Great Meeting and a New Book

We had a great meeting last night and a great discussion during this. Thanks to the Pastors that allow for discussions that range far and wide and sometimes don't have pretty packages or neat endings. Please use the links that I have posted to the right to find more on Frederick Douglass and even discover some of his other writings. He is a very inspirational person in not only his success but in his demeanor and grace in action.

The next book for the book club was decided after much discussion and the lot fell to What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity by Bill Gilham. We hope to see you there next time to discuss this book. It might be a real eye opener to all who read it and the discussion of its concepts are bound to be very uplilfiting. We will meet next on January 18th at 7PM for a the discussion of the book. See you there.

Frederick Douglass

Sorry I waited so long to post. I have been occupied with working on retreats and have neglected my job here. We get to go over The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass tomorrow night when we meet. I must admit that this is a difficult book to read through, but not because of its length. Sometimes it is hard to imagine how wicked we as humans can act towards others but history shows us that we are capable of this and have shown a propensity to do so.
I know this was not meant to be a Bible Study but this certainly is a good representation of how sin can enslave us all even those who think they are the ones in control. I hope everyone got to read the appendix that Mr. Douglass added to the book later.

God Bless,
See you tomorrow.
Bill

Great Meeting and a New Book

We had some great discussions and as you might think a discussion of Abraham Lincoln would do, they branched into many areas. I hope the additional links provided were of use and interesting to you. I will add to them but not remove the existing so feel free to continue using them.

Our next book was picked tonight and it is in the same vein as this but instead of a biography it is an autobiography. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave" This can be found online
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Douglass/Autobiography/

New Relevant Links

I have just added some relevant links to the side of the blog. These are all related to Abraham Lincoln. Feel free to share any links you come across that are related to any of the books we have read or even book clubs in general.

Next Book

We had a great meeting on the 20th to discuss The Tipping Point. I hope those who couldn't attend and even those who did would comment here on the book and their take on the points.

In addition we picked another book, Abraham Lincoln by noted historian James McPherson. The book can be found on Amazon here but I am sure that you can find it in the bookstore and maybe soon in the libraray.

5 days until the next meeting

I think this one will have a lot of good discussion. Can't wait to see everyone there. God Bless.

Book Lists

In the interest of promoting reading and expanding our horizons we decided that we would list some of the books that we liked and some that we would be interested in reading. In order to get you thinking I thought I would give you a list of genres that we came up with so we can see how many different genres we could address in our lists.

The genres we came up with were:
History
Historical Fiction
Biographical
Sci Fi/ Fantasy
Western
Romance
Thriller/ Mystery
Inspirational/ Self-Help
Comedy
Political
and just to include it Comic Books (Graphic Novels to make it sound a little better)

Please add your list as a comment to this post.

Third Book

After a great meeting hosted by Jon and Beth Crow we decided that our next book will be from a different genre. This will be an informational book on trends. Malcolm Gladwell's book titled The Tipping Point. The next meeting is scheduled for July 20th.

Second Book

Now we know what the second book is:
Blessed Child by Ted Dekker and Bill Bright.
The next meeting will be at the church and once the theme is set the host will let us know what we can bring to the club.

First Meeting- What a Blast

That was fantastic. 13 people all talking about the Shack and the occasional tangent. We had different opinions wanted different answers and we were still gracious. I want to especially thank Pastor Mike who not only encouraged but brought it up and got it going. Thanks also to Pastor Danny who is always supportive of fellowship in love even if it is out of the box. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as well and I am excited about meeting again.

9 days til the first book club with a book

I hope everyone got a chance to get the book and read it. I have spoken to some at church who have read it and I look forward to going over it at the club. I do want you to think about whether you would like to host the next club (still would be at Covenant) and pick a book on the 16th that we can read over the course of the next two months. Then host the event and lead the discussion.

First Book - The Shack

The first book will be "The Shack". I have this post here to allow for comments if so desired. Please be charitable and respectful in all comments.

Some Decisions

For going ahead these were the decisions that we made tonight.

We will meet at the church every 2 months on the third monday of the month.
I will be the host for the first book discussion and we will pick someone to host the next discussion at the march meeting. The host will pick the book and be responsible for the theme, discussion and refreshments (doesn't mean that they can't have help with this).

For the March meeting we will be reading "The Shack" by William P. Young which can be found on Amazon at The Shack
This is a challenging book and will require us to remember the tenets from the first post. I think everyone who reads along with us will enjoy the book and get a lot out of it. I will be posting a holder for The Shack so that comments can be added if desired.

Book Club Start

This is the first post for the new Covenenant Book Club. As of now we have not made the decisions that will determine the shape of the book club, we haven't even met the first time. The definition of the book club will be decided by the answer to a few questions:

1. How often will we meet?
2. How will we pick the books that we read?
3. Who will host the book club each meeting?
4. Where will we meet?

Once these are decided we can then lay down some guidelines that will be important as the club progresses. I think foremost is that we must remember that we are a Christian book club and we should pick the books based on that understanding. This does not mean that all the books must be written by Chuck Swindoll or Max Lucado, but we should not pick books that are racy or inflammatory or indecent (I know tough to define at times). Another guideline is that we need to exercise grace in our discussions at all times. Differing opinions are why you have book clubs in the first place, if you all think the same thing then the book club is unnecessary. And the last that I will list here is that we need to be open to sharing our own personal experiences with the rest of the club as it relates to our discussions of the books.

I am looking forward to the start and I know we will all have a good time doing this. God Bless You brothers and sisters.