Tom L
I went into this book looking for an engaging Science Fiction story with multiple interesting story lines which touch on one-another and comprise a while story.
I ended up with a somewhat disjointed story that never seemed to find closure. there were a lot of different characters that I found unmemorable and, consequently, hard to differentiate between. There also seemed to be clear visualizations in the authors mind which I couldn't capture in my own.
Most frustrating was the final description of humanity. I had a hard time understanding exactly what had happened, even after a re-read of certain sections, and the closing seemed to be quickly composed. A final coda is included to describe the lives of each of the main characters and explain the current state of humanity, but this still remained elusive to me and I've come away not really understanding, or even wanting to understand, the authors premise.
If the story had been more engaging I could have overlooked the confused closing. I'm also sure there are many other people who would find the story interesting, it simply didn't hold my attention and seemed to push too much against hard science without explaining how things have happened nor how events will end.
This was a great book describing the lives of each disciple based on scripture. [author: Dr. John F. MacArthur] stuck almost exclusively with scripture and mostly relied on the gospel accounts to describe the disciples. This does provide a firm foundation, but in many cases gives very little understanding into the disciples.
In some cases there are disciples who are only known because of their name being mentioned in a list. At this point some loose connections are made to essentially create an understanding of the disciple in question without convincing facts to back up the understanding.
That being said, there is a clear message that even in the lesser known disciples, they were all ordinary people just as we are today. They had faults and were used because of those faults.
The descriptions are engaging and will provide some solid background when discussing the disciples in a group.
the premise of the book is certainly interesting, following the rapture story and the final existence of man. Unfortunately I found a lot of the imagery to be very disturbing and hard for me to want to read.
Many of the characters were memorable, and I do find myself thinking back to this book and times and considering the final state of humanity. Unfortunately that is often balanced with some horrible acts by the characters and many flashbacks to the main characters home life which are both boring and disturbing in how she was raised.
I'm sure the imagery is used as an example regarding just how far humanity has fallen to allow the rapture to come. It's also disturbing that while the images are hard to read, they are also very plausible today, evoking a sense that things don't have to get much worse for the rapture to come.
While I can't say that I liked reading the book, the final outcome is interesting and the premise is memorable.
I've previously read [book: Death By Meeting] by [author: Patrick Lencioni]. I really connect with his ability to tell an engaging story which communicates the point. He then spends the last third of this book describing the four principals and how to put them into practice within the organization.
The four disciplines of a healthy organization are:
1. Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team
2. Create Organizational Clarity
3. Over-Communicate Organizational Clarity
4. Reinforce Organizational Clarity Through Human Systems
While there is a very big focus on executive teams and high level managers, this book can be used for leaders who are putting together smaller teams. The truth is that at every level of the organization there need to be teams who understand the values and are comfortable with each-other.
I especially appreciated Patrick's explanation of how to define clarity and communicating vision and mission. I also appreciated his focus on how important a healthy organization is, even more important than higher revenue and large clients.
I also appreciated that there were a few concrete examples provides as well as questions to help us define our own answers and to model our organization.
This is definitely a great read for anyone who manages teams of people or defines the direction of an organization.
This book changed the way I look at small groups and the definition of spiritual growth. Our church is focused on working people down a path where they deepen their faith in God through attending more intimate community relationships, from public gatherings through community events and into personal small group relationships. [author: Joe Myers] has me thinking completely differently about that.
Joe describes the four levels of space people move through in different settings. He describes in detail and with examples each of the spaces (Public, Social, Personal and Intimate).
He comes up with a calculation where, for every 1 intimate friend you have, you'll have two personal friends, four social friends and 8 public friends. While this can't be a hard and true calculation, it helps define the number of people involved at different levels and shows that we shouldn't be trying to force people into personal friendships or intimate relationships with each-other, or even God.
The stories in between the descriptions are good and engaging. I did find it distracting to read the different quotes in the middle of text, sometimes breaking apart a thought that I'm trying to understand. It was especially distracting since these quotes are on about every other page in the book.
Overall this was a great book. Our youth leadership consultant also referenced this book in his youth leadership training for our church. If you have any responsibility in defining community or the path people take in their spiritual growth, it's a must-read.
This is one great book, just freaking hilarious while also being pretty useful to me.
Lamb gives me context where I hadn't completely understood before.
Christopher tells the story of Christ from birth. While he talks about his life after he comes out and begins preaching openly, he focus much more on Christ's formative years, everything from an interest in sin to learning the ways of the Buddha.
This is, of course, a complete work of fiction. Everything is made of from the author's mind. While he stuck to historical documents to keep some of it accurate, he certainly stretched a lot to make the story fun and fill in gaps which no one knew about.
I can't really explain the book in one post, though I'm always happy to talk about it. Needless to say, I got to live alongside Jesus as he grew up and was shaped by the world around him. I really gained a deeper understanding of the place of Jews within Roman rule as well as what the heck the difference between a Pharisee and a Sadducee was.
The best quotes I got from the first reading of the book were.
Joshua's ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here's the gist of almost every sermon I heard Joshua give.
You should be nice to people, even creeps.
And if you:
a) believed that Joshua was the Don of God (and)
b) he had come to save you from sin (and)
c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say) (and)
d) didn't blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c),
then you would:
e) live forever
f) someplace nice
g) probably heaven.
However, if you:
h) sinned (and/or)
i) were a hypocrite (and/or)
j) valued things over people (and)
k) didn't do a, b, c, and d,
then you were:
l) fucked
Awesome summation of Jesus' teachings. Oh yeah, did I mention there was some swearing?
Then there was this conversation between Biff and Maggie (Mary Magdalene)
“When we were in India, we saw a festival in the city of their goddess Kali. She's a goddess of destruction, Maggie. It was the bloodiest thing I've ever seen, thousands of animals slaughtered, hundreds of men beheaded. The whole world seemed slick with blood. Joshua and I saved some children from being flayed alive, but when it was over, Joshua kept saying, no more sacrifices. No more.”
Maggie looked at me as if she expected more. “So? It was horrible, what did you expect him to say?”
“He wasn't talking to me, Maggie. He was talking to God. And I don't think he was making a request.”
“Are you saying that he thinks his father wants to kill him for trying to change things, so he can't avoid it because it's the will of God?”
“No, I'm saying that he's going to allow himself to be killed to show his father that things need to be changed. He's not going to try to avoid it at all.”
Another great conversation which helped me better see Jesus' relationship with His father.
Definitely pick this book up. It'll definitely ruffle some feathers with the stuff he made up, like Jesus learning the ways of the Buddha and such. It's a work of fiction, get over it.
Mark Steele's book is very funny with a lot of different life stories to keep you laughing and get a point across. His main goal is to let the reader see how he used to do things to gain popularity and for his own benefit, under the guise of working for God.
Instead we see how he learns to take changes and really give up himself for others. Most of these epiphanies come during mission trips where he's completely out of his comfort zone.
The book is very entertaining. The message is decent though I would have preferred more practical ways that we can change our own lives. Instead we see how his own life experiences have changed his life. It's much closer to an autobiography with a message of humility and taking chances.
This book is actually two different topics and authors. It is primarily a reissue in English and edited to make more readable some letters from Brother Lawrence, a monk from the 17th century world known for practicing holding God in his every thought every minute of the day. In itself this is a great asset and has helped me already begin to see the value in keeping God in mind every moment of every day.
To help this process the book leads with letters written by Frank Laubach in 1970 on how practicing His presence can be a reality. It discusses Frank's own experience in keeping God in mind every moment of the day, as well as some practical pitfalls and practices which can help us through the process.
This book has changed my life and remains on the shelf within easy reach for reference and re-reading.
This book has been great at getting me to rethink how to prepare talks and add stories to the mix. I wish there had been some more practical examples based on specific bible passages or examples which can be used within a specific talk.
That being said, the book has really gotten me to rethink the bible stories and figure out how to make them feel real to people. How to get a group of teens or adults to experience that they are a part of the story.
The example that continues to stay on my mind is bringing teens together to re-enact the Jesus story by blindfolding everyone for an entire evening until they find a Jesus character who saves them.
I've read through many different study bibles in my work as a youth minister. I haven't found any to be easier to understand or have more useful information than the Life Application Study Bibles. The NIV version works well as it tracks with the Episcopal denomination, to which I belong. In general the commentary does a great job giving very useful information right on the page regarding the historical activities going on during the time of the verse being referenced.
I used this curriculum with our youth every Wednesday night for 40 days as the students spent each day doing something for other people without expecting anything in return. All of the teens who went through this curriculum came out changed and far more aware of the people around them. Others within their school saw the change and began helping others.
I purchased this book for as I looked around trying to find a good study bible which teens would enjoy reading. I had thought this would be perfect, but most of the additional information is either too short or not very interesting. In the end it never ended up on the shelves of our youth group room.
I purchased this book with the hope that it could give me some ideas and illustrations for talks during our youth group meetings.
The book is full of great stories, some long and others short. I'm reminded of [book: Chicken Soup for the Soul] in a lot of cases. It even includes sections with each story to flag when I used it so that I don't go retelling the same story over and over.
Unfortunately I've found that I do better with examples and stories from my own life, the life of people hearing the talk or stories from the news in the past two weeks. While having these stories may work for some people, I had a hard time using them and feeling that they made a real impact on the listener.
When I initially read this book I knew nothing of Mike Yaconelli and was shocked by some of the people he brought into the church and the disruptions he accepted (and even welcomed) within the church. The more I have thought about this book over the years the more I relate and hope to lead this type of church. Mike has changed my view of ministry and focused me on a a life and ministry focused on working within the community to change lives.
This was a fun beginning to a cozy mystery series. It's pretty clear where things were going, though I was certainly surprised by the final antagonists and how some people were involved in the overall scheme.
I'll definitely get the second book in the series, though probably through Hoopla, the same way I got the first book.
Another great, fast edition to the series. These really could have been one longer. Tome, singe you can't read any of them independently.
Great having 4 separate stories going along, with berry different characters and classes.
The audio movie nature was great, and I'm sure this is perfect for someone into anime or mecha, but it felt incredibly shallow, and every personality was two dimensional and obvious how the story would go from their initial introduction.
Great if you're looking for a Comic Book for your ears.
Poetic trip around the world. I wish I loved the setting s and characters more, but I see how the book deeply moves others.
While I got this from a podcast recommendation (Thanks Triple Click) I initially wondered what it had to do with computer games. Then the games and lifelong love stories kicked in and I couldn't stop. The characters are incredible and loveable, even the ones I hated.