Humor

Add a Word, Ruin a Christian Book

I am typically pretty disciplined in avoiding memes as they make their way around the Internet. Today, though, I made an exception when I saw the hashtag #AddaWordRuinaChristianBook showing up all over my Twitter feed. (After all, it’s my day off.) It’s simple: you add one word to a book and see how badly you can ruin it. The results have been pretty funny. Here are a few favorites: Avett Brothers, We Are Not Professionals #AddaWordRuinaChristianBook — Steve McCoy (@stevekmccoy) …

New & Notable Book Reviews

I love writing book reviews and I love reading them. Since I cannot possibly read and review all of the interesting books out there, I publish occasional round-ups of reviews written by other writers. Or even if I am able to review the book, it’s always good to get a second opinion. So here are a few notable links I’ve collected over the past few weeks: Keep the Faith by Martin Ayers Reviewed by Tony Payne. “And this is where …

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A La Carte (10/26)

Pastors Who Write Books – Here is some good advice from Barnabas Piper for pastors who want to write books of the sermon series. “When I receive proposals for books or book ideas from pastors I often get something like this as an accompanying comment: “I am the pastor of a X,000-person church, and based on their response to this message I think there is a large demand for this material.” This seems like a reasonable assertion. 80% of the …

Help Lord–The Devil Wants Me Fat!

Last year I posted a few pictures from the old 70’s classic Soul Winning Made Easy by C.S. Lovett. Recently I came across another of his books, one titled Help Lord–The Devil Wants Me Fat! The book teaches how the devil is able to influence your eating, how to deal with your appetite and how to deprogram yourself from bad eating habits. It is an odd mixture of good and bad, useful information and outright legalism (not to mention poor …

Joel Osteen or Fortune Cookie?

The other day I ate some rather extraordinary Thai food for lunch and, on my way out, grabbed a fortune cookie. I cracked it open and read a silly little proverb meant to inspire, I suppose. I wish it had said “A brisk uphill walk after all-you-can-eat Thai is a bad idea.” Never mind. As I waddled my way home, regretting that last bowl of curry (so delicious…), I thought “This fortune sounds like something Joel Osteen would say.” And …

How To Review a Book

I am often asked for pointers on writing book reviews and recently realized that, to my recollection, I’ve never written on the topic. That may be because I consider myself quite a poor book reviewer. I got into writing reviews (over 500 book reviews ago now) by circumstance more than skill; I had a blog, I read a lot, and book reviews just started to happen. Yet I am aware that I am not a great reviewer. Read the Times …

Rich Daddy God

My friends know of my strange affection for bizarre ChurchMerch. A while back I posted some photos of Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now board game. A little while ago we had some friends over to give it a shot. It was horrifying beyond all imagining. In fact, it was completely unplayable. It really made no sense at all. But we all did enjoy the part where we had to look into a mirror and say affirming things about ourselves …

Soul-Winning Made Easy

Some time ago a friend sent me a little gift she knew I would enjoy. It is a small book, published in 1959 titled Soul-Winning Made Easy and subtitled (The Encounter Method). It was written by C.S. Lovett who founded Baldwin Park Baptist Church (which, strangely enough, was later renamed Personal Christianity Chapel). This book is a guide to personal evangelism and it is one that is a classic example of technique-based evangelism. Now obviously I appreciate the man’s desire …

The Rookie Draft

As you well know, the school calendar is rapidly drawing to a close and a new class of rookies is set to graduate from the nation’s seminaries. As the annual rookie draft approaches, I’ve scoured the ranks of young men, have spoken to the scouts, have attended the combine and have interviewed many of the candidates. And now I share the fruit of all this labor and provide my thoughts on how this year’s draft will shape up. Tom McNamarra …

Ee-lectronic gold – A Song

On Saturday I submitted the manuscript for my book. That evening we had some friends come over, and among these friends was Paul, our pastor, who took the opportunity to share a song he had written for the occasion. I do believe this marks the first, and probably the last, time anyone has written me a song. It’s a humdinger, too, even if it is somewhat lacking in historical accuracy. I assume you can figure out the tune, but if …