Book Description
Suburbia: Paradise or Wasteland?Suburbia is a place of spiritual yearnings. People come to suburbia looking for a fresh start, the second chance, a new life. It embodies the hopes and longings of its residents, dreams for the future, safety and security for their children, and the search for meaningful community and relationships. Yet much in our suburban world militates against such aspirations, and people find themselves isolated and alienated, trapped by consumerism and materialism. Is there hope for a Christian vision for the suburbs?Al Hsu unpacks the spiritual significance of suburbia and explores how suburban culture shapes how we live and practice our faith. With broad historical background and sociological analysis, Hsu offers practical insights for living Christianly in a suburban context. Probing such dynamics as commuting and consuming, he offers Christian alternatives for authentic spirituality, genuine community and relevant ministry. And he challenges suburban Christians to look beyond suburbia and marshal their resources toward urban and global justice.Suburbia may be one of the most significant mission fields of the twenty-first century. Here is guidance and hope for all who would seek the welfare of the suburbs.
Customer Reviews:
Thought-provoking, interesting, and a little convicting.......2007-03-17
I have met the author (last name is pronounced 'shee') and heard him speak a few times. His writing style reflects his speaking style: easy to follow, casual voice, yet punctuated with substance and information. While not preachy, Hsu encourages us that Christians are called to be Christians everywhere - including the 'burbs, but he challenges us to think about what that might look like and whether we can consider what God is calling us to do in our neighborhoods and churches. Extensive endnotes can lead to further reading on the subject.
Great.......2006-12-20
It is very nicely written, in a straightforward way and without judgements etc. on living in suburbs, as most of us do. What I found very good was his summary of how suburbs gotto where they are, what they mean, and what the difficulties are of living in them.
Lacking Passion.......2006-12-05
The topic of suburban Christianity is one that deserves attention and thought. And I do agree with the premise of the book--that Christians must not give up on the suburbs. But although this book was well researched, it lacked a fundamental passion to really inspire and encourage the love of God in suburbia. Perhaps that was not the intent, but that is the book we really need to find!
What you are left with is some dry sociological information, mild commentary and a few tentative suggestions like "walk more" or "practice hospitality" or "simplify your life" or "remember how the other half lives" that any non-Christian book about the topic might suggest. I can and do get that type of social commentary from David Brooks. And generally he is more humorous about it too.
God can radically change suburbia through each of us. If we don't believe this, what are we discussing anyway? I believe what is going to get suburban Christians to make eye contact with people and invest in them is a love of God and God's love for people. If we don't care about our neighborhood barista then all the short-term weekend trips to urban missions are more about us than about the people we are suppose to be helping. If we are simplifying our lives to consume less (and save money) but not giving over and above our tithe to charity--again the benefit goes all to us. Ditto for our taking more walks if we don't end up actually talking to anyone new while walking! It's not all about you (or me) the suburban Christian.
To be fair I would probably be less critical of this book if the blurb from whoever Lauren Winner is didn't claim it would be "Provocative...even prophetic." That is what it is precisely NOT. Not provocative enough and not prophetic enough. Bill Hybels' new book "A Walk Across the Room," which talks about making personal connections, is a better guide book for bringing Jesus into your suburb. And as for passion, you can't beat Brennan Manning's "Ruthless Trust" or almost any other book he has written. If you care about this topic, suggest you read Manning to get the passion, pray hard, then do what Hybels says.
Honest assessment of hurdles to profound spirituality.......2006-11-30
I thought this might be an easy read; boy, was I mistaken! Actually this book is full of social commentary that is rather interesting - not interesting enough to last 200 pages, but the author does make some really excellent points along the way. As a product of suburbia, Hsu examines how this new culture has arisen to dominate our landscape today and asks some pretty poignant questions about the "progress" of our society towards the individualism and isolationism of suburbia. He addresses the issue that I see as being a fundamental hurdle to a profound and vibrant spiritual journey - an "absence of scarcity" that has resulted in our entitlement culture devoid of appreciation and always demanding more...faster...easier! Hsu makes the connection between our physical environment and our resulting spiritual lives - and the conclusions he reaches aren't necessarily positive.
Hsu also takes to task the church in the suburbs and examines how many are more like shopping malls bending to the consumer culture than bodies of Christ transforming the culture around them. He also examines how we've lost a sense of connectedness - from the days of yesteryear when families gathered on the front porch to sit and chat with neighbors to the isolated homes of today with high fences, air conditioning and televisions as the centralized all-encompassing focus of "family time."
While Hsu doesn't back down from his concerns, he doesn't paint a bleak picture for the future - there are things that we, as suburban Christians, can and should do to counter our culture; but we must first see that our commercialized, consumer-driven, convenience-at-all-costs society does have some flaws! For Hsu, the answer is that bigger isn't always better, that easier isn't always worth it, and that as a follower of Christ, living counter-culture means more than opposing abortion or not smoking. It means that we must add value to our culture beginning with those closest to us - our neighbors. It means learning to make sacrifices and living within our means so that we can be used by God to assist others in need. And it means understanding that everyone longs for a place they can call home - a place of rest and peace - and while many believe that to be a physical refuge, as Christians we know that our soul will only find rest in Christ and we can share that rest with others who are longing for it.
A Good Start for Worldview Discussions in the Suburbs.......2006-07-11
The suburbs and suburban Christianity have been the subject of a great deal of often justified criticism, so Hsu, a suburbanite all his life, undertook the task of looking at how Christians really can live out their faith even in this too materialistic society. His approach is good, his scholarship is well-balanced, and he has some useful suggestions on how better to address the culture rather than just be carried along on its tide. I think he may be a little too gentle on how Christians need to change their lives in response to the challenge Christ laid out for us, but the book is still an excellent way to begin asking the right questions.
Book Description
Let's face it and mdash;boring rooms at church just don't cut it with today's media-savvy kids. More and more churches are looking for ways to create fun, creative and engaging environments where kids will actually want to be. Whether you're a church practicing the rotation-style Sunday school or are just looking to "kick it up a notch" in your Children's or Youth Ministries, Great Spaces, Learning Places has what you need! We provide all the essentials for both small-budget and large-budget churches to achieve professional effects and to let your kids know how much they are valued.
Book Description
In this feminist investigation into the art of preaching—one of the oldest and least studied rhetorical traditions—Roxanne Mountford explores the relationship between bodies, space, race, and gender in rhetorical performance and American Protestant culture. Refiguring delivery and physicality as significant components of the rhetorical situation, The Gendered Pulpit: Preaching in American Protestant Spaces examines the strategies of three contemporary women preachers who have transgressed traditions, rearranged rhetorical space, and conquered gender bias to establish greater intimacy with their congregations.
Mountford’s examinations of the rhetoric inherent in preaching manuals from 1850 to the present provide insight into how “manliness” has remained a central concept in American preaching since the mid-nineteenth century. The manuals illustrate that the character, style, method of delivery, and theological purpose of preachers focused on white men and their cultural standing, leaving contemporary women preachers searching for ways to accommodate themselves to the physicality of preaching.
Three case studies of women preachers who have succeeded or failed in rearranging rhetorical space provide the foundation for the volume. These contemporary examples have important implications for feminist theology and also reveal the importance of gender, space, and bodies to studies of rhetoric in general. Mountford explores the geographies of St. John’s Lutheran Church and the preaching of Rev. Patricia O’Connor who reformed rhetorical space through the delivery of her sermons. At Eastside United Church of Christ, Mountford shows, Rev. Barbara Hill employed narrative style and prophetic utterance in the tradition of black preaching to address gender bias and institute change in her congregation. The final case study details the experiences of Pastor Janet Moore and her struggles at Victory Hills United Methodist Church, where the fractured congregation could not be united even with Pastor Moore’s focus on theological purpose and invention strategies.
Customer Reviews:
Extremely Helpful!.......2005-11-04
A truly amazing textbook! Perfect for teaching a genuinely biblical theology of mission. It scores high on doctrinal orthodoxy, exegetical scholarship and apologetic/missionary engagement in the contexts of contemporary global-local realities. A rare combination! It has a defiantly high Christology (YES!), a breath-taking appreciation of the Old Testament's all-too-neglected treasure-trove of teaching for a fully integrated Christian worldview, a surprisingly refreshing exposition of familiar New Testament texts, and an authentically 'global Christian' perspective that holds so much promise for Christianity in the 21st century. This is the kind of Bible-sourced, intelligent, horizon-expanding reading that young Christians worldwide need to read for their theological formation, to live and preach the Gospel of Jesus as Lord and Saviour to their grim and jaded generation. As a teacher of theology, I am thrilled to recommend it!
Ramblings, little to do with Missions.......2005-07-21
I have been tasked to translate this book to my native language. I approached it with high hopes, having loved books in the expositive sections of this same series. Also, I highly respected its editors.
What a disillusion! This book has actually little to do with missiology. Rather the authors indulge in long ramblings of ill-informed, leftist economics, geopolitics and political correctness. They do strive to be orthodox in their faith, but then they use all the religious liberals as sources and end up in verbal contortions to disguise the liberal influence...
A waste.
Customer Reviews:
show me god: what the message from space is telling us about god.......2007-03-08
very good quality
Many attempts to debunk Heeren..........2006-10-11
I read this book shortly after its revision came out around 2000, and found it extremely well-argued. Given that, I'm amazed at how vehemently evolutionists attempt to debunk Heeren's points (and even his style of writing).
I'm lead to wonder just how "established" evolution can be when Fred Heeren's book "Show Me God" has a forward written by the person who just won the Nobel Prize for Physics, George Smoot?
Evolutionists can claim that evangelicals are "crazy" or "ignorant", but how can they claim that about the man who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physics?
Nothing comes from Nothing.......2006-07-25
Fred Heeran makes science easy to understand, and points out the inconsistencies of scientists who do not believe God created the Universe without a trace of sarcasm. I am in the middle of reading this book, and plan to read all the books in the Wonders that Witness series. His imaginary conversations with Carl - a voice inside his head - brings everything down to earth, and adds a touch of humor. Fred encourages us to ask questions, and not accept answers that don't match up with reason. He says we should not think that the Bilble is true "to us" because we believe it, but that we should believe because it IS true. He challenges the concept of reletive truth, saying that it results in chaos. And he reveals evidence of a loving, intelligent, personal God.
Clear and Exciting .......2006-07-15
I have only praise for this work because of its accessability. It is clearly written and packed with exciting 'new' discoveries about the nature of the universe from the astronomer's lens. I give it four stars for clarity as an introduction and of its power to stimulate interest in other fields.
On a completely different level, this book is useless to prove the existence of God, to disprove the eternity of the world, etc. As Hume has conclusively shown, the cosmological argument is a fallacious argument. You can't posit some quality of the unseen and unobserved (God) based on what's seen and observed. If that were so, we may posit that God is evil based on observation of genocide and good based on our observation of goodness. There has to be uniformity in the argument; for if someone is willing to use the good in the world and credit a deity for that act, so then also the same principle ought to hold that same god as the cause of horrible acts. Thomas Aquinas tried to use this type of cosmological argument for God's existence but he noted that God exists in a different way than everything else exists. But you cannot logically have a proposition in the conclusion that is not to be found in the premise. For example, a logician cannot begin with a look at the earth and deduce that something altogether different from matter created the rolling hills in his gaze. No, it is not observation that leads to God, but a different premise altogether. For if it was on the basis of the observed that we are conducted to God, he would be whatever is logically given in the premise. But there is nothing given--and there is especially no ONE given in the premise (there is no personality in what we observe). We see only matter--we KNOW persons.
Fred Heeren is therefore an inconsistent empiricist or an inconsistent theist. Remember lastly that even if the cosmological argument was formally valid, it would never lead us to believe in the TRIUNE GOD as Karl Barth forcibly mentions.
If there is a 'message from space' it tells us nothing about God. The conclusion is completely subjective. One can look to Michael Polanyi to understand the objectivity fallacy.
Bashing a square peg into a round hole.......2006-04-24
Full-on christians won't (want to) understand what I'm talking about, so go ahead and give me that "not helpful" vote you will be dying to give me after reading what follows. Likewise, the apathetic, if they could be bothered. (By the way, I am not an atheist. However, I was at one time a christian.) For critical thinkers, and others looking to challenge their worldview, I shall continue.
"Show Me god" is a religious book masquerading as a science text. Scientific facts are falsifiable, religious dogma is not. That is, Science deals with the observable, measurable, and tangible - and will admit when it is in error. Religious dogmas are not prone to admit errors; they are about faith in things that may or may not exist, and, may or may not have happened. Religions attempt to give their adherants watertight comfort in the knowledge that their religious denomination is the truest one. Science admits it doesn't have all the answers.
This book tries to confirm and marry christianity (why not any other religion?) with Science, by using "non-sequiteurs". This is like trying to bash a square peg into a round hole. The title itself "begs the question". "Ad populum" is used, and some quotes are taken out of context. Critical thinkers can sharpen their logic and reasoning abilities by reading this book and scrutinising all the presentations. christians may want to get this book to feel good about themselves and their bogus theory known as "intelligent design". (The christian bible has two different versions of creation BTW. Read genesis chapters 1 & 2. Take notes and compare.) And for others, you may like to look into what "critical thinking" means; my sincerest best wishes to you. Deserves less than 1-star.
Average customer rating:
- Graphic SF Reader
- Form But No Substance
- Great artwork, but (typical with Ellis) a script that deflates in the end
- What if?
- Fun story with an interesting ending
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Ministry Of Space
Warren Ellis ,
Chris Weston , and
Laura Martin
Manufacturer: Image Comics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1582404232 |
Book Description
This is the story of how we could have gone to space. Maybe how we should have gone to space. This is the story of the Ministry of Space: The black budget that financed the move into space. The deaths of the test pilots taken from the surviving Spitfire flyers of the Battle of Britain. And in 2000, the end of the Golden Age, as America and Russia begin moving into space. The secret revealed, and the destruction of a man who sacrificed himself for the Ministry of Space. Plus, a sketchbook section by Chris Weston and an all-new appendix by Warren Ellis revealing the facts behind the fiction!
Customer Reviews:
Graphic SF Reader.......2007-09-03
Ministry Of Space is the story of how one man has the ruthless drive and ambition to get the British to have a massive jump on space and space industry, and gain huge economic advantages. He also does see it as important to humans in general.
There is not much he would not do, or think of doing, to get this done. War, murder, espionage, betrayal, manipulation, blackmail, or whatever.
What he has sacrificed and done is revealed throughout the course of the book, horrifying those who find out, as he finally crumbles under the strain.
Form But No Substance.......2007-02-22
I've been a fan of comic books, science fiction and a better than passing student of history. My profession is engineering. In order for this story to work, it had to suspend my belief. What I mean is I have to forget what I know, ignore the flaws and just enjoy the story.
I can't do this with the "Ministry of Space". The story just isn't entertaining enough.
The artwork is beautiful. So beautiful that is why I bought the book in the first place. However there is an ugly theme running through this story. The premise is that Great Britain appropriates German rocket technology and shuts out it's principle ally, the United States. Already as an American I'm pissed off. The main character, Sir John has few endearing qualities other than his obsessive loyalty to the Empire. He is neither likeable or liked.
After starting off on this sour note, I started caring about the flaws. Supersonic and space flight are risky enough endeavors without the go for broke attitude of Britannia's pilots. The implication is that America has been too cautious. Sure that's why Pancho Barnes had those pictures on the wall of her "Happy Bottom Riding Inn" during the early days of supersonic flight. Some of those pilots just went for it and now they're dead.
Then there is the colonial aspect of this book. Japan ruined forever the myth of European superiority. In this universe, Great Britain starts claiming everything in sight. All the US can do is "protest".
So much for Anglo-American cooperation.
This book turned me off in the beginning, Sir John kept being annoying and the source of the programs original funding really killed it for me. Treacherous beginnning, arrogant story and ugly ending.
Beautiful artwork though.......
Great artwork, but (typical with Ellis) a script that deflates in the end.......2006-09-21
Warren Ellis is the type of writer who has no trouble coming up with interesting and entertaining ideas, but unfortunately, these often see print as overly compressed, poorly fleshed-out narratives that derive from his tendency towards overproduction. [Glance at any comic book store shelves at any month of the year and you're sure to see at least several titles authored by Ellis from several different publishers in several different genres.]
Ministry of Space is a good example of Ellis's strengths and weaknesses. The concept, a sort of post-modern adaptation of the classic British comic "Dan Dare", is certainly engaging and will evoke nostalgia in anyone who, as a child or teenager, admired the graceful swept-wing rocket ships that filled the pages of Atomic Age storybooks.
Unfortunately, the `shock' revelations that occupy the last few pages of MoS will fail to surprise most readers, whom I suspect will recognize where things are ultimately heading well in advance. Indeed, these final disclosures come across as so clumsy and ham-handed that they signal to me that Ellis opted for as facile a conclusion as he could conjure with a minimum of effort. Their net effect is to undermine what had, up till that moment, been an engrossing and well-realized tale of the near future.
The real pleasure in MoS comes from artist Chris Weston, an outstanding draftsman whose artwork supplies the high degree of realism the storyline mandates. He is the rare artist who is as adept at rendering human figures and facial features, as he is at rendering large metal spaceships and the bucolic British countryside. Weston's art is the reason that fans of space adventure and comic art should pick up MoS.
What if?.......2006-08-20
This is the future that you wish had happened. When the seeds of the modern world germinated into something quite different, something glorious, but tainted. Warren Ellis and Chris Weston take a simple 'What If?' premis, What if the Peenamunde Rocket Scientists had been taken by the British at the end of the 2nd World War. From that they create a spectacular ( seemingly naive )confection of British technological derring do, a beautiful homage to Frank Hampsons Dan Dare and a ripping yarn that waits until it's very last pages to pull the rug from under us.
A small perfect jewel of a comic.
Fun story with an interesting ending.......2006-07-14
An interesting story with a somewhat thought provoking end. The art work was quite good too though perhaps not as good as Frank Quitely. Too bad this is the end of the story.
Book Description
A clarion call for the church to harness Christ's passion to invade the secular space around them--transforming isolated saints into a powerful, life-changing body of believers.
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