: rob bell's new book :

... just cracking Rob Bell's newest book, co-written with Don Golden, the guy who was lead pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church, which Bell helped start a few years back. Apparently Don left MHBC this summer to take up a key role with World Relief USA that lines up with his passion to help churches help the poor and oppressed. You can see his bio here, but you'll need to scroll down the page.

Jesus Wants to Save Christians : a manifesto for the church in exile :

Anywhooo ... sure looks interesting. And the timing, with the US presidential election in less than a week, is sure to jumpstart some serious conversations among(st) evangelicals. I'll report back in as soon as I can, but it may be worth picking up, for a mere $14 Cdn. By the looks of it they are articulating some questions many people have begun asking ... I'll paste in a little from the book cover below, see what you think? But here's a teaser ...

" ... forces are now occupying a Middle Eastern country until peace can be fully realized within its borders. This puts a Christian in an awkward place. Because Jesus was a Middle Eastern man who lived in an occupied country and was killed by the superpower of his day" ...

dlc

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" ... there is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.

This is a book about those two numbers ... it's a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity.

It's about empty empires and the truth that everybody's a priest, it's about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

It's about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.”