InterVarsity Press

(Slightly) More Objective Votes for 2011 Favorites

Well, we hate to brag. But we're going to anyway, of course.

We also made well-known bookstore owner Byron Borger's lists (part one and part two) of his favorite books of the year. Several times, in fact. Here's what he says about just a few:

For the ever-popular Practicing the Way of Jesus: "It covers so many topics and, without being pushy, it does offer very good guidance on how to initiate and move towards greater faithfulness in daily living in the ways of Christ."

For The Story of God, the Story of Us (he starts to gush a little with this one): "Oh my, how I resonated with this, how I loved his creative retelling of the stories of Israel and church [and] how he offered this edgy, energetic vision of how getting lost in this story is the way to life." He also wants to nominate author Sean Gladding for an Oscar ("Gladding should get an award for best screen play").

For Jamie Arpin-Ricci's The Cost of Community: "There are lots of good stories of [Arpin-Ricci and his community's] journey (and the dramatic stuff that happens in urban ministry) and there are upbeat examples of great joy in the journey. But, too, this is serious stuff, inviting us--challenging us--to take Christ seriously, as Francis did. . . . Three cheers."

For The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry by Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean (one of my favorites of the year as well): "If the thesis of Christian Smith's important work (Soul Searching, upon which Dean built her famous book Almost Christian) is true--namely that churches are not doing a very good job helping youth name their spiritual yearnings or giving them categories to think theologically about life and discipleship--then this is a rich and vital answer, to that strong critique of our thin approaches. . . . I'm telling you, this is one of the best books of the year. If you are not in youth ministry, buy it for somebody who is."

And then, for Small Things with Great Love by Margot Starbuck (another favorite of mine; check back soon for much more to come on this book at Strangely Dim): "It pushes us, calls us, invites us, teaches us, shows us, how to reach out to others, how to see the alienation and poverty and sadness around us and to take up the vocation of being Christ's hands and feet in this world of need. There is literally something for everyone."

Byron also highlights several Formatio and IVP Academic books. (And no, he really is not a paid employee of IVP.)

So if you need something intellectually stimulating, spiritually challenging and potentially life-transforming to do to pass the time until the best-of-2011 movies are announced on Oscar night, pick up one or two IVP favorites from 2011 and let us know what you think. (On the other hand, if you don't want to be spiritually or intellectually challenged or to change anyone's life--yours or others'--feel free to keep playing video games and watching The Bachelor while your brain cells die off, one by one, and your perception of reality gets more and more twisted. Just don't ever say we never did anything to help you . . .)

More Subjective Treatments for the Best of 2011

"Everybody thinks their opinion is the right one," says Anne Lamott. "If they didn't, they would get a new one."

It's one of my favorite quotes, and the one that keeps running through my head as I try to put an objective spin on my favorite IVP books of 2011. Honestly, it's a ridiculous idea. We label things like books and movies and music and art as "favorites" not solely for what they are (for their transporting melodies or poetic prose) but for how they make us feel, and for what they reveal about our own souls. Remaining objective requires that we leave behind that which is uniquely us--our biases and idiosyncrasies, our experiences and baggage--that which has shaped us and formed us and leaves us longing for more. Objective is boring. And, I'd argue, impossible.

And so favorites, like opinions, are as subjective as they come. If not, we'd all run off and get new ones. With that epiphany, here's my Subjective Best of 2011.

Publishers Weekly called Invitations from God by Adele Calhoun "a persistent critique of modern culture and of status quo Christianity." Hearts and Minds Books called it "a treasure" that requires us to take inventory of that which we accept and reject, and to examine how it shapes who we are.

It also happens to be written by a friend of mine. I met Adele six years ago when my husband accepted a job at the church where Adele worked. I knew her first as pastor, then as mentor and now as friend. During pseudo-therapy sessions on her sofa or muddy hikes through the woods, our conversations dripped with both the anticipation and the anxiety (mostly mine) of hearing and responding to God's invitations.

I wasn't alone. I watched hundreds of women flock to sit at her feet, to soak in her teaching, to sop up her wisdom. To pretend I don't bring the knowledge of who she is and the difference her words have made in the lives of others, including my own, to the pages of this book is, well, ridiculous. "Invitations shape who we know, where we go, what we do and who we become," says Adele.  Both her words and her actions have done the same for me. Subjective Favorite #1 goes to her.

I fell in love with God Behaving Badly the moment I read the subtitle: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? What a seriously fantastic question! It represents countless conversations with my own father, a man of deep faith who has struggled, like so many of us, to understand how a loving God could seemingly be (and these are my words now) so dang mean. More often than not, those conversations found me bumbling along until I'd finally shrug my shoulders and concede, "Honestly Dad, I don't really get it either."

And so when I cracked open this book and found the conversational style with which David Lamb answers some of our hardest questions, I was overflowing with thanks. (Later, when I realized Lamb is an Old Testament professor who actually has the gift of teaching, I was smitten. My parents, both retired school teachers, remain the best teachers I've ever known.) When Christmas rolled around, I eagerly wrapped up this book and gave it to my dad, a reflection of the bond we've shared as we've earnestly pursued our Creator. God Behaving Badly wins Subjective Favorite #2.

Choosing only two favorites doesn't seem like nearly enough, especially when I scan the plethora of passionate, insightful, transformational books here at IVP. But favorites, unlike opinions, do have a limit.

What's yours?

Creative Maladjustment: Practicing the Faith of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we thought we'd post an excerpt from Adam Taylor's Mobilizing Hope, a book that, inspired by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, aspires to unleash a generation of "transformed nonconformists." King coined that phrase in a sermon that cut right to the heart of it: "The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority." Adam picks up on that theme and chases it throughout his book; it seems appropriate, just days after our New Year's resolution to do things differently this year, to remember it on this and every Martin Luther King Day, and to follow Adam on the chase.

***

I used to bemoan the fact that I wasn't alive during the 1950s or '60s, when injustice seemed so much more overt and movements seemed so much more robust. At that time there was no way to ignore the suffocating discrimination of Jim Crow segregation in the South. The task of realizing justice in our contemporary context often seems more difficult because injustice and inequality have become mutated genes that seem more invisible. The Goliaths of economic injustice and inequality may be more covert and institutionalized but are still pernicious. Goliaths are still embedded in systems and structures that subjugate and oppress. . . .

Trying to tackle injustice based on our own limited abilities means playing small. Instead we must tap into the renewing power of faith to overcome the barriers that get in the way of transformed nonconformism.

The first and most common barrier is inertia. Particularly in this Internet age, we are barraged and inundated with constant information and marketing campaigns enticing us to do or buy something. This information makes it more difficult to grab people's attention and solicit their commitment. After a while, we either start shutting out this information overload or become increasingly jaded about solicitations for our time and attention. Inertia becomes our fallback and the keeper of the status quo.

. . . The second barrier is fear, which includes the fear of real or perceived risks associated with getting in the way of injustice. We may fear fallout from colleagues, family or even friends, particularly if the issues we are getting involved in are controversial. Living a countercultural life of activism can involve persecution, particularly in countries that don't enjoy the same degree of protections for free speech and assembly as the United States.

. . . A third barrier is apathy. We can easily become desensitized to the pain and suffering in the world. Apathy is often fed by cynicism, the belief that nothing will really change regardless of our actions.

. . . As people of faith, we are often uneasy about power and blind to the power we possess. While it is important to remember Lord Acton's dictum that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," we are often overly timid and passive about using our God-given power because power takes on an overly negative connotation. But power can be used for life-affirming or life-denying purposes. Dr. King said it best: "power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is shallow and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice."

. . . The last barrier is a feeling of isolation, which makes people feel alone and alienated from people who share similar interests and values. In any campus, workplace, church, and so on, are countless people who are waiting for the right call to action to be drawn out of their isolation. Without an invitation we often fail to realize the degree to which other people share our values and desire to build a better community and world.

. . . Activism can be intimidating, particularly when you think about the complexity and seeming intractability of many of the injustices in the world. Where does one start? What are the best entry points? . . . Creative maladjustment involves a broad range of daily-life commitments. At its core, it requires making a daily commitment to what Gandhi described as "being the change you want to see in the world." Our actions must become a mirror image of our core values and convictions. . . . We are called to be good stewards not simply of our money but also of our time and our talents. Creative maladjustment . . . a more holistic and radical stewardship of our time and resources . . . is at the very heart of discipleship.

Honest Faith & Survivor's Guilt: On the Second Anniversary of the Haiti Earthquake

Two years ago today IVP was still celebrating the successful December launch of Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle, Kent Annan's mission memoir of his time living and working in Haiti. We had introduced Kent to the world at the Urbana Student Missions Conference and launched a contest for a small group to win a trip with Kent to see the work of his organization, Haiti Partners, up close and personal. And then the earth shook.

Early estimates put Haiti's death toll at 230,001 (Kent adds the one as a reminder that these were people, not estimates), and while those estimates have since been revised lower, more than a half-million people are still living without homes amid the rubble two years later.

Kent wrote his second book, After Shock, to wrestle with the goodness of God in the shadow of this already-struggling country, now defined in the global imagination by death and dislocation. To contribute to Haiti Partners' work in rebuilding the country and specifically the education of its children, click here. To grapple with Kent's insightful witness, read on.

***

If you're over thirty years old and have relative health, regular food and secure shelter, how can you not feel some survivor's guilt in this world? (And if you don't, that's a problem too.)

Then there's posttraumatic stress disorder. . . . Part of the definition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (the standard guide on these things) is that a person faces a physical trauma (themselves or as witnesses) and that their response involves "intense fear, helplessness, or horror." . . . Not to minimize the extreme nature of what people in Haiti (or soldiers coming back from combat, for another example), are facing, but I'm struck by how, in a less acute way, this definition applies to almost everyone alive. Granted, some people can experience traumas and, through the difficulty, flourish. But others are crushed. Suffering becomes the sole arbiter of truth. And many of us, I think, are tempted to respond by walling off our hearts or ideals. 

. . . Being shell-shocked by the traumas of life is a right response. Guilt is often a right response to being alive too, when we fail to love as generously as we should. But guilt and trauma shouldn't close us down. Being open to life is also the right response to life. It's what survivors should do as long as we can.

***

The church is a pile of rubble. Nothing left. The school beside it is damaged but standing. Nobody had been in the church when it collapsed, but one teacher died in the church school when the roof partially collapsed in his classroom. . . .

Andre pulls out the Communion wafers. The only part of the building or furniture in the church that wasn't smashed to pieces, which I hadn't noticed when I'd been here before, was where they kept the Communion wafers. . . . We line up to go forward and receive. In front of me is a grandmother. She's lost everything and sees her family and community devastated. She's frail. She moves forward without hesitation in the line. A young man behind me. What dreams can he dream now? He keeps moving forward for the bread.

"This is my body broken for you."

I arrive and the jagged Communion wafer--Christ's presence, yes, Christ's presence that did not stop the church from falling, that did not protect the teacher in the school or the dad on the porch, but Christ's presence here in the pile of rubble and here in this group of people in a sun-struck yard--is placed on my tongue.

For the rest of the service I sit on some rocks, still without shade, next to Jean, whose legs are atrophied and folded under him. He can't walk. He's led a tough life with his disability. Before the earthquake, he always sat on the aisle in one of the front rows. When the first chord of the Communion song was struck, the song signaling we could come up front to receive the bread, the song whose chorus is "Vinn jwenn Jezi, Vinn jwenn Jezi," Come find Jesus, Come find Jesus, Jean would swing out and, using his hands and arms to propel himself, be first in line. He was always the first to come find Jesus.

And here in the rubble, come find Jesus. . . .

Here, week after week, people come to find Jesus. The rubble may make him harder to find, but maybe, like the wafers in the center of this leveled church, he never left and never will.

For the Feast of Epiphany

I always liked the Magi. Really, who wouldn't? "We three kings of Orient are / chewing on a rubber cigar ..." Sing it if you know it ... 

That silly satire is my earliest impression of the Magi. But it hardly merits the feast day offered every year on the Feast of Epiphany, celebrated on January 6. On this day we're encouraged to look at the freshly incarnated Jesus through the eyes of "wise men." 

In his book The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us, the second volume in our Resonate series, Matt Woodley gives us a true sense of the meaning of epiphany, the discovery of the Christ that vindicates every journey, no matter how difficult or seemingly hopeless. An excerpt from Matt's book follows.

***

The Magi represent a universal human drive to embark on a quest. Their stargazing wasn't recreational or philosophical; it signified the red hot coal stuck in their throat, their longing for joy, their participation in the search. After intently watching the stars and planets, after reading the signs and searching the clues, they embarked on a quest. "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea," Matthew tells us, "during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?'" (Mt 2:1-2). We don't know much about them, but we can assume this was a costly search driven by deep desire. In one sense the Magi represent all of us--seeking, questioning, longing human beings who awaken to life as a quest.

But they also represent something about God, for the Magi are not only seekers; they are questers who have been outquested by God. According to Matthew, God initiated their long and costly journey through part of his good creation--a star (Mt 2:2, 9). They may have spotted the star, but God used the star to guide them out of their everydayness toward joy. God also guided them through his spoken word, refining their initial quest through an ancient Old Testament prophecy recorded in Matthew 2:6:

But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
   are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
   who will shepherd my people Israel.

At each stage of their quest God sought the seekers, recapitulating the journey described by Augustine's prayer: "I should not have sought you unless you had first found me." . . . We start out the quest intending to discover something, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something only to find that someone was looking for us. We assume we're ascending to God and realize that God is descending to us. This is divine mercy. . .

It's hard to miss the application for us: the questing God of Jesus, the God of grace, still seeks seekers, welcoming home sinners and outsiders. He still guides us step by step through nature, circumstances, relationships, failures, triumphs and especially the Holy Bible until we are led to worship King Jesus. The church, living at the foot of Jesus' crib and cross, should do no less.

Best of 2011--An Entirely Subjective Treatment

I'm generally reluctant to call any one book I've edited the best. To do so feels more like a betrayal than a compliment. Designating one book as "best" is, after all, implicitly designating all the books I worked on (minus one) as "not the best." That makes this month's theme here at Strangely Dim, "Favorite Books of 2011," a little problematic for me.

Besides, one of the things that distinguishes a publisher from, say, an instant oatmeal maker is that each of our products is entirely distinct from every other. When we compare books to one another, we're comparing apples and oranges, not apple-cinnamon-flavored and "Shrektastic(TM)-Flavored" packets of otherwise identical dust and flakes. We wouldn't have contracted a book--or gone through all the trouble of editing, designing, marketing, manufacturing and selling it--if we didn't hold it and its author in high regard from the outset. So the short answer to the question "What was the best IVP book of 2011?" is perhaps frustratingly evasive: "Every book is the best in its category, which happens to be a category of one." See what I did there?

Nevertheless, the assignment persists. But I'm an oily little devil; I've refashioned the assignment as "my favorite editorial experience(s) of 2011." Sneaky, no? Just try and stop me . . .

Anyway, for me, 2011 began and very nearly ended with the release of two books that had special personal significance: After Shock, by Kent Annan, which came out in January, and The Cost of Community, by Jamie Arpin-Ricci, a November release. Both books remind me of my 2010 visit to Haiti, and specifically of my celebration of the Feast of Pentecost on the floor of a leveled church.

The connection between After Shock and Haiti is painfully obvious. Its author, Kent Annan, is the codirector of Haiti Partners, a ministry dedicated to education in a country where public education is woefully underdeveloped. Less than 30 percent of Haitian children actually get schooling past the sixth grade. A seemingly insurmountable task of educating particularly rural Haitian children falls to NGOs and other nonprofits, like Haiti Partners. Their work wasn't helped by a devastating earthquake, one of the most destructive in history and the subject of After Shock.

My trip to Haiti was planned before the 2010 earthquake. We were celebrating the release of Kent's first book, Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle, by sponsoring a small group of contest winners to spend five days with Haiti Partners staff. I had invited myself along and raised funds from some very gracious friends and loved ones to get me there. The earthquake just punctuated the poignancy of our experience, as we watched communities try to recover even as Haiti Partners helped get their schools back up and running.

Kent was writing After Shock even as he was taking us from town to town, introducing us to teachers and other friends, and helping us process what we were seeing. At one point he and I hopped out of our truck so I could take the book's cover photo; it was intended to be a placeholder till we found a more appropriate picture to take its place, but we never did. Eventually the book was even a finalist for an award for book cover design.

We celebrated Pentecost down the road from the church that graces the book's cover. The only things left standing where we worshiped were some support beams and the tabernacle where the elements of communion were stored. We shared communion that Pentecost Sunday, in commemoration of the birth of the church, as described in Acts 2. On that first Christian Pentecost tongues of fire descended on gathered believers till they started preaching the gospel in a great variety of languages, till they started sharing all they owned with each other and so tying their fates together.

I was in the midst of my own ecclesial earthquake in the spring of 2010, having left a church after a somewhat bitter experience and still trying to figure out what a church ought to mean to me, and what I ought to mean to a church. Sharing communion with people who had lost everything and who were yet able to eat the Lord's Supper together with glad and sincere hearts renewed my commitment to practicing my faith in communion with others and restored my hope that even a fundamentally broken church can be an instrument of God's grace and peace.

One of the people who traveled to Haiti with me was Jamie Arpin-Ricci. He had submitted a book proposal sometime between when we selected him as a winner of the contest and when we boarded the plane; I brought his book contract with me for him to sign, because I get a little giddy over that sort of thing. Jamie got terribly sick while we were in Haiti, so we weren't together often, but our every interaction reinforced for me that he was going to write a really meaningful book.

Jamie's community in urban Winnipeg (the coldest city on earth, in contrast to the unearthly heat of late-spring Port-au-Prince) is rooted in the teachings of Francis of Assisi, whose mission was rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' longest recorded sermon and a good distillation of his ethic. Jamie's insight into the demands of the gospel not just on the individual but on gatherings of people was helpful to me as I processed my Pentecost experience. Our conversations in the many months between contracting and publishing his Cost of Community helped me continue to wrestle with my relationship to the church. Francis, the Sermon on the Mount and Jamie's community in Winnipeg, all their radical circumstances notwithstanding, are good guides for following Jesus.

While we were between appointments in Darbonne, Haiti, a fellow walked by with a donkey in tow. A man leading a donkey, for the uninitiated, is the logo for Likewise Books, the line that houses both Jamie and Kent's books. So they and I grabbed the rope and pulled it tight, and someone snapped a picture. I'm told that I almost got kicked in the face by the donkey for the privilege, but it was totally worth it.

It was an honor to walk alongside Kent and Jamie as they brought their books to life, to sit at their feet as they wrestled with the problem of pain and the cost of discipleship. Buy and read both their books, but read them slowly; they're meant to be chewed, not devoured.

I would be remiss in recounting my favorite editorial experience(s) of 2011 if I didn't mention an author dinner at the first-ever Wild Goose Festival. Seeing so many authors eating together with glad and sincere hearts was a kind of validation of the several years now that we've spent teasing out the role of a publisher in Jesus' command to "go and do likewise." In many ways any effort to publish in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, Jesus' parable that inspires the Likewise line, is deconstructive. To parse such a simple story, such a simple command, into a regularly replenishing supply of new books is perhaps to spin it into hopeless abstraction. We're protected from such accidental subversion, however, by the authors we work with, who are doggedly concrete in their discipleship. To go and do likewise is, for them, first and foremost not just to mull over an idea but to go out and put it to the test--to take Jesus seriously enough to act on what he said.

Two of the authors on hand for that dinner had books come out this year that cut straight to that chase: Mark Scandrette, whose Practicing the Way of Jesus both demands and demonstrates that our discipleship cannot be not merely private and intellectual but must be communal and embodied; and Margot Starbuck, whose enthusiastic Small Things with Great Love makes loving your neighbor as you love yourself seem less like a burden and more like a great adventure. Those two books were only about 2 percent of the total output of IVP's publishing program in 2011. But as a favorite editorial experience, being with them--and the twenty-some other folks around the table who were likewise committed to making the gospel undeniable and unavoidable--is right up there with remembering the birth of the church in a building without walls in Haiti.

That's my best of 2011, as effusive as it is evasive. Editors can't do much, but we can do at least that.

The Fruit of Silence

Imagine not being able to talk. For some of us, that's more wish-dream than imagination; talking too often seems to get us into trouble or to open doors for people to mock us. For others of us, not being able to talk would be torturous. I, for one, would much rather be the only one left able to talk than to be the only one not talking. I quote Bono: I love the sound of my own voice. To borrow from another proverb, in the world of the mute, the chatterbox is king.

In the time before Christ, not many people were talking. The prophets had gone silent for centuries; Israel itself was in mute submission to Rome. And then one day Zechariah, member of the priestly class, emerged from the temple unable to speak, because he had not believed what he heard when the angel of the Lord spoke on God's behalf.

Zechariah hadn't been struck mute because of unrighteousness any more than his wife, Elizabeth, had been unable to bear children because of unrighteousness. Luke's Gospel describes both of them as "righteous in the sight of God"--words not thrown around carelessly in the Scriptures. No, the same God who allowed an elderly Elizabeth to become pregnant just as Sarah, the matriarch of Elizabeth's people, had become pregnant late in life, struck Zechariah mute because of his unbelief, because of his lack of faith, because of his fear.

We don't know how long Zechariah could not speak. We assume it was nine months because we fill in the gaps of the stories we read. But Luke's Gospel doesn't tell us; it only tells us that Zechariah completed his time of service, that he returned home, that "at their appointed time" (nine months + x) God's words through the angel came to pass and Elizabeth gave birth to a child. And eight days after that, Zechariah's lack of faith was overwhelmed by the evidence of God's wonderworking power in the child borne to his wife at such a late age. His fear was overwhelmed by a direct experience of God's goodness to his people. And Zechariah obeyed the word of the Lord and named his child John. And "immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God." This is what he went on to say:

"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
    because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
    in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies
    and from the hand of all who hate us--
to show mercy to our ancestors
  and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
    and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace."

That soliloquy made it into the Scriptures, which means it's counted among the words of the Lord. The fruit of Zechariah's silence is God's word to us in Advent.

We don't often think of something cosmic, something fundamentally redemptive, emerging from silence. Israel itself didn't expect its deliverance to be birthed out of its silent acceptance of the tyranny of Rome. But maybe, if we defy the timidity that tempts us along the way, our silence can bear something like the Word of the Lord: words of mercy we didn't know we had in us, offers of reconciliation we never expected to make, gifts of forgiveness and peace to those we'd long shunned. Silence has the capacity to bear grace, as evidenced in Zechariah's life, as evidenced on a silent night in a little town.

As we wait for Christmas this year, let us accept with faith the silence of God as something as living and active as the Word of God. Let us keep silent not out of fear or indifference but in solidarity with the patience of God. Let us speak boldly when it is appointed for us to speak and commit ourselves to listening for God until a word is given. Let us bear gladly the burden of responsibility laid on us by the Word of God even as we wait for the Word of God to relieve us of all our burdens. Let us prepare ourselves to enjoy the fruit of silence even as we do our part to prepare the way of the Lord in the world--a world that in many ways is oppressed by sound and fury, a world that in reality aches for silence as much as it longs for God to speak. Let us wait, in short, for Christmas.

Strangely Dim: Hacked!

If you weren't there, let me be the forty-fifth person to tell you that at the IVP Christmas party (at the well air-conditioned Lindner Center on the campus of Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois), in the middle of an improv performance, our publisher, Bob Fryling, was asked what he looked forward to every morning when he came into the office. He jokingly (Ha! Ha!) said he liked to ghost-write Strangely Dim for me, lowly editor Dave Zimmerman (can you imagine the temerity?). People laughed, but I was plotting revenge. So I would like to turn the tables and let you know what I would look forward to if I had Bob's job. Take this, Fryling!

First of all, I would require that all IVP employees bring action figures to work so that we could compare our favorites between coffee breaks.

Next, I would put Dave Zimmerman's (that's me, in case you've lost track of who is really in charge here!) desk in the middle of the IVP bookstore. This would save him valuable time in having to walk up front to meet authors and apologize to them for having to wear visitor name tags. Authors would also be impressed with how many books he has in his office library. At Christmastime we could relocate the Christmas tree to his current office and take turns squeezing in to sing Christmas carols in groups of six--which would be a sextet and about as racy as we get around here.

I would further require everyone to carry their pencils over their left ears as an expression of action orientation (always ready to strike an ill-construed gerund) and a long overdue recognition of Dave Zimmerman's (still me) pervasive influence in the office.

Finally, I would tell the world how much Dave means to our office culture. His hard work, unique sense of humor and love for organizational structure (you and I know better, but Bob doesn't, and in case he reads this blog I want him to think that I do, in fact, love organizational structure) are legendary at IVP--sort of like the blue chair room. Maybe we could even put the black chair in the blue chair room into Dave's office to keep all of our icons together! If you like this blog just hum the eighth verse of "Awake, My Soul" (hint: it has a doxological feel to it; if you don't get the hint, you have missed too many office meetings!) and tell Dave you really liked his latest blog.

The Boss (but you really know who this is)

P.S. Don't forget to wear your pencil over your left ear next Friday!

***
This post was written not by Lisa, Suanne, Rebecca or Dave, but by the ultimate doppelganger, Bob Fryling--publisher of InterVarsity Press and apparent weekend hacker. We apologize for the extra-meta nature of this post and for the sextet joke.

Welcome to IVP! (May I Take Your Order?)

It happens so infrequently that I have occasion to toot my own horn, that I really must take the opportunity when it arises. Such was the case with some recent kind words from John Pattison, editor at Burnside Writers Collective and coauthor (with Chris Smith of the Englewood Review of Books) of the blog and forthcoming book Slow Church. I had inadvertently and unceremoniously outed John and Chris as having signed a contract to publish with IVP/Likewise Books, and John very graciously embraced the outing and announced the partnership on Facebook:

Well, it's official and officially public. Chris Smith and I signed a contract with InterVarsity Press/Likewise Books to write a "Slow Church" book. This is what I'll be working on the next seven months. (I'm excited that Besides the Bible is at IVP now too!)

The Beauty of Being Present

In case you haven't noticed, we have a little hospitality theme cooking here at Strangely Dim. To be honest, I've struggled for more than a month to come up with something (okay, anything) that I thought might enhance the theme. Last week, I scribbled two lousy first drafts, drummed my fingers on my keyboard to "Wheels on the Bus," chewed on my bottom lip for a while as joggers and dog-walkers passed by my office window, and waited--and hoped--for a moment of inspiration. Almost absently, I glanced at the copy of The Gospel of Matthew by Matt Woodley sitting on my desk, and I started thumbing through. When I hit the subtitle of Matthew 8 ("The Beauty of Being Present"), I chastised myself.

In today's over-scheduled, over-stimulated, over-industrious, over-distracted culture, being present with people is a monumental accomplishment. I mean, most of us are with people all of the time, but how often would we describe the presence we offer as beautiful? The kind in which our minds don't wander, our eyes don't flutter, our hearts don't waver and in which we never have to say, "Now, tell me your name again?" The sad truth is, we have to work pretty dang hard at being present with people.

In "The Beauty of Being Present" Matt recalls a time when he spent ten hours a week for thirty weeks visiting chronically sick hospital patients. His most memorable patient, an amputee named "Bill," had spent 160 days in the hospital without diagnosis or cure, "listening to doctors and residents endlessly discuss his case" right in front of him. Bill ultimately landed under the care of a psychiatrist who, in a nutshell, told him he was grumpy. 

"After completing my three hundred hours of visitation," Matt writes,  

I concluded that our modern hospitals--efficient, bright and sterilized--qualify as one of the loneliest places on earth. Health care professionals could discuss diagnoses, prognoses, medications and treatment options, but they almost never engaged a patient's sense of agony or abandonment. For all of our disease-curing efficiency, we usually don't know how to provide healing presence.

Healing presence. Maybe it's not often something we consider ourselves conduits of, but as followers of Jesus, we probably should.

Last Saturday night, I had just nestled my head into the pillow when I heard my phone buzz on the kitchen counter. A friend of mine had been admitted to the hospital. She was physically okay but shaken and lying in a hospital bed nonetheless, so I was dressed and walking out the door before I hung up the phone. Halfway to the hospital, I wondered if it was silly that I go. Had she known that I was on my way, I'm certain she would have pointed a stern finger in the opposite direction. But when I stepped around the curtain and stood at the end of her bed, watching her tears flow openly at the sight of my face, I knew I had my answer. There is no substitute for the beauty of being present.

Midnight phone calls are one thing, but often the more difficult task is to provide healing presence in the midst of our everyday lives, stopping our "doing" long enough to be present in the brokenness of the world. And not only in the parts that are so obviously broken, but those that look like the state-of-the-art hospital Matt describes--efficient, bright and sterilized. And in desperate need of an undivided touch.

"As those who are connected to Jesus, trusting him in our spiritual poverty, we can offer others the personal presence of Jesus," Matt says. "By touching others we offer them the touch of Jesus. In our impersonal culture marked by deep loneliness, this ministry of presence--offering the presence of Christ, God with us, to others in their isolation and pain--is an amazing privilege and calling."

Hospitality is often associated with doing--entertaining, opening, welcoming--but I wonder about the healing touch we could provide others if we'd stop doing for them and simply start being with them.

When I think of the best dinner parties I've hosted, for example, I think of the ones that were rich in conversation: where politics, religion and money were all fair game, where surface-level was a bore, where the TV remained off, where dishes sat dirty in the sink, where wine turned into coffee and back into wine again. Where people engaged one another free from distraction and provided a healing presence by simply being themselves. I think the beauty of being present might just be the most beautiful kind of hospitality there is.

I had lunch with Matt last spring. I often ask authors about their experience writing their book; answers vary from "challenging" to "exhilarating" to "never again." But like his memorable time with "Bill" in the hospital, Matt's answer to my question stood out above the rest. After four years of delving deep into the book of Matthew--after being in the healing presence of Jesus--Matt couldn't help but walk away changed. It's fitting then, that the full title of the book is The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us. After experiencing the beauty of being present with Jesus--God with us--none of us, not one, can walk away unchanged.

In less than a week, we'll settle into Advent, perhaps the most poignant season of "God with Us." We're looking forward to sharing our thoughts with you and hope to hear from you as well. Until then, we hope your turkey is juicy, your football teams victorious, your hospitality undistracted and your heart overflowing. But most of all, we pray the beauty of God's presence in and through your life.

Happy Thanksgiving . . . from our house to yours!