With each chapter following a theme -- welcome, opening hymn, scripture reading, sermon, communion, and so on -- together they become a series of anecdotes, reflections about the larger world in which the Church finds itself, alongside some deep scriptural reflection.
The chapter on "Offering" was by far my favorite. It moves from a basic description of how churches approach this part of the service to the author's love of cleaning her house to explaining how economics affects everything to how the Kingdom of God involves all of life and connects us to each other. Lingle anchors these reflections in Jesus' parable of the mustard seed and Paul's call in Romans to bear things together as a community. Like all the other chapters, though, this one builds upon each theme and ties them together in ways the reader might not see coming at the beginning but where it makes sense by the end.
In the end, Credulous is an amazing book -- the best of the churchy-memoirs I've read in recent years -- precisely because it takes seriously what God is doing in and through the Church in the world. This is a must-read!
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I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.