Some of My Favorite Things from 2015

Some of My Favorite Things from 2015

Albums of the Year

Something More Than Free—Jason Isbell

Jason’s followup album to his powerful and confessional Southeastern is quite pleasant to the ears. Jason is known for his great songwriting, and this album continues in that tradition. Jason tells captivating stories, belts out infectious melodies, and and does it all in a way that is drenched with emotion. Many of the songs have a soft, country vibe to them. Laura and I went to see Jason in concert with our friends Mike McAlister and Amanda Anderson as well as John and Laura Gallaher at the Ryman in Nashville this year. This guy is an uber-talented musician who knows how to put on a great show. From his solo stuff, I wouldn't have guessed that I was going to a rock show. I was pleasantly surprised. If there’s one complaint I have for this album, it's that it's too soft for me. I think more percussion and dynamic energy could have been employed to give some songs more of a punch. Some of my favorite songs from the album: If It Takes a Lifetime, Something More Than Free, and To a Band that I Loved.

Mali Is…—Mali Music

This technically came out in 2014, but I only discovered it recently. I was exposed to Mali Music through my friend Michael Jefferson, who would play “Beautiful” several times at our Madison youth group. I remember liking the song, but I didn’t really investigate the artist. A few weeks ago, I thought of the song and decided to try to find its maker, and thus happened upon Mali Music. Jamaal (his family called him Mali and it stuck) is a Christian who grew up leading worship in Savannah, GA, and now resides in California. This album combines a variety of genres, blending elements of R&B, Gospel, Reggae, and Hip Hop. Jamaal is a ridiculously talented musician—you should watch some live footage of him performing. Some of his tunes aren’t as believable as others to me, but I dig the songs Beautiful, Walking Shoes, and I Believe. He is a refreshing voice and a serendipitous find in 2015. I hope he comes out with some new stuff soon.

Novel of the Year

Things Fall Apart—Chinua Achebe 

This story, originally published in the early 1950s, focuses on a fictional Nigerian tribesman named Okonkwo who strives to differentiate himself from his father, whom he views as a lazy failure. He wants to be great and leave his mark on his tribe, and so he works hard in harvesting his crops and managing his family of three wives and multiple children. Okonkwo is a forceful man and is rough with his kin, though he shows moments of tenderness. The novel dives head first into issues of colonialism, with white Christians moving in and working to establish hegemony over the tribe, and the tribe figuring out how to respond to these newcomers who were sometimes respectful, many times not. Achebe has a knack for showcasing the goodness and the ugliness of both the colonizers and the tribe. It is a moving story about Okonkwo’s struggle to stay true to his values and community (even if we might find some of those values quite disagreeable) and keep his honor as an free man. The ending is very poignant and full of symbolism. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Christian Books of the Year

God Is Friendship: A Theology of Spirituality, Community, and Society—Brian Edgar 

This book inspired me to preach a series of devotions on friendship at the Downtown Rescue Mission. It takes a look at what Scripture, ancient philosophers, and Christian leaders through the centuries have said about friendship. Edgar makes a case that Americans and Westerners are increasingly feeling isolated, and cites two studies to illustrate his point early in the book. One was done in America in the 1980s, and the results found that on average a person said they had about 3 people they could confide in. When the study was done again in the early 2000s, that number had decreased to 2 people. Friendship seems to be struggling in American culture with feelings of isolation on the rise, and yet friendship is an important theme in Scripture and history. There were many insights in the book. I share a few here:

1. The challenge to view Jesus as a friend in consonance with John 15 was convicting. Edgar says that often we are comfortable with viewing God as Father or King and Jesus as Lord, and these are right and good. God is high above us and has authority and power over us. He wonders if we have neglected the aspect of viewing Jesus as our friend, however, and that we are comfortable putting God far away from us because we don't want to invest in a genuine friendship with him and let him see who we genuinely are. The disciples relationship with Jesus moved from that of service to that of friendship with their Lord (John 15:12-17). If friendship is the higher calling in our relationship with Jesus, then what does it look like for us to be friends with Jesus? Friendship is based more on two separate people valuing each other enough to genuinely know the other person and be known by them, to embody a dynamic of give-and-take. Read the book to see more of Edgar's argument of how to interact with Jesus as our friend.
2. Edgar was convicting in saying that many of us want to serve the poor as Christians, and yet many of us don’t want to be friends with people who are poor. And what is more valuable and meaningful? The early church incorporated people who were poor into their friendship circle. In fact, friendship meets a different need and performs a different function in someone’s life than financial support alone. Do we have any friends who are poor, or are we content to give to them and not know them?
3. Learning that the Greek word katallage, which is used for reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, means not just the removal of enmity (which was my typical understanding of reconciliation), but the establishing of positive affection and friendship, was a deepening experience for me. “Properly understood, katallage refers to the process of 'making friends,' and the intent of the passage is to emphasize the way the death of Christ has actually transformed enemies into friends.”—p. 166. So if we are to be ambassadors of reconciliation in Christ, this means that we should be about making friendships. People are to become friends with Christ and friends with each other in Christ. This is a tall order, but it is the call of the gospel, a call that enemies can become friends because of Christ's defeat of the sins that separate us and his uniting of people into one family of God.

I came away from this book with a renewed sense of friendship being a core part of God’s gospel of reconciliation of all things. I also hope to be a better friend because of this book.

Overrated: Are We More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World than Actually Changing the World?—Eugene Cho

What a great book. I recently finished it. Cho comes from a place of deep spiritual rootedness and thoughtful societal engagement. He also writes in a way that millennials (or at least this millennial) really can connect with. He is funny—I mean the guy writes in Twitter hashtags and refers to himself as Indiana “Cho”nes. I found myself laughing out loud at several points in the book. Cho is honest about his successes and failures in planting Quest Church and starting the nonprofit One Day’s Wages. He also is very challenging, in a way that is biblically centered and tries to call the best out of you. His main point is that it can be trendy today in some circles to identify with justice work, but often times we do it with the mindset of changing others and drawing attention to ourselves instead of letting God change us (I've definitely been guilty of this!). If we’re serious about justice work, we need to be humble, receptive to our sisters and brothers we want to be in ministry with, and thoughtfully engaged. He advocates for a life of simplicity, generosity, spiritual depth, and educated action. I was very encouraged by this brother in Christ and am grateful for what God is doing in his ministry. Cho is coming to the Prayer and Mission Conference at Asbury UMC in Madison on February 20th and I’m excited to see him in the new year.

Leadership Book of the Year

Creativity, Inc.—Ed Catmull  

I saw Catmull at a simulcast of Willow Creek’s Global Leadership Summit this year. He came across as a very intelligent and quirky leader. This doesn’t read like some dry leadership books where a guru preaches concepts at you. Instead, the book is honest, humble, and very well written. Catmull tells story after story of the various successes and failures at Pixar and Disney, using them to illustrate leadership principles he’s learned along the way. Here are a couple things I learned from Catmull:

Ugly Babies and The Hungry Beast—Catmull uses the illustration of an ugly baby and a hungry beast to describe a common tension that is present in organizations, especially creative ones. He says that new ideas are like ugly babies. When we first hear of them, they are often gangly, incomplete, and not very pretty in their embryonic state. The hungry beast is the push of organizations to expand, produce, and become more and more efficient. The hungry beast will eat ugly babies if they are not protected and given time to mature, even though those babies could become something beautiful if given time to grow. So Catmull advocates for protecting ugly babies for a while to see if these new ideas can develop. Here's a good quote: “I am saying that when someone hatches an original idea, it may be ungainly and poorly defined, but it is also the opposite of established and entrenched—and that is precisely what is most exciting about it (p. 132). I think his concept here is great. If we see that someone has an idea that may be unpolished but has a lot of potential, then maybe we shouldn't kill it immediately. Give it time to grow, develop, and become beautiful. Ruthless efficiency can kill creativity. The Hungry Beast isn't all bad, however. Some ugly babies never develop into something beautiful, and people can dally for extended periods of time on developing them and never get anywhere. If you've given an idea time to mature and it is stalled out, stop protecting it and realize that it's not going to arrive. Let the beast consume it and move on.

Patterns and Randomness—Catmull says there are often two ways that people work with change. Some people gravitate toward patterns, looking for causes and effects in why a change happens so they can create an explanation for it that can guide them in the future. The strength of this approach is increased understanding and wisdom we can apply when facing similar obstacles in the future. The danger is that we can completely misunderstand why a certain change happened, so our paradigm for explaining it can be completely off base and unhelpful. Some successes are almost random. The other approach describes those who embrace the randomness of change, that we cannot fully know why things turned out a certain way; I like to think of them as the more mystical sorts of people. There is no clear or apprehensible explanation for why something happened the way it did, we simply embrace it and acknowledge that forces beyond our control played a part in the outcome. This keeps us humble, recognizing that sometimes our successes or failures happen quite in spite of our best thinking and efforts. On the other hand, being too liberal with this mindset denies us valuable lessons we could learn from seeing genuine patterns that occur in life. Catmull then articulates the challenge that all of us will face: “This is the puzzle of trying to understand [change]: Real patterns are mixed in with random events, so it is extraordinarily difficult for us to differentiate between chance and skill” (p. 156). I loved this. It helps me understand people better, because I know people who lean more heavily in the “pattern” direction and  some who follow the “randomness” direction. We need to embrace both methods in our lives—the learning and wisdom that comes from analyzing patterns, and the humility and openness that comes from embracing randomness (or should I say, providence?). 

I hope to take these lessons and more from Catmull. It was a very good book that I hope to refer back to in the coming years. There are a lot of applications to what Catmull says, in ministry, business, art. I highly recommend this book.

Bringing It All Home

Overall, 2015 has been a great year. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I got married to Laura in July, which has been the biggest blessing of 2015. She has made my life more social and fun. She is very smart, strategic, is a great connector, and is quite a skilled people-gatherer. She is teaching me more about what the faithful love of Jesus looks like. I'm honored to have her as my wife and am excited for what the future has in store for us. Just in case you can't tell, I like her ;). I can't resist, so here's a picture of us on our honeymoon in Portland.

I hope you've had a delectable 2015 and pray that your 2016 is shaping up to be nothing short of amazing and is full of God's best for your life. What are some of your favorite things you're taking from 2015?