I've just been going over the final pageproofs for the upcoming book Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch. This is an amazing book. It has shaped much of my thinking in the past few years as I've been working with Andy on it. It's a paradigm-shifting big-idea book that talks about how we need to move from condemning, critiquing, copying and consuming culture and instead create and cultivate culture. We don't change culture by critiquing it; the only way to change culture is to create culture.The book is about to go to the printer and will be in print later this summer. In the meantime, you can get a free preview of the book at IVP's website. The first few chapters are available there now, and several more chapters will be released in a few weeks, for a total of the first 100 pages of the book. And we invite you to share the PDF with others.
If you're on Facebook, you can become a fan of the book at the Culture Making page. Here's a note from Andy Crouch that he posted on the page:
The release of Culture Making is just over two months away. It will be really fun to have the book out there to start lots of conversations about how we can become cultivators and creators of culture, not just critics and consumers of it.
But you don't have to wait until this summer to start reading the book and to start those conversations. InterVarsity Press has taken the unusual step of releasing, not just the introduction or the first few pages, but the first 40 pages of the book, online, in PDF form, for free. (Yes, they are awesome--and thanks to John Holland for originally suggesting this.) And in a few weeks we'll release another three chapters.
You can download the PDF fromhttp://www.ivpress.com/title/exc/3394-sample-1.pdf
Read. Enjoy. But there's one other thing I'd like to ask you to do. Find at least one way to share this PDF with others. Post about it on Facebook. Blog about it. Forward the link--or the whole PDF file--to your small group, your pastor, your six best friends. (Yes, you can do this completely legally--see the last page for the details on what you can and cannot do with this PDF.)
Then, if you don't mind, post on the wall at Culture Making to tell the rest of us what you thought and what your friends thought of these opening pages.
Bon appetit!
Andy
3 comments:
After hearing him speak at the Transforming Culture symposium, I'm anxious to read this book.
I think I'm going to check it out. It sounds like an insightful book.
Argument: To create a Utopian society we should stop condemning, critiquing, copying and consuming culture and instead create and cultivate culture.
I have to read your book.
Utopian society through one of the Atheist philosophy is an inductive process, we give & accept stark critique, and condemn specifics of proposed ideas, and this way our thoughts are perfected in specifics which later are ready to be applied in grand scale or general sense of life. In the struggle to spiritualize our thought we may surrender with fortitude, our emotion & egos to logical reasoning but still stand confident and appreciative of the truthful triumph of ideas.
That said, your book will provide a counter argument; why critique and condemnation of proposed ideas is wrong. I am curious to see degree to which your thoughts have been refined and spiritualized; I hope your paradigm-shifting big-idea is not based on belief and faith. I am interested in seeing what thought school you reflect, its exciting to see spiritualization of thoughts.
I wish you good luck on your new “paradigm-shifting big-idea” book. Nobody can suppress a good Idea; Good ideas sparkle by themselves; while bad ideas need promotion and protection by zealots who have a vested interest.
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