So my time at Fuller, like college, has been one in which you read, read, read and without question most of the texts are very excellent. One problem. When I start reading the books that I am required to and ones for research on a particular topic, I get side tracked by other books those books reference! Sometimes I just get sidetracked by the mound of books (many of which are those referenced by textbooks) I call "to read after graduations pile," and begin to dabble. With graduation around the corner, I picked up a couple more titles the other day, one of which was written by Shane Claiborne. The other month I had teh pleasure of sitting down with Shane and about ten others in Philadelphia to discuss everything from God's call for justice, living in community, the subversive and alternative nature of the gospel and the like. Shane is a very unassuming, thoughtful and loving person. He really wanted to have a serious round table conversation with our insights and experiences and questions at the center, not just his!

I've known about his book which came out over a year ago, called The Irresistable Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical and I have avoided reading it. Mostly because of my already demanding reading schedule, but also because a roommate read it when it first came out and said this is changing everything. He didn't mean Shane, he just meant the delightful and passionate way in which Shane helps us to recover the nature of Jesus call to follow. So I purchased at a "sale" price this past week in the Fuller bookstore (great deals by the way, potentially one of my vices) and swore to myself that I would not pick it up until after my research and writing for papers was complete.

Like always I began thumbing through it and could not put it down. Buy this book and read it and pass it on to a friend or better yet read it with a community of people. Read it especially before coming to Fuller. If I did not want to teach in a university setting, this book alone would have given me the hermeneutical framework to recapture the imagination of the way of Jesus. So read it and wrestle with it. Let it help you reengage the narrative of Scripture and the Gospels.