Otira Theological Book Club

Discipleship

Lay Education at the Centre for Theology and Ministry (CTM) offers a fantastic resource for the groups within congregations and presbyteries who love to read and discuss books.

New books available for 2012!

Thanks to several generous donations we are able to purchase a great mix of books for the coming year:

A Door Set Open, Peter Steinke (20 copies)
Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith, Nora Gallagher (20 copies)
The Book of Rachael, Leslie Cannold (20 copies)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard (12 copies)
Acting in Solidarity, Peter Lewis (12 copies)

Further donations would allow us to purchase full sets of the latter two books (ie 20 copies of each). Yes, that's a hint :-)

Reviews or study guides for these books are intended to be available early in the new year.

Wide range of books available

We have available for loan a wide range of books which have been chosen to:

create fascinating discussions,
offer another perspective,
enable an opportunity for adult Christian education,
provide an excuse to get together a group of people and share in community.

We have over 150 titles to chose from (check the current list of books), so you’re bound to find at least one title to suit your group (probably many more!). We also have available study guides and questions for some of the titles to help start your conversations.

So how does the borrowing system work??

One person acts as contact person and accepts the responsibility to:

invite a group of people to form a local book group
secure their commitment to meet together
select a title and borrow the books (one title at a time or reserve titles for a period of time)
distribute books, set up meeting date
lead group discussions (or delegate this job to another group member)
return books by the due date

Does it cost anything to borrow the books??

It does not cost your group anything except for the postage to return the books back to the CTM.
Donations are certainly welcome to enable us to continue supplying new titles regularly.

How long do we have the books for??

Normal borrowing time is about 6-8 weeks.

Your group might decide to read some books more slowly in order to delve more deeply into the issues, such as Peter Lewis' "Acting in Solidarity? The church's journey with the Indigenous peoples of Australia" (Uniting Academic Press, Dec 2010). The Otira Theological Book Club doesn't have the resources to have multiple sets of such books available for long-term loan, but if your reading group decides to buy a set of books in order to tackle a substantial and significant title such as this, you might then consider donating the set to the Book Club for others to appreciate after you're done.

How do we get the books??

Either via mail (Australia Post) or by pick up at the CTM, Parkville.
Normally the books will be available to be handed out at the previous meeting, to be read, then discussed & collected at the next meeting.

My group is interested how do I get more information??

Download the book list from this page for a comprehensive list of the titles that are available
Contact us on 03 9340 8800 or info [at] ctm [dot] uca [dot] edu [dot] au