COMPS1: blogging my Comprehensive Assignment

If all goes to "plan" (thanks for the reality-check Nt&Ct!), Jessica and I will be finishing up our Master of Christian Studies (MCS) degrees in April. For me, that involves completing a comprehensive assignment (“Comps” as it is known under Regent’s green roof), within my program concentration of Marketplace Theology. With my supervising professor, Paul Williams, we have worked out a reading list of 3341 pages (or 14 books). My task is to read it all, which is a challenge as I am not the highest capacity reader, and then bring the material into a synthesis in the form of a 10,000 word paper.

Several people advised that after reading each book, that I put together a 1-2 page summary of what the book is about, so that when I get to the writing stage of this task I don’t have to re-read everything – good advice! But, instead, I thought I would blog these summaries and give some short thoughts on how all this reading is fitting together and the significance it has.

My aims in making this public are several:

• It allows me to get my thoughts on what each book is about clear enough to post now & articulate to people outside of Regent’s academic environment on an ongoing basis
• I think this assignment is significant for how God’s people live, so my readers may learn something or do something
  
• This may inspire you to read a book or think through something that you otherwise would not
• It allows my readers to throw their 2 cents into my thoughts on each book and the direction this assignment is leading, especially some of the take-aways – so please post some comments!

I wont elaborate too much on where I think this assignment is going now, rather simply list the books I will be engaging with under 3 reading areas that Paul & I have clumped the books into (although there will of course be over-laps):

Living in light of God's Kingdom Rule & the coming Kingdom:

• Surprised by Hope : Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (N.T. Wright)
• Work in the Spirit : Toward a Theology of Work (Miroslav Volf
• Vocation : Discerning Our Callings in Life (Douglas Schuurman)
• The Other Six Days : Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical Perspective (R. Paul Stevens)
• Listening to the God Who Speaks : Reflections on God's Guidance from Scripture and the Lives of God's People (Klaus Bockmüehl)

Reading the bible well in regards to God's mission & how the Marketplace fits in:

• The Mission of God : Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative (Christopher Wright)
• Hermeneutics for Economists : The Relevance of the Bible to Economics (Paul Williams)
• Economics Today : A Christian Critique (Donald Hay)

Living in Babylon, the complexities of being a Christian in a broken world:

• A Failure of Nerve : Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (Edwin Friedman)
• The Way of the (Modern) World, or, Why It's Tempting to Live as If God Doesn't Exist (Craig Gay)
• Resident Aliens : Life in the Christian Colony (Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon)
• Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (John G. Stackhouse Jr.)
• Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World : Lessons for the Church from Macintyre's after Virtue (Jonathan Wilson)

It is going to be a full-on twelve weeks... please pray me for me...