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I really liked this book. The title is a little off-putting, but it is certainly attention grabbing. Sjorgen wrote this whilst he was the pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati. The title a play off the long list of "conspiracies" so many Christians believe are being brought against the Church today, particularly prevalent in the charismatic circles both he and I grew up in. Nearly all of them complete boloney. So this is one he wants Christians to be on the good side of the conspiracy and be kind to bring folks to the Lord. The New Testament calls everyone to evangelize, but Christians and non-Christians have one thing in common, they both hate evangelism.

The book is focused primarily on organized Churches going out and "witnessing" by doing organized acts of kindness. Washing windshields, free car washes, handing out free pop, cleaning public toilets, etc. Just do good things. If asked, tell them, "We are doing this to show God's love in a tangible way" and that's it. It's good for the public and its good for the Christian. They found it works a lot better than preaching on the corner telling folks the end is near and to repent while they still can.

Some good things here like being open and honest, and ensuring that you don't do damage to people's property, and if it does happen you give it your all to make it better than it was beforehand. If someone says you streaked their window when you were windshield washing, you pay for a professional cleaning, etc.

He made several references about keeping politics out of evangelism. And yet my mind kept wondering on how I could use the same strategies for political purposes, exactly the opposite of what he's asking.

Made several points that are beneficial to any outreach. How a smile brings down people's guard, how to ensure that you go out with a plan including an ending point, so you don't burn out your volunteers. Only ask for the minimum amount of permission you need. If you do good things people will let you come back, if you ask for permission they'll ask you to leave. Ensure you have at least twice as much product on hand as you think you'll need to ensure you don't run out; you can always use it for the next event. Don't insist your pastor be involved. It's important, you lead it, your pastor is already busy. When you go out to do servant evangelism, sometimes the Holy Spirit will show up and sometimes He won't. That's OK. But depend on Him regardless as Steve said, "most Christians are too out of touch with the world around them to even understand their fears problems concerns or issues"

The Third Edition was revised and updated in 2008. In 2022 Sjogren left Vineyard and joined the Catholic Church. I hope he comes out with a fourth edition that focusing on a Catholic parish using the conspiracy of kindness. Not that it's not obvious, but it sure is focused on someone building a "non-denominational" movement across a big city, rather than keeping within a parish boundary, and we Catholics are even worse at evangelizing than the Protestants who aren't good at it and don't want to do it.

@morlock@bookwyrm.social I'm seeing it.

This was not the Wonder Woman I grew up loving. There is no Steve Trevor, there is no invisible jet. It's supposed to be before all that, before she was Wonder Woman, but it happens when there are cell phones and private jets. When I looked up Diana Prince on Wikipedia afterward apparently DC had retconed her origin severla times and the most recent one is similar to what was in this audio book, oh well.

While I don't expect super hero stories to be super reasonable, but this one was less believable than most. Diana tries to save a young woman who apparently has the blood of Helen of Troi and there are a bunch of people trying to kill her because if they don't her evil blood is going to bring the world into war everywhere and another is found with warrior blood with a plan to keep her alive and start a war without modern weapons causing medieval world to return?

I guess it was good enough, but not good enough to get me to read the rest of the DC Icons series.

This was an interesting quick read. An early 20th century book written by the secretary of the New York fire department. Its not particularly well written but then again Alfred Downes isn't' a professional author. It was mostly just a bunch of random stories about the day in the lives of New York Firemen. There were a lot of photos in the book, which I believe is unusual for the time period, and perhaps expensive to reproduce. There were various chapters where the stories were sort of related, but by the end of most chapters I would look at the chapter title and think, well this story doesn't fit that, I guess that's where there is a new chapter.

I most appreciated the stories about the, at the time, new equipment, like steam fire engines, and the telegraph driven fire alarm system. I finally learned where the term "five alarm chili" comes from. The alarm and gong system is activated by someone pulling the fire alarm and it alerts the nearest fire house, and the firemen turn it off at the building once enough firefighters are there. The longer it goes without getting turned off it sends the signal to further fire houses and sounds them again at the original, with the 5 alarm being the worst.

I also liked the stories about the horses and dogs. Apparently back in the day the job of the dogs was to run in front of the horse drawn engines and get people to get out of the way. I'm surprised by how open they said the fire houses were, with folks just wondering in their on the regular. The kids particular loved some horses. I was surprised by, but shouldn't have been, that there were three separate stories about animals named [N-word], one horse, one dog, and one cat.

I feel like this book may have been primarily a fund raiser for the department. I say that as toward the end much was made about the "buffs" which are apparently people who are such big fans of the fire department that they run after the engines when they go by and try to help out the firemen at the fire, which I can't imagine IRL could be anything other than annoying at best or dangerous at worst. Downess also made a big deal about how all of the medals and awards, though given officially by the mayor, are not paid for by taxes but through private donations and then "instructions" on how one sets up an endowment to fund for the metals an individual or group wants to name after themselves and award annually

@Tellington@millefeuilles.cloud TLDR ~ yes catechism is the correct word.

The CCC (Catechism of the Catholic Church) is what we call the book in English. It's a summary of all the teachings of the Church. Catechism class is where you are instructed in the teachings of the CCC.

I am a convert to Catholicism. While my dad was raised in the Church he left when he was about 20 and was more-or-less an atheist, or at least a "non-believer," if there is a difference. Later he and my mom became born-again evangelical Christians when I was ~5 years old, so I was primarily raised in evangelical/charismatic circles. Like most American Protestants we changed churches every time we got a new pastor that said something challenging. I digress. I didn't go through Catechism class until I was 20, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and my wife did likewise 14 years later just for my benefit when she was 32, so I have little point of reference with your experience.

Our daughters are unschooled so that's a bit different from going to a Catholic school. My oldest daughter went through Faith Formation classes at our local parish K-6 but chose not to continue her religious education in 7-8th grade by attending catechism classes to become a confirmed Catholic like most of her classmates did. (I suspect most didn't really have a choice, even though my understanding of Church teaching is that each individual must chose to be confirmed themselves). My youngest is considered going into first grade and she'll be in her second year of faith formation this fall.

As a public-school kid myself I just assumed you were speaking of a voluntary Bible study like before/after school, I might have considered that when I was a teen, but my parents weren't about to drive to town to drop me off when their taxes already paid for a school bus. I apologize for jumping to conclusions.