Product Description
A feisty, entertaining, and educational conversation about the shape of the church of the 21st century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

Lots of talk re church & culture
Leonard Sweet (ed.) The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003)

Reviewed by Darren Cronshaw

This is a fun and insightful conversation about the church and its relationship to culture in the 21st century. Leonard Sweet facilitates the conversation between five Christian thinkers on what the church's message and methods should be, and how much message and/or method should change for a society that is less religious but more spiritual, less influenced by authority than experience, and more attuned to images than words. It is no surprise their different perspectives make for feisty interaction:
* Andy Crouch is young writer and editor
* Michael S. Horton is a reformed theologian
* Frederica Mathewes-Green is an Orthodox Christian and commentator
* Brian McLaren is a pastor and senior fellow of Emergent
* Erwin Raphael McManus is a cultural revolutionary and pastor of the innovative and interethnic L.A. based community Mosaic.
They discuss Christ and culture, postmodernism, tradition, the early church, consumerism and other social influences, sacraments, theodicy, sin and theological systems, understanding Jesus and Paul, and more.

Originally appeared in Darren Cronshaw, `The Emerging Church: Introductory Reading Guide', Zadok Papers, S143 (Summer 2005).

An Irritating Conversation I Couldn't Finish
I picked up this book because I've read a lot about Brian McLaren and the emergent church, but I haven't read much actually written by this group. This book seemed like a good place to start, as it collects thoughts from both McLaren and Sweet, and D.A. Carson references it a few times in Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications. The basic set-up is that Sweet hosts a gathering of five people with a variety of perspectives on what the church should look like in contemporary culture. The nature of the conversation is kind of an emergent church parlor trick, and Sweet's introduction is heavily weighted toward praising the virtues of a church that is willing to create new methods and messages, but other views were presented with fairness and respect, I think.

The format, though, is what put me off and convinced me to give up on the book. I will paraphrase it here:

Introduction - SWEET: I am going to babble on for a while with tortured metaphors and flowery language that reveals a certain paralyzing intellectual insecurity. No joke, I am going to describe gardens and glens and parks and meadows with dragons with theological stings in their tails.

Conversation 1 - CROUCH: So, there's postmodernism (MCLAREN: I need to jump in every three or four sentences to write a paragraph or two about my thoughts. I disagree with your definition of postmodernism, as you mean it to say "Everything I don't like today," while I think it should mean "Everything I DO like today, except where that ties me to an argument I don't want to support."), and it's like the Mall of America. But if churches would just take the sacraments more seriously (MATHEWES-GREEN: This is the part where I just can't restrain myself from sharing a humorous observation. Not something that would actually make you laugh, more like the kind of "Aren't we humorous" observation that is popular on NPR. Oh, and I am frequently disappointed that people don't take the Orthodox Church into consideration when discussing the church as a whole in United States society.)(MCMANUS: Hey man, I really like you, I do. I think you're totally wrong on a lot of things, like your assumption that appreciation of sacraments is the magical cure for everything that ails the church, but I really care for you.)(HORTON: I'm Reformed! My comments don't really connect to anything you've written, but I want you to know I'm REFO-O-O-O-RMED!)(MCLAREN: This is another one of those points in the discussion where I am going to be infuriatingly correct. Crouch makes so many generalizations that it is easy for me to accurately point them out. This will certainly frustrate a reader who is not inclined to agree with me as a matter of principle. And no, I don't think Sweet's editorial position has anything to do with me being the one in position to hit every softball that Crouch lobs.), then we would be just fine (MCLAREN: Please, allow me to share a few sentences about what I think the terms "just fine" should mean. I like to share.).

ME: I'm giving up on this book.

A step beyond the Counterpoints series
What is the nature of the church's mission in the world?Is our message unchanging?Are our methods unchanging?This book explores these vital questions.Leonard Sweet introduces the book, and presents us with the four views held by its contributors.Michael Horton and Frederica Mathewes-Green represent the view that we should have minimal change in both message andmethod, from Reformed and Orthodox perspectives respectively.Andy Crouch adheres to thehigh change in message / low change in method position, while Edwin Raphael McManus prefers a fixed message with evolving methods.Lastly, Brian McLaren advocates a high change in both message and method.

What follows is a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion on topics as diverse as the nature of postmodernity, the place of the sacraments in contemporary church life, the effects of consumerism, and the short-comings of the church growth movement. The format of this book is particularly interesting.It is similar to the Counterpoints series in that it gives each contributor an opportunity to reply to the others, but in The Church in Emerging Culture the authors insert their comments into the body of their colleagues' work - interrupting them, as it were.This gives the book its intended feel of being a conversation - a"serious, thoughtful and respectful dialogue", as McLaren describes it (p. 259), but also an engaging, friendly and extremely funny chat.

Regarding change in the message, it is the present reviewer's conviction that just as Paul passed on to the Corinthians the gospel message exactly as he received it (I Corinthians 15:3), so are we to communicate God's word without making it more palatable, or even more relevant.Regarding change in methods, however, the situation does not seem quite so clear cut.It would seem that we do need to be constantly exploring how we can communicate an unchanging gospel to an ever-changing culture.Perhaps this book will help us to do this.

Falls short of answering an important question
I was intrigued by this book given the diversity of views and capability of the authors. The primary questions listed on the back cover were pivotal: "What should the church look like today?", "What should be the focus of its message?", "How should it present that message?"These are profoundly important questions, and I was disappointed to see that they were not questions well addressed in this book. Instead some of the key ideas in response to these questions were: a need to recover baptism and eucharist and enduring means of grace (Crouch), a cry to return back to well established Reformed doctrines (Horton - solid though those doctrines may be), and some other ideas further 'out there' (McLaren). The writing was far too often unnecessarily dense, cherishing cleverness over clarity, loquacity over lucidity.There was also a terrible formatting choice that rendered a significant fraction of the book completely illegible - the use of 6-pt light gray font to intersperse comments by other the authors outside of their own sections.

There were two high spots in the book, earning the two-stars in this review. Leonard Sweet's introduction was outstanding, with a thought provoking discussion of the nature of interaction between Christ and Culture, painting the picture of a garden, park, glen and meadow. It's the most interesting section in the book. The other high point for me was the presentation by McManus. On relevance: "To become relevant is to catch up with the time in history you were intended to serve. Relevance is not about conformity; it is about clarity and connectedness." On the role of the church: "The church is in the truest sense a biblical community when we incarnate the presence of Christ, reflect the character of God, and open the eyes of the world to the reality of God evident in all of creation. Like creation, the church is here to reflect God's glory, and like Christ, we are here to bring the world to its Creator." On the power source of our mission: "The power of the gospel is the result of a person - Jesus Christ - not a message. The gospel is an event to be proclaimed, not a doctrine to be preserved." And in his wrap up: "The issue of the relationship of the church to culture must not remain in the realm of theory. Our condition is too desperate for that." (The feeling of too much of the rest of the book was the opposite, dwelling too much on theory and opinion.)

While some people will find this an engaging book, for me it's a distinct 'pass' - the book fell short of what it could have been, but if you get a chance to read the introduction or the section by McManus that would be time well spent.

Disappointing
I completely agree with the review entitled "pass". The layout of this book makes it very difficult to understand or track with.

I took a class on Christianity and the Post-modern World at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Charlotte, NC) and I was most excited about reading this book because of the folks participating in the conversation. Placing practitioners like Erwin McManus and Brain McLauren in the same room with with thinkers like Andy Crouch and Leonard Sweet should make for very interesting dialog. On top of that you introduce an Oxford trained, reformed theologian like Mike Horton and a former NPR commentator who has converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in Frederica Matthewes-Green. Sadly the book didn't deliver like I thought it would. It would have been better to have the audio or video of their conversation.They seem to talk past each other and spend the majority of their time critiquing each others points rather than putting forward any clear perspectives as the title implied they would. ... Read more

Product Description

Left-handers have been described as "a people without a history". This special issue provides scholarly analyses of aspects of asymmetry in history, from the Renaissance to the 20th Century.

• Lauren Harris presents three studies describing:

• An 1811 American child-care manual for parents fearing, "lest their children should be left-handed";
• Manuals on swordsmanship from the Renaissance onwards describing the "accepted minority" of left-handed swordsmen, a minority that still dominates the Olympics;
• The enigmatic bias whereby parents use their left arm to carry babies;

• Janet Snowman and Stephen Christman present two papers on left-handed musical geniuses:

• William Crotch, the self-taught, 18th Century, musical prodigy, whose unconventional left-handed playing styles stimulate many questions about the asymmetries of stringed instruments;
• Jimi Hendrix, the 20th Century, left-handed, guitarist of whom Robert Krieger said, "… he was just so different. He just came from such a left-field place."

• Chris McManus, Richard Rawles, James Moore and Matthew Freegard describe an early BBC TV programme presented in 1953 by Jacob Bronowski on right and left-handedness. In an early example of viewer participation, 6000 people sent postcards describing their handedness and also their perceptions of a "mystery picture", that was the duck-rabbit figure from Wittgenstein’s recently published Philosophical Investigations.
• Chris McManus and Janet Snowman describe A left-handed compliment, a newly discovered lithograph by John Lewis Marks (ca. 1795-6 - ca. 1857-61). Given Marks’,"seeming love of vulgarity for its own sake", there is probably an obscene sub-text reminiscent of a Donald McGill postcard.

Product Description
Gerhard Richter's abstractions are profound and beautiful, though perplexing. After all these years, they still present a curious challenge: what, exactly, are they? RICHTER 858 explores this question by focusing on one suite of extraordinary pictures painted in 1999, soon after his return to work after a silence caused by a stroke. Both investigation and celebration, this book brings together image, music and text in a uniquely compelling way: contributors include the great guitarist and composer Bill Frisell, two sharp-eyed critics, and a baker's dozen of prominent, award-winning poets. Housed in an aluminum slipcase, this lavish, oversized volume features the largest, most sumptuous, and most accurate reproductions of any Richter work. The eight paintings of the suite are shown at more than half-scale, and also, quite untraditionally, presented unbound on heavy paper in a pocket at the back of the book--allowing readers to mix, match, and re-present the work for themselves outside the confines of the printed volume. Forty details from the paintings are also reproduced in large-format, accompanied by the poems and texts. These brilliant passages--rich in incident and intervention, and ranging from the coolly sublime to the loudly riotous--make fascinating pictures in their own right. Additionally, a double gatefold opens to show all eight paintings in panoramic view. In essence, RICHTER 858 presents an elegant, if raucous, meeting ground for our most important contemporary artist and a diverse chorus of American music, poetry, and criticism.

Includes poetry by Richard Howard, Jorie Graham, Robert Hass, Ann Lauterbach, Dean Young, Brenda Hillman, James McManus, Michael Palmer, Connie Deanovich, David Breskin, Paul Hoover, Edward Hirsch andW.S. Di Piero.

Edited by David Breskin.
Essays by Dave Hickey and Klaus Kertess.
An Audio CD of music by Bill Frisell.

Aluminum slipcase with white, black and red corrugated box and music CD, 120 pages, 68 color

Publisher: The Shifting Foundation in association with SFMOMA ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A plethora of pleasures
You don't have to be an afficionado of contemporary poetry, or an art lover, to appreciate the many delights housed within the aluminum slip case of this work. But if you happen to be either, or both, this book is a must.

The "book" has, in this case, evolved well beyond the concept of an art tome.The joiningof music, poetry and lovingly accurate reproductions under one cover makes the circumnavigation of this opus is a particularly rich eexperience.Which is not to say that listening to the music , or dipping into one poem, is not an entirely satisfying moment by itself.

Be prepared, however: this gesamtwerk is big, and will not fit into an ordinary bookcase! The paintings being reproduced to scale has dictated the extra large format, but the extraordinarily accurate pictorial results are worth the extra weight.

Just when you thought realism was dead
This is a gorgeous book by a man who in the future will be credited with debunking all the art critics who since the 1950s have been shouting to themselves that Realism is dead, or the ones that still shout "painting is dead." Gerhard Richter breaks all the rules of "being an artist." He has worked in a variety of styles, refusing to produce a "style" as often artists are supposed to do. In his ealy photorealistic -paintings Richter copied ordinary, found images onto canvas, but gave them an indistinct appearance. Again, by working directly from photographs, he manages to debunk all the criticism that such techniques often bring. This subversive realism is now more evident than ever, in these later, almost fuzzy works that still manage to knock the visual senses as if shouting: "Long Live Painting - Long Live Realism!"

A Feast for Eyes and Ears
I've only recently become acquainted with the range of Gerhard Richter's work, but the series of eight abstract paintings which are being celebrated here are enough to justify his reputation for me, and the sheer richness and resolution of their presentation in this book is of a standard I've never come across anywhere. Elegant, sensuous and gorgeous, this is more than a `typical' art book in manners large and small; includes insightful essays by writers like Dave Hickey, poetry, and a CD by Bill Frisell with a string trio that's a lot more quirky and edgy than his recent stuff, in a good way (no banjos).The book's editor, David Breskin, has done an amazing job - the aluminum slipcase is a pretty sharp touch, too.

Much more than another coffee table book
Unfortunately I haven't yet made it to SFMOMA to see the Gerhard Richter exhibit. However, my much anticipated copy of Richter 858 arrived in the mail today, and to say that it didn't disappoint is an understatement. I had initially been a little wary about getting it. It comes with an aluminum slipcase and poetry and an audio CD with music composed by the brilliant Bill Frisell, and while some might find this sort of presentation lush, I, being somewhat of a purist, was afraid these inclusions would be nothing more than bells and whistles-basically a lot of noise to give voice to a suite of paintings that, according to any good Kantian, should be able to stand on its own. Boy was I wrong. People who know me know that I don't like fuss, but even the worry about scratching the aluminum slipcase, or maneuvering the book's awkward size and bulk, or the guilt for not using gloves to turn these impeccably produced pages, couldn't dampen the sheer transport I felt as I drunk in art and text and Bill's passionate and daring compositions with equal abandon. I've been reluctant to embrace anything multimedia, but Richter 858 may have just pushed me into the 21st century. ... Read more

Product Description
Life Magazine special "Year in Pictures (1994)" Collectors Edition, features news and photos of people and places. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Tony Mcmanus, Dayton O'brien, Tony Kuhn, Michael Kraus, Cormac Mcardle. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 20. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Anthony "Tony" McManus (born September 22, 1980 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American soccer player currently playing for Portland Timbers in the USSF Division-2 Professional League. McManus played college soccer for the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 2000 to 2003, where he was recognized as one of the best defenders in Conference USA (C-USA). McManus was selected to the C-USA Team of the week three times, Soccer America Magazine Team of The Week twice, and College Soccer News Team of the Week once. He was also a C-USA third team All Conference his junior year. The accolades continued his senior season when McManus was named C-USA first team All Conference, the C-USA Defender of the Year, an NSCAA third team All-America, and a College Soccer Times All America. In 2002, McManus played with the Memphis Express in the USL Premier Development League. McManus also played ODP for Region III, making the Tennessee State Team from 1994-1999, and was selected for the Region III team in '96, and the US National Pool in 1998. He was also selected to the USASA Region III Team in 2003 and was a member of the US National B Team. McManus was drafted in the sixth round (59th overall) in the 2004 MLS SuperDraft by Chicago Fire. He played in all pre-season matchs for Fire, but sent on loan with the Virginia Beach Mariners of the USL First Division. He played 24 games in the 2004 season, scoring 1 goal and 2 assists in 898 minutes. After the USL season ended McManus was recalled to the Fire and played 35 minutes in the inaguaral Hall of Fame Game against the New York/New Jersey Metrostars. In 2005, McManus moved to the Atlanta Silverbacks of...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1031519 ... Read more

Product Description
12 Compact Disks, Unabridged edition. Read by Paul Michael. ... Read more

Product Description
Michael Jackson cover feature, Dateline disasters ... Read more