Jake Colsen is the author of So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore. Jake Colsen does not exist. Rather, he is a pseudonym for the combined work of Dave Coleman and Wayne Jacobsen. You may recognize Wayne Jacobsen as one of the founders of Windblown Media, the company that published a little book called The Shack--a little book that has gone on to sell well over a million copies. As The Shack has found international renown, it has pulled in its wake Windblown Media's two other titles, both of which are written or co-written by Jacobsen. At the moment I write this review, So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore is ranked #259 in Books at Amazon and #4 in Religious & Spirituality Fiction (placing behind three editions of The Shack). Its success is very clearly related to that of The Shack (where it has an advertisement on the back page).

Have you ever noticed that when someone says, "Don't look at that!" you immediately look at it? I remember as a kid I used to delight in finding something gross and rotten and disgusting and showing it off to my friends, seeing who would flinch first as we dug around with sticks inside some rotten carcass. Perhaps I was a disturbed child but I don't think my experiences were unusual. After all, there are any number of web sites that specialize in showing off the disturbing images of war, violence and stupidity. People have a fascination with spectacle. How else do we account for so-called reality television (not to mention the multitudes of Olympic blooper reels making their way across the Net right now)?

There are many books available today that address the needs, the responsibilities and the health of the local church. While The Purpose Driven Church is probably the best-known of these, there are plenty of others as well, many of which were written in the aftermath of that book's unparalleled success. To this point the books have been largely focused at pastors and church leaders.

In his rather unique ministry, Mark Driscoll has come across some rather unique challenges. Among these challenges has been finding a way of addressing some of the fundamentals of the Christian faith with a fast-growing church body comprised primarily of men and women who have no Christian background whatsoever. Because Driscoll found that he would not able to meet with each of these people one-by-one, he began to write booklets which were subsequently distributed by the thousands. Crossway happened upon these books and entered into a publishing agreement to print and distribute this series they've called "A Book You Will Actually Read." The booklets are part of the literature ministry of Resurgence, called Re:lit (which, in turn, is a ministry of Mars Hill Church).

In 2003 Gene Robinson was elected bishop of the tiny Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire after having served as assistant to the previous bishop for almost eighteen years. Robinson's profile, both within the Episcopal Church and outside of it, is completely out of proportion to the size of his charge. He is, after all, the first practicing homosexual to be elected as a bishop within that church body. His story has been told widely within the media and he is regarded as a hero and leader to many within the homosexual community. In the Eye of the Storm is his first book. Where I had been expecting an autobiography, that is only partially the case. While the book does deal with the events surrounding Robinson's rise to the international spotlight, the book's five parts contains essays and reflections on a variety of themes.

My interest in reading good books came a little bit too late to read David Wells' four part series of books as they were released (No Place for Truth, God in the Wasteland, Losing Our Virtue and Above All Earthly Pow'rs). I now have the four volumes sitting on my bookshelf and have often thumbed through them wishing I could muster up the motivation to dive into the series. The problem is that I am intimidated as I look at them and consider that each of them weighs in at several hundred pages. I know that twelve hundred or more pages of dense content would prove quite the challenge to me and to my too-short attention span.

Though it is the emerging church that seems to have received so much attention in the past few years, just under the radar there has also been a quiet and steady growth of interest in far more traditional Reformed theology. All across North America (and perhaps beyond) Christians, and young Christians in particular, have been rediscovering the church's historic theology. These disparate movements seem to have grown from a common source--a reaction against the kind of "big box Christianity" of the church growth movement. Tired of seeing people as products and weary of experiencing church as a form of entertainment, church-goers have searched to find churches that offer a more satisfying approach to the Christian life. Many have gravitated towards emerging churches. Many others, though, have taken the opposite approach and have discovered the theology of the Reformation.

"What is this emerging church I keep hearing about?" If I had a dime for every time I have been asked that question or one like it, well, I'd be several dollars richer at least. Emerging is one of the buzzwords in the church these days and one that begs for greater explanation. Unfortunately it is not an easy term to define. To borrow a tired cliche, defining the emerging church is much like trying to nail Jello to the wall. It's a near-impossible task, but one Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck attempt with great success in their new book Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be). These are two young men who, if we were to look to demographics, would be top candidates for involvement in the emerging movement. Yet they've turned away from it, opting instead to commit to ministry and service within more traditional churches.

"It would be a safe but sad bet that someone, somewhere in the world, is killing someone else at this very moment in the name of religion or ideology." Thus begins The Case for Civility by Os Guinness. Every day the media brings us stories of death and mayhem and often religion and ideology are to blame. The bookshelves at your local bookstore are groaning under the weight of books by atheists--Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins--who blame religion for many of the world's ills. But the record of nations that turned from religion have fared even worse. Guinness says, rightly I'm sure, that no question today is more urgent than this one: how do we live with our deepest differences--and especially our religious and ideological differences. This book is a proposal for restoring civility.

I try not to make a habit of posting book reviews two days in a row, but in this case I felt this book was so special that I needed to bring your attention to it.