"I believe the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days. I also believe that rivers clap their hands and that mountains sing (Ps 98:8) because he Bible says that too. But I don't think that the Bible means six twenty-four-hour days any more than I believe that he Bible means that rivers have actual hands." (Daniel M. Harrell in Natures Witness)

The practice of the presence of God is a very well known classic of the Christian faith. It collects some of the insights given by Brother Lawrence, a friar that impressed people with the peace he transmitted. It's a great book to make us remember that the presence of God is not far from us, even when we are busy in our daily lives.

I can not say I agree with everything on that book, but the main theme is of much value to me.

Let me start by saying that The Starfish Manifesto (press the link to download it) is not really a book. It's more like a draft of a book, with many parts that would (and probably should) be changed and cut before becoming a book. Which means it is not easy to read, and it is really long. Only the really interested soul will be able to finish it (like I did, and no one else I know was able to).

The Starfish Manifesto starts where Houses that Change the World stopped. It is focused mainly on the prophetic and apostolic gifts, and how the strategy of God to the discipling of the planet can operate through those gifts.

The book starts describing the roles of the prophet and of the apostle, and then how those roles work together for the envisioning of the strategy of the church, locally as well as globally. It finishes with some practical wisdom in how to make the jump. I identified a lot with what is written in the book, except with the financial principles.

This book, together with The Forgotten Ways, are at the moment, in my opinion, the ones that best describe the vision of God for the church of today. A organic, Christ-centered, Kingdom of God oriented, apostolic, missiological church.

This is a long overdue review. I finished reading this book some months ago.

Serve God, Save the Planet is a book that obviously caught my interest, since it talks about the two most important themes in my life: God and nature.

The book starts by showing all the theoretical reasons why christians should be actively interested in protecting the environment, and it does accomplish that role really well. I wouldn't say it brings much new things for someone that understands both subjects as well as I do, but it is an excellent resume of all those reasons.

After that, it turns into the practical consequences of those beliefs, and that's where I find the book a little bit lacking. Most practical aspects talked about are mainly in a personal level. More about what we can do alone in our house (mainly recycling and saving energy). But not much in how we should work to protect and restore natural habitats, or how we can politically intervene in those subjects. And it got a little bit boring by the end, with so many small things we can do.

But overall, I think it is a great book as an introduction to this subject, and worth a read. I would offer one to people interested but with no clue about the subject.

The Forgotten Ways is THE book on missional/emerging church If you want a complete explanation of what the emerging church really is about, this is the place to look. Here the core issues are discussed in an excellent way, in what he calls "apostolic genius" (lame title, if you ask me), which is described as "the centrality and lordship of Jesus, disciple making, the missional-incarnational impulse, organic systems, apostolic environment, and communitas (a type of community formed in situations of significant ordeal and/or mission)."

I didn't learn much in this book, to be honest. But it is a great way of collecting all theological thinking I (and many others) are assimilating for some time now. This is the kind of book to offer if you lack words to explain what missional church is all about.

On the down side, the book is a little hard to read. It's not the language, it's just that I wished the author was a better writer. But it's an excellent technical/theological book, he's not trying to make a novel here. What he achieves in this book is a very good systematization of missional church theological thinking, without lacking the practical aspect.

For all this, it's a must buy. Buy it by the dozens, and offer it on Christmas and birthdays.

Tha Astonished Heart is a critical analysis of the history of the church, and a very profetic one. The author explores the goods and bads of all the phases of the history of the church in terms of religiosity, institutionalism, and catholicity (universality), giving a very good perspective of what really matters in the end.

What I really liked about this book is that it gives you a very good insight and a new perspective of how the church developed through the ages, and what were the consequences of those changes. It really opened my eyes for a lot of new thinking.

In the end, the analysis focus on the models of church we have in our days, the good and bad they have, and other models that the church is not adopting yet (or better, was not adopting in 1995, when the book was written). And then it finishes with hope that we recover the astonishing ability of the gospel.

In the end, this was a very good book, and a very easy one to read. I love when theology is explained with a sense of humor.

Organic Church is a very practical book on how to missional and incarnational "where life happens". The model of waiting for people to come to church clearly doesn't work, what we need is to do what we were allways suposed to do: Go where people are and communicate the Gospel there.

To do so, we need to reduce the Gospel to its absolute minimum (which means take of all the garbage we added to it), and communicate it in a way that people can easily pass to others. The result is a chrisitan movement.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It's very practical and filled with real life experiences.

For anyone interested in Biology in a introdutory level, the Online Biology Book by M.J. Farabee is a nice place to start.

Just finished reading it. The Last Word And The Word After That is the last book on the A New Kind Of Christian triology. It is very similar to the others. The main theme this time is afterlife: What happens when we die? Not only that, but how the view we have of after life afects the rest of our theology.

Good book, as the others. But the second one is the best.

With the same style, this is a continuation of A New Kind of Christian. And a worthy one indeed.

We could say that the main theme of the book is the creation/evolution debate, and although it is a recurrent subject in the book, the main theme is the story of the universe. The story of how God created the universe, and how he intervened in it, and how we fit in that story.

I think this one is better than the first book in the triology. I think its very important to know how to tell the story of life in terms that the people of our days understands them. And the way it shows why you should care about nature, is excelent.

The book might be polemic not only because of emergent theology, but also because it defends that God created earth by evolution. Not that it's polemic to me, but it might be to some :)

I started to read the "A New Kind of Christian" trilogy some weeks ago, and have now finished the first book.

I really liked the book for two main reasons. First, because it speaks about the core issues needing reformation in modern christianity (not the less meaningful exterior things). And second, because the approach used (fictional story) is a very smart way of talking about things that may hurt others.

This is an excellent book to give to that special friend that has problems understanding what that emerging stuff is all about. Because sometimes we focus to much on the superficial things, on the results, and forget to show all the meaningful reasons that led us to live christianity in a new way.

This is also an excellent book for all who find Christ interesting, but the modern church not so interesting. There are other ways of being church, of being christians, that are more appealing to outsiders.

Can't wait to read the other two books...

I feel like the modern church forgot a lot of what means to be contemplative. We are all about praying for objectives, achieving goal, and we end up forgetting that we need more quiet time, more contemplative times. We need to hear from God. And that's what this book is all about.

The book starts by showing what is contemplation, and why we lost it: Narcissism, pragmatism, and unbridled restlessness. This is a very important part of the book, it's where we understand our sickness, where we understand what is wrong.

After that it goes on describing three different contemplative traditions: Mystical, Protestant, and theistic. And by so doing, it gives us a nice idea of how contemplation works in practice, and the various facets it has.

The last chapter ends the book in a perfect way, showing some practices necessary to restore our contemplative aspect. I could describe them here, but it wouldn't be the same as reading them after the rest of the book.

I really loved the book, and I recommend it to every christian. It's a very practical book. And contemplation is something we really need to restore in the church of our days. A must read.

I am a big supporter of the house church movement. I support it, I advocate it, and I live it. So, for me, this book didn't bring much new, it was more a question of hearing someone describing part of what I'm living. But for someone that is not in it, this is an excellent book to read. It gives you the reasons for why we believe we have to return to the house church model of church.

On the other hand, in my opinion, Simson's opinion is too strict for my taste. Specially concerning his view of the "fivefold" ministry and the way he believes house church is the only way to go. God can move in many different ways. I also dislike the way he uses numbers to show that the house church is the right thing to do. The reasons have to be more profound than that. But well, that's the problem with books. If I was talking with him face to face, maybe we would end up realizing we think the same way. Books don't give much room for dialogue.

I recommend this book for anyone frustrated with the institutional church, and that wants to learn more about other ways of being church. This is a great book to give you a general idea of what the house church movement is.

Everyone has already read this book. Or so it seems. I'll start by saying that I really liked the book, and most of it resonates what I have been feeling and thinking in the last year and a half.

Generous Orthodoxy is all about respect. Respecting other cultures, traditions, religions, etc. It's about looking to the past of the church, and understanding what good came from it. It's about being humble, admitting that we suck big time, that we may be wrong in many things. We are better than no one. It's all about the kingdom of God. It's all about having the courage of pressing forward, following Christ and sharing Him with others, despite our weaknesses.

Because of all this, the fate of this book is to be a polemic one. There is no way this book could pass unharmed. The Church of our days is filled with quarrels for one simple reason: We all think we are right and the other wrong. So, this book comes against the Praxis of today's Church. Against our arrogance, against our hypocrisy. So, it is no surprise to me that this book gather so much criticism, since it speaks so well of our Church wrongs.

The Kingdom of God, what is it? For me, this is a question of utmost importance. I believe the meaning of the kingdom of God has been neglected throughout the history of the church. Try asking your christian friends what is it, and you'll be amazed with the answers (or lack of). That is the question this book tries to answer. And I have to say that it answers the question very well.

This is a great book. Very well written, it is easy to read and yet deep enough in meaning. I like books like that. Books that talk about profound stuff in a simple and easy to understand way. There's a lot to learn from it, a lot to be practised, a lot to be debated.

I even recommend it to unbelievers. It's a great introduction to Christianity. And in a sense, the answer to life, the universe, and everything (which, by the way, it's not 42).

I'm searching for a christian book about ecology. Any recommendations?

I would like to recommend you all the book Houses that change the world, by Wolfgang Simson. I haven't read it all yet, but I can already greatly recommend it. You can download it, or you can buy it.

Bushido starts with the phrase: "I have found the essence of Bushido: to die!" What it means, is that a samurai has to die to itself every day in order to be of service. And so starts a serious of practical sugestions of how a samurai should act.

Two things fascinated me in this book. First, it helped me understand a little bit of the japanese culture. We can see that this book had some influence in the japanese way of working, doing business, relating to each other, etc.

The second thing that fascinated me was the similarity between some of the principles in Bushido and the principles of the christian faith. The essence of Bushido, to die to ourselves, is one of the most important principles of christianity (the kind that is lived, not the religious kind).

I enjoyed reading this book, it's well worth it for anyone interested in Japan. And many of the advices in tha book are pertinent to our days, and worthy of being analized. Well worth the time.

OK, this is probably old news by now, but I noticed today the website Library Thing. Library Thing is a place to put all your books so that you have an easy reference to them. Because it's in the internet, you can see who else has the same books, which books they like, reviews made by other viewers, ratings, etc. From the people for the people.

I like it, but I would like to see more community in it. I would like to name other people my contacts, and not only being able to watch their list. It's a social thing, we like to be connected to the people we know. We like to meet new people. We like to connect. We like to know who is connected to us (who is seeing our list).

You can check out my list here.

This is a book about understanding the japanese culture. It is a compilation of several essays on different aspects of their culture, each chapter being a stand-alone text.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It felt very accurate, and was a great way to learn different aspects of the japanese culture. And more than that, showed the difference between the japanese culture and the "ocidental culture" (which turns out to be USA culture). Even for me, a latin, that was a good way to better understand the culture.

A great book to buy.