I love books,
I love reading them on the kindle
I love them even more on the ipad.
I don´t read enough.
I love reading them on the kindle
I love them even more on the ipad.
I don´t read enough.
I am a painfully slow reader.
I have very minimal goals for book reading in a year.
I have a long list of want-to-reads
I probably will accomplish a small fraction of that list in a years time
I probably will accomplish a small fraction of that list in a years time
Perhaps publishing this part of my life online will spur me to read more and better books.
Maybe that inspires you to read too.
Books I have already completed this year and a brief thought about them:
The Holiness of God by RC Sproul
Cut out the first and last chapters and the book increases in value exponentially. A much smarter man than myself, he is a very good writer and I found this book to be a surprisingly easy read. I did not care for the first or last chapters (but I already said that). Chapter 8 was very useful, the best chapter in the book and one worth reading again.Full Disclosure- a free kindle book, that I downloaded soon after we received the kindle for Christmas last year, It quickly sold me on the benefits of a kindle reader.
The Pursuit of God by AW Tozer
Full confession: I didn´t actually finish it. Perhaps it got a lot better as the book went along but I got bored and gave up before I finished. Tozer was a mystic and a godly man, I hope my life can impact half the number of people he has impacted throughout time. However, I prefer to dig in the scriptures to discover God rather than finding keys for a spiritual/experiential search for God in mysticism.
Full disclosure- another free kindle book
Stop Dating the Church by Josh Harris
So I´ve read and used Josh´s books on dating with youth on a number of occasions. He is a blessing to the body of Christ. I was excited to find this book in a church book store and wish I had read it years ago. He wrote it in 2004 and I found it to be a helpful companion to many of the thoughts about the Church that God is forming in my life at this time. I do not agree with Mr Harris on all of his theological stands, he has a particularly helpful section about redeeming Sundays. It is full of practical tips that help make a church experience on a Sunday morning a lot more meaningful to the sleepy-eyed, I-just-rolled-out-of-bed, crazy-saturday-night-movie-watchers, that mark most of our church experiences.
9 Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever
I first read the companion pamphlet about the Marks of a Healthy Church in português after Mark spoke at the Fiel Conference in Brazil a couple of years ago. I was exceptionally blessed by his perspective and willingness to reclaim and preach the importance of church body life. We can debate the 9 Marks and which others we might include/exclude but this was a challenging book to me to rethink my perspective of the gospel and the role of the church in my life. This is a helpful tool to the body of Christ.
Mark is reformed. I do not agree with all of his reformed theology. He is a voice calling for the sufficiency of Scripture, biblical leadership, the pure gospel, and many other things.
Extreme Righteousness by Tom Hovestol
I wrote my thoughts about this book last week but it didn't get uploaded and I lost it. I did not do good justice to this book because of the shear length of time. It is hard to get a good feel for what an author wants to say when you spread out the reading of his book over months (!!). Part of the reason for that was that I felt that he could have said it in a lot fewer words and chapters. Namely this: We love to beat up on the Pharisees for their boneheaded self-righteousness. We should find ourselves in them, we are shamefully like them. Christ calls us to be found in Him, our righteousness not of our religiousity but of our faith. This book became an excellent resource on Pharisaism and lends a lot of background and history to the pharisees, their beliefs and their heritage.
Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshal and Tony Payne
I listened to a workshop that the authors gave three or four times before I bought the book and read it. My greatest sadness: the book is not published in a kindle version, but I managed to mark it up quite a bit and enjoyed the hard copy in my hands. After listened to the authors speak, I was excited about the book and anxious to read it for two reasons: the ministerial concept is one that I am in the process of learning and seeing first hand and for most of my ministry experience, I have not seen these things take place.
His point is this: every Christian should be involved in the work of ministry, evangelizing and discipling others to walk with God. In making the point, the authors make an interesting observation that the Bible does not speak of two different classes of Christians, those who are especially spiritual who go farther and the rest of the masses who are nominal. We can debate the ramifications of this.
I felt a bit uncomfortable at the case for every Christian in ministry that does not have to be as forced as I felt the authors made it. The case is right there in the New Testament, it isn't hard to find.
I felt exceedingly blessed to read the final three chapters. They were worth the price of the book as they lay out some practical things that shift a ministry mindset away from professional clergy who do the work of the ministry to pastors and elders who disciple and train others to disciple and train others.
The authors are not dispensational. They do have a lot to offer.
She Calls Me Daddy by Robert Wolgemuth
A quick little read, even for me! There were some very helpful things in the book and for the most part, it was helpful from cover to cover. To call it "light" in some ways would be an understatement as he made some remarkable simple statements for what I would assume to be the most basic of knowledge about parenting. However, there were many useful things of which I have tried to put things into practice in my relationship with my daughter.
Perhaps it is the audience Mr. Wolgemuth is targeting with his writing, perhaps it is just the shallow nature of pop-christianity. But it is nothing like the hard-hitting practical and important things that some other writers include in their books about parenting: Shepherding a Child's Heart, Don't Make me Count to Three which I would recomend way ahead of this book.
Nonetheless, I learned much, and have tried to adjust my building style to reflect some of the truths he includes.
Introdução ao aconselhamento Bíblico por John MacArthur e Wayne Mack
Finally I worked my way through this book. It took me a long time! It has been a helpful and meaningful read, a basic text book on biblical counseling. It has been challenging for my portugues understanding. My book is full of dog ears and underlined paragraphs. I will keep it handy for reference sake and perhaps pick it up again in a couple of years to glean from its wisdom.
His point is this: every Christian should be involved in the work of ministry, evangelizing and discipling others to walk with God. In making the point, the authors make an interesting observation that the Bible does not speak of two different classes of Christians, those who are especially spiritual who go farther and the rest of the masses who are nominal. We can debate the ramifications of this.
I felt a bit uncomfortable at the case for every Christian in ministry that does not have to be as forced as I felt the authors made it. The case is right there in the New Testament, it isn't hard to find.
I felt exceedingly blessed to read the final three chapters. They were worth the price of the book as they lay out some practical things that shift a ministry mindset away from professional clergy who do the work of the ministry to pastors and elders who disciple and train others to disciple and train others.
The authors are not dispensational. They do have a lot to offer.
She Calls Me Daddy by Robert Wolgemuth
A quick little read, even for me! There were some very helpful things in the book and for the most part, it was helpful from cover to cover. To call it "light" in some ways would be an understatement as he made some remarkable simple statements for what I would assume to be the most basic of knowledge about parenting. However, there were many useful things of which I have tried to put things into practice in my relationship with my daughter.
Perhaps it is the audience Mr. Wolgemuth is targeting with his writing, perhaps it is just the shallow nature of pop-christianity. But it is nothing like the hard-hitting practical and important things that some other writers include in their books about parenting: Shepherding a Child's Heart, Don't Make me Count to Three which I would recomend way ahead of this book.
Nonetheless, I learned much, and have tried to adjust my building style to reflect some of the truths he includes.
Introdução ao aconselhamento Bíblico por John MacArthur e Wayne Mack
Finally I worked my way through this book. It took me a long time! It has been a helpful and meaningful read, a basic text book on biblical counseling. It has been challenging for my portugues understanding. My book is full of dog ears and underlined paragraphs. I will keep it handy for reference sake and perhaps pick it up again in a couple of years to glean from its wisdom.
Current Read: O Que É um Membro de Igreja Saudável? por Thabiti Anyabwile
Later this year:
Border Warden by Murray Mills
Later this year:
Border Warden by Murray Mills
A Gospel Primer for Christians by Milton Vincent
Obediência à Visão Celestial por Sam Doherty
No Mundo, mas Não Do Mundo por William MacDonald
The Gagging of God by D. A Carson
Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters
Church Planting Movements
Don´t Make me Count to Three
Jesus Himself by Andrew Murray
Church Planting Manual by Tim Keller
Redeeming the Gospel from the American Dream
Church Planting is for Wimps by McKinley
How Long, O Lord by D. A. Carson
Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons by Thabiti M. Anyabwile
Here´s to many more hours with the kindle this year! (Thanks Mom and Dad O.!!)
Feel free to leave your comments and impressions of these books or the ones you have been reading lately.
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