The Unlikely Disciple

I just finished reading my first book of the year. It's a thought-provoking book by Kevin Roose.
In April 2009 I went to a youth leader event at Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA. The speaker of the day was Mark Helsel. Our group of youth leaders from Calvary ended up sitting on the steps of Grace Chapel eating lunch with Mark during the lunch break. Our conversation was about church, college, rules, etc and he started talking about The Unlikely Disciple, a book he started reading. After our conversation, the book was on my "to read" list. It wasn't until recently that I was able to get a hold of the book to read it for myself.

It's the first book of the year and it's already on my favorite books list. It was a quick read and roughly 350 pages. Kevin writes in a style that is easy for most people to understand.

Kevin hadn't graduated college and he already wrote a fabulous book... quite the achievement if you ask me.

After finishing the book, I started to think about my own life. What do I REALLY believe? Why do I believe what I do? Is it because of how I was raised? Did I choose for myself what I believe? What would life have been for me if I hadn't been raised in a Christian home? Would I even be a Christian? Do I approach Christianity the same way a "typical" Christian College grad would?

Maybe I should give a little background...

My parents became Christians during their college years and I grew up in an evangelical Christian home. We attended Sunday School and church every week. My parents were quite involved in church; as I got older my involvement in church increased. I wasn't one to attend youth group regularly, but I enjoyed helping out in the nursery, children's church and teaching Sunday School to younger kids.

As I looked into WHERE I would attend college, my three choices were UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management in Massachusetts, American University in Washington DC, and Gordon College in Massachusetts, north of Boston. As the deadline neared, I decided to go to UMass. The day the deposit was due, I decided, no, I need to attend Gordon College.

I graduated from Gordon College, which is considered a "liberal" Christian college by Liberty's standards.

• There are coed dorms - not coed floors though
• There is both a democrat AND a republican club.
• The professors lecture AND then press us to THINK for ourselves 'WHY do we believe what we believe'.
• Gordon is a dry campus, but you're not expelled for drinking off-campus.
• Gordon does NOT limit male-female contact to hand-holding; although if you spend the night with someone of the opposite sex on campus AND are found out you will get in trouble.
• They have mission's trips, but nothing like the mission's trip described in The Unlikely Disciple
  

Where was I? Oh yes, the book. It was a thought-provoking read and I highly recommend the book to anyone who would like to dig a little deeper into what they believe or who would like to know what it's like to spend a semester at a strict evangelical college.

Of course, as I wrote above, there were many questions I asked myself, but I will review those in a later post.

Read the book.

Water For Elephants

Recently I finished reading a book called: 'Water For Elephants'

It was such an interesting read. It's about 350 pages long, but it's a fast, easy read. The author, Sara Gruen, wrote a page turner. She chronicles what it's like to be involved in a circus during the Great Depression. Growing up I attended a few circuses at the Barnstable County Fairgrounds and even in Siljansnäs, Sweden when visiting my grandparents, but I often wondered what it would be like to travel with a circus.

She writes about a young Polish man who jumps aboard a moving train to escape a painful life circumstance; the train he jumped belongs to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. He attended Cornell, but he left in the middle of his final exams in his fourth year. Call it happenstance, he ditched school and jumped upon a circus train in need of a vet. Benzini Brothers didn't care about his diploma, they were satisfied to say they had a "vet" as part of their circus. During a lonely time in his life, Jacob finds companionship and rivalry. He meets Marlena, the beautiful and show-stopping equestrian performer, however she is married to August, the charming but moody animal trainer. Another person Jacob ends up befriending is the circus dwarf who is forced to share a "train car" with him. He is the circus vet, he ends up caring for Rosie, the "stupid" elephant who was a ray of hope for the second rate circus.

It was such a refreshing and fun book to read. Opens your eyes to what circus life may have been like almost 70+ years ago... Recommend.

Books...

After I graduated college, I started reading books again...

What? You think I didn't read in college? Well, I did read in college; however I was unable to read as many books as I wanted for "pleasure". Sure, I read hundreds of pages about micro-economics, macro-economics, muscles, anatomy & physiology, accounting, capitalism, international econ, business law, exercise science, history, German, English literature, but most of the books I read were to ensure I passed my classes, not for fun.

During my junior year of college, I spent a semester in Sweden. One of the classes I took was an English Lit class. It was one of my favorite classes I took in college... sometimes I wonder if I should have majored in English because of my love for reading... Anyway, we read many classics, most I hadn't read before. It was such a treat to read books for fun, and it was also homework.

After college, I created a list of books I had read each year and a list of books I wanted to read. Not long after I started dating Caleb, spending time with him became a priority and reading was again put on the "back burner".

It was actually Caleb who inspired me to pick up my habit again. At the beginning of the year (January 2009), he set a goal to read a book every two weeks; twenty-six books in year. I was proud of him and at the same time jealous of him. I thought it was great that he wanted to read and set a reading goal. Many of the books he chose were thought-provoking interesting reads which prompted interesting conversation in the car and at the dinner table. In July, he was counting the books he read this year, it was almost triple the number of books I had read. He inspired me, now I was determined to get back to reading.

My first book was The Shack. I started it in January and finished it in July. You may think, 'Six months to read a book?' Well, I read most of it, wanted to know the ending, read the ending, and then didn't want to read the middle... In July I forced myself to finish reading the book and it was quite satisfying to finish and start the next book.

The next book I picked up was one I got for Christmas 2008, Infidel. After that, I was hooked. I joined a book club and was even more inspired. So far I have read more books in the second half of 2009 than in the first half!

Here's a list of books I've read so far...

The Shack

Infidel

Three Cups of Tea

Love the One You’re With

Something Borrowed

Something Blue

Guernsey Literary Society

Water for Elephants

Babyproof

The Help

The Millionaire Next Door

Raving Fans

...twelve books; which equals one book a month. We all know that it was more like two or three books a month, since I started in July. Hopefully I can read a few more books before the year's over, maybe bump it to fourteen or fifteen.

I am now inspired to read 26-52 books next year and I am working on a "To Read" list. Once it's finished, I'll post it on this blog... I may even write a few books reviews... in the event people want ideas on what books to read and what books may be a waste of time... ;)