Although this book is a lot of theory thus far (70 pages in), and one of the broadest scopes I’ve read on movements like the emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic streams of the church.  It’s a lot of material, but this point, which affects us all, is new to me.  It truly illuminates some of the things that we are blind to as a pop-media driven culture:

Not only does this imperial global economy claim to define what is ultimate, I believe it is increasingly colonizing the imaginations of peoples all over our planet to buy in to its notions of what constitutes the good life and better future.  No wonder that many of Islamic faith are concerned.  And we should be too.

While our Christian faith fully embraces the material and economic world, we know that for those working from a Christian worldview, the ultimate is never defined primarily in economic terms.  We affirm that the ultimate will only be found in a different reality and a different dream for the global future, defined by the restoration of our relationship to the creator God.  It is a dream in which he ultimate is found in seeing broken lives restored.  It is a dream in which justice finally comes for the poor, wholeness for God’s good creation and shalom for the nations.

The New Conspirators: Creating The Future One Mustard Seed At A Time by Tom Swine (pg. 69)

I know not everyone is on the Getting Things Done bandwagon, but it really is hard for me to go an entire day without seeing a reference to GTD. I picked the book up about a week before I went to Mexico.  Everything in it so far has brought out the “that makes sense” comment, and even a few, “this is genius” comments.  I did one little exercise that it said to do where you take a big project that you have been thinking a lot about, and then you write down one sentence that summarizes what it will be like when it is finished.  Then you write down the very next action that you need to take on the project.  Then that’s it.  For now.  I actually stopped thinking about the project and focused on what I was working on instead.  It was genius.  I wasn’t any further along on the project, but I had put down on paper everything that got it out of my head.  I’m now in the thick of it, and I’ve got these stacks of everything I could ever want to get done on my desk, and I didn’t do what he said.  He said to make sure to have 2 days to go through it, and I was like, well, I’ve got 3 hours, so I can start now.  Big mistake.  I don’t know when I’m going to have time for those stacks.  It really is changing how I see managing what I do.  I need to get those stacks unstacked though.  But it’s too late.  I need sleep.  Hopefully I find some time soon.

I recently finished two books, The Dip by Seth Godin, and Uprising by Erwin McManus.
The best thing from Seth was that quitting a lot of the wrong things is the only way to succeed in the right thing. It’s not the same as giving up. At all.
The best from Erwin was the the whole book. It was kind of like one giant kick in the pants. Get going. Not in 6 months. Now. Very substantial motivation. Loved it.

Next up: A.J. Jacobs‘ The Year of Living Biblically. Hopefully it is as lighthearted as it seems.

I just started Uprising by Erwin McManus. Right off the bat he starts talking about some stuff that really hits home with me, but the biggest thing is the difference between opportunity and freedom. He tells a story about a pianist that calls someone up out of the audience at a performance and tells them they are free to play whatever they want. The problem is that the person doesn’t know how to play. The thing is that opportunity is empty without discipline. Freedom only comes when discipline has given us the skills to play. It’s a beautiful picture of the importance of ground work in everything we aspire to, but especially in our relationship with God. The discipling isn’t to be a better person, or level up, or get more HP, brownie points, etc.; it is so we can be free. It’s like there is this opportunity, but we don’t know what to do with it. Instead of sitting down and listening to the teacher, practicing scales and chord formations, we try to play. We figure out chopsticks and play it for the rest of our lives. We think chopsticks is all there is, and the worst part is that we think we’re really good at playing chopsticks. We mess up sometimes, but when we get it right, it’s awesome. It just sucks that it’s still chopsticks. Endless opportunity doesn’t equal freedom. I have never thought about it like this before.

I got a shelfari. There is a small one on the side of the site, but the site is pretty cool. You can catalog all of the books you own, tag them, mark them as read, put them on your list, share them with friends, rank them, etc. Plus they have plugins for blogs. You can check my shelf out here, and if you set up your library, add me as a friend (wow, that feels lame to say that). I guess it’s all in context, right?

I just finished Donald Miller’s book Through Painted Deserts. It was a pleasant read and reminded me why I loved Blue Like Jazz. His style weaves honesty with creative prose like few others I have read (note:I’m not very well read). His books read so quick, and they take you to a place where you try to go but can’t. That contemplative, need to figure things out, but for real this time, stop just living and start living sort of place. And on that note, I saw this post the other day. That’s right. Blue Like Jazz the movie. Weird. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not. We’ll see.

This book has gripped me. It is like I have lived in this shelter, and this book has deconstructed the shelter. And now, ideas that were just small inlets of light into life are vivid realities, all around me. I’m gripped. It’s like I’ve realized all of these personal and corporate limitations on God, and now that I know that I’ve been suffocating myself, I need to shake it off. It’s a process that I need, and I can’t even explain it in a way that is going to make sense, but this book just makes sense.

Velvet Elvis made me think, “Where was all this info before, and why didn’t my sunday school teachers know this stuff?” Then Blue Like Jazz vocalized the things I felt inside in a way that led me to tears as I dealt with the words on the page breathing life into thoughts that had just been bouncing around inside my head, like Donald Miller was speaking for me. And this book just ripped the blinders off. It was like here are some ideas, these are how these ideas worked for me, and now, these ideas are real, and this is what it looks like to take Jesus at his word. I finished it this morning, and I brought it with me to Mugshots in case I needed to quote stuff from it, but I can’t think of just one thing. I guess the most real part to me, the part that sets the stage for everything else is in the beginning when he talks about how we hear over and over how people’s lives were going to crap, and then they met Jesus, and they just can’t thank him enough for pulling them out of that life. But when you grow up in the church, and you hear that story over and over, this new life doesn’t really feel so much like life. “If God was as boring as Sunday morning, I wasn’t sure I wanted to have anything to do with him.” He goes through what it was like to really follow Jesus, and as he is introing this idea, he says “…me, I had it together. I used to be cool. And then I met Jesus and he wrecked my life.”

As I process this stuff, it starts to freak me out, but I hope for fire. I hope that I live in this community, and the sparks catch kindling, and another world clashes with this one.

I am moving on to The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne. The place he lives just burned down, and they are accepting donations. Click his name to read more about it. Everybody is reading this book, and Rick used a story from it in This Beautiful Mess. It climbed my stack quick.

Currently Reading: The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne.

Next Up:
1.In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day by Mark Batterson
2.Sex God by Rob Bell
3.An Unstoppable Force by Erwin McManus
4.The Dip by Seth Godin
5.ReUnderstanding Prayer by Kyle Lake

I finished this book this morning. I’m pretty sure this is the second time I’ve ever been confident in saying that using beautiful as an adjective is an understatement. (The first time has to do with this girl rhonda) I’ve taken my time through this book, that is short enough to breeze through, but it cuts too deep to be breezy. I can’t quote anything in it’s entirety here, but the beauty in the writing in this book, not just by Rick, but by many of the people from Imago Dei work me over. The one entitled ‘advent’ will make itself at home somewhere in my home soon. I’m not sure how or where, but it provokes you to live. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I started reading a new book (finished Reinventing Jesus last weekend) called This Beautiful Mess by Rick McKinley.  He is the pastor at Imago Dei in Portland, which you may know from Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz.  It is already compelling, and will be worth it’s weight in words, I can already tell.  My favorite line thus far is “In all the tidiness, the wonder of the gospel of Jesus seemed to be disappearing.”  A lot of the book hurts when you read it, but it grows you all the same.

So life is messy, which is certainly addressed in this book, and there is a part in Chapter 6 where he goes into this story about living in a hospital while his son is sick.  It’s heart wrenching, but it leads me to share.  I beg you to pray for this boy that I know.  A friend of mine, Nate Oates, is currently pastoring a church in Lincoln called Emmaus.  A little over a week ago, his 4 year old son, Isaiah Oates, was diagnosed with Leukemia.  You can read about it here, but I challenge you to read the post, Rough Night, Encouraging Morning.  It has redefined what it means for me to have faith like a child.

side note: It also made it 10 times harder to sing ‘You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.’  Honesty hurts, and it is so hard to be completely honest when singing most worship songs.  Maybe some people think I shouldn’t say that, but they probably don’t think about what they are singing anyway.