Everything Belongs has now moved to my top 5 books for church planters should read. the first time I heard Richard was at Soularize. And if my thoughts are too brief, please check out jordon’s.

I rate this book on the CP scale a 5/5 (CP is my new scale measurement that i made up, not some sort of authority). And the funniest thing about my rating for this is that i can’t really explain what this book is about. For that reason I recommend buying this book (not borrowing) and rereading it every year.

What I mean is, it’s about knowing yourself, knowing God, your motivations for doing the things you do, the ability to see life as it comes and not react. It is about transformation and the contemplative life, but it’s about church and the mystery of it’s importance for community and God’s purposes in the world. This book also speaks into the ego, and pride and worry and about becoming more complete in who you are as a Christian. It’s about seeing truth where truth is and it’s about living in that truth and not letting lies determine how you should feel or live.

At the end of the day this book is about perspective, and what it means to live a contemplative life and the only way to seek out and obtain this perspective is prayer and suffering. (I am sure many of you are not following me at all). If you are a church planter or leader, or whatever, please give it a read and think about it in light of how you react, maybe when no one comes to your gathering, or if your relationships are failing, or when an outreach doesn’t work out, or when you are incredibly successful. You see what this book does is it helps you put all those emotions into perspective. What a beautiful thing.

I want to leave you with a quote that inspired me from this book. It may make no sense to you, but it helped me in tremendous ways this past weekend.

“Institutional religion is a humanly necessary but also immature manifestation of this ‘hidden mystery’ by which God is saving the world. History seems to make both the necessity and the immaturity of religion glaringly apparent, which upsets both progressives and conservatives. Institutional religion is never an end in itself, but merely a wondrous and ‘uncertain trumpet’ of the message.”

So bare with me on this thought…as it isn’t totally thought through yet, but have we ever thought of church as a group of people gathering together to produce something?

I think the first place I heard about this was in Steve Taylor‘s book Out of Bounds Church, but while out for breakfast today in Victoria I started reading this local free magazine called the metropolitan and I was overwhelmed with some ideas.

Now currently our little experiment called the open house (I have my reasons for using “experiment” and they have more to do with the nature of our community, not the commitment levels) is once again rethinking our role, space, and existence in east Vancouver and I find it stressful, yet incredibly exciting. We have so many open, flexible and creative people that the possibilities are endless for what we can become. And as I dream about what we can be, and think through what we have become I am beginning to dream about what it would mean for our church to be a creator of content for our community.

This was seriously spurred on through this magazine i read today, mainly because the content of this magazine was simple, to the point and free and even though I have counter opinions to the actual substance I read, I really appreciated how they have provided for the Victoria downtown community. There is something special about a group of people who come together to produce something, to dream ideas of what to produce and then passing it on to their neighbors for free. One might call that a “church experience”, purely in the nature of the community (producing, working, sharing all these things together).

Now what if our church ceased to gather for the sake of gathering, ceased to worship just to worship, but instead gathered together each week to dream, learn from each other, imagine and the produce something for the benefit of our community. And I mean something seriously tangible, not abstract. I mean a magazine, or a business, or a __________, you fill in the blank.

These ideas get me excited, and I hope I can continue to dream in this way with our church, because there is something powerful in creating beautiful, free, beneficial content for our neighbourhood, and I want to be a part of that kind of church.

Having just finished Mavericks at Work: Why the most original minds in business win by William Taylor and Polly LaBarre, I would like to start by saying that in church planting terms (as I like to rate books by) this is a bust. This is a book about ideas for businesses (too many examples I must add), and it’s a no holds barred approach. The writers don’t shy away from how these companies market, find talent and run their business and I found it incredibly conniving, especially in the way that they measure success, so in that regard (as one who dreams about a little more ethical approach to success) I found myself left wanting.

In a business sense the writers try to cover too much ground. From clever business ideas, to marketing those ideas, to hiring the right people, to coming up with the right gimmick, i was overwhelmed form the start. I have ready many of these types of books and this one is on its way to the closet thrift shop (unless you leave a comment here and I will send it to you).

In writing terms the book was too repetitive. Concepts and examples (did I mention about there were too many already) we repeated over and over, almost driving me insane.

So in the end I give this book a 1.5/5 and why the 0.5? Well for the following 5 questions that ask you to work through for your business that I found helpful. Here they are, think them through and don’t buy this book.
1. Why should great people join your organization?
2. Do you know a great person when you see one?
3. Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you?
4. Are you great at teaching great people how your organization works and wins?
5. Does your organization work as distinctively as it competes?

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions.”

R.M. Rilke

thanks Anna

Sometimes I wonder where Jesus really is. What i mean is there are a lot of people out there who think they have the market on where Jesus is; mainly at their religious gathering. But sometimes i think that Jesus is not at that religious gathering.

I heard a pastor this weekend, pleading his people to come to their easter church service because Jesus is more important than “making a ham” or “family.” And although i understand where he is coming from, and the passages of which he is referring, I think he may have missed the point. You see what he is really saying (although he wouldn’t say this) is that Jesus is at their meeting on Easter, so if you really love Jesus you will be at their gathering not hanging with a ham or family.

OK that is a lot to say that it is really important to realize that Jesus is not just in your service, and peoples faithfulness can be in “making a ham” or “family” because Jesus can be there, and if Jesus is there it is more important than your service.

now try reconciling that as a pastor…good grief i have anxiety. time for bed.

OK I am convinced. 7:30pm-8pm is the worst half hour on television.

I came back from work, and turned the TV on to find that there were 4 different televisions shows geared around gossip. Of course they call it “entertainment” but I couldn’t believe the number of gossip shows. Then combine that with countless game shows and old (bad) sitcom’s like Coach and Roseanne.

gross.

It is 3am and at about 1:30am I finished reading the E-myth by Michael Gerber. Why I am up at 3am is the Keg’s problem (not bad food, just a little too much), but now that I still am I thought I would write a few thoughts on the E-myth.

I started reading it because my wife thought it was a good read, and one of my favourite thinkers recommended it here. All I can really say is that I had trouble getting through the first half of the book, but once I made it to some more of the practical steps of small business creation in the second half I definitely was drawn in.

Basically Mr. Gerber takes you along in a story of a lady who has started her personal business called All About Pies and is about to quit. He helps her re-imagine her business, as she was so caught up in the making of the pies, that she didn’t know how to run her business. So Gerber helps her create systems, and the classic turn-key project so that she can get back to why she started the business in the first place. She was so overwhelmed by all the work, she couldn’t take it anymore, but with Gerber’s help she was able to refocus and dream again.

I am not sure what type of ranking I would give it on a church planting scale or a small business scale, probably more towards a 3/5 because many people have found it quite helpful. But on a personal level, this book didn’t do it for me. I found the stories were boring and drawn out, and the advice almost didn’t fit within the context of the stories.

If you are thinking of starting a church (or a small business), I wouldn’t recommend this book, instead learn your demographic, your people and maybe read a little Seth Godin to get you going. The E-Myth will be there when you run out of popular entrepreneurial books to read.