I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Frank Viola on a few different occasions. Because of that I was honored to receive his most recent book in the mail and have the privilege of reading it and reviewing it here. There are a lot things that I like about Frank and his work. I appreciate his egalitarian, grassroots approach to ecclesiology. His approach is certainly more of a people’s approach. And if you know me, you know I resonate with that. I also appreciate that Frank has been so intentional about dialog with others; even those that may seem to have opposing views. So, going into this book I already wanted to like it.The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was the cover of God’s Ultimate Passion. Call me shallow if you will but Frank needs to get some assistance from a designer on his book covers. It says something about the content that Frank has been independently publishing for several years, with base cover jackets and still is a known in the Christian market place. I’ll give him that. But I’m a creative, visual person and I would like to see something more eye-catching coming from Present Testimony.

Second thing that I noticed about the book is the title. Wow! That’s a big undertaking, a book on God’s ultimate passion! Can’t wait to discover what that is. I’m a bit anxious by such an audacious title but still intrigued.

The next thing I do is something I do when I pick up any book for the first time; open to the back of the book and read through the bibliography and then go to the front and read the recommendations. I do this because I want to know who the author is reading. It says a lot about the person. I also like to see who recommends it because my experience is that these people most often have seen earlier drafts and have been in some level of dialog with the author.

Since this has become my habit over the years, I’ve started to notice something over the last couple of years: Brian McLaren recommends a LOT of books. In fact, I’ve seen his name on so many books now that I don’t even read his little paragraphs on the inside flap of books anymore. So, let’s move on to the content of the book.

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Last night we sat around the table after dinner-and in the midst of kids running around-to move into our conversation about money and following Jesus. We each took turn in sharing a story from our lives that has been formative in our perception of money. We each shared about our parents general approach to money. This was revealing, there were only extremes: either pride in their use of money or shame. We shared what we felt compelling about scripture, Jesus’ teachings on money. For many of us, we had some confusion because of the disconnect we perceived between cultural Christianity and what we understood of financial concepts in Scripture. For some of us, we were not raised to consider that following Jesus had anything to do with money… as long as you tithed. Some of us shared an ethical concern with tithing; that our money could be put to better use than church budgets, etc. Overall, it was cathartic. I got an IM this morning saying, ‘That was refreshing.’ Money is the second most common thing Jesus talked about (the kingdom being the first). But we have such a hard time talking about it. Interesting.

For the next few Sundays, we’ll be discussing our relation to money and following Jesus. One of our community members, Rick Zemlin will be leading our conversation this week. Here’s a note from Rick on this Sunday’s meeting:

Our community has decided to read a book together. If you’re interested, we’ll be discussing the book on the first Sunday of every month. Right now, we’re attempting to decide between three books (we’re reading the first chapter of each):

Please leave us your thoughts on any of these in the comments. Thanks.

So, we head back home later today (it’s about midnight right now). We’ve had a great time. Tonight, we had dinner with the Ryan, Holly, Lisa, Katie, Joel, Eliot and baby Pax. It’s always good to be with people you can just pick up where you left off. We got to visit the Edible Schoolyard in Berkley today, which was awesome. Brooke is really inspired to possibly implement somethings back home. We discovered Golden Gate Park for the first time, visited Amoeba Records-which is so awesome it’s overwhelming and some great coffee shops up here which is always a good thing when everyone’s sleep schedules are messed up.Saturday night we pick up Sunil in Long Beach. He’ll be speaking in San Diego on Sunday a.m. at Mission Gathering and Sunday night at our place. Please come out and support Stop Caste Now.

Feels like there is so much more to be said but I’m quite tired. Here’s a few links from coverage of the talk I gave to the Mennonite Youth Convention on Wednesday a.m. before we headed to San Francisco:

• article-I guess it was a big deal that I used the word “crap”. Oops.
• video montage click on the July 6 video link (yeah… pretty cheeseball but Rudy and I made the clip though)
• headset mic’s are overrated… it felt so lame to be wearing that but the kids were a blast to be with