This book has been around for a long time now, but I never bothered to read it. I did pick up the gist from friends – an amazing story of one man’s suffering and dedication to the gospel.

This week while at Janene’s I picked it up and gave it a whirl. My book selection lately has been very average and I was ready to move on from my last read ‘A Fraction of the Whole’, an Aussie book that seems to lack any real coherence and subtance and onto something a little more enjoyable.

In many ways THM was exactly what I expected. A story of a man with extreme dedication to faith and Jesus in a place where many others would simply give up. For those unfamiliar with the story, the book chronicles the life of ‘Brother Yun’ a Chinese Christian as he lived during a time of great oppression in his country. This bloke spends more time in jail and cops more beatings than you would think it is humanly possible to handle. And that is pretty much the point. The story is about suffering for the gospel as well as how God provides for us in those dark times.

It was inspiring to read of the miracles that God did in his life and yet I shared his wife’s frustration (she gets to write her reflections too) at the way he seemed to enjoy placing himself in harms way in Jesus’ name. Our own western ’sufferings’ for the gospel simply look sick and lame alongside this man’s life and there are times when I wonder whether to be thankful for the ease of my life or to wish for a life that would call greater faith out of me.

Its a sad thing that Christianity is so much less potent in a comfortable world and so much more alive in a place of suffering.

I’m still reflecting on what I need to glean from the book. While some of it was definitely challenging there were also times I wondered if Yun had some sort of pathology that saw him constantly placing himself in these places. The flip side is that perhaps he sees the world in a whole different way to me and if I had lived in his context then maybe I’d understand.

This is a challenging book to read, but a little difficult for us to relate to as Westerners. I have been wondering why it has been so popular over here and my guess is that we all long for a more gutsy faith – at least something more than we currently experience – but I doubt any of us would really want to pay the price Yun has…

The first 3 books I have read while on holidays have been Dead Man Running, No Angel and The Barbarian Way. The first two are stories relating to Outlaw Motor Cycle Gangs (OMCGs) while the last was a call to a wild and untamed life of faith. There has been some interesting and unexpected overlap between the two types of books. More about that later…

Dead Man Running is the story of an Aussie Bandido who eventually got to a place where he couldn’t tolerate the violence and thuggery of the OMCGs and who chose to become a police informant in exchange for a new identity in the US. It’s a chilling tale about the inner workings of the gangs and the brutal manner in which people get treated, especially those who ever choose to leave.

It was given to me by my friend ‘D’ who has recently came to faith and left his own OMCG after 23 years of involvement. While he has chosen to follow Jesus he is genuinely worried for his life and for the possible repercussions from his decision.

What was equally disturbing was the incompetence of the ACC who threw him in the deep end and then gave him hopeless support, as well as the completely lame beauracratic systems that prevented any actual convictions from his work. ‘Steven Utah’ was no model citizen, but the story was as much a tale of police blundering (and corruption) as bikie thuggery.

The other book I am halfway thru is No Angel, about an undercover cop in the US who took on the job of infiltrating the Hells Angels. He is a hard nosed bloke who lives on adrenalin – why else would you do it?! What is interesting in this book is how many cops are working undercover as bikers. It seems they have ‘chapters’ everywhere and their job is simply to gather evidence that will ultimately convict these guys of the criminal activity they are involved in.

I really enjoyed the OMCG books and the insights they gave into a slice of life that isn’t normally seen by ordinary garden variety folks. An interesting reflection from both books is that many ‘outlaws’ have started as ‘outcasts’. Those who were rejected by society – for whatever reason – have subsequently chosen to live outside of society and not play by its rules. More than that they have chosen to live in revolt against the values and mores of conventional life.

The most hard core of these are known as the ‘one percenters’. If the stories I just read have validity then these are people you don’t want to mess with or get on the wrong side of.

When I get a chance to blog again I’ll offer some thoughts on Erwin McManus brilliant book ‘The Barbarian Way’ and the places of overlap between OMCGs and disciples of Jesus… No really…

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Yesterday we drove back from an enjoyable week down in Busselton.

Its the 3rd time we have done the January Busso trip with our friends from here in Brighton and this year we finished up with 10 different families dotted around the SU campsite.

We began these camps a few years back with one simple specific purpose – that of helping foster a greater sense of community amongst those who live in this local area. When we go at Easter we do some more ‘Jesus focused’ stuff, but January has simply been a shared holiday.

This time round we had 4 families from here in Writtle St as well as others from around the suburb. It was great to get away with our neighbours and give them a chance to see some of West Oz – as most of them are from overseas or east. I think they had a blast.

However the increased numbers did mean that some smaller groups formed and people generally hung around only those they were familiar with – a bit of a shame in the overall scheme of things and perhaps a learning that if you want to help foster interaction then fewer people is better than more.

As well as 3 great surfs at Indijup Carpark – one of my favourite breaks – I managed to get thru nearly 4 books.

The Time We Have Taken by Steven Carroll is a Miles Franklin award winner and is a beautifully written story of life in the suburbs. Carroll really makes the ordinary every day life sparkle and his writing is superb. Top notch and well worth buying!

Then I moved onto The Children, another Aussie novel by Charlotte Wood. This story follows the interactions in a dysfunctional family when the dad falls off a ladder and enters a comma. It is valuable for the way the roving journalist sister who seems to love spending time in Iraq and other war torn countries is forced to interact with her siblings who don’t see the world thru her eyes. All in all a decent read but lacking a bit of biff.

I am almost finished Richard Flanagan’s Unknown Terrorist – a book dedicated to David Hicks – that looks at how a person can unknowingly be implicated in a terror plan and how the media can sabotage any chance of their redemption. The Hicks dedication at the start gave the game away and for Flanagan – whose Sound of One Hand Clapping is brilliant – I thought this one to be a tad disappointing.

On a different tack I have also been reading Brian McClarens latest Finding Our Way Again and for the most part finding it really valuable. It looks at the value we can find in a variety of Christian traditions and explores how we can ‘find our way’ by including these in our lives. Its one of the most enjoyable McClaren reads for me, but I find his attempts at inclusivism a bit off-putting and unnecessary.

Any with book reviews over here are some ‘highlights’ from the 8 or 9 days we were there…

Sam loves to dance and at the annual street festival he got out there to try and win a digital camera… He might not win but he makes us laugh.

Indijup carpark is one of the best right handers in WA and at 3-4 ft its just a nice manageable size on the mal. I paddled out on the first day and my leg rope snapped after 5 mins so it meant the rest of the time was spent trying very hard not to wipeout or get caught inside. There was one stuff up that resulted in a swim but it was a very nice few days there.

The SU campsite we stay at backs onto this beach and its beautiful. Our friends from overseas are always amazed that such beautiful beaches are so common here in Oz.

We are also getting prepared for our trip around Oz and this was another good workout for the Jayco. One of the things we love about it is that the beds are very comfortable and each morning we were battling to get out of bed before 8.30am – a rarity for me these days! I guess camping is always about compromise and this seems to be the best compromise between tents and caravans.

While we were away we had Australia Day and with a pretty patriotic crew it was well and truly celebrated. Lunch was a bacon egg and sausage fry up and the rest of the day was spent on the water swimming and skiing.

One of the beauties of being a bloke is that the world is your toilet – however as we discovered – if you wee too much and too often close to your camper then the smell is not pleasant… Won’t be doing that again!

The view from the camper window gives you an idea of how close we were to the beach – 50 metres or so. A great picture to wake up to!

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And I slot this one in for the colour of the water. Tell me that isn’t as nice as you have seen anywhere!

So… we’re back and into it…

Work started at 7 am this morning which was a bit hard to take, but we are now in countdown mode with only 11 weeks to go until April 20th which is when we drop everything and take off.

Looking forward to it!

I finished the ‘Art of the Engine Driver

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‘ yesterday and found it a brilliant read, but not in the way you might normally expect. It was a slow moving, almost meandering type of book, but it drew you into the lives of the characters in a powerful yet deceptive way.

The story is set in one of Melbourne’s frontier suburbs in the 1950’s and explores the lives of the folks who live in that street. It is unapologetically ‘ordinary’ in its content matter yet it is superb in its writing and in the way it delves into the issues that confront suburban people at the outer edge of the city. As you read you cannot help but feel drawn into their lives and from there to reflect on your own experience of suburban life.

Here’s the publisher blurb:

The Art of the Engine Driver is the story of one evening in the lives of the residents of a new outer Melbourne suburb. As a mighty steam train leaves Spencer Street Station on its haul to Sydney‚ a family of three ? Vic‚ Rita and their son Michael are walking down their street to an engagement party. George Bedser‚ a shipbuilder from Liverpool‚ is celebrating the engagement of his daughter‚ Patsy. He has no family here and has invited the whole street to the party. Vic is an engine driver‚ looking to be like his hero Paddy Ryan and become the master of the smooth ride. As the neighbours walk to the party using a mixture of description and internal monologue ? we hear their stories and are drawn into the lives of a bully‚ a drunk‚ a restless young girl and a happy family man. On this hot summer?s night the old and the new‚ diesel and steam‚ town and country all collide and nobody is left unaffected. This is a distinctly Australian novel in the spirit of Tim Winton and Robert Drewe‚ a luminous and evocative tale of ordinary suburban lives with an extraordinary power and depth.

I really enjoyed being part of the pathos that is so often assumed to be ‘normal’ life. From the confused girl to the worka/alcoholic husband and the resigned wife. These are all people I know and somehow that makes it that much more incisive.

I have just started his latest book, The Time We Have Taken – which is the third in the trilogy (I couldn’t find the second!) and is a Miles Franklyn winner.

Its great to have discovered another Aussie author who genuinely makes me want to keep reading!

I am about half way thru Larry Crabb’s book Becoming a True Spiritual Community

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and finding it interesting but also a little puzzling.

It seems Crabb has almost done an about face on the value of counselling and other similar practices and now advocates ’spiritual friendship’ and ’spiritual direction’ in their place. If I read him right he seems to be saying that all issues require a spiritual/divine/supernatural solution rather than using the more theraputic methodology.

There are some appealing things about what Crabb is saying, but by the same token he seems to have created a ’spiritual’ approach and an ‘unspiritual’ approach to spiritual growth and resolution of issues. I keep feeling he is pushing the ’spiritual’ too hard, as if he is compensating for a previous stance.

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At the moment I am almost finished The Shack

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Also waiting to be read are:

Becoming a True Spiritual Community by Larry Crabb. I guess you could call this ‘diversifying my reading’… I have never been a big Crab fan, but this one grabbed my attention and I thought it would be interesting to delve into how we function more authentically as the church. We’ll see how I go…

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– by Jean Hatton. I’m interested to learn something of this group and how they came about and I’m a big fan of biograhpies so hopefully it will be a good one.

Reimagining Church by Frank Viola – I was sent this book a while ago to do a blog review on, but I am a bit behind… Part of it is that I just don’t find myself reading these kinds of books much any more. I find they seek to convince me that church needs ‘re-imagining’ but I am already convinced of that! Seven or eight years ago I was reading them by the bucket load, but each time I do these days I don’t feel refreshed and invigorated – more just ho hum… Now that’s not to say ‘Re-imagining Church’ is a ho hum book, but it probably explains why its still sitting there. Not enjoying Pagan Christianity didn’t help either I imagine… I will try and get thru it and write a review.

You Gotta Have Balls by Lily Brett. This is another of the books for our brighton Book Club, but I fearI may not get into this one either. It might be a good book even, but I have too many others that I want to read to even pick it up. I’m not a very good book club member I’m afraid!

Anyway that’s the menu at the moment!

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If ever you needed convincing that bad press sells books then this is it!

I have read plenty of negative stuff about this book from the very conservative critics and I have also heard some very positive reviews from friends who have read the book, so I decided it was time to spend the $$ and make my own judgment.

I will confess to being something of a snob when it comes to literature and anything less than quality prose does tend to leave me cold. So we weren’t off to a brilliant start here… The Shack is a fair piece of writing, but not compelling.

I found it hard getting thru the first 60 pages mainly because the subject matter was so gut wrenching – a dad losing his daughter while camping and then discovering she has been murdered by a serial killer. I guess its every parent’s nightmare to see one of their kids die or suffer and I couldn’t help sitting in his place.

I am past that bit now and at ‘the shack’ where Mack meets God. God (the father) turns out to be a big black woman, Jesus is an average looking middle eastern man and th Holy Spirit is of Asian extraction. The author has been setting the scene for the conversations that will develop between Mack & ‘God’ and so far it is somewhat interesting, but probably not my cup of tea.

While it masquerades as a novel it is unquestionably a theological work because it does present God in a specific light and (I am led to believe) will go on to look at church, salvation and other theological themes.

I didn’t struggle with God as a black woman – in fact I found it quite a helpful way of getting past the ‘gandalphian grandfather’ that many of us have in our heads. I don’t think that is heretical in any way – just a clever device for making us reconsider how we have imagined God.

I have found the descriptions of relationships and conversations between the 3 (F, S & HS) a bit cheesy, however I accept that my own grasp of these relationships has been heavily shaped by an evangelical heritage that doesn’t involve a lot of laughter and frivolity.

As with ‘Sweet’, I will offer my reflections as we go and I’d be interested in yours back.

I have been reading ‘Sweet’, the novel by Tracy Ryan watcher the dvdrip watch bowfinger in divx

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about the relationships between a WA Baptist pastor in the 80’s and 3 female members of his congregation. Essentially it explores the rather subtle issue of codependence and how this develops between a pastor and congregation. I don’t know how wide an appeal this book will have, but for those of us in leadership roles it ought to be read and reflected on.

‘Cody’s’ journey has been of particular interest to me as she is a young Christian in the process of questioning her faith and wondering about its foundation. Her place of certainty is not Jesus or the scriptures, but William her pastor and she is struggling to come to terms with the fact that all is not a cut and dried as he would once have had her believe. Still his power is great…

Here’s an excerpt I found very challenging. After reflecting on Paul, the young man who drew Cody to faith, she goes on to think of William:

But with William it was the other way around, he had not attracted Cody to God. He had simply come to stand in the way of her notion of God. She had got caught up before she knew it, swayed to his way of seeing things somehow, like Patty Hearst, that syndrome where you form a dependence on your captor, your torturer. Was he really her captor? No-one forced her to be there. Doing what she would not do, and not doing what she would do, as it said in the book of Romans.

She thought of Jane Eyre wild wild west dvd download , which she had read at school. The chapter before Jane’s wedding, the wedding that fell apart:

He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not in those days, see God for His creature, of whom I had made an idol.

Is it just me or are those challenging words for those in local church leadership?

It makes me ask where is the line between protecting the sheep and abusing the sheep?

It causes me to wonder how much of my own needs to be needed and admired by those I lead get in the way of doing what’s best for both of us. As I read the novel I think William is (so far) quite oblivious to his controlling ways and personal needs. He doesn’t come across as a tyrant and yet his subtle exertion of control over these women is possibly even more destructive than if it were overt.

As a person who has led a larger church I have experienced the destructive side of the Jane Eyre quote as people have expected me to be someone I simply could never be and as I have used that influence to get things done. It is a strange and sometimes disturbing relationship that takes place between needy pastor and needy congregation member.

If I have learnt anything it is that those of us in leadership must be secure in our own identity if we are to risk leading others. Insecure leaders are the very worst as they make all sorts of demands stemming from their own need to be loved and valued and not from healthy motives.

I am pondering what makes a person secure rather than insecure. I was originally reflecting that it was a function of maturity – that as we get older we need the approval of others less – but that is not universally true…

Perhaps it has something to do with coming to grips with the greyness of the world and our frailty in making sense of it. William continues to see most issues in a strong shade of black or white and it is his undoing. I tend to think that as we get older we should be able to determine what issues are clear cut – and they get fewer as you get older – and which are grey, but maybe not all can do this.

I haven’t finished the book, but I imagine Cody will end up getting disillusioned with this brand of church and will leave. She will be guilt ridden for her ‘betrayal’, but will struggle on for the sake of integrity. She will become one of the ‘churchless faith’ Christians who still want to follow Jesus and who still believe, but who have not found a place to live a more questioning and reflective expression of discipleship.

I am currently reading ‘Sweet’ a novel I discovered on Nathan’s blog download don t look now bedtime stories dvd download

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and finding it very interesting – partly because it is written about a scene I have been so intricately involved with for the last 34 years, but partly because it addresses the ongoing issues of co-dependency that plague both church leader and church member. By that I mean, the people needing a pastor and pastor needing to be needed.

Nathan summarises the story well with these words:

Tracy Ryan’s third novel, Sweet, is the story of three women caught in the thrall of a manipulative pastor of a conservative Baptist church in the outer-suburbs of Perth circa 1986. The Reverend William King is a complex figure, genuinely caring but always controlling.

Cody is seventeen and has just lost her brother in a car accident. In her grief the church offers her a degree of purpose and meaning. Yet she seems to fall into Christianity, rather than converting through conviction. Soon, William is pressuring her to give her testimony in front of the church, the story of her conversion from the darkness of ‘Romanism’. But this story he is trying to impose on her doesn’t ring true; her nominally Roman Catholic background is neutral in her memory.

Kylie is a young mother whose husband Mick is frequently away shearing. Her Baptist neighbours take an interest in her and babysit her children; soon she finds herself sucked into the church. Mick is unimpressed by her heavy involvement and she is torn between the church and him.

Carol has been a Christian much longer and her story is about the disintegration of her externally perfect Baptist family. As problems with her daughter and husband arise, she begins to realise that life isn’t as simple as her faith has taught her.

If you have been part of WA Baptist churches over the last 20 years then the scenery will be very familiar and like me you might even find yourself wondering who the ‘Reverend William King’ is…There is too much insider knowledge for this not to be based somewhat on personal experience.

So far it hasn’t been an overly negative portrayal of either the Baptists of the time or of William King (although there are definite issues with both).

Sometimes our history can look so embarrassing in hindsight, while in the moment it can actually appear to make perfect sense. The ’separateness’ of the cultures is probably what strikes me most strongly at the moment, possibly because this has been my own significant shift. It was the era when we stayed away from sinners except for purposes of overt evangelism.

If you are easily offended by a few pretty graphic sex scenes then its not the book for you, otherwise you will probably find it a good read.

It is well written, easy to follow and yet at the same time has some substance for those of us in churches and ministry. I think it would be an interesting book for those in the ‘pastoral care’ field to use in their training courses as it would shine the spotlight on the complications of being both pastor and church member.

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If you haven’t read it yet then you must buy a copy.

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