Inspired by Uninspiring Verbosity

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a book by Erwin McManus called Chasing Daylight with my Forefront small group. The book started off rather slowly and, I am sad to say, has moved very little from there. McManus clings to one passage about Jonathan and the Philistines and (ab)uses it to say how great Jonathan is and how we should all be like him. Every once in a while, he would throw in anecdotes from his own life to illustrate his point even those feel the same as the passage.

Somehow, he manages to use a lot of words and say very little. Somehow, readers on Amazon laud him for this. I am perplexed by the praise given to this book which, weighing in at over 250 pages, probably could be summarized in less than 10. One thing that I learned from my Grade 12 English teacher is how to be very concise when writing essays; too much flowery language and you’ll lose the reader.

Suffice it to say that the book is lost on me. Perhaps it was unfair for me to lose any sort of hope in the book but a few chapters into reading it (thus settings expectations even lower for the subsequent chapters), but I can only stand to watch the beating of a dead horse for so long. For someone who doesn’t usually read too much, this has been a great defeat. (I am redeemed, however, since the small group has become much less about the book and, instead, more about getting to know great people whose hopes, joys, burdens, and struggles are akin to my own.)

Out of this, however, comes a renewed interest in literature. I am convinced that I have to balance this book out with something elegantly and intelligently written. In previous small groups, I have had the joys of reading very engaging books like A New Kind of Christian and Blue Like Jazz. While I may not endorse everything that is written in those books, at least they were fresh and presented a new perspective.

After lamenting about this to a former pastor, he pointed me to a couple of books: The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller (whose Manhattan church I often attended), and Simply Christian by N.T. Wright, a venerable juggernaut of theology. I have also been toying with the idea of (co-)leading my own small group in October through Forefront and, if I did, this would be a perfect opportunity to explore one (or both) of these books.

What do you say? Do I take the risk?

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