What's Next.

I Am A Hutterite.

Book Review. Kirby, Mary Ann. I Am Hutterite. The fascinating story of a young woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage. Thomas Nelson. 2010. Comment. Henry. Hutterites represent a very small and very interesting minority group in Canada and the U.S. Their culture is based on religious convictions that originated with one Jacob Hutter, an Austrian hatmaker of the sixteenth century. In 1528 he led a fledgling group of Anabaptists to a new kind of Christian community. In 1536 he was burned at the stake. After his martyrdom his followers became ‘refugees’ that took them on a four hundred year journey (flight). In 1874 they arrived in New York with the resolve to pool their resources and start over. Their distinctive when compared to other community groups (Amish and Mennonite) is their common ownership of goods. As Mary Ann reminisces about her childhood years on the colony in southern Manitoba we get a good look at the positives of colony life. When her family left the colony her world experienced a serious collapse. Life was difficult as she faced prejudice of many kinds. Family life as she had experienced it was turned upside down. To her the ‘cost of freedom’ was too high. It was only in adulthood that she began to appreciate the reasons behind her parent’s decision to pay the price of freedom in exchange for security of colony life. This is a great historical resource and also a warm biographical story. According to the “Award jury, SASK Book Awards: This (story) has the makings of a prairie classic.”

Sacrilege.

Book Review. Halter, Hugh. Sacrilege. Finding life in the unorthodox ways of Jesus. Baker Books. 2011. Comment. Henry. I see this book as a sequel to “The Tangible Kingdom”. Using the text of the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, Hugh describes what he understands to be an application of those teachings to today’s Christian living. He gives his own definition to the ‘sacrilege’ to make it fit a description of how Jesus impacted the religious community of his day. Similarly we need to be prepared to become ‘sacrilegious’ in our witness if we hope to be effective in our culture. “Sacrilege is about removing religion from our faith.” (32) “What you believe about who Jesus is will be the most important thing affecting who you become, what you do, and how much you experience the living God.” (39) The author prefers the term “apprenticeship” (49) to the term discipleship when it comes to being a follower of Jesus. It is all about becoming like Jesus. Listening and obeying are more important than learning and teaching. Incarnational communities (villages) should be the focus of church life rather than small groups. The witness of a message through a life is more effective than the preaching of a sermon. A ‘hunger for righteousness’ will not be satisfied by doing religious things, but by being involved in meeting the needs of needy people in your life and community. Communion (Eucharist) is not only for those who ‘have it all together’ but for those who are stumbling ‘learners on the journey’. Bringing peace (shalom) to the lives of needy people in our ‘world’ should be the goal of our church programs and activities. Sacred space can happen anywhere when we faithfully strive to be ‘salt and light’ in the part of the world we find ourselves in. The choice to “jump into the pool of the kingdom- will be the most exhilarating, heart-expanding, heartbreaking, life-on-the-edge choice you will ever make”. (220)

The Grand Weaver.

Book Review. Zacharias, Ravi. The Grand Weaver. How God shapes us through the events of our lives. Zondervan. 2007. Comment. Henry. Here is a book from a man who has over the years become a very effective ‘apologist’ of the gospel. This book however focuses on the reality of how God works in our lives to produce something beautiful and honoring to Him. He talks about our DNA, our disappointments, our calling, our morality, our spirituality, our worship and our destiny and shows how these ‘threads’ in our lives are woven together in a very personal, God-honoring tapestry of life.. This becomes a great source of encouragement. Intro. - “To allow God to be God we must follow him for who he is and what he intends, and not for what we want or what we prefer.” Our DNA is God’s imprint on our lives. It is evidence that God made us for Himself. The pattern and plan of our lives becomes visible as we consider our “hearts, our minds and the cross”. (51) Fundamental to the calling of God in our lives is the teaching that we are really ‘temples of the living God’. Our bodies are sacred. “Morality is the fruit of your knowledge of God, conscious or otherwise. ”Traditionalism, legalism, and spirituality” (96) are challenged by Jesus. Our will plays a crucial part in our attempts to do God’s will. The liturgy of worship is made up of five elements; “the Lord’s Supper, teaching, prayer, praise and giving”. (140-148) “The mystery of worship will always remain, but the majesty of worship will triumph.” (152) As Christ-followers we have the assurance of a magnificent destiny with Christ in a place prepared for us. henrydirksen.blogspot.com

Desiring The Kingdom

Book Review. Smith, James K.A. Desiring The Kingdom. Worship, Worldview, And Cultural Formation. Baker Academic. 2009. J.S.- Associate professor of philosophy and adjunct professor of congregational and ministry studies at Calvin College. Comment. Henry. The focus in this resource is the ‘reshaping of Christian education’. It suggests a paradigm shift from an emphasis on information, i.e. a Christian world view, to a goal of transformation that reflects sound discipleship that is expressed in worship and a desiring of God’s kingdom. This book has an appeal to the academic. Intro. “What if education wasn’t first and foremost about what we know, but about what we love?” (18) “Liturgies (a synonym for worship) –whether ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’- shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and are our most basic atonement of the world.” (25) “We are- loving, desiring, affective liturgical thinkers or cognitive machines.” “We pray before we believe, we worship before we know- we worship in order to know.” (34) “Behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology.” (37) A person as a lover model” (62) is an alternative to a person as a thinker and/or believer. Liturgies (in a broad sense) can be found in both religious and secular rituals, e.g. “the mall’s liturgy”. (98) Other sources of liturgy are military nationalism, entertainment, sports and even the cinema. The author does “an exegesis of the social imaginary embedded in Christian worship”. (155) He imagines that we are Martian anthropologists being exposed to Christian worship for the first time. This exegesis covers topics such as a call to worship, greetings, song, confession, baptism, creed, scripture and sermon, Eucharist, and offering. In the final chapter the author proceeds to “sketch what Christian education could or should look like if we are liturgical animals”. (216) He calls into question the value of a Christian world view in a ‘Christian school’ that is the key to Christian education. “Christian education has been concerned with information rather than formation.” (219) The goal of Christian education “is the same as the goal of Christian worship: to form radical disciples of Jesus and citizens of the baptismal city who, communally, take up the creational task of being God’s image bearers, unfolding the cultural possibilities latent in creation- but doing so as empowered by the Spirit, following the example of Jesus’s cruciform cultural labor”. (220) This involves “reconnecting church, chapel, and classroom”. (223) henrydirksen.blogspot.com