Book reviews 12/3
Finished reading a couple books this week. It’s been slow moving… been watching too many movies apparently.
SFWA Grand Masters: Volume 2 (various authors)
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I’m a huge sci-fi fan. Years ago, I had this goal of reading all the Hugo Award and Nebula Award winning novels… and novellas… and short stories… and watching associated movies… well, you get the picture. In hind-sight, that was pretty silly, though I’ve enjoyed most of the ones I’ve read to date (quite a few). This book is the second compilation of five authors who received the SFWA Grand Master Award. These guys are good. I liked this one slightly more than Volume 1, since two of my favorite sci-fi authors were included: Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. I can’t get enough of their works, and they have both written far too many.
Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile (Rob Bell, Don Golden)
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This book sparked a few heated discussions between T and me, to put it lightly. :) There were some seemingly anti-American statements early on in the book that pretty much kept her from reading the entire thing and trying to take the good parts away. I tried really hard to like it, as Rob Bell has been a favorite pastor of mine for a few years (listen to his sermons here). I think he and Don had some good points to make about the Church as it is today, and perhaps where it needs to go. However, they cut the book off way too early without coming back around to support the strong statements made in the beginning and in a few places in the middle. I would call it more of a “teaser” book, which gets you thinking a bit and then you have to go off and figure out the rest on your own, which is quite likely what they intended. Here’s a small excerpt (pp159-160) which I think speaks to that, and is a good point all by itself.
Share on FacebookThe measure of a sermon is not whether it affirms what you already believe. A sermon is not a product to be consumed and then evaluated according to how good it was or whether it was pleasing or enjoyable. If a sermon can be resolved in the time it took to deliver it, then it missed something central to what a sermon even is. … The sermon is about starting the discussion. The sermon is about having the first word. The sermon is a catalyst that inspires people into whole new ways of seeing their lives.
