The BOOK … and other books

I have been a sucker for books for almost as long as I have been following Jesus.  When I discovered Jesus for the first time, I was working as an earthmoving operator in our family business, and sometimes as part of a shearing team.  I wasn’t a fluid reader by any stretch, but I was hooked on Jesus and devoted my limited capacities to reading the Bible and nothing much else. 

Gordon Hansen was my very first Christian mentor.  He was the Assistant Station Master at Gunning Railway Station.  As such, he was mostly on night duty.  This suited me fine because I didn’t sleep very much and had a lot of questions.    Late at night I would jump in the ute and roll into the empty station yard knowing that Gordon would be inside.  Endless hours were spent sitting in the station talking about absolutely everything – which was a lot of things for someone who had started life again at the age of nineteen.

Gordon was also passionate about Jesus.  Every fettler who entered the station house had heard the story of Jesus at least once.  He made sure of it.  They respected and mostly liked Gordon because he would always stand them for a loan till payday when their modest wage didn’t quite make the stretch.  But for me, Gordon was my internet search engine before it existed. 

As I was ploughing my way through books like Leviticus and Job there were lots of questions.  Gordon was a practitioner rather than an academic student when it came to following Jesus.  He didn’t read Hebrew and couldn’t finesse his response with such academic prowess as to leave me mesmerised and coming back for more.  Instead, he taught me to go directly to Jesus.  He just said I should look for Jesus in everything I read.  He said I should go to Jesus for all the answers to my queries.  In his world, Jesus was the full revelation of the Father and whether it was Deuteronomy or Daniel, I would get the right interpretation by linking it to Jesus.

I started taking his advice. If I was struggling to relate to a particular portion, I would write notes about what it was saying and then put the notes beside me while I read one of the gospels.  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t get to see Jesus in what I was reading.  I didn’t so much need a theological master to explain, I just needed to see Jesus.

Fifty-plus years later, I am doing the same thing. Not just with the Bible, but with other books as well.  My test of a book will be the measure to which it makes known and connects me to Jesus.

 I read quite a few books.  I have been guilty more than once, of judging a book by its title (rather then by its cover).  I have been known to believe that this next book will fully answer the question its title presumes.  Even if it doesn’t I will probably line up for the next one with the same optimism. 

What saves me most of the time is the Gordon Hansen principle.  As I plough my way through chapters of yet another title, I am looking for how it makes Jesus known to me and how it makes my relationship with Jesus the more essential shaping force for my life and lifestyle.  As I am enlightened and encouraged by the insights of clever godly people, I am wanting to check it out by the Jesus hermeneutic -  i.e. are the ways I am reading about represented in the lifestyle Jesus modelled.  For those who need to know, hermeneutics is the science of interpretation.  For me, Jesus is my primary hermeneutic principle.  If I can’t see it in Jesus, I am not all that likely to adopt it, no matter how powerfully it is argued or how successful it has been.

So, I approach reading a bit differently.  I am not really looking for sermon illustrations or someone else’s story to tell.  I realise some people seem to use books as a drug and go from their last “high” to the next.  I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life telling other people’s stories or fruitlessly wandering up tracks marked out of other people’s revelation.   I either need to make it my own, or set it aside as a simple testimony and nothing more.

I’m reading differently because I read fewer books now. I read them until I get to road test it in my own life and gain my own story. I take what I read to Jesus.  I figure out what I need to do with it and what Jesus needs to do in and through me to make it work.

For example, I have a book called “A Team of Teams.”  Its written by an American General who was involved in Iraq following the second intervention by the name of Stanley McChrystal.  I have read this book three times over the past few years and I will probably read it again.  It is one of the best ways of explaining what I understand to be “kingdom of God networks.”  I read it and then I read the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and find I am merging revelation with a significant modern event.  All the while I am adapting and applying it to various things I am trying to achieve.  I don’t think Stanley McChrystal sought God for revelation.  He was just a clever human being who was created by God.  When he applied his creative mind to solve a problem in Iraq he came up with something that looked a lot like what seems kingdom of God to me.

Another book I have just finished is one that I will almost certainly read again.  It is called “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry,” by John Mark Comer.  It’s about de-cluttering your lifestyle.  It is a full-on Jesus-following book from a successful mega-church pastor who radically simplified his life without cutting himself off from his calling.  The reason I downloaded the book was because it was recommended by a German church planter by the name of Emanuel Prinz.  Emanuel was the leader of a small catalytic team who formed an NGO so they could work in Sudan at the time of the civil war.  Their faith and obedience saw 1.8 million new Muslim background believers baptised through the formation of 112,000 multi-generational churches.  I thought a guy like that would be frantically busy – and he was, until he discovered a better way to keep doing the work, ie. without hurry.

Since I don’t know any leaders of large numbers of churches who don’t epitomise “hurry,” I figured Emanuel must have learned something powerful from John Mark Comer.  I thought I should read the book.  When I grow up and have a catalytic role in seeing more than a hundred thousand churches started with new believers, I will have learned to eliminate hurry.

What I like about the book is the way he draws out the lifestyle patters from the Scriptures, and from the teaching of Jesus.  So, he definitely ticks some important boxes for me.  One of the powerful things about a Word-based insight is that the Word keeps on having power to shape my life.  It remains fresh and alive.  Not everything in the book nails me down, but John Mark’s winsome vulnerability invites me to go on a journey in the direction of “non-hurry.”

Here are a few other titles that I’ve been reading this year:

“The Fountain of Public Prosperity”  (Stuart Piggin and Robert Linder)  At 654 pages this is a tome, but these guys have raked through a lot of original source documents to show how much the Wesley/Whitefield revival in England and the Clapham Sect influenced the early white settlement of Australia – for good. 

“The Magna Carta of Humanity”  (Os Guiness)  If you want to scope the origins of the culture wars going on at the moment, Os uses five revolutions to identify radical change in the history of nations (United States, France, England, Russia and China) to contrast the difference between mutual covenant and brute force.

“Movement Catalysts”  (Emanuel Prinz)  I referred to Emanuel before.  His thesis highlights the fact that effective breakthrough into rapidly multiplication of disciples and churches will depend in part on the catalytic qualities of leaders.  Leadership that produces multiplication is quite different from leadership that creates attraction and addition.  His research seeks to identify the common characteristics of those leaders who have seen significant breakthrough.  By observing leader-practitioners, he is really describing characteristics of apostolic leadership.

“Motus Dei”  (Warwick Farah editor)   This is a well-researched, thoughtful review of the recent phenomenon of rapidly multiplying disciples and churches.  A work of God that has seen around 1% of the world’s total population come to Christ in the past 25 years can’t be sneezed at (approximately and conservatively 114 million spread across more than 2,000 separate movements.  As usual, it has come under criticism from parts of the established church, but these people record, count and review like no other group I have known. 

“From Christ to the Reformation”  (Williston Walker)  “Church History in Plain Language” (Owen Shelley)  I’ve set myself a goal of reading some Church History each year.  It can be a bit depressing, but it keeps me aware of the bigger narrative.  I want someone to write a book on “pioneering movements in church history” so I wouldn’t have to wade through the inane politics of religious institutions.

Oh, yes, and

 No Plan B  (Lee Child)    I told myself I wouldn’t read another Jack Reacher book, but Nola bought a copy and there it was on the side table asking for my attention.  I found a lot of tips if I ever find myself in a bar brawl, but not so many for the kingdom of God.

I’d like to hear from you.  Let me know what God has called you to do and what books you have been reading that are helping you.