Grownup School at North Church
Amazon.com has a special-feature section called “Grownup School.” The lead-in to this interesting section says: “When you’re a grownup, you read what you want to—not what you have to. But where do you start?” In the interest of furthering the educational mission of North Church and helping grownups decide where to begin, the Cyber Ministry Team is presenting brief synopses of a representative sample of books available in our church library and on the shelves in the Dickinson Room. The comments in quotations are taken from the jackets of the books and do not necessarily reflect the views/opinions of the Cyber Ministry Team or North Church. The seven reviews below have been uploaded to the website on March 17, 2008.
Derek Maul. 2007. Get Real: A Spiritual Journey for Men. "'Get Real' celebrates the emerging twenty-first century Christian man. He's not a stoic lone ranger or a noisy boaster but a spiritual adventurer who's unafraid to find strength in community with others, including other men. The new Christian man is countercultural, rejecting society's phony values (the incessant desire for power, youth, cars, gadgets) and finding courage in Jesus' invitation, 'Follow me.'" A "Leader's Guide" accompanies the text. Peter J. Gomes. 2007. The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. "Jesus came preaching, but the church wound up preaching Jesus. Why does the church insist upon making Jesus the object of its attention rather than heeding his message?" Gomes "believes that excessive focus on the Bible and doctrines about Jesus have led the Christian church astray...To recover the transformative power of the gospel...we must go beyond the Bible and rediscover how to live out Jesus' original revolutionary message of hope...." Katharine Rhodes Henderson. 2006. God's Troublemakers: How women of faith are changing the world. "Through her probing interviews with twenty change-makers...(the author) has illuminated the path to ethical action and personified the transformative possibilities of leadership...This is a book that paints a healing picture of religious faith through the fascinating lives of women leaders...(the book) identifies a latent power in each of us to help change the world from 'what it is to what it could be.'" Sharon Harrins-Ewing. 2006. Prayers for School Teachers: Contemporary conversations with God. One reviewer says: "Christians who teach in public schools have a calling to model the love of God in every interaction with others while living within the guidelines of the state. They will be able to do this only if they spend significant time in private prayer...The prayers (in this book) are heartfelt and beautifully written." The book consists of over 150 prayers on such topics as forgiveness, guidance, students, parents, and the school year. Barbara Brown Taylor. 2006. Leaving the Church: A memoir of faith. The author "tells the moving story of how she searched for her own authentic way of keeping faith--even when it meant giving up her pulpit." Reviewer Frederick Buechner states: "This beautiful book is rich with wit and humanness and honesty and loving detail. It is a book about the wonderful mess of being alive in this world, and about the wondereful and terrible things that happen to us in it, and about the dream of God...I cannot overstate how liberating and transforming I have found (this book ) to be." Mary Beth Lind. 2005. Simply in Season: A world community cookbook. This is a cookbook commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee. It "provides recipes and reasons to eat seasonal foods grown locally. Eating in season is a great way to improve your health, support local farmers and help the environment." Huston Smith. 2005. The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the great tradition. "With stories and personal anecdotes, Smith not only presents the basic beliefs and essential teachings of Christianity, but argues why religious belief matters in today's secular world...Smith rails against the hijacked Christianity of politicians who exploit it for their own needs. He decries the exercise of business that widens the gap between rich and poor, and fears education has lost its sense of direction...Smith reserves his harshest condemnation, however, for secular modernity, which has stemmed from the misreading of science...."
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