Atonement stories are always interesting and often heart rending. Last Christmas Danelle gave me a novel for a gift, but holidays ended and I never got round to reading it. On Saturday I started reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and found it absolutely brilliant.

Its not often I find myself unable to put a book down, but this one kept me reading until I finished it on the flight home yesterday. It wasn’t because it was riveting in a ‘mystery/thriller’ kind of way, but more because it captured the terrible pathos of broken humanity seeking redemption in such an incredibly ‘inhuman’ world.

Rather than me try and write my summary – here’s something I pinched from another review website:

In The Kite Runner, Amir and Hassan grow up together in Afghanistan like brothers, although they couldn’t be more different. Amir is the son of a wealthy businessman, a Sunni Muslim, a Pashtun, and he’s educated and reads voraciously. Hassan’s father is a servant to Amir’s father, and Hassan is a Sh’ia Muslim, a Hazara, he’s illiterate, and he has a harelip. But neither boy has a mother and they spend their boyhoods roaming the streets of Kabul together. Amir, though, continually uses his superior position to taunt or abuse Hassan, and one day hides in fear as Hassan is beaten mercilessly by bullies. The Soviet invasion of Aghanistan sends Amir’s family to the United States, but he returns there as an adult during the Taliban rule to atone for his sins to Hassan. Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan émigré living in San Francisco and his debut novel has received mostly good reviews. The Denver Post says The Kite Runner “ranks among the best-written and provocative stories of the year so far.”

If you enjoy a confronting novel that deals in ‘real life’ for a different part of the world then this one is great.

In reading novels like this it always causes that question to bubble to the surface for me again: why has my life been so privileged while others seem to draw the short straw and get born in places like Afghanistan in wartime?

I was going to ask ‘why was I born in a safe place’, but given that my home base is Belfast that doesn’t really apply. I have experienced some degree of war and religious persecution, but nothing of the order that seems to take place in middle eastern countries.

So many people reading this book dirty dancing havana nights free …

I have just finished it and am well and truly underwhelmed.

With all due respect to Rob Bell (who I am sure is a good bloke) can someone tell me what all the fuss is about? I found it moderately interesting, but hardly inspiring or life changing.

I was given a copy of Under the Unpredictable Plant – an Exploration in Vocational Holiness as a Christmas present and read it over the weekend. I haven’t read many Petersen books and often found him on a different page to myself in many regards.

This book I enjoyed on many levels. It is not a difficult read – which is always nice! And it also says some provocative and challenging things – Eugene the prophet coming to the fore.

Essentially he argues that pastors are not to be Messiah’s (people who fix it all) or Managers (religious program co-ordinators) but to be spiritual directors – those who help other grow in their connection with God. I find ‘spiritual director’ a bit of a trendy term at the moment.

He laments the mess the church has got into as we have tried to be a religious service provider and the damage this has done to pastors who willingly buy into this paradigm of ministry. He calls us back to a much simpler, more intentional expression of community without all the bells and whistles but with a strong focus on helping people become more like Jesus.

If you’re a program management freak then you’d be advised to stay well clear of this book!

He has some great things to say about how the work of ministry so often leaves us as people who are hypocrites, leading others to a God we don’t know and rarely experience. He argues that a significant proportion of a pastor’s time ought to be spent God and then with people. And in that he is a big fan of long term ministry. Petersen has added the vow of stability to the other more common vows of purity, simplicity etc.

When I get a minute I’ll post a few quotes from the book.

This is a great novel by Jodi Picoult.

I was reading Transforming Mission by David Bosch and although I was enjoying it, was going slow. I picked up this novel for a change and read it in a day.

Its an interesting ethical story about a 13 year old girl who was ‘genetically engineered’ by her parents as a bone marrow/kidney donor for her sister with leukemia. She struggles to have a life of her own as a result and ends up suing her parents for rights to her own body. It raises some great questions about how far we go to save life.

Its a great novel for the world we are creating!

I am now onto The First Casualty by Ben Elton – also a novel with ethical implications and it looks like a good one too.

What would you read if you were on holidays?…

Tomorrow we leave for Bangkok – no kids and a great time hanging out with some really good friends. If its a holiday then I need to take a book or 3.

I went to the local library today and found 3 books that I have been hoping to read. Here they are, as well as one I bought recently:

1. When Jesus Came to Harvard

It doesn’t look like an easy read, but I like its focus on how Jesus would deal with difficult ethical questions.

2. Affluenza – Scott has been raving about this so I thought I ought to go read it and allow my consumeristic western tendencies to be radically challenged.

3. Shantaram – a novel that Al Hirsch was reading when he was here a few trips back. I liked the feel of it but have never got around to reading it.

4. Transforming Mission – I read this a few years back, but only ordered my own copy of it recently. i’m not sure how much I’ll get read of this one. It feels a bit heavy.

Chances are I’ll read the novel and forget the rest!

If you like to listen to books while travelling then these guys have some great free offers.

Audible.com

offer three free books and you don’t have to stay with them after the trial…

If you consider yourself a first world missionary and you haven’t read Roland Allen’s Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and The Causes Which Hinder It, then you really need to get cracking.

I discovered the text of the book today on Steve Addison’s site in PDF format. (Steve has a stash of really good stuff!)

This is a gem.

I am also reading Christianity Rediscovered at the moment. It is another great missionary book, where Vincent Donovan explores what the gospel looks like for the Masai people.

I have just started reading three new books. Actually 2 are very old and one is recent.

The two oldies are by Roland Allen, a British Anglican guy who was a missonary in the early to mid 20th C. His books were first published c. 1920.

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One is called The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the other is Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours. Both have been deemed classics in the missional arena so I figured it was about time I got on the ball and read them. They do seem to have some useful stuff to say.

The other is the newly released (relatively) emergingchurch.intro. It seems like a very readable popular approach to emerging ideas.

I am nearly finished Primal Leadership, a book I have enjoyed but haven’t been rivetted by. There are some excellent leadership concepts in it, but its just getting tiring reading the same stuff over…

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in the cut free If you’re read the six thinking hats then this is simply that kind of stuff in different format.

It was good value first time around but this one feels a bit tired and uninspiring. All he really says is that different situations require different kinds of action. I realise we sometimes don’t get this, but its hard to get excited about this kind of a book!

I am however enjoying Daniel Goleman’s Primal Leadership – some very useful thoughts in there.

street warrior dvd download Ok, I didn’t actually ‘read’ it.

I tried… but it was pretty lame. I skimmed looking for stuff that would be useful, but all in all it was pretty disappointing.

I don’t believe in wasting time reading stuff that just doesn’t fire me, so it will be going back on its shelf in the library.

Key idea?… We are spiritual beings and there is a spiritual dimension to coaching. We agree on that much. Beyond that it gets messy.