Ok! So I wanted to explain what is happening here with the book discussion since I have been away from it for a time. There are two main things you need to know if you plan on reading things with us.
First, we are putting a temporary hold on Keller’s book The Reason for God. This is not because I am tired of it or it is not a good book. It is really helpful and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is thinking about reading it. I have put it on hold for two main reasons.
1. Oprah has chosen her next book pick and it looks like an interesting one. This is more because we want to be interacting with the culture and what they are reading. The fact is the Oprah’s book club has two million readers (and probably more who are not registered!). If we discuss books that are being read by so many people at the same time, the chances for evangelism and interaction over great issues increases tremendously. I have already seen this when we have talked about books that were popular. When we discussed The Kite Runner, the amount of Google searches and hits on the site jumped. Now, to be clear, this is not about getting more readers. It is about reaching more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. If more people hit the site and even read a little bit of what we are discussing, it is possible for them to “hear” the gospel through that. This is a great reason to “attract” more readers to this site. The same happened when we discussed parts of A New Earth and Twilight.
2. When I “wordled” the Discerning Mind website and blog, I discovered something disturbing. The word “Keller” got more use than “Jesus,” “God” or “gospel.” This means that while we discuss books by people and want to reference things from the culture, I need to modify the way it is done. I need to connect it more to the great gospel that is the truth. Put simply, Jesus needs more “air time” on this site than any other human, Christian or otherwise. I hope to change that immediately. I recognize simply having the name “Jesus” on the site more does not mean the gospel will necessarily be more clear, but the change I plan on making to help this is beyond just using the name more. To help this, I am writing a post about why we interact with cultural things and what we hope to get from it. This should help clarify the purpose and keep me more on track. I hope you will see the change is minor, but very important. Stay tuned!
Second thing you should know is we are going to discuss the latest book pick from Oprah’s book club. This book is called The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and you can find it either at your local bookstore or on Amazon. What I would recommend is that you pick up a copy and start reading it with us as soon as you can. I am going to take a few days and get familiar with the book so we can see how quickly we are going to go through it and how we might be able to discuss it. We might do chapters like we have before or we may just read the whole thing and start an ongoing discussion on some of the themes from the book. I can see the benefit of both approaches and would welcome your recommendations in the comments section.
Anyway, there are the issues that are happening and what my plan is. I am sorry for changing things, but I believe this will be good for us. As always, feel free to leave comments and I will review them. Have a great day and pick up the book if you can.
Michael
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