What’s the best way to hurt the local agriculture market in a country full of starving people? Indiscriminantly give away tons of free food. Relief organizations have learned the hard way that if they want to create a self-sustaining market of locally grown produce, they can’t always bring in truckloads of rice from other countries.
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Stark Myth Busting
Rodney Stark loves being a contrarian. And The Triumph of Christianity is no exception to that rule. While the book summarizes much of what he’s written elsewhere, it’s still a fun, breezy exercise in myth busting. Here are a few spots where Stark’s juices get flowing:
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Faithful Are the Wounds
Charlie Hummel was president of Barrington College for ten years, director of faculty ministry for InterVarsity for another fourteen years and the author of several IVP books. While his most famous IVP title is Tyranny of the Urgent which has sold over a million copies, he also wrote several larger tomes including Fire in the Fireplace and The Galileo Connection.
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Six Influential Books
What books have shaped me the most? Taking IVP books out of consideration (to keep bias to a minimum), the books below have formed my thought life, my spiritual life, my sense of aesthetics, and how I view and interact with the world.
After making the list I noticed that I read most of them before I was twenty-five. And I suppose that’s to be expected. In midlife and beyond, most people have already been shaped, and it’s harder for any one book to have a significant impact. The last book in my list (presented here roughly in the order in which I read them) is the exception.
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Clinching the Content
“Audiences don’t always hear so good, but they see real well.”
In college I was singing with the University of Denver Chorale when I first heard this. We were backing up the Denver Symphony in a performance of Verdi’s Requiem. During one rehearsal Brian Priestman, the music director, was talking to those of us in the chorus about when we should sit and stand at different points in the piece. We even rehearsed our movements. Priestman said they were an important part of the total experience; how we moved could add drama or emphasis to the end or beginning of a section. “You see,” he explained with a wry smile, “audiences don’t always hear so good, but they see real well.”
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Finding an Opening
In the musical 1776 there’s a classic scene in which Thomas Jefferson starts his solitary work of drafting the Declaration of Independence. Quill in hand, he scribbles down a line, looks at it, then crumples up the paper and throws it on the floor. He sits a moment, thinking, and then scribbles another line. Again, dissatisfied, he throws that on the floor. Then just as he’s about to make a third attempt, but before he even writes one word, he crumples up the paper and throws it down.
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Opening Salvo
Beginnings matter. A writer in search of a way to pull readers in need look no further than a strong opening line. Not all opening lines are created equal. They come in great variety. But they typically arrest attention and set the tone for all that is to come. Here are some of my favorites:
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One Way to Keep Readers Reading
With short attention spans growing shorter due to so many distractions from iPhones, social media and our own to-do lists, how do writers keep readers with them all the way to the end?
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News Flash! Zealot Isn’t News
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan has exploded on the scene as the #1 bestseller on several lists and become a media feast. This book suggests that Jesus was just a failed revolutionary and that the apostle Paul should be credited with making him into “Christ.” This is not news on several levels.
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When Smart People Say Stupid Things
I’m always amazed when very intelligent people say very stupid things. But it’s happened again. This time it’s in The Grand Design, the latest book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge for thirty years, a chair held by no less than Sir Isaac Newton, himself no slouch. Mlodinow has his own pedigree to be proud of. So what did they say?
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