Thanks to the Wesleyan Denomination’s Spiritual Formation Department I received this book just last week and finished it up just this morning!

What a great look inside the life of the Coach Dungy’s coaching principles and God-honoring lifestyle!

With the help of Nathan Whitaker – a personal friend of the Dungys, Coach Dungy has written an amazing account of his life up-through the Colts’ Super Bowl win last year! Reading through much of the history of this great NFL coach and seeing how God has continued to be his focus throughout his adult life, it is encouraging to cheer on Coach Dungy and “my” Indianapolis Colts.

The book is exciting for my football-loving mind, too, in that it reads occasionally like a play-by-play of some of the high-profile games I sat on the edge of my seat during. To read those same plays coming from the coach of the team I was cheering for brings a new angle and excitement.

I recommend this book to any Colts fan AND/OR to anyone looking to read about a person who puts his faith in Christ first before his career – and how that faith interweaves throughout his dealings in life!

Coach Dungy is a hero in my book – even before reading his book!

On my flight to Indianapolis last week I finished the book, “Jim & Casper Go to Church” by Jim Henderson (not the puppet-master) and Matt Casper. Jim is a 50-something pastoral ministry-veteran and Casper is a 30-something proclaimed atheist. Jim hired Casper to attend 12 of our Nation’s churches with him and to dialog together about their experience. Some of the churches they attended: Saddleback (Rick Warren), Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), and Lakewood (Joel Osteen).

The book was nearly impossible for me to put down. I would’ve read it in one sitting if I had the time!

I couldn’t help but wish that I would’ve kept my notes from my semester of church-hopping while at IWU! Reading through these conversations brought back some interesting memories and an overwhelming renewal to my own heart’s passion to love God and love my neighbor as myself.

It should be obvious to each of us by simply pausing for a moment of thought to realize that we are doing “church” a whole lot different than Jesus ever probably intended. Sure a couple thousand years have passed and culture is strikingly more-modern than in Jesus’ time, but the message hasn’t changed and the urgency of that message hasn’t either.

Why is it, then, that we have clouded our churches with so much “other”? Sure we’re doing church fairly well by our own standards, but why isn’t “the church” known as an organization that loves God first and loves our neighbors as much as we do ourselves? Aren’t THOSE the things Christ told us to be about?

Why the focus on music? Why the focus on nice buildings? Why the focus on being “post-modern”?

Shouldn’t those things be further down the line AFTER loving God and loving people?

I’m challenged.