Calvin Miller - LOVE

In the book Love, written by Calvin Miller, we are shown many different aspects of love. What it means to us as Christians, how it affects our day to day life in our own personal growth and within the relationships we have with those around us. It is at the base of what so many of us believe, yet it can be so difficult to truly love like God loves. This book takes you through some interesting studies and brings up some thought provoking questions to get your mind and heart thinking not just about love in general, but how to apply it in our lives. This book is written like a study guide, divided into six weeks. There are discussion questions at the end of each chapter to get a group into a lively discussion each week. Miller keeps you digging deeper by having the weekly topic directed at a different area in your life – for example, serving others or personal worship. I read through this book without doing it as a study, but I can see how it could easily work as a small group guide or even make a meaningful personal study. I appreciated that he uses Bible texts throughout and encourages you to get into your own Bible, reading passages for yourself. This is definitely going to be read again by me and I can see myself using it in a group study.

Transforming Church in Rural America by Shannon O'Dell

It’s been a while since I have reviewed a book. Life has been busy. Transforming Church in Rural America written by Shannon O’Dell was a good book to help me get back into the swing of things.

This book is the story of how O’Dell moved his family from a large and prosperous city church to a small and barely there rural church. He tells of God’s calling to bring him from all the things most pastor’s dream of in a church to a somewhat sad situation in a dying church in the sticks of Arkansas.

I can relate all to well to the dying church as we have seen them over and over in our travels. It isn’t to say there isn’t passion or God’s blessings there, but there isn’t much in the way of change to move things forward. This is what O’Dell found too. Tradition and an attitude of “that’s the way it’s always been” gets in the way of growth.

O’Dell speaks honestly about a pastors struggle to want a bigger and better church for his own benefit rather than for spreading God’s word and he takes you through that to get to the real reason behind wanting church growth.

All in all, this book is a wonderful picture of where so many churches are and where they could be if they would open their hearts to some change to reach those they might not otherwise reach. Definitely worth the read, especially for those in rural areas.