I just finished reading an interesting book called Counterfeit Revival, by Hank Hanegraff. The book was written at the height of what Charismatic/Pentecostals were calling a fresh renewal or revival in North America. You may remember this time (starting around 1994 and ending in 2001) as a church in Pensacola, Brownsville, and one in Toronto were getting some media attention due to strange things happening in their meetings. Hundreds of Christians were flocking to these towns to ‘catch the fire’ and bring it back to their local churches. My home church was no exception.

As I read the book which recounts tales of people falling down, shaking, and laughing uncontrollably, I couldn’t help but think how impressionable I was back then and how easily people buy into wacko stuff. This renewal ended up signaling the beginning of the end of our church. Within a few years of buying into hyper-charismania our church shrunk dramatically in size with many people falling away from the faith and many more still disenfranchised because the truth of who God was had been exchanged for an experience that couldn’t last.

Unfortunately emotional experience dealers like Benny Hinn still have a stage and many charismatic churches still focus more on the experience than the truth. Even recently, people like Todd Bentley managed to rally and deceive people into coming to a ’spiritual’ experience, while cheating on his wife behind the scenes.

Back to the book. I’d recommend anyone that has grown up or experienced hyper-charasmatic doctrine to read it. It’s a very truthful examination of some very unfortunate practices in the Christian culture. For me, reading some of the stories was a blast from the past.

Finished another interesting book last night - although I should preface the interesting part with; interesting primarily to entrenched evangelicals or people who have grown up going to church.

A New Kind of Christian by Brian Mclaren is a fictional diaologue between a Pastor and Science Teacher (who is actually a former pastor). Through their dialogue they wrestle with issues of cultural Christianity and the challenge to be a new kind of Christian in a post-modern world and what that may look like.

This book resonated with me on a lot of levels and had I read it when it was written several years ago, probably would have rocked my own theology pretty good. The call to get out of the church [building] and be agents of social change is one that has been rippling through the American church lately. The biggest catalyst of this new kind of thinking about Christian life has been because of people like Mclaren and what is being called the Emergent conversation or movement. Books like A New Kind of Christian don’t seek to give all the answers but ask a lot of questions that are indictive of the upcoming generations approach to spirituality.

Who should read it? If you’ve grown up in the church but have always felt like some things are a bit off or if you are currently a leader in the church than this book will challenge your thinking about “Christian culture”.

I haven’t been doing a lot of reading since the summer but recently read a short book called “I sold me soul on eBay“.

The author is an atheist who decided it may be beneficial to his life to consider a religion (other than the one he grew up with - Jainism). Instead of picking from a plethora of religions himself, he decided to put the decision in the hands of eBay customers. The winning bidder turned out to be a Christian pastor, doh! The author was than asked to visit over a dozen churches and write his critique of them.

The book - while not a great piece of writing - is a great look into the church from a nonreligious persons point of view. The author who calls himself a ‘friendly atheist’ takes a very even keel approach to his critique and offers a lot of good advice to those who profess to be followers of Jesus.

While it’s true for any religion that the faith involved is highly subjective, my latest reading looks at some very objective reasons for believing in the Christian faith.

Who Made God? is a short (200 pages) Christian apologetics book, that deals with various questions that are often asked by Christians and to Christians. While many of the questions asked are only touched on - as far as the answers in the book go - it’s a good starter for anyone who is wanting to see the more factual (objective) side of their faith and in the back of the book there are resources for the reader who wants to dig deeper.

Last week was a busy one and so I didn’t have time to put up my weekly book report. So here are the last 2 books I’ve read.

Book 3: I decided to go with some lighter reading, and again read a book I’ve had for some time. Ten Million Steps chronicles my great uncle’s run across the United States back in the early 90’s. While this is a feat that has been accomplished before, (not just by Forrest Gump) there is a twist to this story. Paul Reese was 73 when he did it! It took him 124 days, where he averaged a marathon a day. His wife followed along in an RV and was his support crew. One interesting note is that my current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote the forward for the book which is essentially Paul’s journal of the run. By the age of 80 Paul had run across all 50 states.

Book 4: Ten Commandments Twice Removed was given to me by my Dad a couple of weeks ago and I thought (from the title) that it was going to be political/religious commentary on the Ten Commandments. The first half of the book was an interesting study on the Jewish (Old Testament) covenant vs. the New Covenant, established after Christ’s resurrection. The second half and the real point of the book, was on observing the Sabbath on Saturday. This is a Seventh Day Adventist belief and has really defined their denomination, hence the name. While it was an interesting read from a theological standpoint, it wasn’t a very complete argument and the title was misleading, which left me with a taste of propaganda in my mouth.

In week number 2 of my summer of reading, I finished a book that I had read the introduction of about 2 months ago.

‘The Myth of a Christian Nation’ by Gregory Boyd was a great follow up to the Jesus Style and really challenged my world view.

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So, my summer of reading is underway and it has started in a great way. My friend Dave loaned me a book a month or so ago, called The Jesus Style. I have to admit that since it was written in the early 80’s I was a little skeptical about its relevance. I was wrong.

The author (Gayle Erwin) did an excellent job of breaking through all of the religious dogma that surrounds the person of Jesus, to get to his character - character that displays power through servant hood, humility, childlikeness, and love.

In one of my favorite examples from the book He compares confession to taking a crap. If you do it regularly it’s good, easy, and healthy. If you don’t, it’s toxic, hard, and nasty.

I highly recommend this book if you want a fresh look at Jesus and especially if you’re in any type of religious leadership position.

It’s amazing how easy it is at the end of the day, to eat dinner and then plop in front of the TV until my brain goes into hibernation. It takes no effort to watch TV and after a night of doing it I’ve found it to be as good for me as eating a whole bag of Doritos. So with some exceptions, (like a Giants game here and there) Jess and I have decided to in large part abstain from TV for the summer.

I’ve decided to tack on an additional goal for myself to read a book a week, staring in June. I’ve been slowly stacking up a pile of books that I really want to read and aim to get caught up and read them all by the end of the summer. In order to stay accountable for this I’ll post a brief summary of the book that I read on my blog so that you know I’m staying committed. I’ll be adding a category called Books on the sidebar as well.