Willard, Dallas Books

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

Dallas Willard

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Total reviews: 138 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dallas Willard, an acclaimed theologian and professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, fulfills the longing of many Christians who want to live as true disciples of Christ rather than distant dabblers. Likewise, he scoffs at consumer Christians who are simply banking on admittance to heaven as their payoff for attending church. Or worse still, those who use Christianity to advance their political agendas rather than their spiritual ones. But this is not a scolding book. Rather, Willard devotes his efforts to discussing specific and inspiring ways to develop a discipleship to Jesus--not as an act of sacrifice or even one of spiritual luxury--instead, as everyday people committed to the teachings of Christ. "The really good news for Christians is that Jesus is now taking students in the master class of life," writes Willard. "So the message of and about him is specifically a gospel for our life now, not just for dying. It is about living now as his apprentices in kingdom living, not just as consumers of his merits." --Gail Hudson

The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

Dallas Willard

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent Challenge for Those Who Want a Deeper Spiritual Walk With God 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"The Spirit of the Disciplines" focuses on the various disciplines that God uses to change people's lives. The book contains 11 chapters and 2 appendix for a total of around 265 pages.

Each of the 11 chapters addresses a particular theme. Chapter 9, addressing the specific disciplines, is my personal favorite. According to Willard in Chapter 9, the disciplines are separated into 2 groups:

1. Abstinence - This group consists of actions that helps us from becoming too involved in the world so we may better focus on God instead of the things of this world. The disciplines included here are: solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice. Willard's comments on solitude and silence were particularly insightful (solitude can help us in resisting conformity to this world).
2. Engagement - This group consists of actions we can do to serve others in this world so as to not become so isolated that we render ourselves useless to be used by God for His glory. Disciplines included here are: study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission.

Other chapters (such as 11) address issues such as: can a Christian be financially and spiritually successful at the same time?

Willard will definitely challenge you to think and pay attention as you read, so be forewarned - this is not a light read!

Read, enjoy, and be challenged and encouraged! Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

How to Live as Jesus Lived

Dallas Willard, one of today's most brilliant Christian thinkers and author of The Divine Conspiracy (Christianity Today's 1999 Book of the Year), presents a way of living that enables ordinary men and women to enjoy the fruit of the Christian life. He reveals how the key to self-transformation resides in the practice of the spiritual disciplines, and how their practice affirms human life to the fullest. The Spirit of the Disciplines is for everyone who strives to be a disciple of Jesus in thought and action as well as intention.

Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ

Dallas Willard

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Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Although Dallas Willard's Renovation of the Heart is an accessible handbook for learning about spiritual formation, it's not lightweight by any stretch of the imagination. It compels the reader to take in the concepts slowly, underline important passages, scribble notes in the margins, and slowly absorb and put into practice the ideas Willard espouses. "Although there is much talk about 'changing lives' in Christian circles, the reality is very rare, and certainly much less common than the talk," writes Willard. But, he adds, no one need live in spiritual and personal defeat. Rather, the way of change is through inner transformation and taking the small steps that lead one to it. Beginning with an introduction to spiritual formation, he then outlines the avenues through which transformation takes place, including thoughts, feelings, choices, social context, the body, and the soul. Each chapter concludes with questions for personal or group reflection. Read it once, then keep it close for further reference--it's a book that will continually refresh a spiritual journey. --Cindy Crosby

Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God

Dallas Willard

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Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"God spoke to me." "The Spirit spoke to my heart." "God revealed the idea to me." Being close to God means communicating with him--telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing and understanding what he is saying to us. It is this second half of our conversation with God that is so important but that can also be so difficult. How do we hear his voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What role does the Bible play? What if what God says to us is not clear? The key, says best-selling author Dallas Willard, is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator. In this updated classic, originally published as In Search of Guidance, the author provides rich spiritual insight into how we can hear God's voice clearly and develop an intimate partnership with him in the work of his kingdom. Features & Benefits

* provides insight into God's direction in daily life

* aids in learning to hear God's voice

* gives guidance for developing a richer relationship with God

The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship

Dallas Willard

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The last command Jesus gave the church before he ascended to heaven was the Great Commission, the call for Christians to "make disciples of all the nations." But Christians have responded by making "Christians," not "disciples." This, according to brilliant scholar and renowned Christian thinker Dallas Willard, has been the church's Great Omission.

"The word disciple occurs 269 times in the New Testament," writes Willard. "Christian is found three times and was first introduced to refer precisely to disciples of Jesus. . . . The New Testament is a book about disciples, by disciples, and for disciples of Jesus Christ. But the point is not merely verbal. What is more important is that the kind of life we see in the earliest church is that of a special type of person. All of the assurances and benefits offered to humankind in the gospel evidently presuppose such a life and do not make realistic sense apart from it. The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian -- especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way. He or she stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God."

Willard boldly challenges the thought that we can be Christians without being disciples, or call ourselves Christians without applying this understanding of life in the Kingdom of God to every aspect of life on earth. He calls on believers to restore what should be the heart of Christianity -- being active disciples of Jesus Christ. Willard shows us that in the school of life, we are apprentices of the Teacher whose brilliance encourages us to rise above traditional church understanding and embrace the true meaning of discipleship -- an active, concrete, 24/7 life with Jesus.

Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul

J. P. Moreland, Dallas Willard

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Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

PREPARE YOUR MIND FOR ACTION

The mind plays an important role in Christianity. Unfortunately, many of us leave our minds behind when it comes to our faith.

In Love Your God with All Your Mind, J.P. Moreland presents a logical case for the role of the mind in spiritual transformation. He challenges us to develop a Christian mind and to use our intellect to further God's kingdom through evangelism, apologetics, worship, and vocation.

"This exploration into the mind of evangelical Christianity is one of the most courageous books of our time. In language that is thoroughly erudite but compassionate, theological but practical, and scriptural but entirely relevant to today, the author presents the deeper significance of Paul's plea to the Christians at Phillipi: 'Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.'" -D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., senior minister, coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

"This is more than just another Christian book. It is the wake-up call that the church needs today. God gave us minds for a reason. It is crucial that we become like Christ in the way we think. If we heed J.P.'s words, we can counter the culture in which we live, work, think, and minister." -Josh McDowell, Josh McDowell Ministries

"J.P. Moreland exemplifies the Christian mind as it ought to be-tough and analytic, but also generous and caring. Christians who want to develop their minds in the service of Christ couldn't find a better teacher, or a better book for the task." -Phillip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial

Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God's Transforming Presence

Ruth Haley Barton, R. Ruth Barton

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winner of a Christianity Today 2005 Book Award! To seek to fill a book with words about moving beyond words into solitude and silence is a daunting task; it is laughable really, if one sees the irony in it all. I have found myself . . . drawn to the task and yet somehow strangely resistant. On the one hand, I have been drawn to the task because my journey into solitude and silence has been the single most meaningful aspect of my spiritual life to date. . . . On the other hand, I am aware of the continuing challenge solitude and silence represent in my own life. Even though it has been well over ten years since I first said yes to God's invitations to enter more intentionally into these disciplines, I still find it challenging to protect space for these times apart which so deeply satisfy the empty places of my soul. Ruth Haley Barton describes how she has discovered the real presence of God--the God who is present through the practice of solitude and silence. Her book invites you to meet God deeply and fully outside the demands and noise of daily life. It is a call to the adventure of spiritual transformation--an adventure that will lead you to freedom and authenticity, allowing you to become the person God created you to be. In Invitation to Solitude and Silence Barton offers spiritual guidance for your journey, helping you to hear God's call more clearly and showing you concrete ways to say yes. Chapter by chapter she combines teaching and reflection on different aspects of the journey with activities and disciplines that will help you to practice solitude and silence. Barton offers the prophet Elijah as a biblical guide for your journey. And she offers her own perspective to help you understand the ups and downs you might experience along the way. The beauty of a true invitation is that you really do have a choice. You can say yes or no. God is waiting for you to respond to him from the depths of your desire for relationship, belonging and transformation. Will you say yes? Features & Benefits

* Invites you to meet God deeply and fully outside the demands and noise of daily life

* Clearly explains classic spiritual disciplines

* Shows how you can practice--and benefit from--disciplines

* Combines teaching and reflection with activities and disciplines

* Describes an approach that works for both introverts and extroverts, introspectives and activists

* Offers the prophet Elijah as a guide

* Draws on Barton's own experiences

* Provides biblical grounding

* Written from an evangelical perspetive

* Barton is cocreator (with John Ortberg) of the devotional curriculum An Ordinary Day with Jesus

Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge

Dallas Willard

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Editorial Review:

What does it mean to 'know' God today? Philosopher and Christian leader, Dallas Willard takes the reader on an intellectual journey showing how our culture has downgraded 'spiritual knowledge' to something less than real, making many believers begin to doubt their faith or opt out of the culture altogether. Willard corrects this trend by explaining the case for seeing what the Bible teaches as 'true knowledge' and so provides a basis for how Christians can most effectively engage their cultures. Here Willard tackles the roles of science, reason, and faith in the Christian life and how believers should engage the church, work, and the entertainment culture we live in. In the end, much of what Jesus taught us is a new way to think and act; here Willard updates Jesus' message for our day and age.

Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice: Experiments in Spiritual Transformation

Dallas Willard, Jan Johnson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not worth the money 2 out of 5 stars.
23 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Let me be clear about what it is that I'm reviewing. The book "Renovation of the Heart" is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. It should be rated very high and read by anyone serious about growing as a Christian. I can't say enough about how great that book is.

However, this book about daily practice and experiments in spiritual transformation is quite the opposite. It has 61 chapters that more or less outline the original work by Willard. Each of the chapters does an OK job of sticking to the individual topics and ends with an "experiment" to help you apply what the chapter is talking about.

These "experiments" are an absolute disappointment. They basically consist of questions that make you think or reflect on the topic. "Consider what it would look like for..." "reflect on this," or "pretend that." You get the picture.

I bought the book expecting some tangible action experiments but all I got were some relatively simple questions which are supposed to provoke deep thought. I gave this book 2 stars instead of 1 because it uses some of Willard's original material and could be useful as a simple devotional (the chapters are about 2 or 3 pages long).

I would strongly recomend to anyone considering this companion book to stick to the original and wrestle through it, no matter how weighty it may be.

Editorial Review:

Renowned spiritual director Jan Johnson takes nuggets of wisdom from Dallas Willard's classic work Renovation of the Heart and unpacks them for deeper understanding.

The Connecting Church

Randy Frazee

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

NT Church for the 21st Century? 3 out of 5 stars.
20 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Randy Frazee's "The Connecting Church" is a book not unlike a coin; it has two sides--hope and frustration. Reading it will find you both wistful and pounding the table. Unfortunately, you end the book doing the latter.

Frazee is one of a cadre of author/pastors spearheading a self-proclaimed renaissance within Christianity. Often called "postmodern Christianity" or "The Emerging Church," this trend seeks to recover the spirit of the early New Testament Church. "The Connecting Church" embodies one of the most prominent aspects of Emerging theology: recovering deep human relationships via a "satellite house/neighborhood church" model.

Tested within his own church in TX, the ideas espoused by the author take small groups to the extreme. Instead of traveling by car to a small affinity group of ten or so, the small group is your entire neighborhood. You reach your neighborhood by incorporating the people in it into your group through strong relationships and friendship evangelism. In a variation, a set of Christians moves together into a neighborhood and pursues the same ends.

The part that few people will object to is living out a Mayberry-like ideal of community. You open your homes and lives to your group. You socialize with your group daily, almost to the exclusion of other relationships, pouring yourself relationally into a set of people that will stay together for years. Its an accumulation of social capital now sorely lacking in most people's lives.

The larger church body itself works to enact a consistent discipleship program that supports the neighborhood groups. It has a distinct preaching cycle that repeats yearly. This program has measurable checkoffs for spiritual growth, meaning the church can see how effective it is in this area. The teachings aim to release people from a prison of consumerism, careerism, and isolation into a balanced love of God and love for others. In its purest form, this model moves into a semi-communal living mode that can even include shared possessions.

A superficial reading of this book yields an immediate desire to make it work. I know that I would love to try to make such a community possible. But problems exist. As much as Frazee insists that people stay in one place, the nature of work today means that a family moves nearly every seven years, usually as a result of work situations. With the last recession forcing many families to move just to put food on the table, unless the Church in America is willing to work harder to help Christians keep their jobs, the dream of staying in one place is elusive. Truth is, the small rural communities revered in "The Connecting Church" are progressively becoming ghost towns because the jobs went elsewhere.

There are other issues with idealizing small, tightknit, rural communities; in the book, the very model Frazee encourages cannot be applied to small, rural communities at all! It's inherently a suburban or city-only model. It's odd that Frazee cannot provide a workable modern solution for the very type of community he idolizes. I live in the country, and as much as I'd like to implement Frazee's model here, the basic elements of it do not play well in the countryside.

Lastly, the emphasis on keeping neighbors together creates an unintentional ghetto-ization of the Church. If the residents of a rich neighborhood are encouraged to stay together exclusively, as is the poorer neighborhood, when will they mix? They used to mix on Sundays at the church, but Frazee encourages hanging with your group even at the whole church meetings. And as much as the goal is to create multigenerational, multicultural communities, most neighborhoods are remarkably homogeneous.

In the end, the proof of concept is in the doing. Churches in my area that have adopted the model in "The Connecting Church" have been disappointed in the results, many abandoning it altogether. People are quite set in their ways, and the old small group model that is based mostly on affinity is not that creaky, yet. Like the Israelites who had to entirely die off before their descendants finally entered the promised land, this generation of Christians may some day pass on and allow Frazee's model to assume prominence in an upcoming generation that fully embraces it.

"The Connecting Church" is filled with great ideas and will definitely get you thinking. Hopefully, Frazee will work out the bugs and find an audience willing to give it a try.

Editorial Review:

This book explores the three essential elements of real community and helps readers put into practice the fifteen principles that undergird those essentials.