Books @ Leadership Network

Insights from The 4:8 Principle

Last summer during our much-needed vacation to Hawaii, I memorized Phil. 4:8. I really wanted to allow the idea of renewing my mind with positive thoughts to take effect. It was one of the best vacations ever as I intentionally replaced negative and stressful thoughts with “whatever was true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy!”

A couple months later I ran across The 4:8 Principle: The Secret to a Joy-Filled Life by Tommy Newberry. Here was an entire book based on the same verse! My wife and I have really enjoyed it. Now we are buying copies for friends of ours!

Here are some of the insights, Tommy offers:

“The average person thinks approximately 50,000 thoughts per day. Each thought moves us either toward our God-given potential or away from it.”

“No area of your life is untouched by your thoughts.”

“The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven or hell; a hell of heaven.” - John Milton

“The secret conversations you hold in your the privacy of your own mind are shaping your destiny, little by little…. What you persistently think eventually but inevitably crystallizes into the words you speak and then the things you do.”

“… thinking, talking, and worrying about what you don’t want can never bring you what you do want…. As relentlessly as you try, you cannot think one thing and experience something else.”

“You can override past negative programming by deliberately choosing new behaviors that line up with your God-given potential, whether or not you feel like it.”

“Dwell on the person God wants you to become….  Contemplate the wonderful and exciting plans God has for your future.”

“You will always feel what you dwell on…. you can do away with a negative thought only when you replace it with a positive thought.”

“One of the most effective and least utilized methods for upgrading your emotional life is acting your way into the feelings you most desire…. [otherwise] you will forever be doomed to enjoy only those positive emotions that arise spontaneously.”

“Emotions don’t reveal the quality of your life; they reveal the quality of your thinking at any particular moment.”

Eric Bryant

Mosaic, Los Angeles

www.ericbryant.org/blog

Pagan Christianity?

Tony Morgan reviews a new book by Frank Viola and George Barna about the house church movement. Here's an excerpt:

I just finished a review copy of Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola and George Barna. This is a revised and updated version of the same book that Viola published in 2002. Basically, the book is an attack on the institutional church and Viola and Barna's attempt to portray the house church movement as the only biblical method for the church body to gather. In fact, the "final thought" that the book shares is a three-step process for people to leave their current church.

...

I'm sure for some people it's the expression of faith that best helps them experience biblical community and spiritual growth. Though it's not for me, it's just another reminder that it takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.

Great book review. Read the full book review of Pagan Christianity >>

---

[errata: apologies for the wrong attribution in a previous version of this post]

Taking Postmodernism to Church

Who's Afraid of Postmodernism: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K. A. Smith

Though I am involved in various ministries, college ministry is most often the lens through which I view many of the paradigm shifts taking place at the intersection of culture and Church.  Our college ministry, hopefully, provides the impetus for many of our student's questioning, struggling, wrestling, and yearning for God and genuine community in the Church.  Because college really is an unique time in life, where many students for the first time find themselves free to ask the questions that they thought they have previously had a firm grasp on.

Much of this searching for God and genuine community in Church is inherent in our postmodern culture, and whether we acknowledge it, like it, or dislike it, postmodernism has allowed students to ask questions and wrestle with issues that they previously felt uncomfortable with before.  That's why this book has been such a great book to read, as it gives one the chance as the author states, to neither "demonize", nor "baptize" postmodernism, but to have a better understanding of its affect in our culture and Church.  Smith believes that postmodernism can help reshape the Church by being an "ally of our ancient heritage."

I'll leave you with this great quote below, as it reminds me of the current struggle of my student's as they wrestle with their faith in a Church that is sometimes too individual and consumeristic:

If I am opposed to the epistemology, or theory of knowledge, that plagues modern Christianity, then I am opposed to the ecclesiology (or lack thereof) that accompanies this modernist version of the faith. Within the matrix of a modern Christianity, the base "ingredient" is the individual; the church, then, is simply a collection of individuals. Conceiving of Christian faith as a private affair between the individual and God--a matter of my asking Jesus to "come into my heart"--modern evangelicalism finds it hard to articulate just how or why the church has any role to play other than providing a place to fellowship with other individuals who have a private relationship with God. With this model in place, what matters is Christianity as a system of truth or ideas, not the church as a living community embodying its head. Modern Christianity tends to think of the church either as a place where individuals come to find answers to their questions or as one more stop where individuals can try to satisfy their consumerist desires. As such, Christianity becomes intellectualized rather than incarnate, commodified rather than the site of genuine community. (pp. 29)

Prayer: A Struggle for Control

Admittedly, through nearly twenty-four years of full-time ministry, I have not often viewed prayer as something I enjoy. Of course, I know I am “supposed” to pray, but I struggle with a temperament compelled to action. Surely, I am not alone.

With a desire to advance in this critical area of my life/ministry, I have recently turned to Philip Yancey and his work, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference (Zondervan, 2006). Written by one who states that his “main qualification for writing about prayer is that I feel unqualified-and genuinely want to learn,” the book offers a refreshingly balanced assessment of the subject: of all that prayer is, is not and still can be for those, like me, who are not yet satisfied.

One section entitled “Guilty” has me thinking. There, Yancey reminds that God asked only two questions of Adam and Eve: Where are you? What is this you have done?

The first question, he notes, addresses our present reality. Are we attempting to hide, feeling exposed, suffering from guilt or shame, the hurt and rejection of others, or perhaps even angry with God due to unmet expectations, etc.?

The second question recalls the past and, if we are honest, provides an opportunity for proper assessment of what exactly has brought us here.

Having answered these questions before God, we are prepared to leave the garden (of prayer) newly clothed and rightly positioned for the journey ahead.

In other words, authentic prayer is that excerise through which I realign myself with God; through which I again admit, “Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.” Prayer compels me, therefore, to cease from striving to control, and to will myself to be controlled by the One who not only knows me best, but who is, truly, about what is best for me.

Perhaps prayer, then, is time to answer once again the question, “Do I really believe that?”

Mark DeYmaz
www.mosaicchurch.net