October Book Club will meet on Sunday, October 29 after church.  We will talk about Jen Hatmaker's The 7 Experiment over lunch.

This book is about creative ways to try fasting.  Hatmaker's concern is excess and the negative effect excess has on our lives.  She describes how her family tried limiting themselves in seven different ways each month for seven months.

In some ways, I think we will find we are continuing a theme with this book.  Last month's book, Salvation on Sand Mountain, was about Applachian Christians reacting to secularism by turning to an extreme:  snake-handling.  Hatmaker's book was born from an experience when taking in hurricane refugees.  A boy walked into their Austin, Texas home and said, "Dad!  This white dude is RICH!"  The comment stuck with her.  She writes, "I was so blinded, I didn't even know we were rich."  Austin, Texas may be as culturally distant from Sand Mountain, Georgia as you can get and still be in the American South.  Yet both Covington and Hatmaker were compelled to find unusual ways to separate themselves from the culture we live within.

There is a big difference.  Punkin Brown and Dennis Covington turned to something which the church had no experience in 2000 years of doing as a part of Sunday meetings.  Jen Hatmaker is trying to revive a practice that has been continuously used throughout church history.  None of us were interested in snake handling ourselves; some of us may well be interested in trying our own version of the 7 experiment.  Those not inclined to try the particulars of the 7 experiment will continue fasting in other ways, both as part of the church at large in Advent and Lent and individually according to our own callings.

James 1:27 says, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:  to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep onself unstained from the world."  How do we keep ourselves unstained from the world?  That's the bigger question we'll keep discussing.  But Hatmaker also raises interesting and funny points about fasting in particular.