Velvet Elvis

So anyone who doesnt know me, I hate reading. Im slow at it, I get bored with it and I have a small case of ADD. Velvet Elvis has me cured. If you could have seen a hidden video of me reading this book, one page I was hitting myself because I thought something so stupid, and the next was laughing and then I had a lump in my throat. Im not sure if it will speak to you as it is speaking to me... but this is truly a gift from God. It has made me interested again. Thanks God.

Velvet Elvis is on my to-do list of books. From my understanding, if you liked that book then you will like "Blue Like Jazz". I enjoyed the first half of that book very much. I kept reading points the author would make and go, "Exactly! I guess other Christians have the same issues I have with Christianity, too." (The 2nd half of the book did almost a 180 and I wanted to yell at the author....but mainly because he started mixing his Christian views of helping people and gov't mandates. ......Grrrrr).

I also just read another book you might like called "Jim and Casper Go To Church". It's about a real-life pastor (Jim) that hires an atheist (Matt Casper) to go to various churches with him and give his "outsider" feedback of what he sees. So, they go to some of the popular mega-churches (e.g. Joel Osteen's Lakewood, Rick Warren's Saddleback, and T.D. Jake's church) and they also go to some smaller churches, Pentecostal, Emerging churches, etc. The book was interesting...Casper had some really good points about the pros/cons he saw at the various churches. My main beef with the book is that it is only one atheist/outsider's opinion -- so some of his complaints were frustrating to me. For instance, Casper is a musician so he gauged the music of each church differently than I think average people would. Plus, I know quite a few atheists and they are all across the board from despising God and religion to seeing value in religion but just not convinced of its claims. Overall, the book was pretty good.

I have three other books that I bought recently from Amazon:
unChristian (I just started this one)
Red Letter Christians
They Like Jesus but Not the Church

All three of those are along the same lines as "Velvet Elvis", "Blue Like Jazz", etc. All these books are basically about the re-examination of Christianity and the role of church in our lives. ....And basically that we've gone off track. e.g. Church seems to be about church and not Christ's message. etc.

I've read Blue Like Jazz and I felt the same you did. I actually lived 2 minutes away from Reed, where the book takes place and visited Donald Miller's church and listened to Rick speak.