Living Open Source» Reading

How to find the best bible commentary?

Tim — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:13:13 +0000

It would be easy to fill your book shelves with bible commentaries. I have recently had a bit of a cull on my shelves, making use of the Amazon Marketplace to lighten the load from commentaries I have never even opened. While trying to find a better commentary on Mark’s gospel, I came across BestCommentaries.com. This is an amazing catalogue of every bible commentary ever written (and yet to be written). Just take a look at the catalogue of commentaries on Mark’s gospel for example, that includes a huge list of forthcoming publications. I did begin to wonder why we need all these endless commentaries, but then despite my full shelves, I hadn’t found a commentary on Mark that told me anything I couldn’t already say.

So what did I buy?

Having sold a large number of a particular commentary series I had grown to hate, I saved up all my pennies and bought the new hefty Hermeneia commentary on Mark’ gospel by Adela Yarbro Collins. This is a pretty impressive commentary packed with historical background and comes at Mark with a historical-critical approach. It certainly fills any gaps other commentaries left.

But even more valuable to me has become the Oxford Bible Commentary, reccomended by a friend, which is a very recent commentary on the whole bible and does a pretty good job of surveying latest scholarship. It is where I turn first and probably the reason for loosing a few of those commentaries that were collecting dust.

Are you a New Kind of Christian?

Tim — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:29:57 +0000

Brian McClaren’s book, A New Kind of Christian, has been around for a while. It is part of a trilogy of books that highlights some of the issues facing Christians and the church as it negotiates the transition from modernity to post-modernity (or whatever you want to call it). If you haven’t yet got your head round this change in our culture, haven’t noticed it, or haven’t a clue what that last sentence means, then this book will certainly help you visualise and sense the challenges that the church faces.

And I do mean visualise, because this book is like no other on the subject. It is written as a fictional account of a conversation between two Christians – a pastor and and a school teacher. Through their conversation and shared struggles with smug easy-answer, controlling brands of Christianity inherited from modernity, their story suggests it might be possible to live the Jesus way as a post-modern.

A refreshingly different kind of book, that has given me much to think about. I’m off to find the other two books in this trilogy.

View book details on Amazon

Tokens of Trust – the Archbishop on what it means to believe

Tim — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:25:46 +0000

One advantage of using the train is being able to read. So last week’s jaunt down to Brighton meant I got round to reading Rowan Williams’ latest book, Tokens of Trust. This is the Archbishop’s introduction to Christian Belief which takes a walk through the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed in order to paint a picture of what it means to say “I believe”. As the title of the book hints at, the creeds invite us to trust the God who made heaven and earth, and that such trust is actually what it means to believe.

“Bad religion is about not trusting God, trying to avoid God or even outwitting him”

It is from this starting point that the Archbishop reflects on the essentials of belief and invites us to trust a God who has shown himself to be trustworthy, especially in the person and story of his son Jesus.

“What God shows himself to be in Jesus is simply what he always is; he doesn’t decide to be like Jesus for thirty-odd years or even thirty thousand. God is thus and not otherwise”

The book moves through the key phrases of the creed exploring the implications of a belief in God, Jesus, the church and resurrection. It is a deeply thoughtful exploration that prompts us to return to the essentials set out in the creeds long before we got caught up in debates over models of atonement and the like.

One area that this book seemed to contribute to an ongoing reflection, at least in my head, is about the way in which we read the bible as community (or not). I think it was Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis that pointed out that reading the bible in private is a relatively new invention. The Archbishop says something similar, calling us back to put the bible at the heart of the church again and also reminding us of one of the fundamental beliefs of baptists – that it is Jesus, revealed through the bible, not the bible itself that is our final authority.

“[the Bible] is not a sort of magical text, supernaturally giving us guaranteed information about everything under the sun. What we call its ‘inspiration’ is it capacity to be the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, making Jesus vividly present to our minds and hearts…”

Worth a read, I think…

View book details on Amazon

Marketing Your Church

Tim — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:18:15 +0000

Churches struggle with the whole area of publicity and communications. Church noticeboards, posters, newsheets and web sites are all areas where churches fail to communicate effectively in the modern world.

Here are a couple of books that might help you move your church into the 20th and maybe even the 21st century…

Most of the books and websites in this area tend to come from the US, so I’m delighted to recommend two recent books by Brits on the subject. In fact Phil Creighton is a fellow Baptist, deputy editor of the Baptist Times in the UK. His book, How to be Heard in a Noisy World, is written from his own experiences in local church. Neil Pugmire’s, 100 Ways to Get Your Church Noticed deals with the same subject, but in 100 digestible and doable projects.

Both these books take a practical approach, with lots of ideas about how to communicate news, events and church life in a way that is at least on a level with modern standards and expectations, without blowing your budget. Phil’s book is worth a look, if only to spot your own church’s noticeboard in the hall of shame. 100 Ways to get Your church noticed is sure to have at least one idea you could try.

Its a shame neither mention WordPress in their chapters on web sites. Neil does at least mention the benefits of a Content Management system, though there are rather too many church specific systems out there, with the usual ridiculous Christian price tag attached, and which are not a patch on WordPress (or any of the 100 other open source CMS tools). I’ll stop ranting now… Just take a look at the books and have a go.

Sharing your Church’s story – the Book

Tim — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:50:39 +0000

After discovering WordPress a while back, and becoming immersed in the world of blogging, it seems to me that the blog has a lot to offer the church wanting to share its story. And now Brian Bailey has even written a book saying just that! The Blogging Church – Sharing the story of Your Church through blogs.

The Blogging Church is a book which aims to answer the why rather than the how kind of questions.

Be not afraid – this is not a technical book. Brian Bailey explains to geeks and non-geeks alike how blogging is an essential tool for churches and church leaders wanting to communicate the story. If being church is about living the Christian story, then the telling of that story is what sharing the gospel is all about. If you want to share a story then you need to learn to blog. By sharing the story, you invite others to respond, joining the conversation.

“Blogging is about connecting communities through conversation.”
Brian Bailey

Brian presents some clear non-technical reasons why blogging could help your ministry or church by connecting people, building community and sharing the story. It doesn’t tell you how to set up a blog or what software to use – you can find that sort of information elsewhere. Brian focuses on what is important and what is possible with a technology that is now within the grasp of anybody. Included in the book are interviews with other church bloggers who share some of their experiences too.

If you don’t know what a blog is or what it has to do with church then you need this book.
If you do know what a blog is, this book will help you see its potential for sharing the story.

View books details at Amazon

Velvet Elvis – faith resprayed?

Tim — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:43:34 +0000

Rob Bell is founding pastor of Mars Hill (–with a web site to go ooooh over of course). This recent book is his angle on what living the Christian story might look like in a post modern world. Admitting that he spent his first year at Mars Hill teaching through the book of Leviticus may not strike you as being most relevant, but Rob puts a lot of emphasis on the Jewish context of Jesus the Rabbi and the Old Testament.

His “repainting” of the Christian faith is one which is focused on an earthy kind of discipleship, following the Rabbi. He roots this in an interpretation of the bible that rightly aims to consider its historical context. It is an easy book to read with a lot of personal testimony and illustrations. Pretty too.

Rob probably doesn’t say anything that others haven’t said in their own respray of the faith for the post modern world, but he makes following Jesus sound possible, having brushed off some of the baggage we have accumulated. Rob is also the guy behind the Nooma DVDs. There is also a recent interview with Rob available on Premier TV online.

View details of book at Amazon

DELTA – A church WordPress theme

Tim — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 10:38:08 +0000

Its been a while since I managed another theme. This one is designed with churches in mind and is the result of having helped a couple of churches online with WordPress. WordPress really is much more than a blogging tool. This theme is the next step along the WP-driven church evolution. I may even finally get round to using this on my own church site which to my shame still isn’t yet WP-driven.

The theme also includes a few extra header images. To use them just find the CSS stylesheet entry #main and modify the background-image tag. You could always create your own. I always think that a church website should have plenty of pictures of people rather than buildings! To make your own create an image with a width of 640px and a height of about 170px. Then upload it to the theme directory and modify the CSS.

The theme supports the following plugins:

Of course if you enable the sidebar widget you can put anything you like in the sidebar on the right.

Let me know where you are using the theme, especially if you are using it to build a WordPress driven church site.

Download the LivingOS DELTA theme.

Yancey on Prayer

Tim — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 08:19:00 +0000

I went to hear Philip Yancey last week at the Guild Hall in Preston, hosted by the Saltmine Trust. We’ve all read What’s So Amazing about Grace and The Jesus I never knew, but now his latest book deals with the subject we all struggle with – Prayer. I’ve just started reading the book which is an honest pilgrim’s look at prayer taking on questions like “Does it make any difference?”, “Does prayer change God or change me?”.

The evening with Saltmine was excellent, with drama including some of their adaptation of the Screwtape Letters . Yancey was interviewed chat show style with questions from the audience and in the second half he spoke on prayer. It is his honesty and humility that makes his books worth reading.

Mission-Shaped Church for Free!!

Tim — Tue, 23 May 2006 19:32:22 +0000

Mission-Shaped Church is a report published by the Anglican Church which very neatly summaries the state of church in the UK and surveys some of the emerging movements within and without. This is an essential resource for anyone thinking about the future of church in this country. It is available in paperback for about

Books on CSS and PHP

Tim — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:42:53 +0000

Books to get you started with CSS and PHP (the bread and butter of WordPress themes and plugins).

CSS and PHP in 10 minutes was where I started having worked with vb, ASP and other languages previously. Happy reading…