Jordan Rippy

Here are a few things I’ve read over the last several weeks:

Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham

• I highly recommend this book.  It challenges the age-old idea that the way we will succeed in life is to thrust our energies into our weaknesses in order to improve them.  Buckingham’s research shows that in fact, people get better when they focus with a higher level of intensity on making their strengths stronger.  It’s a great read for anyone interested in maximizing their influence, productivity, and effectiveness.

Wide Awake by Erwin Raphael McManus

• Full disclosure: I am an Erwin junkie.  That said, this is a fantastic book.  It explores what it means to truly live out your dreams.  One of my favorite quotes from this book is, “There are things that you are not supposed to learn from experience because the experience will kill you.”

Community 101 by Gilbert Bilezikian

• I decided to do some reading on what Biblically functioning community should look like.  At the request of Dr. Waddell, I started with Community 101.  Wow.  Any Christian should have to read this book.  Community is central not only to relational growth, but also to Spiritual growth.  Bilezikian begins by exploring the Triune Godhead and then launches into a fantastic overview of what “the church” should look like.

Eternal Echoes by John O’Donohue

• This book is community from the perspective of a quaker.  O’Donohue uses multiple essays to explore our longing to belong.  Why were created with this longing?  What happens when it is not met?  When it is pursued?  When it is rejected?  When it is found?  It’s a fantastic reflection on human relationship and the need to belong to one another.

Here’s the deal. I know some of you don’t like these book reviews, but you need to realize that I think it’s great when you chime in and we discuss them, but ultimately these reviews are for me. The blog is a great way for me to track my yearly reading and to be able to review some of the content. With that, I just read Blue Like Jazz. Honestly, I thought it was great but I feel like it didn’t quite live up to some of it’s press. Miller is a great and relatable writer and I totally resonated with what he had to say.

• “Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.”
• “I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time.”
• “Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror.”
• Coming to know that Jesus is God is not like doing math.
• “Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things.”
• Chess players go crazy, not poets.
• “I love to give to charity, but I don’t want to be charity.”
• “It’s not that I want to earn my own way to give something to God, it’s that I want to earn my own way so I won’t be charity.”
• “Passion is tricky, though, because it can point to nothing just as easily as it points to something.”
• Christian spirituality is a nonpolitical mysterious system that can be experienced but not explained.
• “There was room at the table for me, but I wasn’t in the family.”
• “It took me a while to understand that the answer to problems was not marketing or program but rather spirituality.”
• “I want to marry a girl who, when I am with her, makes me feel alone.”
• “I think our society puts too much pressure on romantic love, and that is why so many romances fail.”
• “I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty four hours to earn ten minutes use.”
• “Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together.”
• “When you live on your own for years, you begin to think the world belongs to you. You begin to think all space is your space and all time is your time.”
• “There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction.”
• “It was the affection of Christ, not the brutality of a town, that healed Zacchaeus.”
• “All the wonder of God appens right above our arithmetic and formula.”
• “If we could, God would not inspire awe.”
• “I think we have two choices in the face of beauty: terror or awe.”
• “We are too proud to feel awe and to fearful to feel terror.”
• “I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.”
• “I was tired of Biblical ethic being used as a tool to judge people rather than heal them.”
• “God has never withheld love to teach m a lesson.”
• “Everything rests in the ability to receive love.”

On the way home from New York I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Inspiring. For those of you who don’t know, Randy Pausch is a college professor who recently found out that he only has three to six months of good health due to pancreatic cancer. This book recaps his last lecture on “How to Achieve Childhood Dreams”. I highly recommend this book. It’s an extremely read. If you’re not a big reader, at least check out the video of Randy’s lecture.

• “When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”
• “The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”
• “Sometimes the most impenetrable brick walls are made of flesh.”
• “I know you’re smart. But everyone here is smart. Smart isn’t enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here.”
• “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”
• “Complaining does not work as a strategy.”
• “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”
• “When you go into the wilderness, the only thing you can count on is what you take with you.”

While I was in New York I finished reading The Shack by William Young. This book is amazing. It’s a fictional exploration of forgiveness and God’s love. I love how the author describes the relationship of the trinity. Even though I usually wouldn’t include quotes from fiction, a few lines really stood out to me:

• “I suppose that since most of hurts come through relationships so will our healing.”
• “Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book.”
• “I told you for later.”
• “To force my will on you,” Jesus replied, “is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy.”
• “Judgment is not about destruction, but about setting things right.”
• Learn to live loved.
• “It is not the nature of love to force a relationship but it is the nature of love to open the way.”
• Live in expectancy not expectation.
• If anything matters, than everything matters.

I just finished An Unstoppable Force by Erwin McManus. Probably the most influential book on church leadership and Christian living that I have ever read. I highly recommend it. Allow me to overwhelm you with quotes:

• “Whenever the church is seem through the template of an organization, we begin creating an institution. When we relate to the church as an organism, we begin to awaken an apostolic ethos, which unleashes the movement of God.”
• “The church can only thrive in the context of healthy relationships.”
• Change must not be seen as a necessary evil, but as a God-given tool.
• “The more one focuses on one;s own living, the less one is concerned about giving life to others.”
• “If churches wait to long to die to themselves, then they ensure that they will die by themselves.”
• “One survival has become our supreme goal, we have lost our way.”
• “All too many times we kept our traditions and lost our children.”
• “It is one thing to have a preference; it is another to demand that one’s preferences be honored above the needs of those without Christ.”
• “All the change in the world, minus the heart of God, equal zero movement.”
• “Today the call to cross-culture ministry doesn’t even require going; it just requires staying with a purpose.”
• “We have superficially attributed to generational trends what are in fact worldview shifts.”
• “We are to pitch tents, not build cathedrals.”
• Don’t build monuments, create movements.
• “God calls us to take memories with us, but leave the memorabilia behind.”
• “Many times, we would rather have Godless security than spirit-lead change.”
• “God is continually inviting us to believe that his future is better than any past we have experienced with him.”
• “The reality of change is the promise of miracle.”
• “We must leave the past, engage the present, and create the future.”
• “Values are transferred through relational environments.”
• “it is far more important to shape the values of a community than to set the rules.”
• “The church’s brithright is to be the fountainhead of creativity and human potential.”
• “The danger is going beyond an order of worship to a worship of order!”
• “It’s hard to believe that a movement born of visionaries and dreamers would become dominantly known for its traditions and rituals.”
• “In an organization, leaders must be brought in from the outside. In a movement, leaders emerge from within.”
• “Could we consider that even our death would be an act of faith if the direction of our bodies pointed to the way of God’s future?”
• “What took faith yesterday is sight today.”
• “Faith, love, and hope are not foundations or pillars; they are wellsprings.”
• “Jesus doesn;t call us to love God and tolerate our neighbor.”
• “Serving others with others is the surest path to having your own needs met.”
• “We tend to love the altar so much that we refuse to set it on fire. Yet God comes in the flames.”
• “The incarnation of Jesus Christ is God’s undeniable evidence that relevance to culture is not optional.”
• “After you expound on the purpose, then you expose the problems.”
• “Spiritual leadership in the change process is not so much about being the primary advocate of change but being the primary example of change.”
• “The Ten Commandments are the lowest possible standard of humane living.”
• “Grace has been seen as the liberty to live beneath the law rather than the capacity to soar beyond the law.”
• “When evangelism is not reserved for the elite, kingdom relationships become everyone’s responsibility.”
• “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”
  - Basho

I just finished Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball. Really enjoyed it. I was required to read it a couple of years ago for school, but I didn’t finish it. Anyway, this post is not about the emerging church, it’s about a great book on worship. I really like Kimball’s focus on holistic ministry and multi-sensory worship. I love books that challenge me to think more creatively about worship and leadership. Kimball also has a lot of great things to say about intergenerational relationships and consumer Christianity.

• “Church is the people of God on a mission. (1 Corinthians 12:27; Acts 1:8)”
• “It is dangerous to elevate the [worship] gatherings over true spiritual formation.”
• “We only dishonor the people in a local church and risk creating backlash when we blindly use someone else’s model’.”
• “Biblically, it is important to cultivate intergenerational relationships among believers (Psalm 145:4).”
• “Never mistake motion for action.” - Ernest Hemingway
• “A core value of Vintage Faith church is that we can’t explain what happens with the church by the methodology we use. It can be explained only by the Holy Spirit’s involvement.”
• “Being organic is not being unorganized and chaotic. Anything organic and living is the opposite of random.”
• “Emerging worship expresses love and adoration for God through creativity mixed with theology and artistic expression.”
• “The desire is to avoid developing a dependency upon a person in the worship gathering (or a dependency on a certain personality or style of teaching).”
• “We need time to allow the Spirit to convict or encourage our hearts after the message-rather than rush out the door. We need times where we can intercede for others or get on our knees to confess our sins.”
• “May we never allow the creative design of worship gatherings to push Jesus to the sidelines.”
• “We have lost intergenerational relationships in church by keeping everyone in segmented into programmatic departments.”
• “A sign of unity in a church isn’t if they know the senior pastor, but if they have the same DNA. It isn’t about a person; it is about Jesus Christ.”
• “We have a holy responsibility to decide how money is spent as an act of worship.”

I recently finished reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. The book is Bell’s attempt at articulating what a Christian worldview should look like. I really liked it. I appreciate his historical approach to the life of Jesus, as well as his emphasis on life here on earth, rather than just eternity. Here are some take-aways from the book:

• “For a Christian, Jesus’ teachings aren’t to be followed because they are a nice way to live a moral life. They are to be followed because they are the best possible insight into how the world really works.”
• “Christian = Noun. A person. A person who follows Jesus. A person living in tune with ultimate reality, God. A way of life centered around a person who lives.”
• “A church is a community of people who are learning how to be certain kinds of people wherever they find themselves, so they can do whatever it is they do “in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
• “Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God who is already there.”
• “Shalom is the presence of the goodness of God. It’s the presence of wholeness, completeness.”
• “Your job is relentless pursuit of who God made you to be. And anything else you do is sin and you need to repent of it.”
• “Sabbath is taking a day a week to remind myself that I did not make the world and that it will continue to exist without my efforts.”
• “We cannot earn what we always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting is true about us is actually true.”
• “For Jesus, this new kind of life in him is not about escaping this world but about making it a better place, here and now.”
• “The goal isn’t escaping this world but making this world the kind of place God can come to.”
• “We cannot live independently of the world God has placed us in.”

Read it. It’ll be good for you. If you’ve already read it I’d love to hear what you thought.