A year after the release of True Story, InterVarsity Press has released a study guide for personal reflection or group discussion. It’s a free download from the InterVarsity Press website, so enjoy! When used along with True Story, it’s ideal for study in smaller groups.

On the front cover, it says that you have to get permission from me to make copies, so here it is: you now have permission. Go, therefore, and make copies!

A huge thanks to my friend CR and the folks at Duraleigh Presbyterian Church for field-testing the material. I hope this gives the people in your churches and organizations an easy way to learn step-by-step about how Jesus’ talked about the gospel, and discover why it’s really great news!

I’m going through major transitions.

First, we’re having another boy, and he’s due in September. Second, we’re moving to Los Angeles. We don’t know the exact timing, but we’re heading up there sometime in the next seven months or so. Third, I’ll be out of a job in six weeks as a director for San Diego InterVarsity.

Conception, location, and vocation. What else could possibly change?

And the transitions weighed down on me like a burlap sack full of black coal. First, I really loved the first seven years of my marriage. No kids. Eat out? Anytime. Movies? We’ll be there. Sleep in? Enjoy the snooze button. Life was good in no-kid-ville. Don’t get me wrong: Ice is a joy. But when he came into the world, my lover became a mother. And I became the help.

Second, L.A. is Nineveh to me. I grew up a Laker-hater. Plus, add lung-blackening smog, parking-lot traffic, and the expectation to drive 45 minutes to see friends, and it’s hard to think of a city that can be any more aggressively anti-community. Throw in materialism and rampant image-consciousness into the mix, and it seems to stand against everything I live for. I hate L.A. so much that though my wife hails from its South Bay, we drove down to San Diego when I proposed because I couldn’t stand to think of being engaged in L.A. See, I’ve got serious issues.

Third, I couldn’t dream. With my wife’s job lasting for only a year, I found myself again in limbo. I can’t live out a dream. I have to wait for another year — possibly two — before I can work for something longer term. I’ve often felt like a racehorse at the starting line, where the other gates have opened while mine has stalled shut. And now, I have to wait even longer.

Eyes downcast, it’s hard to stay upbeat.

But I’ve been called to let go of what isn’t real. The wife of my first seven years is no longer. She’s now a mother. A beautiful, tender, nothing-held-back kind of mother, the best kind that my son could ever have. I need to let the old wife pass away to embrace the wife I truly have. Because the wife I have, though different, is still the wife I desperately need and deeply adore. And L.A. may be Nineveh, but I can’t go to Tarshish. Sure, what place can be more idyllic than San Diego. But it will soon no longer my home. Instead, l’ll need to embrace my new home. (Though, rooting for the Lakers may take some time.) Besides, I hear the food can’t be beat. And my past director role — and all the identity that was wrapped up in it — needs to die, so I can embrace what will come next. Letting it go gives me an empty hand to grasp the new thing. And I want to make sure that I’ll be able to catch it when it comes by.

For Christians, Fridays always come before Sundays. Crosses are the way to crowns. And resurrection is always preceded by death. The two are never separated — in faith and in reality.

But perhaps we don’t give enough attention to Holy Saturday. Good Friday and Easter Sunday get a lot of attention in liturgical calendars, but many of us live in Holy Saturday: we know death has already come, and we wait to be reborn.

I’ve been invited to lead a workshop at the National Outreach Convention 2009 on The Big Story. And Tell It Slant is the first stop on the NOC’s blog tour. They’ll post some questions, and I’ll reply to their questions and any that you might have throughout the day. So ask away!

Christianity Today just published a Bible study based on the Big Story, the diagram featured in True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In. It’s a follow-up to the article they published last July. It’s not free, but for a small fee, you can download it and make up to 1,000 copies for your church or organization.

Rating: 10

This is the first book I’ve finished in 2009, and if the rest of the books I read this year are in this caliber, this is going to be a very good year.

Postman deftly shows how the shift from the Age of Print to the Age of Television is having a disastrous effect on the tenor of our public discourse. He argues that the very nature of television makes it impossible to have deeper, thoughtful conversations about the burning issues of the day. And, he convincingly argues, TV affects everything else in culture. He has a clear intellect, and his sharp analysis on the way television shapes us is disturbing and should serve as a wake-up call to us all.

This book was written over 30 years ago, and was a prophetic call in an Age of Television. But it seems that as we’ve moved into the Age of the Computer or the Age of the Internet, some of the arguments don’t easily port over. The Internet is a somewhat more interactive form of media than, say, television. Or even books for that matter. And I’d be interested to know the prevailing metaphor that the medium of the Internet is introducing into our culture today.

Regardless, it’s a timely book that argues quite forcefully for the need to ask questions about the role of media in the shaping of not only our culture, but also our minds.

You can view its Amazon detail page by clicking the image above.

Click here to see other reviews.

As many of you know, True Story has a companion booklet called Based on a True Story that’s intended for giveaway use.

What’s news, however, is that InterVarsity Press has given me permission to post the first twelve pages of the booklet, so you can get a sense of what it’s like. If you like how it captures the central thrust of the Christian message, please feel free to get some copies for your friends.

It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re in the middle of a recession. And if the pundits are right, it’s the worst economic slide since the Great Depression. In it, we’re spending less: Christmas sales are down, even online. For many, that merely reinforces the fact that our economy is hitting the brakes, which leads to despair. But what if this could be a season of hope and opportunity?

Giving is also down. And something seems wrong about that. In a time of fiscal crisis, I know we all have less. But since there’s a greater need, shouldn’t giving actually increase?

That’s where we need vision for a new kind of economy. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of the one we have: capitalism is the survivor of the fittest, and it looks like it’s here to stay. But if, in the simplest of terms, a robust economy is measured by how quickly the money flows from one hand to another, why should it be dominated by a system of the purchase of goods and services? In a market system, we earn dollars to spend on things, which goes back to corporations to pay for salaries, which come back to us — and it all goes around in a circle. In a good economy, that money flows around faster. In a bad one, the cycle slows to a standstill.

So why not have a system where giving has a far larger share. It’s still a cycle where money is exchanged, and the giving can support non-profit organizations who offer jobs and provide social services with what they do — to the benefit of society — while also providing income so that these workers can survive and continue to contribute to the market economy. Just as rising oil prices pressed for greener alternatives (though that pressure is now off), perhaps a recession can push for alternatives to augment our market economy.

For example, my friend pointed out an idea from Simon Chan’s book, Crazy Love. On page 120, Chan makes the suggestion that Christians could try to live at or below the median income ($46,000 in 2006). Perhaps a national number is unrealistic because of where you live. Perhaps you choose your county’s median income, or your city’s. Or perhaps you can’t do it now, but you might be able to in a few years. No problem. But you try. And you put yourself at a limit, then give the rest away. Or just a lot of it away. Wouldn’t that feel refreshing? It feels a lot like what Jesus would teach.

And he didn’t just teach on it. He also asked people to do it. Remember the rich, young ruler, who lived as a moral exemplar, but couldn’t give all of his money and possessions away to the poor? Jesus let him walk away. Or Zacchaeus, who gave away half of his wealth to the poor, and gave back four the times the amount he stole unfairly? When salvation came to his house, so did justice. And vice versa, when justice came to his house, so did salvation.

This is where Christmas comes in. Jesus also limited himself. On Christmas, we celebrate that God showed up on earth as a cooing, crying baby. That’s limiting. A biblical author writes: “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.”

So as followers of Jesus, what if we decided to live on the median income of the region we live in? And then gave the rest away. We’d still be rich in comparison to the rest of the world, where one billion people live without access to clean water or electricity. In America, almost every one of us is rich. And we’d learn limits, and learn love through our generosity. Instead of clinging to our advantages, we gave it away. We’d be happier and freer. And that’s what Jesus came to do: to free us. For it truly is better to give than to receive.

This Christmas, we’re given the gift of limits. And I don’t want to be insensitive: I know that some of us have lost our jobs. But we’re also given the opportunity to give even in tough times. And in this way, our sliding economy offers us another chance to live more closely to what Christmas is about.

Perhaps it’s my Gen X sensibilities, but I don’t trust politicians or the American political process that much. I don’t publicly endorse candidates for any office, thinking that one day they’ll let us down. And after the 2000 elections, my trust in the American political process was buried deep in the sands of the ocean bottom, where Florida’s hanging chads probably reside. Even blogging about politics isn’t my style. Though it’s true, perhaps I get overly religious when I say our best hope lies in Jesus.

Now, I’m not the type to threaten to move to Canada when our government blows it either. It’s beautiful country up there, but I do like it here. But deep down, I often felt that something was wrong with politics. Many of us did. Our leaders seemed more interested in making their names great or chasing their libido rather than caring for the welfare of their citizens. Self-indulgent earmarks made their way into budget proposals and bills. Indiscretions, either with boy pages or high-class prostitutes, gave the media something to profit from. It was hard to think that we’re in good hands.

But Tuesday has given me a glimmer of hope . . . though in a different way than you might think.

It’s not because of who got elected. I still don’t trust politicians much. But my heart swells — well, as much as an Xer will allow — when I think about our political process. On Tuesday, we mandated a radical shift in the direction of our country, domestically and internationally. And no matter how you feel about that change, change did happen and we did it without violence or bloodshed. Historically and in the light of current events, that’s just plain rare.

On top of that, in what other Western country, would the people rise up and cut through racial divides to vote for a biracial President-elect, who’s also a product of a broken home? We actually did it, and unlike in 2000, there hasn’t been any controversy about it. At least not yet. And for all of Europe’s progressiveness, they haven’t been able to do this. It really says a lot about the American people: over 115 million voted, and collectively, we empowered the leader whom we thought would best exemplify change — regardless of melanin content. Martin Luther King Jr’s dream started to ring true: we didn’t judge by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. Yes, for the first time in a long time, I felt a little hope for America.

Sure, I already mentioned that I don’t threaten to move to Canada. But it’s probably clear that I’m not a flag-waving zealot either. Even with the little knowledge I have, I’m acutely aware of our faults as a country, and the damage we have done in the name of greater good — though it was clearly etched in self-interest. And I don’t make the mistake of equating America with the Kingdom of God. This isn’t a Christian country, no matter how much we’d like it to be.

But I am an American. And I know and pray that God can redeem all things, under heaven and on earth, even governments. And on that fateful Tuesday, the greatness of our political process shone like a brilliant jewel. No matter how people voted, it’s clear that our form of democracy has to be one of the most significant inventions of government in history to elect the person that it did. And for a minority community that had been enslaved, lynched, and discriminated against by people in this country — and the government itself — for centuries and as recently as 40 years ago, Tuesday must’ve felt like redemption. Many of their leaders placed their lives in Jesus’ hands and yet sought to make a humble, peaceful and courageous difference in their country, most apparently through the Civil Rights movement. Now, within their lifetime, their own eyes witness this country elect one of their own. And now, all Americans can call him one of our own as well.

Now I don’t claim that Obama is Jesus’ choice, though some who are less discerning may confuse between the two. But no matter how you voted on Tuesday, please keep our President-elect in your prayers. Given our current malaise, he’ll definitely need them.

I just watched Sicko last night. Whenever I watch a Michael Moore film, I get riled up. I don’t have my wife’s gift of instantly picking up on faulty logic. And now you can see why I can’t win an argument with her either. So with Moore, I get taken in. I want something to change. But then I have to remember … right, it’s Michael Moore. So I start checking the facts and counter-arguments.

Because Fahrenheit 9/11 was too biased to be helpful. And though I liked Bowling for Columbine, I was bothered to find out that the South Park-like clip in the middle was not created by Parker and Stone. The editing and animation style made it seem like they created it, and that’s just misleading. And all Michael Moore movies contain some of his antics, like taking the victims of Columbine to Target’s headquarters to get them to stop selling hollow-point ammunition. And this movie’s no different: he took 9/11 rescue workers who couldn’t get health care to Guantanamo Bay, because the navy had set up a 24-hour health clinic for the detainees. Sure, he’s getting his point across and doing some good, but you can’t help but feel like he’s using the victims too.

But all that being said, I can’t seem to find the fact checkers on this particular movie. Moorewatch.com — the site that’s “watching Michael Moore’s every move” — was preoccupied in the petty explanation of what Moore did and didn’t do in saving the site. (In Sicko, he’d given $12,000 to the site’s owner to help with health care bills for his wife.) The stuff I do find points out that the health care systems of Canada, Britain, France and Cuba are not all that Moore has made them out to be.

But that’s beside the point. Moore’s making a strong case that health care in our country is in shambles. He offers us stories of people who’ve been burned by our health care system, and have lost something truly valuable — whether it’s a finger they couldn’t afford to reattach or a loved one. And sure, the health care system works for those with loads of cash, but a country should be judged by how we treat the underprivileged. That’s how God would judge — Old Testament and New.

Which leads me to the point of this post: why can’t we have free, universal health care in this country? We are the only Western country without it. The critics say that lines will lengthen like wrinkles in a tanning bed, doctor’s salaries will plummet, the quality of health care will suffer, and we’ll be mired in administration. But the other Western countries seem to do just fine. Even with their problems, it’s our country that’s showing up lower on infant mortality rates and longevity.

We don’t turn a student away from an elementary school education because he can’t afford it. We don’t let a house burn down because the tenants can’t afford to pay the firefighters. And we expect the police to defend the rights of the rich and the poor equally — though they’re definitely working out the kinks. But we allow sick people to be turned away from hospitals and quality care because they can’t pay. The people who need the care most find themselves unable to get it. This just seems outrageous in the wealthiest country in the world.

Honestly, it bothers me because it hits close to home. My in-laws are sick. My mother-in-law has diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. My father-in-law has had open-heart surgery, and is now in laying in a hospital bed in Korea, testing the rest of his body to see if the cancer they found in his intestines has spread. Neither have health insurance: they can’t get any because of their pre-existing conditions. And they’re too young for Medicare or Medi-Cal. So they have to resort to county hospitals and free health clinics — and they often choose not to go because they can’t stand to wait six hours. So I might be a bit selfish in my rant. But the 47 million Americans who don’t have health care likely have relatives who care about them too.

It’s not news to say that we need health care reform. I’d just like this issue to be on the front-burner of the upcoming elections. If we’re to care for the least of these, it seems that addressing our health care system should be something our country should make a priority, and try their best to get it right. (I know there are some government-haters out there that think that we should only have loving individual efforts to help people out, and sure, I don’t want anything bloated and inefficient either. But there are some things that should be in the hands of the government: common goods like public education, infrastructure, law enforcement, public services, etc. In private hands, someone always gets neglected.)

If we truly believe that each person is made in God’s image, shouldn’t they be treated as such? Access to adequate health care shouldn’t be based on the thickness of their wallets, but merely because they breathe and bleed.

I’m done ranting. What can we do about this?

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Update: Thanks, Danny. Check out this Frontline special on the healthcare systems of Britain, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland. I found it helpful in exploring the different ways each country has attempted to care for its citizens.

Rating: 7

This book asked the right questions and challenged much of my current thinking. Basically, it asks: what’s the best form of church? And it shouts loudly against anything large and institutional, and argues for something smaller and incarnational — something that doesn’t merely invite, but goes out.

It seems idealistic. In the end, they argue for a church structure that has worked during Roman and Chinese persecutions of the church, and argue that it might possibly work here where there is no persecution. That’s where I’m skeptical: we, in the Western world, live in a time without persecution, and so these larger, more institutional forms of church do exist and provide alternatives. The fact that alternatives exist will create competitive structures against these smaller structures that the author is arguing for, making them harder to sustain.

That said, this book has a lot of insights and challenges for the institutional church today, if even to get us to stop thinking about inviting people to bigger rallies called worship services, and to think about being Jesus’ presence beyond our the walls of the church. And the author’s right: the megachurch model isn’t reproducible, and we should choose models that can be easily reproduced, like a network of house churches.

Much of these principles need to be reincorporated back into the church to remind us who we are and are suppose to be — a community that loves God and others. Yet, many of these ideas, especially if read by idealists like me, need a healthy dose of nuance and maturity to make these models sustainable.

You can view its Amazon detail page by clicking the image above.

You gotta check this out: a student, who just spent her summer with the urban poor in Cairo, tattooed the fourth circle of The Big Story on her foot! She said that “it has become a great conversation starter!” No doubt!

Click the links to see the original videos of the Big Story — part 1 and part 2 — or the training manual.

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Update: The write-up article is no longer available because the short format allowed for too many misunderstandings. For a fuller treatment, please check out True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In (for believers) or Based on a True Story (for seekers). A study guide for True Story is forthcoming through InterVarsity Press.

My apologies — a 13-month old can drain every last ounce of creativity left over from work, leaving me shriveled up and pruned for content. New posts are hard to come by. But I still keep up with reading (more passive . . . *grin*), yet the reviews languish in their own section of this blog. So I’m going to start posting my reviews as well, and this is a great book to start with.

To see other reviews, click here to go to the library. So here goes:

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Rating: 10

This book is simply amazing. The premise alone is worth the cost of the book: if you want to change culture, critiquing it or consuming more of it won’t do. You have to make more of it.

But there’s more far more value than just that one idea. The book’s large in scope (what is culture?), clear in thought (what exactly goes into shaping culture?), sharp in intellect (who’s thought about the culture-making possibilities of an omelet?), humble in spirit (because we really can’t change the world, but. . . ) and hopeful in tone (. . . God can and is doing something.) It shows us both how we can’t change the world — thus, our need for humility — and yet, how we can still participate in the culture making enterprise in Christ.

Add the author’s skillful command of the language and mix in more wonderful concrete illustrations and examples, and the result is a brilliant and satisfying read.

You can view its Amazon detail page by clicking the image above.