Books for 2008, installment 1

I have resolved to read one hundred books in 2008. Yesterday, I listed ten of my favorites from last year. Here's a list of a few of the hundred (again, in no particular order):

The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor (I'm actually almost finished with this one. Taylor is probably my all time favorite Southern writer).
What Jesus Demands from the World, by John Piper
Planting Missional Churches, by Ed Stetzer
Something by Flannery O'Connor
Something by Wendell Berry
The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative, by Christopher J. H. Wright
A Theology for the Church, ed. Daniel Akin
The Diary and Journals of David Brainerd
Prayer, by Richard Foster
I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
Announcing the Kingdom, by Arthur F. Glasser

I have a long list of readings for my seminars, a couple of which are included here (like Stetzer), but these are some "pleasure" reads. I'll add more as the year goes on.

Night

As you can see in my "current reading" list, I've just started Night by Elie Wiesel. This short book (only 109 pages in my copy) is Wiesel's memoir of his experiences as a boy in Nazi ghettoes and then concentration camps. It is a powerful read. The Shoah still has a profound effect in Europe.

In April, 1945, the last of the camps were liberated by Allied forces. After visiting the Deportation Memorial in Paris and then hearing from survivors during the 60th anniversary commemorations two years ago, I decided that I should read this little book every April for the rest of my life. Today, I'm starting my fourth time. I look forward to sharing with you as I go.

Theology, Methodology, Ecclesiology, Oh my!

As I was preparing to write more about J.D. Payne's article on ecclesiology and church planting, I decided to check out an article he refers to in the first few paragraphs. In the April 1998 edition of Evangelical Missions Quarterly, Tom Julien, of Grace Brethren International Ministries, addressed the question, "what is a local church?" Going further, he distinguished between the essence of the church as revealed in the New Testament and the expression of the church in cultures. The gist of his argument is that church planters must distill the essence of the church in order to plant a culturally appropriate expression of the church. Dr. Payne agrees, saying that ecclesiology, our theology of the church, is the "most critical issue in church planting today."

As I was thinking about all this, I was also involved in an online discussion for one of my doctoral seminars on the emerging church movement. We were talking about whether the "conversation" is more about theology or methodology (maybe I can tell you more about that discussion and its origins in the future). I suggested an article that I found through Joe Thorn's blog: Mark DeVine's discussion of the emerging church movement and Southern Baptists. In that article, DeVine says that leader "Scot McKnight insists that the movement is about ecclesiology, not theology."

But what is ecclesiology if not theology? My classmate Lloyd caught that contradiction immediately. Certainly, our ecclesiology plays itself out in our methodology, and our methodology reveals our theology. Can those be separated? If you add our emphasis on strategy to the mix, things really get interesting. Does our strategy, which includes our methodology, line up with our theology, especially our ecclesiology? Maybe it does, but I'm not sure.

I want to work on these questions, though maybe with fewer words ending in "-gy." We'll see where it goes.

Church and Culture

Two of my seminars this semester relate to topics that, at first glance, seem different: emerging churches and cultural anthropology. The key word there is "seem." I am amazed (and thankful) how much these two seminars fit together and are impacting my work. Cultural anthropology is about studying why people live, think, and act like they do. How does that culture impact the way that we share the gospel? It's a subject traditionally saved for missionaries. On the other hand, the emerging church "movement" in the US and Western Europe (especially Britain) is very much about impacting culture by living in it, which means studying why people live, think, and act like they do.

One great example of how this study is impacting my work is through a book called To Every Tribe with Jesus: Understanding and Reaching Tribal Peoples for Christ by David Sitton. As the title suggests, it's a book about unreached tribal peoples and, more specifically, about animistic cultures. I must admit that I first thought the book would be the first of the semester that didn't relate to my life in France (or the US). I was wrong. Ralph Winter suggests in the foreword that the book has much to say for those working in postmodern cultures, and he's right. Our world is very much affected by animism. Here in France, there are more fortune tellers and astrologists than there are ministers or priests.

It is a valuable exercise for us as missionaries, pastors, or church members to step back and consider our own world as another culture. When we come to our community as learners of culture, we might very well discover that all our reaching out is, in fact, cross-cultural missions.

The passing of a blog...

A few months ago, I was inspired by a friend to write a blog about what I've been reading. I made all of one post: the introduction. That blog, En Train de Lire, is no more. Instead of two separate blogs, I'll just post from time to time about my reading here on Dayspring Project. If you're curious about what I'm reading at the moment, I've added a list in the sidebar.

Feel free to comment on your own reading, especially if we happen to be reading the same thing.