: to bookstore? or not to bookstore :

One of several trivia game questions at Saturday's ( excellent :) farewell deal was ... "where is Don's favourite place to shop?" ... and the envelope please : Bolen's, a local independent bookstore, Chapters, and amazon.com ( although, I am likin' AbeBooks more and more, as a glocal Victoria, now international outfit ). Every once in a while I'll wander into the local Christian Book store, as I did this morning, compliments of a $25 gift card tucked into a card last Saturday night. I was struck by a couple of things:

First, David Fitch's 'Great Giveaway' and Hirch&Frost's 'Shaping of Things to Come' were both on the 'Church Growth' shelf. Oops! Secondly, I was able to escape only $10 poorer with both my friend Vaden Earle's 'ONE : a Face Behind the Numbers' and Shane Clairborne's new book 'Jesus for President' ...

What struck me, you ask? well there's this controversy brewing in Victoria about how to cope with our growing poverty / homelessness / addictions issues, especially downtown. I am re-reading John Grisham's 1998 legal novel 'The Street Lawyer' as it was the book, oddly enough, that piqued my interest in urban ministry back in 2002. So I resisted the urge to get the two 'church leadership' books that jumped out at me, Gordon MacDonald's 'Who Stole My Church?' and Barna's 'Pagan Christianity' and went with ONE and Jesus4Prez instead. Why? well, MacDonald and Barna would probably only re-inforce what I already know ( and experienced the last few years ) and make me mad(der). Hopefully, Vaden and Shane will make me mad, but for the right reasons, and will help me begin to sort out what to do about it. I'm less and less sure what we call the evangelical church 'as it is' is actually hitting the bullseye, if God thinks in terms of hitting bullseyes? OK, is actually properly tracking towards a Kingdom fulfillment mindset.

'nuff said ...

dlc