Brandon Jones

Last week I started, and finished, a wonderful little book called Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life by Jack Levison. It’s a relatively new book (it came out around March I believe) and originally caught my attention through a recommendation by Scot McKnight. My interest was secured after reading the other endorsements: NT Wright, Walter Brueggeman, Eugene Peterson, Phyllis Tickle & Will Willimon. That’s a somewhat eclectic group for a book on the Holy Spirit, and when they (well, McKnight) label it as ”the most biblical, wide-ranging, innovative, and refreshing book on the Holy Spirit in years,” I take interest.

Anyways, the opportunity arose to pick it up and read it, and read it I did. Devoured would probably be a better word. I was hooked from the introduction on. In it, Levison discusses his background: growing up in a setting devoid of any tangible move of the spirit, and then entering a season in seminary of exploration that forever changed him. The book arose from a sense of having one foot in Pentacostal world, and one foot in the mainline protestant world (he’s a professor at an United Methodist seminary and his wife pastors at an United Methodist church) and the desire to bring the two together and allow them to learn from one another.

That’s a desire I can strongly respect. There’s a lot of disunity, misunderstanding, fighting and other such nonsense that goes on between the many different denominations when the reality is that we probably have a lot we can learn from one another. Even though we like to think we have a corner on all things theology, the pride and arrogance of such a thought can often put us in a position where we miss things we should be learning.

Anyways, Fresh Air. I’ll blog more specifically about specific pieces of the book in the coming days but in (quick) summary I’d have to say that I really quite enjoyed it. I don’t know if I’d go quite as far as McKnight does in his endorsement (accepting the ‘innovative’ remark). A lot of the focus felt to me to be correcting the missteps prevalent in the more Pentacostal wings of the church at large; I thought there could have been more remarks made the other way as well. But by and large this was quite a poignant and refreshing read. I came away with a new desire to see the Holy Spirit move in and through my life and the communities I’m involved in — I’d call it a success at least in that respect. 4 Stars out of 5.

I enjoyed this story of a woman from the untouchable caste in India who worked herself up out of poverty to become something of a manufacturing tycoon. Certainly an interesting read at the very least.

It is of Sketchshare, a nice collaborative sketching app for the iPad. Click thru to read my thoughts.

This is quite an interesting read and begs the question, “Are we doing it all wrong?” The “it” I refer to is, broadly speaking, cross-cultural mission. One “why” for the question that comes directly from this pdf is the enormous stress and strain it puts onto the workers:

We have reported in earlier papers that the amount of stress experienced among cross-cultural workers averages around 600 points on the Holmes-Rahe modified scale, with levels peaking up to 900 and beyond for people in their first field term. … They found that 50% of those scoring 200 points were hospitalized within the subsequent two years for heart attacks, diabetes, cancer, or other severe illness.

Glow in the dark coins. Not just any though. These are particularly awesome. They have a dinosaur on them, and at night (or whenever it’s dark) the skeleton glows. Just click the link to see for yourself.

“The poor tell us who we are. The prophets tell us who we could be. So we hide the poor and kill the prophets.”

Phil Berrigan

I love stories of creativity and ingenuity like this. Check out the full site for more details.

For a cool $1 Billion dollars. You read that right. And it’s apparently a good deal. Instagram’s official post here. Currently, Facebook plans on leaving Instagram as a stand alone product. Hopefully their influence stays limited (mark me as one concerned with Facebook’s privacy record). If you are concerned, and interested in migrating away from Instagram, this article lists what you need to do to delete your account, and this one lists a few alternative services (for iOS).

Here is a list of 40 books on living missionally. I’ll vouch for many of these books. My top three on the list are Transforming Mission by David Bosch (A South African!), The Shaping of Things to Come by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, and Missional Church by Darrell Guder. There are many other important works on the list though, so check it out!