In bestseller Bell’s rousing fifth thriller, Alex Hawke fights the leaders of a new and invigorated Russia, where Vladimir Putin has been locked up in a lethal prison built over a massive radioactive waste site. Evil mastermind Count Ivan Korsakov (aka the Dark Rider) is determined to return Mother Russia to her rightful place in the world order by reacquiring her former colonies, after which he intends to conquer Europe and reign as the new tsar.

The only thing standing in his way is Hawke, who, is more than up to the task of thwarting those who try to take over the globe. Life throws Hawke a curve when he finds himself falling in love with the astoundingly beautiful Anastasia, who just happens to be Korsakov’s daughter.

This was a great book, lots of action, intrigue, and dramatic twists.  I thoroughly enjoyed it. it’s length if daunting - 512 pages - but it reads so easily and quickly, you hardly realize that you’ve spent hours reading.

In my journey to read 200 pages per week, next week offers me the opportunity to read the new book by Ron Martoia called Transformational Architecture: Reshaping Our Lives as Narrative.

Reimagining Church

Having dinner with Len Sweet last month, he brought up the book Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity by Frank Viola and asked if I had read it or not.  I noted that I had not, but in the midst of developing my life plan a few weeks ago I decided to order it and read it.

Here’s a partial book description from Amazon:

Viola, a leader in the house church movement, believes the church as we know it today is nothing like what God intended it to be. According to Viola, the first-century church, which should be our pattern, met in homes without any official pastor. All members of the church were involved in worship, spontaneously breaking out with teaching or song as they were moved. Decisions were not made until everyone reached consensus. There were no official leaders or elders, but there were men who served and taught and helped others, thus leading by example. Viola believes that to bring the church back on track, both clergy and denominations must be completely abolished. Churches should not have buildings nor should they worry about doctrinal statements.

Len told me that he loved reading paradigm busting books.  This book is certainly a paradigm busting book!  The above description is very appropriate.  Frank is an all or nothing guy.

In reading this book, I came to agree with Frank in many ways on the framework.  The devil, however, is in the details.

The one major issue I had regarded false teaching.  Frank believes that you should accept anyone into the organic church because they have been accepted by Christ.  In general, I would agree.  I posed to him a question, however, that created some concern.  My question was this:  What if you had someone who became part of your organic church that didn’t believe in the Trinity.  They believed Jesus died for their sins and that it was through him that one would spend eternity with God.  But they didn’t believe in the Trinity.  In fact, they had an apologetic against the trinity and got quite red-faced angry about it.

Now in a traditional church structure, that’s not a problem.  In Voila’s organic church framework, everyone is able to teach and share.  The danger is that this non-trinitarian person could stand and share his thoughts on the Trinity.  He would have be lovingly corrected and proper teaching on the subject would have to be done, especially for those young in the faith.  But what if this became a common practice?  His response to me was :

I’ve met Christians who were confused or mistaught on the Trinity, but they clearly believed in Jesus Christ, followed Him, accepted his Deity, his saviorhood and Lordship, etc. They later came to believe in the Trinue God after they were patiently instructed about it. Apollos wasnt’ clear on the fundamentals of the faith too before Priscilla and Aquila instructed him. But he was received because God received him.

I would have concerns about this, quite honestly.  I don’t want this one issue to define the church.  I don’t constantly want to have to deal with this issue every time we meet, or on any consistent basis.  We would either have to mutually decide (but can’t mutually decide in Viola’s framework because it’s a unanimous consensus) to remove him from the community or I would have to leave.

The all or nothing strategy also appears to work against him when one considers the church from 100-300 A. D.  The way they socialized people and dealt with new Christ-followers is different than the details of what he is proposing based on my reading of Webber and his Ancient Future material.

Again, I think the framework is solid; some of the details are worrisome.

This paradigm rips the heart out of USAmerican Christianity, and possibly Western Christianity as well.

What this paradigm does is put me and a lot of my friends on the street looking for work.  That’s not to say it’s a bad thing - we may actually begin to see transformation and revival come to our world.  Of course, that also scares many pastors to death because they can’t do anything else.  All they have is a Bible degree and a M.Div.

However, I would encourage you to read it even though you know you won’t agree with it all.  I think in the USA there is going to be a decline of Christianity (I’ve written about the coming church transition here) and if we are going to reach people we will have to be prepared for it.

A little technology post here.  I have a mac and last week I ran upon a program called Books.  It is an open-source book cataloging application for MacOS X.

What it does is allow you to use the ISBN number (or author or title, etc) of any book you own to create an entry into its system so that you can keep track of your cool book collection.  It even has a section to record to whom you might have loaned the book out.  But it gets better!

It actually has a button that if you click it, the program will engage your iSight camera (or any other default video camera attached to your computer) and produce a video capture screen that has a series of lines on it.  If you put the bar code of the book up to those series of lines, it will read the bar code, grab the ISBN, put it in the new book ISBN section so that you can click “Quick Fill”.  It will then go out to the internet database you have chosen (I use amazon’s US site) and download all the information about the book into your database.

Voila!  You have cataloged your entire collection in no time.

Give it a try!

The Barnabas Factors

The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members, by author and professor J. D. Payne, describes how Barnabas should be considered as a model for contemporary church planting team members. Each chapter of this work addresses a particular “Barnabas Factor, ” a healthy aspect of Barnabas’ life that assisted in Kingdom expansion. The eight practices include:

1. Walks with the Lord
2. Maintains an Outstanding Character
3. Serves the Local Church
4. Remains Faithful to the Call
5. Shares the Gospel Regularly
6. Raises Up Leaders
7. Encourages with Speech and Actions
8. Responds Appropriately to Conflict

Dr. J.D. Payne is a National Missionary with the North American Mission Board and an Associate Professor of Evangelism and Church Planting in the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Having taught church planting and evangelism courses in evangelical institutions for nine years and served with several church planting teams and with the largest Protestant evangelical missions agency in North America, Dr. Payne is aware of the lack of quality church planting resources, particularly resources addressing church planting teams.

The book will be available later this week.  Purchase the book at the discounted rate of $14.99 $12.99 by going here. It is coming soon to online and brick and mortar retailers.

Praise for The Barnabas Factors:

Given the risky and pioneering nature of church planting, it is essential to develop healthy relationships amongst members of the founding team. Here J. D. Payne gives us a biblical model of engendering healthy team dynamics by looking to the life and ministry of Barnabas. This is a book for those of us who want to keep a joyful camaraderie whilst advancing the kingdom.

Alan Hirsch
Author of The Forgotten Ways and The Shaping of Things to Come
Founding director of Shapevine.com

The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members is a unique and much needed book for anyone interested in church planting. I strongly believe it is a must-read for newly appointed missionaries and just as essential for veteran missionaries. This book powerfully sets forth the need for godly personal characteristics that are vital for successful church planting teams. The diagnostic tool at the conclusion of the book will be a great help in evaluating potential team members.

Charles Brock
President, Church Growth International
Author of Indigenous Church Planting: A Practical Journey

I highly recommend this book. From end to end it is practical: it’s the relationship stuff, the personal qualities of team members, and the realistic nuts and bolts of ministry that are so ultimately determinative to fruitfulness in the church planting and team contexts. Payne brings great clarity as to what is a missionary “call.” And for no extra charge there is a powerful tool at the end pulling all the principles together to help you decide who to take onto your team and who not to. A must-read for all church planters.

Daniel Sinclair
Author of A Vision of the Possible: Pioneer Church Planting in Teams

You reproduce what you are! In The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members, J. D. skillfully uses Barnabas to expose eight critical factors that enable a person to be an effective team player. Often, in the West we focus on glittery leaders; J. D. focuses on Barnabas, the glue of Paul’s first team. He does an excellent job of making these attributes practical and applicable in the team church planting context . . . The book certainly should be read by those headed for the field and those teams already functioning in a field context.

Dick Scoggins
Head of Leadership Development, Frontiers
Author of Building Effective Church Planting Teams

Dr. J. D. Payne stresses the crucial need for possessing the personal and character qualities that were evident in the life and ministry of Barnabas. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those who are dead serious about planting churches that are built on a solid biblical foundation and impacting their communities in the same manner in which the churches started by Barnabas and his team members impacted theirs.

Daniel R. Sanchez
Director, Scarborough Institute for Church Planting and Growth,
Roy Fish School of Evangelism and Missions,
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Having served as a church-planting missionary and trainer of church planters for over twenty years, I believe the greatest obstacles to effective church planting teams were, and today remain, unresolved team conflict and personal character issues of team members. Now there is a tool to help church planters be more proactive in effectively selecting suitable team members. If there is a priority need today in church planting, it is a need for the church planting team members first to be people of exemplary Christ-like character . . . Payne’s book addresses this issue in a clear and concise manner. This tool is a necessity for every church planter’s, mission agency’s, and church’s toolkit as they seek to develop and deploy effective church planting teams for the glory of God.

R. Bruce Carlton
Associate Professor of Missions, Boyce College
Author of Acts 29: Practical Training in Facilitating Church-Planting Movements Among the Neglected Harvest Fields

J. D. Payne offers sound biblical advice for building a strong church planting team. Often, in an attempt to build the perfect “Dream Team” many church planters rush the process and end up shipwrecking the potential of a new church. Nothing can be more devastating to the birth of a new church than a spiritually dysfunctional team. Whether you are planting a new church or leading a church planting organization, The Barnabas Factors: Eight Essential Practices of Church Planting Team Members is a must-read!

Stephen Gray
National Missions Director for the General Association of General Baptists
Author of Planting Fast Growing Churches

The Tangible Kingdom

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community (J-B Leadership Network Series) is a new book by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, both of whom serve Adullam Denver, a community of faith whose purpose is to retell the story of Christ through sacrament, worship, community, and mission.  It is part of the Leadership Network Series and was published in April, 2008.

Reading this book was like sitting and talking with my wife all night.  There was a comfort level with the authors.  As I read each page, I felt like I was looking into the present future of church.

I am not going to do a true book review.  But I do want to share with you some points and ideas that caught my attention.

1. The authors were real and transparent. They told of their wounds, failures and disappointments.  This is rare in books today.

2.  The authors describe a working, practicing Ancient-Future expression of church.  Robert Webber became a hero to me in 2003. I have read all of his ancient future material and contemplated my own expression of how that would work.  But these guys have done it and are seeing life and community transformation from it.  It is an expression of how church should be.  It’s a community that I long to be in.

3.  I see the church in transition, and becoming more oriented around communities of faith than traditional church structures. If you are interested in this, you will find this book warm and inviting and practical.  If you are an attractional church, you need to read this book; it will challenge your attractionality and all you think about church.

I will probably have some thoughts that flow out of this reading later in the week.

I highly recommend this book to you.  It will challenge and encourage.