Book reviews

BOOK REVIEWS BY TANWIN TANOTO

READY OR NOT

BY DOUG PAUL

Ready or Not is a call for Christians to innovate and pioneer for the future. It is an invitation for kingdom leaders to reclaim their calling to innovate. Written at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the book is a wake-up call for church leaders to think beyond the Sunday service and whatever used to be ‘normal’. In these uncertain times of lockdown, online churches and dwindling church attendance, author Doug Paul asks this timely question: “How does kingdom innovation happen and how can we make it normal?” To answer that, Paul breaks down five phases of kingdom innovation: (1) Identification: framing the start of the journey by locating the big idea and framing the problem we’re trying to solve; (2) Ideation: generating new practices, concepts and ways of thinking to solve the innovation challenge; (3) Experimentation: launching, testing, adjusting and relaunching the innovation; (4) Mobilisation: knowing why and how the innovation worked so it can be mobilised; and (5) Multiplication: making the innovation scalable and removing as many barriers as possible. These five phases give us the framework and mindset that encourage innovation.

In each phase, Paul uses stories and innovations from the past to drive his points home. From the creation of Sunday school, the WWJD bracelet, the civil rights movement and Archimedes’ ‘eureka’ moment, to the great manure crisis of 1894, Paul brilliantly illustrates the myth, barriers and triggers for innovation. I find this book to be weighty. Weighty in a sense that it is better to be read slowly, with a journal in hand, so you can take notes along the way. Better yet, this is a good book to be read together with your leadership team. After all, ideas are generated better in teams. Overall, I cannot say this is a practical book because this is more of an idea book. So, it is weighty in the sense that it helps you to think and plan rather than do and copy. That is, after all, the essence of innovation.

In summary, this is an excellent and challenging book for all kingdom leaders. Whether you are a church planter, a pastor or a para-church leader, this book will tickle your creative bone and make you curious about what kingdom innovation looks like. I highly recommend the book, especially as churches and other Christian organisations are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. “You are not to be the reformed, gilding in gold the victories of the past. You are to be reforming: Active. Adaptive. Always listening, learning, searching, curious … joining Jesus in what he’s doing next. This is the leadership we need for the brave new world we find ourselves in. This is how we find the future, together.”

MISREADING SCRIPTURE WITH WESTERN EYES

BY E. RANDOLPH RICHARDS & BRANDON J. O’BRIEN

Some books open our eyes. Some books blow our minds. This book does both for me!

At first glance, I thought this was an exegesis book on how to interpret the Bible. But after reading it through, this is actually a book on culture. Richards and O’Brien show us how our cultures play a key role in our interpretation (or misinterpretation) of the Bible. “In whatever place and whatever age people read the Bible, we instinctively draw from our own cultural context to make sense what we are reading.”

The Bible is a foreign land – especially for us living in western culture. And if you have taught or preached from the Bible, you would know that the biggest challenge is to bridge the gap between what the passage meant for the original hearers and how it applies to us. This is especially difficult due to our cultural blind spots. This book highlights some of the major cultural assumptions and axioms we have in our western culture and contrast them with the Ancient Near Eastern culture. For example, by looking at the Bible through our individualistic and western eyes we might misinterpret the collective and communal aspects in some passages in the Bible. The second example is how we see time. For modern Westerners, we value time. We measure time by the seconds (or hundredth of a second if you are a race car driver). But in the Ancient Near East, they don’t see time that way. They have two units of measurement for time: Kairos and Chronos. “… the biblical authors, like many non-Westerners, were less concerned with clock or calendar time (chronos) and more concerned with the appropriateness and fittingness of events (kairos). You might say they were more concerned with timing than with time.”

Being an Asian who grew up in Indonesia and now living in Sydney, I feel this tension all the time. So, I can understand the complexity of reading an ancient scripture from cultures that are foreign to most of us. However, I believe as a preacher we need to do our due diligence and be as faithful as we can to the text. In that regard, this book is not only a comprehensive tool to recognise our cultural blinders, but it provides a few practical steps to remove them when reading scripture. On a personal note, Richards was a missionary in Indonesia for a few years. So, he uses a lot of examples from Indonesian culture and language to contrast that with western culture. That I find relatable and amusing.

WITH ALL YOUR HEART

BY A. CRAIG TROXEL

(Ezekial 36:26), to its danger (Jeremiah 17:9). In the New Testament, Jesus also talks a lot about hearts. He deals with people’s hearts in His ministry. With more than 1000 occurrences, ‘heart’ is the most used word in the Bible to describe the inner-self. However, ‘heart’ can also be the most misused word today. Troxel argues that the way we interpret ‘heart’ today is different from what the Bible meant – almost the opposite. “Today, heart is understood to refer to a person’s emotion. Biblically, the heart refers to the whole person, including the capacity to think.” This book explains the three functions of the heart: mind (what we know), desires (what we love), and will (what we choose).

What I love about this book is the way Troxel points everything back to Christ. By outlining the functions of the heart, Troxel also outlines the sins associated with each function. How sin limits our mind on what we know, how iniquity twists and perverts our desires, and how transgression and rebellion drive our will. As a solution, Troxel presents Jesus in His offices as an antidote for our sins. Jesus as our prophet teaches and assures our mind, Jesus as our priest redeems and renews our desires, and Jesus as our king subdues and strengthens our will. As a minister, I find this book very helpful in helping me understand the wholeness of a person. In helping others, it is critical that we see people as a whole. Not only do we know people by their choices, but we can love and understand people better by relating to what they think and what they love. Moreover, this book also helps me shape my own pastoral heart. By understanding that my heart consists of my mind, desires, and will, I can know myself better. It also helps me in carefully reflecting on what God is forming me into. This book is easy to read while at the same time filled with rich theological and biblical arguments. Not only is ‘heart’ the most used word in the Bible, but most of our issues are also related to our hearts. Therefore, I find this book to be mind-opening – or should I say heartopening?

I highly recommend this book if you want to learn how God transforms the lives of His people through our hearts – ourselves and those who are under our care.

“The heart is the governing centre of a person. When used simply, it reflects the unity of our inner being, and when used comprehensively, it describes the complexity of our inner being.” – A. Craig Troxel The Bible talks a lot about the heart. From the songs of David, the new covenant that God promised His people To read more reviews by Tanwin go to: https://freshhope.org.au/blog/category/reviews/