All that to say, Scot McKnight has put out a really interesting little e-book called “Junia is Not Alone.” It’s a book that tells the story of a Junia, and other women in church history, who have long been ignored and brushed to the side by our history books. Somewhere in the church history Junia, referenced in Romans 16:7, actually was changed to “Junias” and therefore called a man by those interpreting the text. Ladies and gentlemen, the first sex change recorded in the bible!

Scot McKnight (successfully) argues that Junia was, in fact, a women and that she is not the only woman to be marginalized throughout church history. I gave this book to a friend of mine (a woman) who has been wrestling with this stuff and she found it both alarming, encouraging and maddening! Definitely worth a read if this stuff interests you.

The invitation to respond to the gospel, however, must naturally lead to incorporation into the community of witness.  It is clear from the New Testament that God’s Spirit forms a community of people for mission. God’s call has always formed a people, a community, within which God was known, worshiped, made known, and served. God has selected a single people out of the all the nations of the world in order to make this people a visible sign of salvation. Jesus continued this process with the formation of the disciples into a mission community. The eschatological gathering of Israel, initiated by Jesus, was continued but the post-Easter community of disciples in faithfulness to Jesus. Individual Christian existence is only possible and meaningful within such a community. The life of the community is the primary form of its witness, and it is also the equipper and supporter of each individual Christian in the practice of his or her vocation as witness of Christ. This community is, as ecclesia, called out and set apart for witness, for demonstration before the world of the presence and power of Jesus the king. We must grapple with the problems presented in the institutional church, but there can be no biblically based theology of mission and witness which does not emphasize the centrality of the “called out people” for that mission.

Darrel Guder; The Continuing Conversion of the Church, 68

As a pastor however, I know its the one thing that I need the most. It is the one thing that fights against most pastor’s greatest temptation: Pride. It is a strange thing that pastors and leaders struggle so much with pride. We are supposed to be the ones who are most grounded in the scriptures, grace and truth. I think therein lies the problem. Pastors get lifted up as something that is impossible to live out. Really, pastors get lifted up as idols. Pastors become something to attain to and, dare I say, even worship. Somehow, we are supposed to have a greater access to truth and God than others. Sounds like a recipe for pride for me.

The truth is, all of us who are pastors know the truth. We struggle just like everyone else. We wrestle with our beliefs, our calling, our kids, our marriages, and even our faith. But we aren’t supposed to let all the people in our churches know that. So, we somehow fool ourselves that we are not really human. That we are not really like everyone else. We secretly wish that the rest of our congregation was more like us – after all, isn’t that what they basically tell us – that they aren’t like us?

I think Thomas a Kempis writes specifically to people who struggle with the things that pastors do when he writes,

How many perish through empty learning in this world, who care little for serving God. And because they love to be great more than to be humble, therefore they “have become vain in their imaginations. He only is truly great, who hath great charity. He is truly great who deemeth himself small, and counteth all height of honour as nothing. He is the truly wise man, who counteth all earthly things as dung that he may win Christ. And he is the truly learned man, who doeth the will of God, and forsaketh his own will.

The answer? The remedy to pride in pastors? I think the answer is simple, but complicated: submission. Thomas a Kempis writes later, “It is verily a great thing to live in obedience, to be under authority, and not be at our own disposal. Far safer it is to live in subjection than in a place of authority.”

Even pastors need to be under authority. Date I say, it is especially pastors who need to be submitting to others on a regular basis. As a pastor, I have found that one of the most important practices I have ever undertaken is that of mutual submission with those I am in leadership with and those I am in community with.

In the postmodern world of violence and uncertainty, there is a great need to recover the Christus Victor theme that God in Christ has defeated all the powers of evil, that he has conclusively abolished sin, death, and all that is evil in the world, and that because of his death and resurrection, he will return for his final victory over all that is evil and set up his kingdom and reign over all the earth. The church is called to witness to this truth by its very existence and in its worship to remember these past saving events of God in history that assures the new world we anticipate.

Definitely a book worth reading…

• Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ
  Eugene Peterson
  I love Eugene Peterson’s writing. I consider him one of my “author mentors”. I rarely have anything bad to say about anything he has written and this is no exception. In fact, I think that this is his best book yet. Yes, that is saying a lot. This book is essentially an exposition of Ephesians and he offers an stunningly realistic look at the reality of the thing we call “church.” I read this book during one of the harder times of my ministry life and it was so comforting to be reminded that the church is not always pristine, nor even pleasant. At the same time, it is so worth all the effort because it is through the Church that God is working.  Eugene has helped remind me that we are all growing up in Christ and therefore all in process.  However, this does not mean we can just sit back and be okay with being screw-ups. Two words emerged to form a phrase that has been a bit of a mantra for me this year: “Patient  tenacity.”  This is how we need to approach the christian life and church life. We need to approach it with an attitude of patient tenacity.One of my favorite quotes from the book:

  “Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines: death of nations, death of civilization, death of marriage, death of careers, obituaries without end…the practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, live that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.”

• Finding our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time
  Margaret Wheatley
  I love out of the box leadership books. In all the conversation this year about the death of leadership, it is leadership books like these that are actually worth our time. That is, books that deconstruct the top-down, machine driven leadership systems that we have created in the last 100 years. I think that in church environments (established as well as church planting contexts) we pastors and leaders tend to have issues of control which is rooted in a distrust of our congregations. This distrust isn’t often admitted or even realized, but I’m convinced it is there. But, it seems to me that we build church/community systems and structures assuming that people will not be committed and will not fall in line with our mission. As a result we build in structures and create models that tend to control people. This book gives us a better way forward. I think I have found one of my new favorite authors.
• The Next Evangelicalism
  Soong Chan-Rah
  I think this is a really, really important book. Hard, but important. I blogged about this book at length a few months back. I talked about the importace of submission in the topic of diversity in this post. I won’t say much more about it here, I’ll let you read the post if you are interested.
• Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace
  Miraslav Volf
  I am a little late to the game on this one. I actually bought this book quite a few years ago before I was to hear Miraslav Volf speak but did not get it read. Wow, I’m sad I waited so long to read it. This is an incredible book on the nature of forgiveness and generosity in light of the grace of God. Seriously, if you are looking for a book that will give you some new things to think about, order this one today. Volf is a brilliant mind and in this book he has given us a great and readable gift.
• When the Church Was Family
  Joseph Hellerman
  I admittedly have not finished this book. But I have been enjoying it immensely. There are some really challenging thoughts here on the ways that our individualized worldview is in deep contrast with the worldview of those in biblical times. I can not say too much about it because I am still digesting it but I have been really surprised by how much I’m enjoying this book.

This book is a collection of a lot (I forget the number!) of short essays on the good news.  The great part is that each author wrote their chapter as if it were being submitted to their local paper.

I wrote mine to the people in the suburbs of Philadelphia.  I focused it on global nature of the gospel because I am convinced that suburban folks tend to get lost in their own world and so dang focused on ourselves. I wanted to show us suburbanites that while the gospel does apply to us as individuals, it is so much bigger than that and is actually much better news than merely individual salvation.

There are plenty of amazing entries in this book. The great part is that they are short enough to read in just a few short minutes. They are great to read as part of your morning or evening prayers and scripture reading rhythms.

I’m personally buying a bunch of these and giving them to friends and family for Christmas.  Feel free to do the same. :)

You can purchase the book on Amazon here.

That’s why the book ReWork by Jason Fried and David Heinemier Hansson, founders of 37signals, was such a refreshing book. This book is essentially a series of short reflections and essays on creating a healthy leadership culture.

It seems to me that in my time as a leader, the bottom line necessity in leadership is trust. Not only building trust in your leadership community, but the basic trust that people generally want to do good, make a difference in the world and be part of something special. I think that many leaders create environments where they assume (knowingly or not) that people will screw things up and therefore their job is to create an environment that will make sure they don’t, catch them when they do and punish them accordingly.

This book confirmed a lot of my ideas about leadership culture and it also helped me think through some things that I hadn’t thought of before.

No, I didn’t get this book for review, though I did get it for free at a conference. But I would have paid to have it in my library. If you are into this kind of stuff, this is a can’t miss kind of book. If you buy it here I’ll get a small kickback so I can buy more books! :)

I love learning as much as I can about leadership and healthy organizational development. The best way to describe this book is with the word “rich.” It’s really, really helpful and she’s putting words to some things I’ve been feeling for a long time. Here is one of my favorite quotes so far:

“We act as if humans are motivated by selfishness, greed, and fear. That we exist as individuals, free of the obligation of interdependence. That hierarchy and bureaucracy are the best forms of organizing. That efficiency is the premier measure of value. That people work best under controls and regulations. That diversity is a problem. That unrestrained growth is good. That a healthy economy leads naturally to a healthy society. That poor people have different motivations than other people. That only a few people are creative. That only a few people care about their freedom. These beliefs are false.“

I’ve been around enough organizations and I’ve been part of enough churches to see this belief played out.  It usually doesn’t result in anything good.  She writes immediately following this that these beliefs have “created intracable problems that we now encounter everywhere.” Her book is all about finding a better way forward. I think you’ll enjoy it if you are half the leadership nerd that I am.

A few weeks ago the book And: The Gathered and Scattered Church showed up on my front step (that’s because I bought it of course).  This book was written by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay of Adullam Church in Denver, CO.  I was interested in this book for a few reasons.

First of all, we use the phrase “shaping and sending” in our congregation as a short description of what we are doing. I respect (from afar) what these guys are doing so I was hoping this book would be a bit of the struggles and successes they’ve had in trying to work this out in the context of their community.  I wasn’t disappointed.  I really, really appreciated hearing their story.  They didn’t approach the book as “here is how we did it and why we are some awesome.”  Rather, I felt like I was sitting in a coffee shop with them as we conversed with the pains, struggles and joys of seeking to live as a community that is gathered together around Jesus Christ and sent into our neighborhoods, work places, schools, homes, etc to be the presence of Jesus.

The second thing I was hoping for was a recapturing of the significance of the “gathered” aspect of church family life. I’ve become more and more convinced that the weekly gathering is and should an extremely significant part of a community’s life together. I understand the recent efforts to de-emphasize the Sunday morning experience.  But, I personally think that approach is an overreaction.  Yes, the Sunday morning experience has become an idol for many. But I don’t think we need to throw it.  We need to find harmony between the gathered and scattered nature of the church.  If all we do is gather: no good. If all we do is scatter: no good either.

All that being said, I felt like this book is a really, really helpful dialogue partner for churches seeking to find that rhythm between gathering and scattering, or as we say it at The Well, shaping and sending.

Non Disclaimer, discplaimer: This book was not sent to me to review and I don’t know the authors (though, one of my favorite couples in the world just moved to Denver and I sent them to Adullam and they said they loved it and it felt like The Well – that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!).  I just liked the book.  I think you’ll like it too.

This is the description of the book: “In ViralHope: Good News from the Urbs to the Burbs, fifty authors take on the task of sharing the good news for their city, together weaving a beautiful tapestry of the gospel in all its depth and complexity. These essays reveal how the gospel lives and breathes in neighborhoods around the world.”

EcclesiaPress just published a video about the book which includes some of the centent from the book as the content of the video. Here it is…