegorical interpretation (that apparently allows for magic). Even more surprising was the strong defense of Catholicism in chapter 9, which summed up the author’s 51 precepts, beginning with a statement that man only has two (2) means by which s/he may attain cer...