A Brief Review on The Gospel According to LOST

As you may know, I review books fairly regularly. Most of them are sent to me for review. In this case, I bought this one, have not been asked to review it but I’m glad to.

Who is Chris Seay?
He’s the pastor of the Ecclessia Church in Houston, Texas and author of The Gospel According to Tony Soprano, The Gospel According to Jesus, and his latest title, A Place at the Table:  40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor

What I Liked – 

I think the best thing I can say is that it’s an excellent read for “serious but somewhat normal” LOST fans. To no fault of its own, it will disappoint the super-nerd LOST fan. You know the one who has a Mr. Ecko tattoo, convinced the spouse to name the twins “Desmond and Penny” and got the VW van in honor of Hurley.

Really liked the “patron saint” theme – planning on using a little of that in my sermon. Also, liked the artistic renderings of the LOST characters – well done.
In terms of spiritual value, I’m not expecting much from these types of books, however Chris does a fantastic job between being interesting, brief and insightful. Further, it’s very “sermon material” friendly. I know most of the audience are not pastors, but for those who are – bonus!

What I Wasn’t Sure About – 
I read it twice. Once right before Season 6 and again this week in preparation for a sermon in which I was mentioning LOST. I haven’t watched it since the finale so unfortunately, I wasn’t “there” with every reference (which points to the strength of the book by the way). But even not having recapped but having seen the finale, the book felt dated. I imagine Chris feels the same and would love to see him revise and update it. THEN, I would watch the series again and read it again. Win-win here :)

Conclusion
I think LOSTies in my Christian circles would really enjoy this. You can order a used copy through Amazon right now for less than $5.

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Monday Morning Brief – 3.16.09

It’s been a real fast week.  Haven’t had a chance to post or catch up on my blog friends since last Monday.  I’ll try to catch up on some of my thoughts (and yours) in the next few weeks.  

Highlights of the Week … 1. All is well with our little family.  Nathan gave us high-fives for the first time this week and he just started clapping.  2.  Emergent cohort meeting with Thomas Turner, Scott Kent Jones, Scott Lenger and for the first time ever, Tim Nye.  Good times.  Looking forward to next month when we discuss Augustine’s City of God 

Disappointments of the Week … 1. No new Lost episode.  2. the new Office episode with the Willy Wonka Michael inserting 5 golden pieces of paper in the paper boxes.  I’m not trying to be the cool guy who who likes to be critical but it wasn’t that great.  I like the Office, I want to like the Office again, but I’m watching and not really laughing.  And where’s Stanely?  I think he gave one eye roll last week and we hardly heard from the miserable guy.  They’re not using their cast this season.    

Reading … Three Views on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, Still reading Cross-Shattered Christ by Stanely Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader (which I’ll finish when the Cubs win the world series), flipped through The Great Giveaway by David Fitch.  Handful of magazines too like the new Relevant Magazine, the new Youth Worker Journal and flipped through the new Group magazine.  I love magazines, they require little from me.  

Listening to … a little less of No Line on the Horizon but I’m still loving it and so is the rest of the nation.  Debuting no. 1. on the billboards was an easy prediction but doubling the sales of the previous highest selling record of the year, Springstein’s Working on a Dream, is pretty impressive.  You can read a little more here.  2.  Fiction Family (with Jon Foreman and Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek) is pretty good.  Jon always sounds good.  Even when he’s not rocking out with Switchfoot (who are supposed to release a new album soon with their new label).  They’re is a hint of Dylan especially from Jon (he’s been doing this on his EP’s too), even some PFR which is pretty cool.   The new Fray is pretty good too.  Though overplayed and unpopular to admit, I like the Fray.  While I like the new album and I think they are good guys, I have a hard time telling which songs are from the old album and which are from the new album.  I can only imagine that an artist would be frustrated to hear that, but I can’t tell.  So I liked the first album, obviously I like this one too but was looking for a little more.  

Student Ministry ... is going well.  1. Yep still loving Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus but Not the Church.  We’re doing the video curriculum and this past week was part one of, “Is the Church homophobic?”.  The discussions run far deeper than the initial question but as everyone knows, this is a topic that we discuss so much more out of the church than in it.  Happy with the start of it. 2. We had our first Summer Missions Team meeting.  We talked about many things, including a better team name.   

Looking forward to ... Amidst the powers Conference with Evan this weekend!

Laughed … with America at Jon Stewart’s fight with CNBC’s Jim Cramer from Mad Money.  Stewart is cool but I can’t watch this show … uhh …daily.  Anyway, nice work Jon, I appreciate you saying the things that need to be said.  Don’t be selective now, there’s a lot more to say my friend.  You can read the NY Times’ article about it here.

Watch it here.