Capon, p. 26-27 - Trusting Jesus

Continuing our discussion on Capon, I am embeding pages 26 and 27 here. Comments?

Capon 26

StrengthsFinders 2.0

While we are pondering what to say about God’s presence and anxiety (see below), let me mention a new tool for discovering the strengths of our personalities.

Deb and I are part of a couples group that include two former church planters, one current church planter/pastor, a prison chaplain and a retired pastor who is the regional overseer for the Dutch Reformed Church (eclectic group!). The group also includes a model, a former airline stewardess, a children’s book author, a psychoanalyst, a jazz pianist and a PhD student (that last would be me--it is a fun group).

The interesting thing about this group is that it was not started by the men but by our wives, with Dr. Sam’s wife Jane taking the lead. This means that rather than being task or agenda oriented, the group is much more relational with a focus on community.

Anyway, someone recently suggested that we take a personality profile test and mentioned “Strengthsfinders 2.0” by Tom Rath.

There is a web site associated with the book, and each new book contains a sealed access code which allows you to go to the web site and take a strengths profile to find what your five top “themes” are out of a total of 34 themes. Such things as Achiever, Activator, Adaptability, Analytical, Arranger, Belief, Command, Communication, Connectedness, Consistency, Context, Deliberative, Developer, Discipline, Empathy, Focus, Futuristic, Harmony, Ideation, Includer, Individualization, Input, Intellection, Learner, Maximizer, Positivity, Relator, Responsibility, Restorative, Self-Assurance, Significance, Strategic, etc.

It took me about 30 minutes to take the profile and I was amazed how accurately it nailed my personality.

Here is the home page:

strengthsfinder.com

Anyone who knows us care to take a wild guess at which characteristics were in my top five, or Debbie’s top five?

McKnight on the most "influential books"

Hi: I'm not posting this to necesarily to start a conversation -- I just thought you might find McKnight's discussion of the most influential books in his life interesting. After you watch this, we can return to the previous thread about influencing culture. McKnight is a voracious reader as well as prolific writer.



... By-the-way, McKnight started out teaching at a seminary, but decided to move to a liberal arts college in order to have greater influence on unchurched young people ... a good example of what we were talking about in the previous thread.

Reading list

ok, this thread still has a little life in it. John Meadows asked who recommended which books and who wrote the annotations. I got most of the annotations from reviews on amazon because only Laurel and Brian actually sent me annotations?

Here you go … do any of you lurkers want to add any book suggestions?

Brian Emmet:
Wright, N. T. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009.
David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale UP, 2009)

Robert Grant
Finke, Roger, The Churching of America, 1776-2005; Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Tickle, Phyllis. The Great Emergence. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008.
Lencioni, Patrick. Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable. About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Books, 2004.
------. The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and Their Employees). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Books, 2007.
Noll, Mark A. The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2009.

Laurel Long
Durant, Will and Ariel. “The Reformation.” The Story of Civilization, Vol. VI. Great NecK, N.Y., 1935.
Hayek, Fredrick A. The Road to Serfdom. Edited by Bruce Caldwell. 2007. The University of Chicago Press, 1944.

Summer Reading List

summer is almost here... tell us what you are planning to read this summer and why. If possible, rank your book selection by priority.

I~ll have to contribute my list after I arrive back in Miami on Wednesday.

ok Laurel: go! You too Biiilly....

Parakeet Practice

McKnight identifies "blue parakeets" as those sections of Scripture that don't seem to fit into our [personal, denominational, churchly, etc] organizing schema for the Bible. Of course, the identity of a "blue parakeet" can vary by observer! For some, the violent OT passages where God judges the Canaanites in the harshest possible terms are blue parakeets; for others, passages that [appear to?] teach female subordination are blue parakeets; for still others, passages that teach God's intention to save everyone (various kinds of universalism) are parakeets, just as graphic descriptions of hell are parakeets for others.
So let's try a case study together: consider these lines from Psalm 8: "What is man that thou are mindful of him, the son of man that you care about him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor." Let's set these lines alongside Job's complaint, "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, that you examine him every morning and test him every moment" (Job 7:17-18, but it's a good idea to read all of chapter 7 to get the flow).
Question: which passage [if either] is the blue parakeet for you? Why?

Birdwatching I

Scot McKnight (see his jesuscreed blog on beliefnet) recently published The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How you Read the Bible. John Meadows recommended it, so I picked up a copy and was helped and challenged by reading it. I propose we spend a couple of conversations discussing it. I'd recommend you read it, but will provide a short summary of each section so that you can participate in the discussion without having to read the book ("Covenant Thinklings, where you can talk big without actually having to do any work!").

To get us into things, here's an assignment from the book:

Read chapter 19 in Leviticus (the subhead in your Bible may say something like "Various Laws." After reading through the chapter, make a list of the "laws" that you think are still "for God's people today," the ones that "no longer apply," and the ones that make you say, "Huh? No idea what to do here" (which likely means that it "no longer applies," so maybe you only have to make two lists after all!)

Now: on what basis did you assign various "laws" to the first or second (or third) list? It would probably be best to pick one example from each list and tell us how you made the call.

Appropriate humor is to be encouraged.

Favorite books?

I'll toss out a possible topic for discussion.
What has been your favorite book of the last two or three years? Let's say that it does not have to be theologically or religiously oriented -- it could be humor, novel, historical, devotional or any other genre. I have several books in mind that have had a formative influence on my thinking. I'm not sure yet which one I would pick as my favorite. I'll get back to you on that.

A secondary question might be which genre is your favorite? I am currently a fan of macro-historical books dealing with early modern European empires. Probably my favorite was C.R. Boxer's "Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415-1825" (1969). It is only 100 pages long and written in simple English but brilliantly covers four centuries of European colonialism.

here are a couple of more questions:
-What book have you read twice, and might read again?
-What book do you have on your shelf to read that you are most looking forward to?
-Have you ever paid more than 50$ for a book?
-Do you have any written notes or summaries of books that you might share with others?

Remember Brian's suggestion that we keep our comments to 500 words or less...