Dear ______: I’m glad to hear that you are seeing the pattern inside my recommended reading strategies. For all those I’ve told you about so far (primary sources, textbooks, and scholarly studies) the pattern is to get a clear big picture, and then moved toward the details. Think of it as the concentric circles that emerge […]
Interview with Rich Hansen, author of Paradox Lost
I met Richard P. Hansen when I was giving a set of lectures on missional Christian community at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia Missouri where he was then pastor. I was really excited to hear about Paradox Lost, a book he was writing about paradox in the Christian faith — and now it is in print! May […]
Review: A Goodness I Cannot Explain
Imagine: You start having odd symptoms. Your doctor does a scan of your head. There is a tumor. Two treatments are possible: each has very serious risks. How do you decide? That is the situation Rev. Catherine Stewart faced a few years back. The journey that follows is the subject of her new book, A Goodness […]
Join my “Review Crew” and help launch my new Christmas Play!
I’m about to publish a Christmas play. (I call it “Christmas Play.” Pretty catchy, eh?) I am totally psyched about this project. It is designed for production in churches. It focuses squarely on the real Christmas story, weaving the biblical text of every Gospel passage about the coming of Christ into one story. I’d love to […]
Review of “Loaded Words: Freeing 12 Hard Bible Words From Their Baggage”
I met Heather Choate Davis and Leann Luchinger at a conference. We traded books and talked about historical theology. It was a great way to pass the time at an event where none of us fit in. At all. They told me about the book they were working on: Loaded Words: Freeing 12 Hard Bible Words […]