Last night I finished a good book and saw a great movie. The movie called War Dance was shown at the Colfax Events Center as part of the Worldviews Film Forum put on by Urban Skye. It is a beautiful movie about kids living in war ravaged northern Uganda. In documentary style it follows three kids living in a government protected camp as they prepare for a national music and dance competition. Three of the kids are highlighted and their stories told. It stood out to me that in spite of how much trauma, terror, and loss these kids have gone through in their short lives that they are still kids at heart.
The book I just finished was one that I was reluctant to pick up. It has been getting a lot of attention in Christian circles lately which always makes me skeptical - especially given the separatistic and incomplete nature of the Christian sub-culture. However I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. The book is called The Shack by William P. Young.
The story is fiction and, although it is no great mystery novel, it does something that I have come to appreciate lately. The author takes a theological understanding of God and, rather than dryly writing out 'this is who God is,' he puts it in the form of a narrative that keeps the pages turning. Although one does not have to completely agree with all the theology of the author, and, after all, what theologian does anyone completely agree with anyway, he does a great job tackling God's love, grace, and mercy in spite of all the evil and sorrow in the world.
This form of narrative brings to mind a recent book that I read which has been very helpful in a business sense - and it wasn't a bad story either. The book Death By Meeting by Patrick Lencioni is about the purpose of meetings and how they should be understood and run. Sounds kind of droll, doesn't it? But through the story he makes the valid case that meetings should be more engaging than going to a movie. Meetings have an active relevance and importance to one's life that a passive viewing of a movie does not - so why do we prefer movies? The methods and ground rules Lencioni gives have been super helpful. I have started incorporating these into our meetings at Ecclesia which I believe has made a significant improvement in our time together.
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