Leeds North East Circuit - Local Preachers’ Reading Group
The Reading Group began in September 2003. I had had the idea some months earlier and spoke to several other preachers about it. At the next Preachers' Meeting I spoke about it and five people expressed an interest in forming a group.
We decided to meet once a month at my home. This gave the meeting a much more relaxed feel than if we had met in a church. At the inaugural meeting we decided how books would be chosen and how the meeting should be structured. We would take it in turns to choose a book and at the next meeting the ‘chooser’ would get the ball rolling by giving a short précis of the story.
It was also decided that we didn’t want to be a group who only read 'religious' books simply because we were preachers. In fact people chose widely. Novels ranged from Anthony to Joanna Trollope with much more in between. We enjoyed non-fiction too, including Christianity in a Post-Atheist Age by Clive Marsh, who actually came along to our meeting. I must admit, it was quite daunting to have the author in the room when talking about his book!
Our discussions were as wide-ranging as our books but were usually linked into to our calling as Christians and specifically as preachers. Monica Ali’s Brick Lane led us to ask how, if at all, should living in a multi-ethnic city affect our preaching? Having read Nick Hornby’s How to be Good we wondered about how people in Britain viewed the Church today. We talked about ‘hot topics’ such as medical ethics and climate change and our responsibilities as Christians in these areas. We didn’t always agree with one another but we always respected diversity of opinion. We laughed a lot too!
I valued the opportunity to socialise, to get to know one another better and to read books I would never have chosen myself.
Catherine Frieze
Books read Autumn 2003-5
Fynn: Mister God. This is Anna
Joanne Harris: Chocolat
The Diary of Anne Frank
Clive Marsh: Christianity in a Post-Atheist Age [Clive came to the meeting]
Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible
Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers
Philip Pullman: Northern Lights
Monica Ali: Brick Lane
Nick Hornby: How to be Good
Joanna Trollope: The Rector’s Wife
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Brian Wren: What Language Shall I Borrow?
Jodi Picoult: My Sister’s Keeper
Andrea Levy: Small Island
Salley Vickers: Mr Golightly’s Holiday
Poetry e.g. Douglas Donne, UA Fanthorpe, Keats, Herbert, Lear, Auden, Pratt Green …..