Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

Yesterday I finally finished reading Peppermint-Filled Piñatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love by Eric Michael Bryant. I’m sorry it took me so long to finish it but I was working on my own book proposal and well LIFE.  

Anyway, I brought the book home a few weeks ago and Cassandra (my beautiful wife of 20 years) stole it from me.  I had finished the first two chapters but the title caught her attention.  Then she read the entire book within 24 hours!  So, I had pencil underlines all through out the book!  So yes, she liked it.  Or should I say it challenged and convicted her about building relationships in our community.

Eric Michael Bryant is a pastor at Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, CA.  For those of you who don’t know Mosaic is pastored by Erwin McManus.  Mosaic is a unique church in that it is truly multi-racial. Eric is one of the few white people on staff.  He and his wife purposely moved to an area in LA where they are in the minority.  

The title of the book comes from when he went out to get candy for their child’s birthday party.  He wanted to save money so he bought peppermint candy.  But his wife knew that children wouldn’t want the cheap stuff they wanted the good candy.  He compared that to life.  People don’t want cheap relationships they want the good stuff.

He said the invention of the garage door has probably hurt relationships as much as anything.  I would tend to agree.  We just wave at our neighbors and push a button and go out of site.  He said as believers we need to quit hiding from the world and get in the world.  We have to get messy and dirty with people.  Not their lifestyles but we have to be involved and life is messy.

Eric is very transparent and doesn’t preach at us through this work.  But it was very convicting and confirming to both me and Cassandra that this is what church should be about.  Church is being the hands and feet of Jesus not a building, or a choir or band or the best pageant in town, etc….

I highly recommend Peppermint-Filled Piñatas and give it 4.8 hockey sticks out of 5.

Kitty Foth-Regner asked me to review her book Heaven Without Her.  I’m so glad she did.  I didn’t know what to think about this book when I received it.  Kitty was a self-titled Feminist and an Atheist for most of her life.  She was raised in a faith filled home, however Kitty chose another path.   As a child of the 60’s she headed off to college in the early 70’s and found herself immersed in the “hippie” movement.  

Kitty is a copywriter so it is no wonder this book is so well written.  There are very few books I can say that were hard to put down but this one was.  Had I been able to spend one day reading I would have done so because it is a story of her journey from being a Feminist Atheist to a follower of Jesus Christ.

The story begins in May of 2000 when her aging mother is dying.  It is almost like a “24″ story.  She starts the chapter telling about her mother’s last moments on earth and how she flashes back to what made her an Feminist Atheist.  Then she moves ahead and explains why her mothers last moment made her re-examine the faith she had been raise in. 

Kitty did not have an instant conversion.  She was a full fledged Feminist Atheist.  All of her friends were the same as her.  But as she began to examine Christianity she started to find the claims true.  But this scared her so she began looking at every religion to see if they were true too.  But as she continued to research it became apparent to her that Jesus was now her Savior.  

Her new faith caused her to lose many of her old Feminist Atheist friends because she told them about her new faith.  Here is a quote that sums up the book for me:

As a feminist, I was concerned exclusively with myself ‘I want,’ ‘I need,’ ‘I have the right’–that’s pretty much all I thought about.  Whereas Christianity teaches me to say, ‘What can I do for you?’” 

I would highly recommend reading this book.  I give it 4.75 hockey sticks out of 5.

I was asked to review the book Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist by Dave Schmelzer.  Dave is the pastor of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Greater Boston. He and his wife, Grace, have five children. Before participating in the founding of the Greater Boston Vineyard, Dave worked as a playwright and saw two of his plays professionally produced on the west coast. 

Dave was an Atheist through college (or at least an agnostic).  The book is written in a similar manner to Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.  I’m not saying it is like BLJ but it has that same feel to me.  But Dave wasn’t searching for God by any means.  This book details his decision to follow Jesus after years of being a skeptic.  He thought he was a good person so he didn’t really need God. Then as he says he discovered he really was a “jerk.”  

After finding the love of his life, God called him to start a church in of all places Harvard.  He had inherrited some money so he and his wife asked a man to invest it in the riskiest stock possible.  Either they were going to make a lot of money to start a church near Harvard or they would lose it all.  God blessed and they started reaching professors and skeptics at Harvard and surrounding areas.  Their church started growing so much that the local media started taking notice.

He writes often about prayer, faith and how Baywatch caused 9/11. (you’ll have to read to understand) His daughter almost died and God answered their prayers and she made it through.  He is very transparent and vulnerable as he discusses his life of faith.  It is 179 pages long and it is available tomorrow.

I highly recommend this book and give it 4.5 hockey sticks out of 5.

I apologize to the publisher for this late review.  I received this book before I resigned my last church and unfortunately everything from my office is in our crawl space under the house because my office is very small now. 

I reviewed Patty Kirk’s first book Confessions of an Amateur Believer last year.  It was a great book about her journey to faith. So when the publisher asked me to review her new book Starting from Scratch : Memoirs of a Wandering Cook I assumed it would be similar.  I was wrong.

To be fair, this is a well written book it just wasn’t what I was expecting.  It was stories of her childhood woven around her love for food.  It is full of recipes and stories about her family.  I guess it was going to be similar to her previous book and be about her faith.  If you like family stories and want some recipes then you will like this book.  If you are looking for a book about a journey in faith this is not for you.  

Todd Wright and my friend Marty Duren just finished a book called JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches To Relevance. (Missional Press) This is a great book by two pastors that are in the middle of transitioning the churches they serve. Todd is the pastor of a church in West Georgia near Alabama. Marty is the pastor of a church in a booming part of NE Atlanta (near the Mall of Georgia)

This was a hard book for me to read because I recently realized that the changes I was bringing to former church I served were too much. Both of these pastors talked openly and candidly about their struggles, mistakes, heartaches, and victories along the path of transitioning a church.

This book is well worth reading if you are a pastor or lay person. I have not had the privilege of meeting Todd but he seems like a great guy. Marty has been a great friend of mine for the last 3 years. I’ve read many books on ministry and most of the authors don’t have time to correspond and I understand they are busy. Marty took many times to call me and allowed me to hang out with him in Buford on several occasions. So I’m a little biased when it comes to this book. You won’t find a better person who is Kingdom minded and cares about people like Marty.

I think this book should be required reading for those who desire to see God transform their churches. I give JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches To Relevance
4.5 hockey sticks out of 5.