I am reading and recommending N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. In the book he gets into a number of what one might think are side-issues, but he always relates them back to the belief in the resurrection. An excerpt from pages 216-220:

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I didn’t read much of anything on my recent road trip (no time, though I listened to the audio book of John Grisham’s The Appeal), but when I got home, I found Ori Brafman’s Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior waiting for me, and I devoured it. Picking up my unfinished Surprised by Hope again, I plan to finish it and do something of a review very shortly. In the meantime, a thought-provoker on the Kingdom of God:

Today is Earth Day, but I hadn’t planned to say anything about it… I had something else in mind for today, figuring that I had said what I wanted already in So Long Ago the Garden for Blog Action Day, and in my post On the Loss of Wonder and its follow-up, two posts that arose out from my reading of Dale Allison Jr.’s book, The Luminous Dusk: Finding God in the Deep, Still Places. That’s not to say I was done thinking about it… I’ve had in my mind an idea which I’ll come to presently. I’ve been reading N.T. Wright’s book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, I decided to change the theme of my post this morning when on page 90 I read these words:

When I arrived home after picking up the kids from school today, I found four books bundled up for me — a new set of review copies for a pile that’s already falling well behind. Maybe if I hadn’t spend so much time on Frank Viola’s latest… Opening the envelope, I found a good crop, too — watch for further comment on them:

• Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N.T. Wright
• Rising from the Ashes: Rethinking Church, Becky Garrison
• The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus, Bruxy Cavey

“Pagan Week” has been held over in view of the extended conversation I’ve had with Frank Viola, which turned out not to be a brief one-post interview after all. We got into some pretty big questions, which help frame a deeper understanding of his latest book on which he collaborated with George Barna. My review of Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices ran all of last week, during which I voiced a number of concerns with the book and pointed out some strong points. In the end, the biggest caveat with the book is that it’s overly prone to being misunderstood, but can be recommended as a good discussion-starter: just don’t mistake it for an attempt to provide comprehensive answers on each subject it addresses. In no small part, this conclusion fueled my desire to have a conversation with Frank around the book itself. As we did with my Interview with Paul Young (Author of The Shack), the conversation was conducted via email, and I’ve stitched it together in this format. As I said before, just imagine we’re all sitting around a table in your favorite independent local coffee shop. Frank and I converse for a bit, but you’ll get your comments in edgewise a little further on — for now, grab that latte you ordered, pull up an extra chair and pass the biscotti.