A few weeks ago we had a schedule conflict and couldn’t make a trek to Grand Rapids, Michigan to the bi-annual CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) conference.  Although we truly enjoyed being with local friends, pastors and lay delegates of a Central PA denominational gathering, we missed  being at the remarkable national meeting of CIVA. We need to publicly thank the leadership of CIVA and our stalwart supporter from Lancaster, PA,  Ned Bustard, for helping us get a display of books there, sans Beth & Byron, and for Mr. Bustard for representing us at the event.

Since we couldn’t have dozens of tables, display racks, or take our boards and shelves to make a pop- up bookstore the way we do at some large events, we only sent a handful of titles and, still, the artists, art teachers, art historians, patrons, museum curators, critics and those who do ministry among and for artists all seemed glad to see our titles. We thank those who browsed and bought books from us — it means a lot.  It reminds us of how important cultural creatives and those thinking about aesthetics have been to us in our work. We are grateful.

LISTS LISTED

Over the years we have developed numerous lists of books or columns about our book-selling at IAM or CIVA or other gatherings where we’ve served serious artists and those interested in culture-making. Please see (and send to others, if you know anyone who’d appreciate it) lists of books about the interface of faith and thea arts here, here or here, or, just for instance, see my review of Beauty Given by Grace: The Bible Prints of Sadao Watanabe, here. Or our review of Art That Tells the Story edited and compiled by Chris Brewer, here.

Not long ago I insisted  in a Hearts & Minds BookNotes column that last year’s release of a multi-volume set by Calvin Seerveld was “the publishing event of the year.”  His stunning and influential classic,Rainbows for the Fallen World (Toronto Tuppence Press; $30.00), appears on nearly every list on the arts I do, so these newly compiled anthologies of essays, articles, scholarly pieces, sermons and sundry projects  — like Normative Aesthetics or Redemptive Art in Society — are important.  For what it’s worth, I had the great privilege of being asked to pre-read and then write a blurb for Redemptive Art.  More important and knowledgeable critics have offered better endorsements, but since you are a Hearts & Minds fan, figure you might like to see part of this quote of mine, from the back of the book:

Can high quality, properly nuanceful, allusive theatre, sculpture, painting or song help heal the world? Can art expose injustices, bring comfort to the hurting, shake the idols of our age? These chapters are amazing pieces, a true gift for those wanting to go further along the journey towards “seeking the peace of the city.” Wise leaders and faithful artists simply must read them.

Dr. Seerveld was at the CIVA conference this year, as were a fine array of other very important writers and supporters of artists. Nicholas Wolterstorff (who – I might shamelessly note – has a chapter in the book I edited called Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life) was there.  His book Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Eerdmans; $26.00) is a classic in this field, published by Eerdmans in 1980, the same year as Rainbows for the Fallen World.  I like to tell the story that I learned of both in a splendidly stimulating pair of reviews in Vanguard magazine that year, called “Cal on Nick, Nick on Cal.” It was important for me to learn of these two Christian philosophers, understanding from their excellent academic work what people meant by the “integration of faith and scholarship” as well as the realization that even those within the same worldview community could disagree about how to go about doing “uniquely Christian scholarship” in a  particular field of the Lord.  Perhaps I took it a bit too much to heart, since are bookstore is very diverse, with “left right and center” viewpoints on offer, enhancing, we hope, principled discussions within each area of life, and each academic or vocation arena, as we ponder and discern what it truly looks like to “think Christianly” and live faithfully, in but not of the world. I thank God for Cal and for Nick, and to realize they were both at this historic CIVA conference and that we would not, was nearly painful. If you don’t have Art in Action, you really should.

Another person we admire from a far was there, poet and author (and publishing hero) Luci Shaw. We stock her several volumes of lovely, thoughtful poetry, and her wonderful book about being a Christian in the arts, Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: Reflections on Creativity and Faith (Nelson; $13.99.) I recently skimmed it again, for the umpteenth time, alongside an old favorite, a classic by her best friend, the last Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Waterbrook; $18.99.) I would tell those uninitiated to this genre – books about faith and the arts – to read Shaw before L’Engle, but anyone who keeps a library of a few books across the broad school curriculum — campus ministers, say, or “faith in the work-world” geeks or just those who like to read very widely — should have them both.

Luci’s most recent book of prose is Adventure of Ascent: Field Notes from a Lifelong Journey (IVP; $15.00) which wonderfully surveys the landscape of her experience of aging. 

One of the great additions to this field was edited by David O. Taylor, and I really would have liked meeting and hear him at CIVA – Taylor gave the opening address, so, of course, we had a big stack of his edited volume For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Baker Books; $15.99.)  If you are somewhat new to this body of literature, I guarantee you that this will be a great on-ramp, a way into reading about the myriad blessings of beauty, the important issues and concerns, the joys of church-based art ministry.  Some of the contributors here are professional artists, a few write about aesthetics and the arts professionally (Jeremy Begbie, John Witvliet, Barbara Nicolosi) and some are just solid church folk interested in the field (Lauren Winner, Eugene Peterson, Andy Crouch.) There is a lovely foreword by Luci Shaw. This is great book, enjoyable and helpful.

Faith+ Vision: Twenty-Five Years of Christians in the Visual Arts, edited by Cameron J. Anderson and Sandra Bowden with an Introduction by Nicholas Wolterstorff (Square Halo Books) $44.99

It was Square Halo Books, in fact, that partnered a few years ago with CIVA to create and publish a large coffee table book of contemporary Christians in the arts, to honor their 25th anniversary.  Modern, postmodern, classic, iconoclastic, heavy, playful, the work represented in Faith+ Vision: Twenty-Five Years of Christians in the Visual Arts, is broad, mature, and evocative.  The paintings and other visual art pieces shown are “suggestion-rich” and “allusive” as Seerveld might say, and we are honored to continue to stock it.  In fact, I was honored to get to do an endorsement on the back — next to serious scholars in the field such as Ena Heller and Wayne Roosa and William Dyrness.  I wrote, very sincerely,

In word and image, the pages of this book record the glorious work of an organization dedicated to support the Christian artist. CIVA is a wonderful association and this book shows off the God-blessed glory of the their members’ work in extraordinary fashion. Thank God for the gentle steadfastness of CIVA,. For those who compiled this excellent books.  And for Square Halo who publishes manna like this.

I so wish I knew how to get folks to buy this handsomely designed, inspiring showcase book. The artists deserve to be known, and this organization needs to be supported.  It really does make a great gift!

If you want really the “best of the best” standard lists of books, do see the links I offered above.  Or write to us, and I can customer make a list, just for you at whatever stage or level you want. The lists are not exhaustive, of course, and we have other titles on the shelves here at the shop, but they will serve as a reliable core curriculum. We have a lot of older “back list” titles at Hearts & Minds, and can get nearly anything in print, so do send us orders if you want. 

Now, I’d like to share with you a handful of newer titles, including some of what we showcased at our small showcase in Grand Rapids last month. These are others to celebrate.  All are 20% off — do send us an order so we can keep doing this kind of work, promoting Christian scholarship and resources often not found in typical bookstores.  

10 RECENT BOOKS ABOUT FAITH AND THE ARTS

Creative Church Handbook: Releasing the Power of the Arts in Your Congregation J. Scott McElroy (IVP) $20.00 This was one of our biggest sellers at the CIVA Bi-annual, and they honored Scott by arranging a book signing to celebrate it. This book has been years in the making; it includes a report of of various church groups that have robust arts ministries, and offers guidance drawn from them, stuff they’ve learned, insights they’ve gleaned along the way.  In this regard, Creative Church Handbook is both interesting/ inspiring – to hear these stories, learn of these ministries and outreaches – and practical/useful — with the “take away” points so clear and actionable. Scott has been involved in conversations about faith and the arts for years, has written an earlier book (Finding Divine Inspiration) and this new, slightly over-sized work illustrates his keen ability to pay attention to what God is doing across the land.  It shows how to mobilize and manage artists and other creatives within your congregation and how to establish structures and parameters for arts ministry.  It includes good stuff on outreach and engagement with the local arts scene in your own community as well as how to wisely think about utilizing the arts in worship and sermons, even.  I’m particularly glad that the arts work of a local church near us here is included;  kudos to our neighbor DeAnne Roe for how McElroy described the work over at Living Word Community Church. This book is a must-have resource, highly recommended.

Who’s Afraid of Modern Art? Essays on Modern Art and Theology in Conversation Daniel A. Siedell (Cascade) $21.00 I’m not a fan of the bland cover, but this book is anything but bland, and the always interesting, often passionate Siedell has followed up his seminal God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art with a great new volume, a must-have for anyone wanting to stay current with the “state of the art” of recent conversations in this field. This fabulous, richly informed new collection of over 30 essays, is grouped into six major themes. Blurbs on the back include one by David Raskin, the influential (atheist) professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the Art Institute of Chicago. (“He asks important questions about art and belief, and helps me better understand my own passions.”) and by Gregory Alan Thornbury, President of The King’s College in New York City, who, after avery thoughtful summary, says “This is a landmark work, a signal of achievement in the field.” As it says on the back cover, Who’s Afraid of Modern Art? celebrates the surprising beauty of art that emerges from and embraces pain and suffering, if only we take the time to listen. Indeed, as Siedell reveals, a painting is much more than meets the eye.”

Siedell’s serious essays are arranged in these units: The Ear,  The Audience, The Art World, The Artist, The Art, and The Poetics of Modern Art.  Fantastic!

ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art edited by James Romaine and Linda Stratford (Cascade) $41.00 Mr. Romaine has been known in evangelical art circles for years, in part because of his role in Square Halo Books such as It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, Objects of Grace: Conversations on Creativity and Faith, and The Art of Guy Chase. He is now Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art History at Nyack College. Mr. Romaine is the President of the Association of the Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA – who knew?) He recently helped edit the excellent collection of art history essays done in honor of Dr. John Walford, Art as Spiritual Perception (published by Crossway — I named it as a Best Book of 2012, which you can find in this big list, here.)  Linda Stratford is an Associate Professor at Asbury College and a board member of ASCHA as well.  I name these important qualifications to assure you that this hefty book is very well done, a collection of exceptional scholars showing forth their work about the methods they use to do faith-informed, coherent art history.  To suggest that a book about methodologies within a sub- genre of a certain, technical field — Christianly conceived analysis of art history — is worth reading by non-specialists may sound like a stretch, but I think this stuff is very interesting for any adult learner and think it should be available in church libraries and among those who like to think deeply about these sorts of things.  Nearly all of us could benefit from fresh teaching about old stuff, and on one hand we could just consider this a refresher course, a good overview of all kinds of interesting matters.  More so, though,  we can learn much about our own self-awareness about our methods and tendencies and styles of how we engage culture and scholarship by dipping into these keen approaches to Christian engagement with culture. These grapple with how to think faithfully about how we do just that – how we approach this artifact or that painting or the accepted wisdom about this school of thought or that cultural movement – is very, very helpful.

The first batch of essays by world class scholars look at icons and iconography. The next handful of pieces look at methodological issues of reading theology in Renaissance and Baroque Art.  The third section looks at the historical-religious context of Nineteenth, Twentieth, and even a bit of Twenty-first century art.  The authors are from a diverse array of institutions, from The University of Chicago Divinity School to the Pratt Institute , from Duquesne University to several universities throughout the world.

Sanctifying Art: Inviting Conversation Between Artists, Theologians and the Church Deborah Sokolove (Cascade) $22.00  Cascade has an uneven, even peculiar, series, “affs/Art for Faith’s Sake” that is worth knowing about, a series which includes books large and small, including some poetry volumes,  a biblical theology of dance, a splendid, mature work by Bill Dyrness  (Senses of the Soul: Art and the Visual in Christian Worship), a very nice devotional based on Emily Dickinson, the significant ReVisioning book on art history mentioned above, and, a bit oddly, a teaching preaching book by Will Willimon, among others. This is a solid, foundational one, and should be known widely.  As Robin Jenson (herself Professor of the History of Christian Art and Worship at Vanderbilt) says “Deborah Sokolove has given us a rare gift. She has articulated her belief in the value and purpose of art in language that is fresh, convincing, and – perhaps most of all – accessible to and respectful of the lay reader. This is obviously a work of love, and it is a great joy to read.”  Many of the reviews and endorsements have been excellent, nearly urgent: Denise Domblkowski Hopkins says that the author “brilliantly accomplished what she set out to do – change the conversation between artists and the church….” and suggests that much is at stake here.  

The Virtues and Vices in the Arts: A Sourcebook Shawn R. Tucker (Cascade) $33.00  I have not looked through this much, and wondered if it is mostly about the arts, or mostly about virtue, faith-formation and character. The seven deadly sins are known, perhaps the virtues less so, but this book brings all of them together and “for the first time, lays out their history in a collection of the most important philosophical, religious ,literary and art-historical works.”  Is this mostly art history then? Literary criticism? Historical theology? Yes, yes, and yes. It is a massive anthology, putting, in the words of a professor from Bowdoin, “philosophical treatises into conversation with religious and literary compositions.  Even more interesting, he draws on key artistic works, paintings, and sculpture, allowing the reader to imagine other ways to think about ethical problems.”

Seeing the Unseen: Launching and Managing a Church Gallery Sandra Bowden & Marianne Lettieri (CIVA) $30.00 This is another splendid, book which was launched at the 2015 CIVA event, and we are thrilled to have a few here at the shop. Sandra Bowden is, we might note, one of the most informed and respected art collectors in North America, herself a devout Christian and driving force within CIVA for decades. (Some of her own splendid collection is shown in a truly exceptional Square Halo Books coffee table art book, The Art of Sandra Bowden, edited by James Romaine; $49.99.)  Ms Lettieri is a mixed media artist, art instructor, and is currently in a residency at the Cubberley Artist Studios in Palo Alto, California.

This beautifully crafted new book is 10 x 7, spiral bound, and chock full of insight, vision, and lots of very practical advice.  Stepping into this world can be daunting – bad art is an embarrassment and we must resist cheap or unconsidered work, but we must also realize that the power and witness of even the most highly creative, exceptional work can be harmed by shoddy or unprofessional installations.  Anyone who is an artist could benefit from this; anyone who is interested in displaying real work by real artists should know this stuff, and anyone who is serious about doing a gallery, especially in a parish setting, simply must have it.  

The Art of Helping Others: How Artists Can Serve God and Love the World Douglas C. Mann (IVP) $15.00  Mann is a songwriter and former music and publishing executive (not to mention an accomplished visual artist) and has done extensive mission work.  (He currently divides his times between  Colorado and the Ukraine.)  In this book Mann offers a memoir of his own “joy, pain, sacrifice and hope” which calls artists of all sorts, in fact, all followers of Jesus, actually, to lives of “creative incitement to the glory of God.” Although this will inspire you to invite and network artists for activism and service, it will, more deeply, inspire all of us to live more generously, seeing the world in nuanced, colorful ways, and sharing that passionate vision with others. All of us, artists or not, can be encouraged by this author who, Ben Arment says, “has the hands of an artist and the heart of a pastor.” Maybe we all need a little “creative incitement.” 

Life After Art: What You Forgot About Life and Faith Since You Left the Art Room Matt Appling (Moody) $13.99  We stock all the recent books in the recent imprint the “Moody Collective” which are written by younger adults, energetic volumes with an Millennial edge, deeply Christian but not pushy, well written and artful. So it makes perfect sense that the Collective would do a book about the creative passions that so many younger adults long for. (And others, too; recall that Doug Pagitt says we now live in “the inventive age.”)  This nice volume is, interestingly, as cool as their others, but has an appeal to readers of any age.  The topic is a commonly discussed theme – how school and grown- up life seems to squeeze the playful creativity of childhood out of us – but I know of no other book that reflects on this from a Christian viewpoint.  I love the blurb on the back by Anne Jackson, who explains that “Matt takes readers on a journey to the art room to discover our purpose in life, which can be found in our God-given ability to create beauty for the world to see.”  This is a book full of invitation, beauty, grace, and being set free to care about all this more.  I should have listed it in my list of books last months about leisure and play. Very nice.

Sense and Spirituality: The Arts and Spiritual Formation James McCullough (Cascade) $18.00  McCullough has his PhD from the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews so you know this is some serious, meaty stuff.  He has published articles on the music of Anton Bruckner as well as the art of Graham Sutherland and Makoto Fujimura.  This book attempts to explore some new grounds, not just deepening our faithful understanding of aesthetics, nor the general conversation about faith and the arts, or church ministry among artists. This work is hoping to advance our insights about “how the arts might actually advance spiritual formation in terms of the cumulative effect of religious experience and intentional practices.”  It naturally offers more to the discussion between theological aesthetics and practical theology, but, more, it offers an analysis of artistic communication and how music, poetry, and painting can help us in our spiritual formation. Can our experience of the presence of God be animated by our appreciation of aesthetics and by our actual engagement with art?  As Wheaton art professor Matthew Milliner says in his back cover review, “McCullough deftly calls attention to the elephant in the elephant in the aesthetic seminar room: the way that art catalyzes spiritual growth.” 

Van Gogh’s Ghost Paintings: Art and Spiritual in Gethsemane Cliff Edwards (Cascade Books) $16.00 Edwards is a fascinating author, having done books on Japanese haiku, and several previous books on the faith life of Van Gogh and his paintings.  I wish this had come out in time for CIVA; it arrived just after the conference, so here it sits, lovely, beckoning. Elizabeth King, a sculptor who won a Guggenheim Fellowship and a recipient of the Academy Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters says “This is a superb work. The author’s fearless journey into the life of Van Gogh and the interiority of the writing take the readers herself into solitude, loneliness, labor, triumph, and sorrow.  It is a complex work… we treat with this book the very path Van Gogh himself hesitate3d on and wrestled with himself on: the seeming contradiction between the intellect and the spirit in art.  Obviously, the Dutch painter remains one with whom we resonate.  Even Henri Nouwen, who drew so tenderly from Van Gogh, has esteemed Mr. Edwards contributions to Van Gogh studies.

BookNotes

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There is little doubt that for many, the new Os Guinness book, Fools Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion (InterVarsity Press; $22.00 – our cost, $17.60) is one of the most eagerly anticipated books of the year.  Dr. Guinness is one of the most elegant and eloquent speakers and writers I have ever encountered and many esteem him as one of best thinkers and most articulate spokespersons in our generation for informed, thoughtful faith that is Biblical,  culturally engaged and, well, persuasive. Guinness’s global experience as a world traveler (he was born in China, lived in Switzerland, studied at Oxford, resides in the US and often participates in global confabs and international symposia) gives him a cosmopolitan air that is sophisticated and attractive and delicious for those of us who value a great communicator with profound material. Most importantly, he is a lucid and compelling advocate for historic, Biblical faith – not fundamentalist, not aligned with the Christian right (or left), not trendy or peculiar or particularly sectarian, but just solid, sensible and faithfully orthodox. He is an ideal personification of what Lewis called “mere Christianity” or what Stott described as “basic Christianity.” 

Indian born, Cambridge-educated Ravi Zacharias, another internationally-known, elegant speaker and writer, says “Few thinkers rise to the level that Os does, even as he plumbs the depth of vital issues…”

James Sire says, of this new book,

Fool’s Talk is a direct exposition of the inner logic and rhetoric of persuasion, showing how hearers are moved from unbelief and doubt to conviction of the truth of the Christian faith. Guinness’s focus is not only on the nature of effective argument but the character, ethics and faith of the apologist. Intellectually profound and immensely practical.  I loved the book. So will you.

Claremont professor Mary Poplin, whose own journey of faith (by way of Mother Teresa) is wonderfully told in Finding Calcutta and her own cultural assessment is offered in Is Reality Secular? describes the book nicely.  She writes, 

Os Guinness, in his characteristically clear and insightful style, helps us recover the art of persuasively making the case for the truth of Christianity. Fool’s Talk uniquely suggests we use, not the eager-to-win argumentative styles of the twenty-first century, but the persuasive styles of the church fathers, Old Testament prophets, New Testament writers and Jesus himself as our models. The irresistible nature of their reasoning and Guinness’s brilliance in explaining them is a sure guide for apologists and evangelists, which he wisely urges be one in the same.

To understand the significance of this remarkable work, you should know, too, that Guinness – unlike some who write books about evangelism and apologetics, understands beautifully that the gospel to which we invite seekers and the unchurched, is nothing short of the full-orbed Kingdom of God, the Lordship of Christ lived out in all of life, inspired by the Spirit, shaped by grace, for the sake of the world.  

His book 1998 book The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Word; $17.99) is not only a personal favorite of mine, but has proven to be a watershed book, inspiring a renaissance in discussions about vocation and calling and a faith-based view of work across the Christian community.  I routinely cite lines from that great book, drawing on chapters such as “Everyone, Everywhere, in Everything” and “Locked Out and Staying There.”

It was the one book I chose to review when I was asked to contribute to a book called Beside the Bible (edited by Dan Gibson, John Pattison, Jordan Green; IVP; $15.00) which was a collection of 100 reviews of 100 must-read books — a great book itself, by the way.  My own personal debt as a reader to Guinness’s books  – including his first, the out of print study of the 1960s counter-culture called The Dust of Death, which I often mention as seminal and life-changing for me –  is very significant, even if I do not live up to his impeccable intellectual work  or consistent intellectual faithfulness.  Further,  Os and his lovely wife have been friendly supporters of our bookstore and family, and their prayerful encouragement has been a blessing. I say this so that those who are not familiar with his large body of work or his status as a respected elder statesmen within evangelicalism, would consider buying some of his books. Or at least be inspired to follow along carefully as I describe his work.

Listen to this delightful half hour lecture to see what I mean. Please listen to the end — it is very powerful and you’ll surely appreciate it.

I have greatly admired other, smaller books of Guinness’s like Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin and Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance both which emerge from his serious critique of churches – mostly evangelical ones whose leadership seem to have been largely shaped by managerial models, glamour and an obsession with metrics, thriving on techniques of marketing and light-weight seeker messages rather than conventional church models based on mature worship, robust explication of Scripture, and serious, nonpartisan, social witness.  (Although, to be clear, the razor-sharp critique in those books aimed at his fellow evangelicals could equally apply to more liberal churches that embody their own sorts of compromises and idols.)

His passionate, uplifting book of last year, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times (IVP; $16.00) eschews any religious plans to manipulate culture or force social transformation, insisting that even as we work hard to serve the common good, we do so only in God’s ways, relying on Christ alone for cultural renewal, not our political power or social might. (This would be an excellent book to read, by the way, for those who have pondered the Oxford University Press volume To Change the World by James Davison Hunter. Such important and interesting work.)

On my short list of titles that are out of print that I long to see reissued is his brief and potent book about developing the Christian mind called Fit Bodies Fat Minds… Again, there, he calls us out for our sloppy thinking and cultural captivity; it seemed to me to be nearly a manifesto for our work as Christian booksellers.

Despite the somewhat negative tone of some of these broadsides, Os has been more than a curmudgeon lamenting churches with feeble visions of vocation or market-driven views of church growth, or postmodern trendiness. His critiques are usually gracious and most always wise, and doubtlessly on the top of my list of books with which thoughtful Christians of any tradition or church affiliation should grapple.  I can hardly overstate this, and wish many more readers would take them up and share their insights.

Guinness has given us other sorts of books as well, books sometimes on mainstream/secular publishers, books that bank on his reputation as a former scholar at Brookings Institution,  a Senior Fellow of the EastWest Institute in New York, his status as a sociologist with a PhD earned under the eminent Peter Berger, media pundit (who did a stint with the BBC), founder of bi-partisan project designed to deepen American’s appreciation for first amendment freedoms, advocating for structural reforms that promote pluralism, religious diversity and which enhance civility. His hard-hitting book Case for Civility was about much more than public manners but offered positive plans for enhancing better public discourse and stability in the public square. His pair of meaty books  A Free People’s Suicide and The Global Public Square reflected, respectively, on the threats to religious freedom in North America, and globally.  Dr. Guinness has even addressed United Nations diplomats on this topic of religious freedom, inviting them to help “make the world safe for diversity.” A major book, Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil, attempted to enter the conversation about theodicy, not so much to answer the big question of “why” but to offer a framework for thinking about large evils such as genocide or sexual trafficking.  It is a hugely under-utilized book, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Fools Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion is a book that has been nearly a life-time in the making.  Guinness tells us that he made a promise to himself, and to the Lord, that he would not write about evangelism or apologetics (the art of defending the faith and making a persuasive case for the truth claims of the Christian worldview) until he had significant experience doing so. I cannot judge, I really can’t, but I have a sneaking suspicion that some who write books about evangelism have rarely actually led another to lasting faith and some who write about apologetics like to think about the logic of faith, but, again, may not have had much experience actually befriending skeptics and relating well to those who are hostile to Christian conviction. Although Guinness surely knows the benefit of scholars and thinkers and writers — he cites philosophers and scholarly authors on every page! — he is right that bookish guidance about doing this kind of work simply must be field tested and refined by real conversations, with real people, knowing real failures, sometimes through heartache and tears, even. The topic demands real pages written after years of experience and genuine concern. Guinness writes that he has waited 40 years to write this book. 

 Fools Talk is in a sense everything he learned about the topic from three larger than life influences and mentors: C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Peter Berger (to whom the book is dedicated.) 

If this book was Guinness’s guide to either one of these three giants of thoughtful and humane Christian apologetics it would be worth every penny.  That he draws on and in some ways brings together all three is remarkable, even extraordinary. I suspect you have not read a book like this, ever. 

Guinness, you may know, was on staff at Schaeffer’s L’Abri in Switzerland, and remains a friend of the L’Abri movement.  It could be surmised that he may be one of a very small handful of none-family members who knew Schaeffer best. As was mentioned, Guinness earned his PhD at Oxford University in sociology on the esteemed Peter Berger, a renowned sociologist, author, and Lutheran lay leader. Again, he knows the man well. 

On occasion Guinness will share an anecdote about one of these three characters, sometimes telling a personal story of his own conversations with them.  He writes,

C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and Peter Berger did not know each other, and they might not even have liked each other, and they might have heartily disagreed with what I have done with their ideas. But the creative clash of their three quite different ways of understanding has set off a nuclear explosion whose energy has fired by thinking. Indeed, I have worked for years in the light of their ideas, and my gratitude to each one of them is unfathomable. 

Indeed, he has worked for years in their light.  In the early 1980s Guinness tried his hand at a novel, a much-discussed, greatly appreciated story written as a creative set of memos from a spy working for the Enemy (think of a mash-up between John Le Carre and Screwtape) called The Gravedigger Files. This book brought a bit of Lewis, a bit of Schaeffer, and a lot of Peter Berger’s “sociology of knowledge” approach to worldview studies, helping us – via this very creative genre – appreciate the cultural assumptions in the late modern West and the need of the church to be newly faithful.  This was, if I might, the How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor [by James K.A. Smith] of the 1980s, prescient and profound, clever as it was.  Looking back, playfully, it could have almost been called “How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Peter Berger.”  It was edited, expanded and re-issued in 2010 under the title The Last Christian On Earth: Uncovering the Enemy’s Plot to Undermine the Church (Baker; $17.00.) We found it hard to describe and hard to sell, but it is – I’m not kidding! – a wonderfully thoughtful read, a bit of parable, a bit of cultural exegesis, a playful example of some of what Guinness explores in this new Fools Talk: the need to deeply understand the cultural forces that shape how people think and see and understand and live in this culture, and the need to use humor, satire, and “turning the tables” as a form of apologetics. In Gravedigger cum The Last Christian On Earth Guinness does just that.

Which brings us to the very substantial, weighty, examination of the art of persuasion found in this tour de force, Guinness’s 270 page masterwork, inspired by images of the jester, the fool, and what the Apostle Paul called “the foolishness to Greeks.”

In the first few chapters, Guinness is again in his critical mode, exposing the significant failures of apologetics in our day.  Even in the introduction he offers an incisive exploration of the impact of digital technologies – many of us, almost subliminally are about self marketing in this age of tweets and selfies – and the doubled-edges of the sword that this is: people are increasingly open and in communication but yet are therefore increasingly wary, weary, even.  Who can deny the growing suspicions and cynicism many carry in part due to relentless 24/7 advertising and ubiquitous propaganda?  And who can deny that there is much cultural anger against the public face of Christianity, much self-inflicted by the harsher corners of the Christian community? And we all know that there are those who specialize in argument and so-called apologetics but whose loud polemics are simply an embarrassment in contrast to the beauty and grace and richness of the gospel.

Some BookNotes readers will recall our promotion of a book called Slow Church which critiqued the idols of efficiency, technique and speed, and I must say that I thought of that good work by Chris Smith and John Pattison as I followed Guinness’s cultural criticisms. While Smith & Pattison made the case that church should be slowed down, more relational, patient, local, human-scale, Guinness makes parallel recommendations for how we bear witness to the truth of the gospel. We must slow it down, showing more patience, relating well to even our antagonistic conversation partners. We must be aware of the “devil’s bait” of technique and methods, and resist any formulaic, pre-packaged, quick-fix answers. I suspect some of Os’s emphasis on this comes from hanging around Francis and Edith Schaeffer who were renowned for the great care and individualized pastoral and apologetic counsel offered in the context of welcoming hospitality that they would give to each and every person they encountered.  Guinness is adamant about this and while is seems so obvious that it hardly needs saying, it does need saying.  And he says it strongly, even denouncing the “imperialism of technique” and “McTheories.”  

He puts it nicely, saying,

The good news of Jesus is the best news ever, God’s foolishness that is God’s Grand Reversal, which subverts the wisdom of the world to show true wisdom and display real power. Recovering the lost art of persuasion is urgent, timely, and supremely practical, but it is always an art and not a science, and it is not for cheap sales-people but for genuine lovers of Jesus and lovers of truth, beauty, and a knowledge that is more than facts and information. 

Way too many training sessions and books and workshops and manuals are provided – for those who even care enough to do such things these days – offering pat answers and tricky strategies for answering the expected questions that people have.  Guinness will have none of it, insisting that our friendships with seekers and skeptics must be honest, real, true, and that our replies to their views must be unique, thought-through, and always appropriate for the uniqueness of that particular person and his or her needs, issues, questions, at whatever stage they are on in their spiritual journey.

(An aside, which is more than as aside, I guess, as Guinness mentions it: there are those who no longer care about apologetics at all, and this is regrettable. Some seem to think there is something magically powerful about sheer proclamation, and do not emphasize explanation or argument; others have long come to disdain apologetics because they don’t even think it is important to do evangelism. Sad but true. How glad I was, by the way, that at our local PC-USA Presbytery meeting this week there was a workshop on evangelism!)

Consequently, many of the chapters of Fools Talk are about helping us learn the art of what might be called, in this context, spiritual discernment. (I do not recall that Os uses that phrase, actually, but he advises us to size up the situation and gives us pointers for discerning the stage a person may be on in her journey.) Guinness invites to listen well, to ascertain the deepest issues driving the seeker, and learning the art of attending and responding well to these matters.

To help us, Guinness does some heavy lifting for us, reminding us of Biblical stories and explicit teaching about the duplicitous deviousness of the human heart. We surely must know that, apart from God, many are, frankly, not seekers. People are spiritually dubious, tentative at best. Folks hold presuppositions and idols and false hopes. (Lewis cleverly joked about his own religious disinterest as the absurdity of the “mouse stalking the cat.”) Therefore, we must help people deconstruct their own deconstructions (one complex chapter is called “turning the tables”) and with wit and kindness but sometimes also hard words spoken well, help skeptics doubt their doubts. (Timothy Keller writes about this clearly in his important and useful Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.) Guinness uses examples from Lewis, Schaeffer and Berger about doing just this — it is thoughtful, provocative, and finally practical.  I love, for instance, his guidance about moving our discernment about the journey of our conversation partners from a meeting point to a pressure point to a danger point, where they are inevitably forced to wrestle with deep things about their deepest convictions and concerns, and realize the consequences of their ideas and beliefs, or lack thereof.

The Bible study Guinness does here is curiously intriguing. He draws some important truths from stories – including some that may be lesser known. (Occasionally I thought this was a bit tedious, and then – bam! – he’d offer a line of insight or a take-away point that I had not seen coming, or that I had never considered.) Not only does he draw on great Bible stories but he tells great stories from history.  In one section he may tell of a Greek battle or pivotal moment in the Roman Empire and documents the character formation or self-awareness of the ancient leaders and then he will recount the remarkable Christian conversions of serious thinkers such as W.H. Auden or Pascal;  on another page he will bring us into an illuminating episode of existential dilemmas from novels like The Plague or the literary reflections of Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky.  Or, he will tell about his own long journey home.

Guinness knows the best literature and writings of some of the smartest people in the Western world. I do not want to scare you away, but he cites episodes from the profound reflections of some of the most remarkable thinkers  — often to illustrate why great thinkers have rejected the faith, and even if this is slow going for some readers, it is valuable, and you will be rewarded.  

Questions are important to Guinness and he commends to us the art and science of asking good questions, questions that are “spring loaded” with other questions. 

The human heart and mind must be approached wholistically, so doing proper apologetics is – and this is central to the book – not only about logic and reasons and evidences. Truth is known deeply, in ways that are more than merely intellectual, and we appeal to people with their deepest heart-level questions and fears and issues.  Thinkers must think well, but even thinking well is more than a matter of the brain. 

(You may know how Steve Garber has ruminated on this, first in his significant Fabric of Faithfulness and again in the exceptional and profound Visions of Vocation; or how philosopher Esther Meeks has appropriated the work of Nobel Prize winning scientist Michael Polanyi in her Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People or her Little Manuel of Knowing or her massive Loving to Know: Covenantal Epistemology. Guinness does not reference Garber or Meeks, but he might have.)

He even suggests that many moderns have been educated in only the data-oriented left brain, and miss imagination, nuance, analogy, creativity and the like. So our persuasion dare not be reduced to winning intellectual arguments or merely refuting the claims of the atheists.

Guinness knows all this very well, and helps us appreciate the complexity of the apologetic task by quoting or retelling writers, artists, or philosophers who have penned their memoirs or philosophical reflections about their own rejection of faith, their own sense of knowing what they know, and what they came to trust or not trust.  We must understand how the human soul works, and listening in on the likes of Arthur Koestler or Schopenhauer or Nietzsche or Jung or Irtega y Gasset or Ronald Dworkin helps us, especially as Guinness gives us background and uses their quotes so effectively.  Guinness has done the heavy lifting for us, bringing us these reports from the greatest minds that have written about these things, and we would do well to ponder them carefully.  His framing them, explaining what we can learn from the nature of their unbelief is nothing short of brilliant. 

Of course, he tells more than the useful stories that expose the anatomy of unbelief.  He examines the thoughtful conversion narratives of great writes such as Augustine – you really have to know more of his story! – and C.E.M. Joad and Chesterton and Pascal and, of course, C.S. Lewis.  Whether you know these names or not, it is good, intriguing storytelling, offering great, witty lines.

Allow me to say this, however: you may, like me, regret that most of these citations and stories are from great intellectuals of the West, and the novels and plays he cites are decades old, at best.  I do not know if today’s thinkers – young or old – care much about Plato or Milton, Yeats or Kafka, Ibsen or even Iris Murdoch or Agatha Christy.  I wish Os would cite contemporary films or more recent scholars or at least a few contemporary lyrics from indie rock artists or a stand up comedian or TV drama.  I know that Dorothy Sayers and her once-popular mysteries provide great illustrations and certainly most of us need schooled in the writings of Erasmus and Chesterton, say, but it is nearly ironic that in a book so insightful about attending to one’s conversation partner, being a good listener and aware of the audience and her social location and cultural context, Guinness (and his editors?) seem unwilling to offer on-ramps to these significant, older authors. (Don’t you hate it when an author says somebody “famously” says something and it is a person you’ve never heard of, saying something you’ve never heard of?)  Again, it is not bad that Guinness cites Lucretius rather than Ludicrous (your welcome for that wordplay there) or Alberto Giacometti rather than Paul Giamatti (again, your welcome) but it might have been a more reader-friendly book if only…

Another major section of Fool’s Talk comes in chapters that warn about the dangers of our own foibles, and the huge challenges they create in the minds of the unchurched, obstacle for our Christian advocacy.  Useful, must-read books like UnChristian (Gabe Lyons & David Kinnaman), You Lost Me (David Kinnaman) or James Emery White’s The Rise of the Nones are excellent entries to these concerns, but Guinness, naturally, brings a deeper understanding and more profound response.  

For instance, in a chapter on hypocrisy (“Beware the Boomerang”) he offers six steps to pursue in responding to charges of hypocrisy; this is truly valuable since such  accusations are common and, frankly, a legitimate critique of Christian faith — but it is not simplistic. It is rich, good stuff.  Similarly, in a chapter called “The Art of Always Being Right?” Guinness explains the dangers of arrogance and pride and too much confidence in dogmatic, pat answers.  His approving citation of Albert Camus’ brave intent, “To tell the truth without ceasing to be generous” is a good reminder. His call to “gentleness ” and “respect” (see I Peter 3:15) is lovely, and his quoting St Augustine who was “honest facing up to the temptation of using words as power” is fabulous.  His stuff about asking good questions is brilliant.

Guinness observes, “…all too often the urge to win and to win at all costs breaks through in Christian speech, whether in showy exhibitionist rhetoric or ruthless steamrollering.”  Ain’t that so true?

He lifts up famous Christians who showed a better way, from ancients like Gregory of Nazianzus and Ambrose to Chesterton’s decency in his famous debates with George Bernard Shaw, to the (contemporary) “humility and humor of Professor John Lennox of Oxford University in his recent debates with new atheists.” Nice!

Again – to underscore the point of this book which is a guide to learning how to persuade, not just scold or proclaim or badger or win arguments about religion – Guinness in this chapter explores some of the parables of Jesus and how they were so remarkably able to unsettle and expose and invite the hearers to repentance and a realization of grace. He worries that in all our efforts to win debates (at least those of us who enter into religious conversations, having perhaps read books on how to argue well) we sometimes make a winning argument, taking the battle, so to speak, but losing the war, as it were. The goal of our conversations, he repeats, is not to win debates or look good in our sophisticated arguments, but to touch lives, inviting people to faith through grace. We want people to care about truth so they might come to trust the God who loves them so.  He writes,

The false art of always being right is a deadly trap for Christian advocates. Conversely, it is a high privilege to use the art of persuasion to bring people to where they know in their heart of hearts that they are wrong, that God’s offer of grace is free. Little wonder that such a privilege and such an art can only be pursued with humility and with an overwhelming sense of God’s grace to us, too. Again, the art of truth leads back to the incarnation, the cross and the Holy Spirit, and the life of faith continues as it began.

This reminder is the theme of the beautiful Epilogue, called “The Way of the Open Hand.”  He explains that this symbol points us to

the positive side of apologetics that uses the highest strengths of human creativity in defense of truth. Expressing the love and compassion of Jesus, and using eloquence, creativity, imagination, humor and irony, open-hand apologetics has the task of helping pry open hearts and minds that, for a thousand reasons, have long grown resistant to God’s great grace…

You will notice, in this good quote from the last page, that Os mentions the imagination, humor and irony.  These are actually explored in great detail – rather humorlessly, I might note – as Guinness teaches us from Peter Berger, who wrote (in the 1960s) profound work on what we might call the sociology and spirituality of humor.  The chapter called “spring loaded dynamics” is perhaps the most challenging in the book and yet may be the most important.  Here, Guinness’s debt to Berger and Schaeffer and Lewis are evident, and it is nothing short of brilliant.  Yet, dense and brilliant as it is, it must be read in light of a previous chapter – one that has Berger’s fingerprints all over it – called “Triggering the Signals.”  

You may have heard the phrase (coined by Berger, I gather) “signals of transcendence.” Lewis himself explained how this reality was key in his own conversion (“surprised by joy”) and Os develops it clearly. 

Shifting from Lewis to Berger, he writes, 

Berger’s rich discussion of other signals of transcendence are a goldmine for the Christian advocate. It covers such typical human experiences as hope, play, humor, order, and judgement. His discussion is fresh and invigorating, but we should see it as a brilliant rediscovery rather than as radically new, for this was a powerful theme in the early church.  In the third century, for example, Gregory of Nyssa built on the Greek notion of desire and developed it in a biblical direction.

Guinness is fantastic here, swiftly reminding us of Gregory’s profound teaching, shifting to Augustine, noting that “the same understanding of desire blazes in St Augustine, fanned by his own experience of passionately searching for God” and then on to, for instance, the telling of the story of Le Chambon (the famous town in France that hid Jews from Nazism’s reach) and how author Philip Hallie (Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed) was drawn to “how goodness happened there.” 

Of course, when a seeker realizes that there must be some Giver if there are gifts, some Signaler if there are signals, some Meaning-giver if there is any meaning, he or she can still say “yes,” “no” or “not yet” to the invitation to understand that Meaning-giver as the God of the Bible, incarnate in Jesus the Christ.  People may “fall on their knees or turn on their heels.”  Like in his wonderfully rich book for seekers called The Long Journey Home: A Guide to Your Search for the Meaning of Life (WaterBrook; $18.99)  Guinness helps us chart the journey of our conversation partners, helping them do some ruthlessly honest self appraisal, realizing that signals of transcendence may not immediately draw skeptics to faith.  (That is why we need “spring loaded” dynamics, asking probing questions, and the tools of wit and irony and even the ploys of good drama to push and pull our friends to deeper questions and new plausibilities and finally new answers.)

You see, all of this is complex and serious, demanding that we unlearn and relearn how to persuade, not just win arguments or, worse, meanly moan about the atheists and unchurched and nones.  We need fresh, thoughtful evangelism, and that will mean learning this discerning art and taking up with fresh energy the call to be persuasive.  Of course we only do this in concert with the Holy Spirit of God, whose job it is to call and convert and transform.  Yet, we have our part to play.

And here is a large point: we may seem like fools to the watching world to press hard to give a fulsome witness to faith  – no matter how creatively and winsomely and passionately we argue. Are we willing to seem like “fools for Christ?” 

And is there some sense in which our foolishness is just what is needed? 

Guinness thinks that is exactly right and he has talked about this often in older lectures and has hinted at it in more than one book.  His chapter “The Way of the Third Fool” that clarifies what he means by being a fool, based on his astute reading of the notion of foolishness in the Bible, is very important, and I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it anywhere.  You will have to ponder it a bit, but it is quite intriguing.  Just for instance, at one point, he draws on the notion of  a book by Desiderius Erasmus, published in Rotterdam in the early 1500s called The Praise of Folly. 

This is tricky business, though, and we need Guinness’s good guidance to get it right, I think.  Of Erasmus’s satirical project, he writes, 

Needless to say, not everyone understood Erasmus’s point. On the one hand, some people failed to understand his fool-making style and interpreted him woodenly. One stolid reviewer, a fellow cleric, wrote that now that Erasmus had written his brilliant book The Praise of Folly, he should consider writing a second book, The Praise of Wisdom. Poor man. Earnest, wooden and literalistic, he had missed the point. Erasmus had written The Praise of Wisdom but he had written it upside down and inside out in order to be more persuasive to those who were resistant to being challenged. 

One of the things I appreciate about Fools Talk is how Guinness himself sometimes helps us from misunderstanding. In a section talking about the use of the arts to help us in this process of “turning the tables” and offering “spring loaded” questions, he tells of an artist who objected, wondering if this intentional nuancefulness was demeaning the arts themselves, recruiting them for some subversive task that had this apologetic goal. Os’s response, although brief, is clear and helpful.  Throughout, just when things are piling up, quotes and ideas and points and theological polemics, he offers a story, an example, often from his own life.  From conversing with atheist philosopher A.J. Ayer during a train ride to his own experience pondering life’s meaning when a possible brain tumor threatened his well being, Guinness brings this all home. He is a scholar and learned writer, but he is not a dry intellectual.  I learned years ago that he does not view that epithet as a compliment. 

Well.  Readers can tell this work comes from a life time of thinking and doing.

The wait was worth it. 

This is a book that combines great learning, passion for God’s glory and Biblical truth, and a great array of experience with life, with friendships, with conversations with world-class thought leaders as well as with ordinary people, from militant atheists to disillusioned church goers, older and younger, well-educated and less so.  The writing is not simplistic, as this is no simple matter. Lives are at stake and while the destiny of each soul and the health of our post-Christian culture finally is in the hands of the God of heaven and Earth — remember his previous book Renaissance — we have to be attentive to serious matters in these serious times.  Dr. Guinness has thought hard, read widely, listened well, and is always the teacher, inviting us to consider things not only in a new light, but in a deeper hue.  I respect his work, and commend it to you. I especially recommend this brand new Fools Take: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion.

***

So here I am, trying my best to describe this book, to pique your interest, but, perhaps I am not being persuasive.  What an irony!!  Please, please, forgive me for my lack of clarity or for not making this sound compelling.  I invite you to ponder your own needs and interests, and invite you to work through this book, perhaps with another.  I think it will be illuminating, helpful, and, for some, even if you may not agree with every bit, it will be a paradigm-shifting, transforming experience. 

Fools Talk is, in the words of Jerry Root (himself a Lewis scholar) “necessary and vitally important.” 

Michael Ramsden of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics says it is “a remarkable book… I whole-heartedly recommend it.” 

Or, if I may dare marshal evidence, our friend and professor of these very topics, William Edgar, writes, interestingly,

There is no doubt about it, Christian apologetics is having a renaissance. Oddly though, precious little of it addresses the art of persuasion. Who better to redress this lacuna than the preeminent apologist of our times, Os Guinness. Among the many virtues of Fool’s Talk is the presentation of a robust Christian faith that is not predictable. Many people are so sure they know what Christians are going to say that they don’t actually listen. Guinness keeps them off-balance, much in the way Jesus’ parables caught his audiences off-guard. Faced with a plethora of modern challenges, from technology to globalization to political sales talk to moral relativism, we are tempted to develop a single, safe, reactionary method–ten steps to the punch line. Guinness does the opposite. Like G. K. Chesterton in an earlier age, Guinness reminds us that truth is quite unlikely, that is, dubious to unaided reason. He advocates a broad range of arguments, all of them imaginative, but all of them pointing to the surprising truth, the unpredictable love of God.”

BookNotes

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I hope you read my last post reflecting on the diversity of views within the broader church and the need to work for greater unity in Christ, showing grace to those with whom we may disagree.  The two main books I reviewed are a bit different in style and tone, but both are beautiful and important.

Regardless of  the degree of your own passion to know and relate well to Christians of other denominational traditions, worship styles, theological methods, cultural leanings, or ethical and political convictions, the fact of the matter is that many churches, or at least most of the ones I know, are themselves nearly ecumenical centers, not quite hotbeds of theological diversity, but more varied then most folks admit. To use Richard Foster’s helpful image, some of us have been refreshed by more than one “stream” or type of Christianity.

I know this isn’t commonly assumed, but think about it.  Even conventional, denominational churches have folks who have been informed by non-denominational traditions – – they’ve appreciated some TV preacher, they’ve read one of the ubiquitous evangelical authors, they attend a neighborhood Bible study led by moms from the local community church, their kids were involved in an interdenominational campus ministry like CCO or IVCF or Cru.  Those raised in United Methodist homes marry Lutherans and end up Episcopalian. Folks once fired up in a small charismatic Bible study have found a place in a quiet CM&A church; I know a few PCA pastors who are now wearing clericals, serving within the RCA. UCC congregations have former Catholics, and some Orthodox parishes are made up of former independent evangelicals, who were shaped by C.S. Lewis or Dr. Dobson as much as the Desert Fathers or Alexander Schmemann.  And, of course, many congregants read, for better or worse, religious news from the mainstream media, take in some Biblical archeology from The History Channel, and come to their own conclusions about this or that as they talk about the pastor’s sermon over Sunday dinner.  Church people are not as uniform in their beliefs as we tend to assume, and there are different stages and ages and perspectives on faith within almost any normal church.

Some tensions within our churches come from what one might say are worldview differences.  Jack Haberer years ago studied Presbyterian churches and learned that some members in the same congregation most valued creedal faithfulness, others vibrant worship, others still are glad if their church gives them opportunity for meaningful mission, etc. If you are a relational type and you have dear sisters and brothers, you may not mind a bad sermon.  If you are deeply involved in rewarding volunteer work with youth, say, and see vibrant youngsters maturing in faith, you may not care if you like the music in worship or not. That is, what people most want in a church, what they think most counts, emerges from deep assumptions. It may be helpful to explore what we most think of when we think of good faith or a good church to discover why what agitates one person isn’t a big deal to another. That book was called GodViews: The Convictions That Drive Us and Divide Us (WJK; $20.00) and I think there is something to that.

Churches are not as diverse culturally or racially as they ought to be – I’ve shared resources about being more multi-ethnic over and over for years and years, and am grateful that publishers are helping us with insight and ideas — but there is theological diversity in many churches.  Evangelical churches have folks sneaking off to read Diana Butler Bass or the late Marcus Borg and more theologically liberal parishes have members who have found renewed faith by reading Tim Keller or Nancy Pearcey. And everybody is reading (the Roman Catholic) Henri Nouwen or watching videos on spiritual formation by John Ortberg or Ruth Haley Barton who draw on monastic wisdom.  (This diversity can be destabilizing and troubling or it can be a resource for greater depth and charity, but that is a topic for another day.)

My point is that there are differences that we have to manage and the more we share our faith journeys the more honest we will have to be about this.  Further, of course, many churches are still in conflict over worship styles and local ministry plans or budgets, as the ethos of most every congregation is evolving, changing with new leadership and new times and new members. 

Even if a congregation’s members mostly share a common faith orientation, they disagree about the details of running the church.  It seems there is often room for trouble,  conflict to be managed, hurts to be healed.  So we need not only graciousness about our theological differences, but reminders of our relational loyalties, learning to deepen our sense of belonging to one another.

The buzz word of our time, it seems to me, is community, and the longings which have put this word on everyone’s lips are profound and will endure. From those of us who remember the shared friendships lost and lamented in The Big Chill or who came of age watching Thirty-Something or even Parenthood, we long for deep relationships, lasting loyalties, and meaningful friendships.  (Do you recall my BookNotes review of the recent Brazos Press book by Wesley Hill called Spiritual Friendship? It is so good!) We want to “do life together.” We read the Bible and realize that Christian faith is communal, deeply relational. American individualism, we increasingly realize, is profoundly flawed and ultimately deadly.  The Triune God is relational, and we are wired for community. Wendell Berry is right when he talks about “membership” in the commonwealth. We are in this together.

Living with grace and honoring the diversity of personalities, theologies, politics and customs at the local church level may be the crucible for learning the habits of heart and (yes) practices that will help us be more ecumenical in the broader Christian community, too (not to mention more civil in the public square.)  Doing local church well, nourishing community and care in what some call “body life”  — the life lived out together in the local body of Christ in the ways the New Testament mandates —  is urgent not just for the health of the local church, but is a school for relating well at the macro-level.  

I would like to think that those who pass the peace with brothers and sisters in worship, embodying practices of reconciliation, week by week, will be nicer people over time, and these folks will play well together at church board meetings and the like.  They’ve offered blessings to people, even people they may not like, in this ritual, after all, and we thereby learn to do this stuff, “practicing” in worship what it means to be a peacemaker, out in the world. I would like to think that then those folks who learn to be generous and gracious in the Christian congregation, learning attitudes and skills of community there,  will also be the kinds of people who refrain from virtual ugliness on the internet.  Yet, I know there are people – me? -who sometimes say things on line that they would never say in person, face-to-face. So the formation of habits that allow us to be in community in the local church, even being skilled peacemakers there, is not a magic bullet or the only way to deepen our ecumenical manners or our public civility. But it helps.  

(For deeper explorations of this, by the way, how the rituals of Christian liturgy form us, please see James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works (Baker; $22.99 each.) I can’t tell — although I’ve tried in these pages and elsewhere — how very important these serious works are.)

So, yes, yes, talking about community is important. We have a large section of these kinds of resources in the shop (not to mention a whole shelf full of books designed to help small groups leaders nurture better small groups, which is a good step towards more Biblically-shaped, living together in community. Send us a note if you need help with your small group or a small group ministry in your church.) But “community” means much more then having a small group.

Here are 15 books on building community, working for unity in the local church, being the Body.

Life Together  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (HarperOne) $14.99  Bonhoeffer, you may know, wrote his PhD thesis on the nature of the church (perhaps inspired by an epiphany he had about the profound nature of ecclesiology while worshipping once on Palm Sunday in Rome.) His call to radical discipleship and loving service for the sake of the world is deeply interwoven with his views of the forming power of the local Christian church. This is, as the cover rightly proclaims, “The Classic Exploration of Christian Community.”  Not many books have endorsing blurbs on the back by Richard Foster, Henri Nouwen, and The New York Times, so I hope you realize this is truly one of the great books of our time.  Serious, brief, powerful. It’s a must-read that should be available in your church library and on your shelf.

Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us  Christian D. Pohl (Eerdmans) $20.00 A thoroughly captivating, fascinating, wise and important book for any educated reader.  It is in many ways beautiful, naming and exploring four essential practices that sustain a sense of community, and the obstacles of living into them in these days.  This is so good, there is really nothing quite like it in print, making it a must-have, must read book.  In a way is a follow up to Pohl’s very important and equally wonderful work on hospitality, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Eerdmans; $21.00)  Yes!

Lessons in Belonging: From a Church-Going Commitment Phobe Erin S. Lane (IVP) $16.00  I have raved about this book before, and think it should be high on the list of books you read about how the local church can be a place of deeper relationships and community. The author is a heck of a great writer — young, a bit snarky, not exactly as colorful as Anne Lamott, say, but equally as funny, she is energetic and wonderfully able to craft very creative, entertaining sentences.  Her story — as a hip, young woman, married to a young pastor — follows her own ambivalence about commitment.  She calls herself a “commitment phobe” and although that sounds like some generational stereotype, the concerns are real for many of us — introverts and skeptics and those who have been hurt or fear deeper friendships. This is a good, smart book about the ups and downs of belonging, even to a small, normal church, and I recommend it highly.  There is a great foreword by her friend and mentor, Quaker writer Parker Palmer.  Phyllis Tickle says “One of the clearest and certainly one of the most informing pictures I have seen to date of the generation of young adults who presently are shaping the twenty-first century church.” 

Disunity in Christ:Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart Christena Cleveland (IVP) $16.00  I’ve given enthusiastic shout-outs about this before, in print, and at events, hoping that many will want to grapple with this great book.  It is not the only book about the things that divide us such as race and class and gender, but it is perhaps the best.  It is great because Ms Cleveland is Biblically-grounded, clear, and also because she is, interestingly, upbeat and even humorous. Heady, heavy, liberationist hermeneutics about class and gender may appeal to liberal academics, but most of us – whether we are in mainline churches or evangelical fellowships- need encouragement, challenge, inspiration, and useful guidance. Cleveland is an African American sociologist and teacher, and is well suited to help us navigate this provocative stuff, and she does it really well.  She tells good stories, offers keen insight, pushes us a bit, and invites God to guide us into deeper unity and mature diversity.  I love this author and her good book, and believe it will help us uncover hidden influences, allowing us to move in healthy directions, for God’s glory.  Please, read this book!  You’re sense of community can only be enhanced by exploring how even our conversational patterns can be off putting, and how learning some cross-cultural awareness can help. Cleveland is now the Director of the exceptional Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School.

A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God’s Design for Life Together Scot McKnight (Zondervan) $19.99 Dr. McKnight is a major, evangelical, Bible scholar, one who has written detailed commentaries and academic work, as well has helpful books for on everything from fasting to praying the hours to the ethics of following Jesus to interpreting the Bible. We regularly promote his One.Life and (mostly positively) reviewed his important The Kingdom Conspiracy.  Here he is doing what he sometimes does – offers mature and informed scholarship in chatty, upbeat, funny and sensible ways, making it informative and inspiring. I like McKnight a lot and really appreciate his insistence in this book that our local congregations should be more diverse, less homogeneous, more gracious, a place where we learn to live together, witnessing to the world about the peace that passes understanding.  The title is a great one, eh?  In a few chapters, McKnight gets at this as well as any other book, and speaks bold truth, even hard truth, in ways that seem natural and do-able. Thanks be to God for this good brother and his generous vision of a diverse church and his explaining how the glories of the reign of God must be known and shown in the local church, where people flourish and grace is experienced and diversity is event, even as a deeper unity is celebrated and broken relationships are healed.  Yet, I must say, a few of these chapters – as good as they are – drift off into what I might call “basic Christian growth” offering (very) good insight for daily discipleship but seeming to be not terribly connected to the basic point of the book. I am not sure I agree with the blurb on the back by Derwin Gray (“This is the most important book you may ever read outside of the Bible”) but it does indicate that it is exceptionally useful. Christena Cleveland says “Anyone who desires unity with all of God’s people, not just the ones who are most like us, will be emboldened by this book.” Let’s hope!

Building Up One Another Gene Getz (David C. Cook) $12.99  This little volume is a powerhouse of a paperback, a simple bit of Bible teaching by a fine evangelical leader (now consulting as the president of Center for Church Renewal.) This is a tremendous idea, each chapter a study of one of the many “one another” commands in the New Testament. He unpacks the meaning and offers simple suggestions for building up one another, serving one another, bearing with one another, even teaching on the seemingly mundane mandates like greeting one another. The study guide that is included is helpful, with some self-assessment questions, too. This will help us get beyond merely tolerating one another, but living into the truth of our being “members of one another.”  Very practical, no-nonsense, practical.

The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive Mark Dever & Jamie Dunlop (Crossway) $15.99  This new book is a very solid, conservatively evangelical study of how the gospel itself is what transforms a church. It contrasts the often frenzied efforts to “create” community and resists any pre-packaged plan or manipulation to develop deeper relationships with their sense that the preaching of the gospel, and a church being shaped by the historic marks of the church, will, with proper vision casting and gospel-centered teaching, become a body of those who truly love one another and reach out with hospitality and care to others. Dever and Dunlop are leaders at the thriving Capitol Hill Baptist and their church is nicely well known for their tight-knit community. They provide “an alternative to running your church on the building blocks of specialization and segmentation.” Designed mostly for church leaders — there are excellent pieces about structural matters in the congregations ethos or schedule that mitigate against the teaching of each chapter —  this is a seriously Biblical call to authentic Christian community in the well-ordered, grace-based local congregation.

The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love James Bryan Smith (IVP) $23.00  Oh, how I hope you know this trilogy of books – the Apprentice Series.  Dallas Willard says of them that they are “The best practice I have seen in Christian spiritual formation.”  The first was The Good and Beautiful God followed by The Good and Beautiful Life.  This third one, with good Bible study, helpful and inspiring insights, and practical “Soul Training” exercises, is all about the local church, the community in which we find ourselves, those to whom we belong and are bound together for spiritual formation and whole-life discipleship.   Can we live out Galatians 5:6 – faith expressing itself through love? Can we create local faith communities that could honestly be called “good and beautiful”? One doesn’t have to read these books in order (although it may help.) Lovely, good, true.

Lean on Me: Finding Intentional, Vulnerable, and Consistent Community Anne Marie Miller (Thomas Nelson) $15.99  I hope you know Miller, who wrote a the profoundly moving Permission to Speak Freely which is also about being vulnerable, real, gut-wrenchingly accepting within the local church. Here she tells her own story – itself worth reading – and draws helpful principles for renewal, committed, healing relationships. Upbeat, conversational, very interesting for those who appreciate such an honest, passionate voice.  This is a great read and would make a nice choice for a book club.

Community in the Inventive Age  Doug Pagitt (Abingdon) $16.99  I love the way this book does some clear-headed, basic, cultural assessment – showing how things have shifted from the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age and what kinds of churches tended to emerge in those social settings – helping us understand some of the contours of our own “inventive” era.  He may or may not be fully right about this age of transition and how that means we must rethink leadership patterns and faith formation within the local congregation, but I assure  you it is interesting and important material. Some serious sociologists might take exception to his quickly summarized categories and some serious theologians will think he’s a bit light-weight on stuff that matters most, but for a quick read to stir the pot, it is a very, very helpful manifesto.  If you like Len Sweet’s early work, Phyllis Tickle’s cultural analysis, if you’ve followed the Emergent conversations, you will appreciate this insight gleaned from Pagitt’s own Solomon’s Porch, a wholistic missional community in Minneapolis.  See also his Evangelism in the Inventive Age and Preaching in the Inventive Age.  Very candid and creative about new ways to do church, based less on “bounded sets” but relationships.

A Good Neighbor: Benedict’s Guide to Community Robert Benson (Paraclete) $14.99  I raved about Robert Benson as a writer and inspired, down-to-Earth spiritual guide in the last BookNotes post, telling about his poignant book lamenting our denominational disunity, The Body Broken. Here, he offers a too brief, splendidly written, truly lovely meditation on meaningful connections — in your small group, in your neighborhood, amongst your friends, and of course in your own local congregation, drawing on the ancient Rule of St Benedict of Nursia.  Most of us, he explains, are involved with many people, mostly all day long, but still feel disconnected, even lonely. As it says on the back A Good Neighbor “takes an intimate look at how others are defining, discovering, nurturing, and sustaining life and love right where you are. Facing the confusing contradictions of modern life head on, Benson shows what it means to live in our neighborhoods, work at our jobs, be family, and be friends, in ways that builds places of relationships, love, and mutual support.”  I adore this gentle guide to Benedictine views of promises and belonging and service to and with one another;  what is interesting, and what sets this book apart somewhat from most others on this list, is that, in Benson’s hands, this monastic vision drawn from the Rule is applied to ordinary life for ordinary folk, less about forming “a” community (at church, in a small group, in an intentional community household) but more about being open to deep friendships and a sense of belonging to one another in various spheres of life and in various locations. He talks about how people are “given” to us — those who routinely cross our paths or are in some sort of relationship, gently giving a holy obligation to see each as a gift. What a lovely, lovely, book!

Life Together in Christ: Experiencing Transformation in Community Ruth Haley Barton (IVP) $18.00  While this book is initially, mostly, about spiritual formation – learning to practice the classic disciplines, creating “sacred rhythms” in order to experience God’s gentle transformation as we encounter the centering Spirit – it insists that this happens best when we are in community.  In many ways, Ruth has been one of our best guides into the inner life, in her great books In Search of Silence and Solitude and Sacred Rhythms and Deepening the Soul of Your Leadership. However, here  she brings these insights and invitations to a transformed life into the context of an intimate community, offering guidance for small groups who want to do this inner work together.  My, my, this is sweet, challenging, vital material, fabulous for any small group wanting to experience God, opening themselves to spiritual transformation together.

The Communal Imagination: Finding a Way to Share Life Together Mark Votava (Urban Loft Publishers) $12.99 The author is part of a missional faith community in Tacoma Washington, living in incarnational ways that allow for a deep sense of place to emerge, and in this splendid, thorough work shows how the local church body can help us slow down, learn from our local region, and resist the hyper-mobile, individualistic culture, creating, instead, places where people can know and be known, love and be loved. Missional theologian Michael Frost says “Mark Votava’s book is like a smooth stone in a churning stream…it is a sure and unwavering call to simplicity, presence, attentiveness, and collaboration. Read it slowly. It calls us to nothing less then a new way of being human.” A visionary, important book from a small, indie press.

Community and Growth  Jean Vanier (Paulist Press) $22.95  I do not know if most ordinary church folks will want to wade through this thick and important work, but you should know it, and realize it is perhaps the best thing written in our time about deepening serious, intentional community.  You may know Jean Vanier as the gentle, French Canadian who started the L’Arche communities (that so attracted Henri Nouwen in the last years of his life) which forms community with persons with disabilities. Here, he draws on ancient monastic wisdom, psychological and spiritual insights, and invites us to give ourselves to one another in service and care. Anyone living in any sort of intentional community household must know this, and anyone longing for the deepest sort of communal experience will benefit.  This is a masterpiece.

The Intentional Christian Community Handbook: For Idealists, Hypocrites, and Wannabe Disciples of Jesus David Janzen (Paraclete) $19.99  This is another book that simply has to be on this list — it is really the only and very best book of its kind — event though it has, admittedly, a pretty small market.  This is a wonderful guidebook for those who want to live together in intentional community, doing house-holding together, maybe drawing on new monastic insights, forming relationships shaped by common rules and practices. The foreword is by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, which will give you a hint of its vision. Janzen (who graduated from Bethel College and studied at Harvard Divinity School)  has been part of significant intentional communities such as New Creation Fellowship and Reba Place Fellowship.  Whether you are interested in “living together in a world falling apart” or have any sort of housing ministry — maybe a discipleship house, a Fellows community, a camping staff that live together, or a house or cell church — this is going to be really useful.  There are tons of good stories, interviews, wise guidance and substantive input about being in intentional community and deeper levels of body life.

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

We’ve been out selling books with several good groups, meeting new customers and old friends, jacked up on caffeine and adrenaline and a bit of Holy Spirited energy to serve God’s people, even if it means packing boxes at 2 am, driving miles through heat or rain, lugging hundreds of heavy boxes up or down stairs and down hallways, setting up books with more theological diversity then most people ever see, anywhere.  From the classic marble and wood and stained glass of Lancaster Seminary (yes, it reminds us of Hogwarts) to the modern, sleek beauty of the new performing arts center at Messiah College, to other nice or not so nice spaces, we’ve brought out pop-up bookstore on the road, grateful for the trust groups put in us to offer our resources for their events. 

Nearly the first to arrive and always the last to leave these gatherings,  Beth and I have time to ponder the event as we tear down, debriefing what we’ve heard, sharing about the people we’ve chatted with,  reviewing the books that sold (or the ones that didn’t, always a curious, depressing matter.) Each event is a blessing, even though we sometimes come away perplexed about the habits, customs and theologies of groups that aren’t exactly our own.

LONG, WIDE PEWS

Which reminds us of just how diverse the church is, how long and wide the figurative pews are with folks sitting here or there, scattered all over the place.  As passionate as we are about being ecumenical and serving the vast array of groups that we do, it isn’t always pleasant, holding this diversity together.  From our local church to our on-line customer base to our conference friends, it is hard, knowing how broken the Body is.

UGH

Just a few weeks ago an esteemed congregation from the conservative, evangelical network called the Gospel Coalition had a meltdown with accusations of inappropriate, heavy-handed abuse of authority.  I have been sad to see a seemingly responsible, gospel-centered church so confused, but also have been troubled hearing the harsh judgements back and forth about this church. (Surely there is toxic stuff in other sorts of congregations; the ultra-conservative church culture of the Duggarts aren’t the only breeding grounds for religious weirdness, and those who throw stones should be careful.)

TONY CAMPOLO

And then the internet lit up a week ago up with the revelation that our friend, the famous Baptist evangelist and social action advocate Tony Campolo,  came out in favor of full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church.   Some of the mainline churches who we’ve served with our book displays – the Penn Central UCC had me do two workshops on “Reading as a Spiritual Discipline” for the sake of church renewal just a few days ago – have long settled this matter, with creative exegesis of Biblical texts and their convictions that (perhaps like the Jerusalem Council in Acts) the Spirit can guide us into new understandings of old rules. While some of our friends were rejoicing that Tony finally turned faithful on this, others were going ballistic.

HERESY?

That most evangelicals and Catholics disagreed with Dr. Campolo makes sense, but that some would say that because we disagree about exegesis of a few passages about this particular topic, Campolo is now “apostate” and “heretical” is troubling, and is, in my view, itself bad theology.  A dear friend barbed me with this accusation of “heretical” (we attend a PCUSA church) but that oddly didn’t hurt, because I know the friend loves me, even if he is sloppy in his word choice. However, I am grieved at the hard stuff some have said about Tony. The historic creeds of the church say nothing about our detailed philosophies of how the Bible works, and nothing about contemporary, ethical issues (from war to sexuality, science to art, poverty to bio-ethics.) Not all viewpoints are equally consistent with Biblical truth or appropriate for the faithful, and it is never acceptable to disregard Scriptural teaching, but surely there are some issues on which we might agree to disagree, without breaking fellowship or using words like apostasy.  In Romans 14, Paul himself suggests there are “disputable matters” over which we can respect the conscience of brothers and sisters with whom we disagree. 

(Mennonites and other Biblical pacifists have long thought that other evangelicals and main line Protestants are Biblically unfaithful and theologically liberal for disregarding or explaining away what they see as crystal clear texts and Biblical teachings – that war and killing is worldly and a sin to which Christians are called to respond with Christ-like nonviolence – but they do not suggest that those with more traditional views are thereby heretics.  They do not break fellowship over the fact that others disagree with their literal views of these Bible texts, and I admire them in their generosity in this matter, even thinking it could be a model for other disagreements within the Body of Christ.)  

AGREE TO DISAGREE BECAUSE WHAT WE HAVE IN COMMON IS PRECIOUS

So, it may be a healthy spiritual practice to agree to disagree about some things, even things we hold dear (as do Biblical pacifists about Jesus’s teaching about nonviolence, for instance.)

For instance, in a startling pastoral letter to his own famously charismatic Vineyard congregation, expanded and published into a book called Letter to My Congregation (David Crumm Media; $16.95), pastor Ken Wilson shared his own conviction that same sex relationships may best be considered within the local congregation in this way, as a Romans 14-type “disputable matter” not worthy of breaking fellowship over, and invites others at his Vineyard congregation to stay in conversation, in fellowship, even though he and his leadership have shifted in their pastoral position regarding full inclusion of gays, lesbians, and those who are transgendered.

Although my point in this rumination is to invite us to more civility in our discourse, greater tolerance with our conversation partners, even giving others “the benefit of the doubt” that they’ve done homework and made serious Biblical evaluation in whatever views they hold, it might be wise to suggest — on this very topic of discussions about differences in theologies of inclusiveness in the church of GLTB believers — the book I have mentioned before as the best I can recommend for deeper, more faithful, more generous conversations, called Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church by Wendy Vander Wal-Gritter (Brazos Press; $16.99.) You can see my previous (brief) remarks about it here, when I named it one of the Best Books of 2014.

EUB, UNITED METHODIST, LUTHERAN, BRETHREN … and EVANGELICAL

Beth and I were raised in fairly conventional mainline denominational churches. My small home church, where I was taught about salvation and Jesus and living right, was EUB, before merging with the Methodists in 1965, and Beth was raised Lutheran, learning early on about church history and liturgy, law and grace. And while she has some Anabaptist blood in her family background, I think I’ve got some in my veins.  Yet, I was shaped primarily by different sorts of evangelicals, charismatics,  teachers of conservatively, Reformed, systematic theology and worldviewish, Dutch neo-Calvinists who called themselves reformational as they promoted the Lordship of Christ over all of life.  Sure I did a stint, happily, at the progressive faith-based social action mission, the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, and knew the radical Berrigan brothers.  Jim Wallis of Sojourners was the first book signing we did in our store 30 some years ago, I think. 

STREAMS OF LIVING WATER

You can see why I really, really love Richard Foster’s mature and wise book about honoring the strengths of the diverse streams of spirituality that flow through the church, Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith (HarperOne; $15.00.) I resonant and value each of these “streams” and am glad for their renewing influences in my own life.  At heart, though, I am an evangelical,  deeply committed to the standard fundamentals of the faith, the first things of the gospel, perhaps a bit more then what Lewis called a “mere Christian.”

I say all this to share my heart – broken, again – as I ponder the grand diversity within the Body of Christ and the sad ways in which so many in various churches or camps don’t know or respect each other.  More liberal mainline folks mock evangelicals, and conservatives consider liberals beyond the pale. Terse rebukes and name-calling persists, while substantive and gracious ecumenical dialogue is rare. The antagonism on display in some quarters about Campolo is nothing new, but just newly reminded me of this, vicariously;  hanging out at our various book tables with differing groups this month reminds us of it more directly. We are usually deeply enriched by our ecumenical experiences, even if we are sometimes frustrated that this group seems to have these blinders, and those have those blinders. (Ahh, and they all expose my own!)  One person said to me that if our more conservative customers knew what we were doing with these mainline Lutherans or UCC folk, they’d worry, and I suppose that is true. And even though I understand the substantive matters that nearly necessitate the mistrust and broken fellowship among us, it makes me sad.

Yet, there is hope. At the liberal Lancaster Seminary two weeks ago, I felt the sadness of an Orthodox priest who could not share Eucharist with Catholics and Protestants in the group; I know that there is great longing for deeper inter-denominational awareness in some quarters.  The UCC planners of this event had as speakers a fiery Mennonite leader, a Pentecostal scholar, and a Dutch Reformed ecumenist (a relative of the famous theologian from the Free University  of Amsterdam, G.C. Berkouwer.) Next year, one of their keynotes speakers is a professor from Westminster Theological Seminary.  That mainliners invite such folk to their events is nearly miraculous and seems to me a signpost of the Kingdom!

At Baltimore’s Saint Mary’s Ecumenical Institute a few weeks ago (at an event I wrote about previously) Mike Gorman, a very reputable and important New Testament scholar, had responding to his paper on his new book Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation and Mission (Eerdmans; $28.00)  John Franke, who has written widely on the theology, has a little book on Barth, and on the culturally-savvy, missional church (he’s a PCUSA Presbyterian) and Stephen Bauman, who works for World Relief, the hunger and relief agency of the National Association of Evangelicals, whose good book Possible: A Blueprint for Changing How We Change the World  is published by the typically evangelical Multnomah Books ($22.99.)  You see, there are robust conversations going on, with diverse conversation partners, doing the “iron sharpens iron” bit from Proverbs 27.  We are glad for these nice events.

Still, the ways in which we are quick to condemn and judge and critique – I am talking to myself, here, as well, I must admit – aren’t always healthy or helpful.  A thoughtful pastor friend of mine (with whom I have great conversations, and disagree over much) was recently called “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” in the newspaper and although he laughed it off, I am sure such rebuke from the ill-informed must sting.  There are wolves in the church today (I am not naïve about the harmful effects of goofy theology and heterodox thinking and spiritually shallow leadership) but there are also a lot of good people doing their best to follow Jesus in sensible ways, informed by their best lights and the influences they’ve had. 

We all have much more in common in our faith then the things that divide us.  

So heavy was my heart on these matters that yesterday I re-read, yet again, one of my favorite books, the utterly beautiful and truly lovely The Body Broken: Answering God’s Call to Love One Another by Robert Benson (Waterbrook; $10.99.) I was wiping tears off my cheek yet again last night as I read of his own journey, his shift from Nazarene to Methodist to Episcopalian, and his wish for his many friends to know one another, to care for one another, to live into the unity Christ desires and prays for, knowing that what unites us is greater then what divides us.  

Benson (a really enjoyable author who has written some of my favorite books, on topics as unique as vacationing and baseball and landscaping and writing) is mostly known as a retreat leader, an author who writes about contemplative spirituality and books about prayer, Benedictine formation and the like. Consequently, he has spent time among many, many, different kind of Christians, and I related to his story a lot. A lot.  I suspect some BookNotes friends will too.

He writes,

I have been called to worship by praise choruses and gospel tunes, Wesley hymns and Latin chants. I have sung along with rock and roll quartets, cathedral choirs, and string ensembles.

I have entered the courts of praise when they were in dusty circles around a campfire, in tents with sawdust on the floor, in convention centers with big screens provided so that we could see what was going on up on the stage because it was so far away, in candlelit monastery chapels, in cathedrals in which you could hardly breathe for the weight of the history that is present there, and nearly everywhere in between.

I have stood shoulder to shoulder with charismatics, fundamentalist, evangelicals, Jesus freaks, mainstreamers, and all manner of liturgical folk. I have smelled incense, shaken a tambourine, genuflected before the altar, bowed as the cross is carried past in procession, and passed the peace. I have prayed through, prayed silently, prayed collects, prayed Psalms, and chanted night prayers. I have heard evangelists, preachers, ministers, deans, canons, bishops, superintendents, chaplains, lay ministers, and all others kinds of authorities as they stood in front of some portion of the faithful and sermonized.

I myself have been a special speaker, a keynote addresser, a guest testifier, a retreat leader, a lay reader. I have taught a Sunday school class, led a church school class, coordinated a Christian adult education hour, and lectured in a symposium.

Ha.  If only he mentioned speaking in tongues in a dorm room, or praying the psalms in a jail cell, or teaching the Bible at a political protest, or preaching the gospel during the set of a famous, druggy rock band, I’d have to say this list covers my life, too.

And like Benson, “I have studied
just enough Church history to be dangerous.”  And, like him, I resonate
with his reminder – drawn from a passage from the second century (about
150 AD) First Apology of Justin the Martyr who clarified the heart of Christian worship. 

Benson the Dangerous Church Historian tells us a bit about that ancient letter, and shows how most of us still do these things today.  And then he says,

…inflames our pride and promotes attitudes that oppose catholicity. We must resist the kind of intellectual certitude that will not allow for change and growth in one’s own perspective and understanding.

I defended sectarianism for decades. I instinctively knew in my heart that there were other Christians in other churches, but I had no place in my affections for Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, or even some (less conservative) Protestants. This is why the “conversion” moment I experienced was so life-giving.

While reading through the wonderful, new collection of essays and talks given at the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, C.S. Lewis and His Circle, edited by Roger White (Oxford University Press; $29.95), I was struck by the remarkably able thinkers and charming characters who gathered with or later stood on the shoulders of the Inklings and their tribe.  There are chapters – essays and memoirs —  by those who were friends of Lewis, or who are particularly engaged in Lewis studies, from Walter Hooper and George Sayer and Owen Barfield, to lesser known individuals such as the priest who married Lewis & Joy Davidman, or the recent scholar who unlocked new ways to understand Narnia, Michael Ward, and so many others. Are there such people who are known today, so well read and aware of the spirit of the age, exceptionally logical and rigorous in classic scholarship but also passionate about the heart, the imagination?

Another new book out just last week that we are proud to stock is by Philip & Carol Zaleski and looks at the literary lives of Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, and Charles Williams and is simply called The Fellowship (FSG; $35.00). There may not be a particularly close-knit network of literary-minded, pint-drinking, famous Christian friends like there was with the Inklings and their fellowship but there may be those who deserve (almost anyway) to be compared to the Oxford don and his pals. 

Although for the Lewis mantel to be bestowed properly, the recipient would have to be a novelist and poet, of course, but in terms of eloquence, skilled apologetics and clarity of a Christian vision of life at the beginning of the 21^st century, two (among others, I admit) prolific writers come to mind.  Both are exceptional, premier communicators and serious teachers.  Both stand in the tradition of  “mere Christianity” (although may be more rigorously evangelical then Lewis himself) and are generous, gracious, and yet gritty, realistic thinkers.

Dr. Os Guinness, himself trained at Oxford (and an Irishman, like Lewis, who was, of course born in Belfast), owes much to Lewis, as he explains in his forthcoming book, Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion (IVP; $22.00.) Some of us have been waiting a lifetime for Os to do such a major work on Christian proclamation, apologetics and persuasion, knowing of his keen insight about and his deep desire for a culture of civility which permits a robust presentation of the gospel that can be persuasive to those who are informed by the secularizing forces of modernity.  That book will be released soon, and I will do a more thorough explanation of it in an upcoming BookNotes column. (We are taking pre-orders now, and would be happy to send it as soon as it arrives if you order now.) The wonderfully articulate, silver-haired Ravi Zacharias says Fool’s Talk is a “landmark” book, and Guinness himself explains that he has been wanting to write this book for nearly 40 years, but was determined to wait until he felt he had adequately thought through the complexities of the issues involved, the nature of the secular mind, and had actually experienced doing evangelism and apologetics, with serious experience in engaging in conversations of consequences with those who were skeptics. Indeed, this is a book, drawing (in part) on Lewis himself, which will be considered not only magisterial, but important and lasting.  I can’t wait to tell you more about it, soon.

A second author who quickly comes to mind when thinking about who the “C.S. Lewis of today” might be is Rev. Dr. Timothy Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.  Interestingly, the New York Times itself suggested this about Keller, upon the release of his 2008 book Reason for God: Believe in an Age of Skepticism (Riverhead; $16.00) and subsequent DVD curriculum by the same name.  That his work is published by the prestigious Riverhead, part of the Putnam Publishing Group, is itself impressive and indicates that Keller’s work is taken seriously.  Even those who do not find themselves in his particular Reformed camp acknowledge that he is an incisive thinker, an effective preacher and sophisticated church leader, and a very engaging, thoughtful writer.

That his first book was about ministry to the poor (called Ministries of Mercy: The Call to the Jericho Road) and that he brings in to New York speakers such as N.T. Wright or co-authors books about the work world with business leaders such as Katherine Leary Alsdorf (Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work) or has tackled the philosophical and pastoral questions about evil in Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering shows that he is a writer who is interested in real-world faith and whole-life discipleship. His big book about doing culturally-engaged church ministry is very good
— not perfect, of course, but maybe the best book of its kind that I know — and
you really should know it, especially if you are a congregational leader; it is called Center Church: Doing Balanced Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City. Counterfeit Gods is a potent critique of the idols of money, sex, and power, and Generous Justice is subtitled How God’s Grace Makes Us Just.  You can see why I like this guy.

Timothy Keller’s brand new book Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (Viking; $19.95) is a somewhat smaller, almost compact hardback — in the shape and size of his best-selling Prodigal God, Encounters with Jesus, Generous Justice and Counterfeit Gods.  But do not be surprised — it is a dense, serious book, packed with insight, mature writing, even demanding at times.  There is fascinating history, good theology and astute cultural analysis woven together inviting those of us who talk about the gospel to do it well and to be effective.  The endnotes are truly exceptional (and include what is nearly a full appendix or two with detailed suggestions for preaching plans and sermon prep, offered at the end in these extensive extra notes.)  The book is very important, and I think BookNotes readers will be wise to consider it.

Here is the first thing you should realize: although the book is entitled Preaching the subtitle explains much of the content (and in this it will dovetail nicely with the forthcoming  Os Guinness book on persuasion, which is heavy on analysis of the secular landscape and cultural habits of contemporary people.) In other words, the book is useful for many of us who want to understand our times, to be effective in our Christian witness, to be astute about the shape of our unfolding discipleship. 

It might not surprise you to hear that some of this book draws on the truly landmark book A Secular Age by the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor.  Keller has been telling people about this book for quite some time, and, in fact, gave a very impressive endorsement for the back of James K.A. Smith’s introduction to Taylor entitled How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Eerdmans; $16.00.)  Regarding Smith’s book, Keller writes,

Charles Taylor’s crucial book on our secular age is inaccessible for most people, including the church leaders who desperately need to learn from its insight. Jamie Smith’s book is the solution to this problem. As a gateway into Taylor’s thought, this volume (if read widely) could have a major impact on the level of theological leadership that our contemporary church is getting. It could also have a great effect on the quality of our communication and preaching. I highly recommend this book.

And so, in his own new book, Preaching, Keller has a chapter called “Preaching and the (Late) Modern Mind.” It starts, curiously, with a quote by P.T. Forsyth’s 1907 book called Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, which, Keller suggest, is still remarkably up to date. (I first learned of Forsyth, by the way, from Eugene Peterson, who remains a fan of his books on preaching and on prayer.)  Here’s Keller: “By identifying one of the main narratives of modernity and laying out a way to deconstruct it from within, Forsyth was a pioneer and pathfinder.”  Later in the chapter, Keller draws significantly on Taylor.  I would suggest that the few middle chapters (also “Preaching Christ to the Culture”) are must-reads for anyone who is interested in the “Christ and culture” conversations, thinking faithfully about art or work or civil society, the missional vision, and the like.  If you found Smith’s book – which we’ve promoted widely – to be a bit challenging, Keller’s synopsis may be really useful for you.

And, just to show that this isn’t just for heady intellectuals who read Charles Taylor or Jamie Smith, Keller quotes the nearly iconic song “Let It Go” from Frozen.  If you want to understand the narrative of the autonomous self that pervades even the children’s songs of our age, you just have to read those pages. We all have to grapple with this stuff – the air we breath, the social context and location of our churches and those who listen to us preach and teach and speak.  If you not only want to see “between the lines” and just “below the surface” of our cultural moment and societal ethos, but want to know how to share some wise Christian counsel to re-shape the souls of those informed by the “hidden belief web of secularity,” then this is going to be exceptionally helpful for you.  Which is to say, if you are any kind of Christian leader, teacher, writer, blogger, public thinker, politician, artist, media person, campus minister, youth leader, parent, Christian educator, spiritual director, or anyone with influence, you really should know this material and the moves it makes to help us speak well into the times.  Again, the subtitle is crucial: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism.

I started off with this — you should buy this Keller book if you care about the times, if you want to be astute in your engagement with the world around you, if you want to understand your peers, co-workers, parishioners or the media pundits that influence public opinion. In my chapter in Serious Times: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life I preached on 1 Chronicles 12:32, about being “sons and daughters of Issachar” who “understood the times and knew what God’s people should do.”  This is a book about the times and how to speak wisely to those moderns who are shaped by the world in which they necessarily live. I think it is Issacharian.

But I could have started where Keller himself does, with his own apologetic for the book.  His first two short chapters – a good introduction and prologue – explain that the Bible itself uses the language of preaching, speaking, teaching, in rather broad ways.  That is, all of us are called to steward the language we use, and many of us are to speak wisely and well about the gospel as we inform others, in church, in small groups, or in our own circles of influence.  Of course, a book called Preaching is certainly aimed at those who preach sermons to those gathered for worship, but he explains that there are other “levels” of preaching that some of us do.

He writes,

Every Christian needs to understand the message of the Bible well enough to explain and apply it to other Christians and to his neighbors in informal and personal settings. [He calls this level 1.] But there are many ways to do the ministry of the Word at level 2 that take more preparation and presentation skills yet do not consist of delivering sermons (level 3.) Level 2 today may include writing, blogging, teaching classes and small groups, mentoring, moderating open discussion forums on issues of faith, and so on.

This book aims to be a resource for all those who communicate their Christian faith in any way, particularly at levels 2 and 3.

I don’t mean to overstate this tangent, but I think his introductory framework is insightful.  He shows that there are various sorts of ways to proclaim the Word and that we will always require “a host of varied forms of Word ministry, the specific public ministry of preaching is irreplaceable.” He quotes a the Australian theologian Peter Adam saying our church’s gospel ministry should be “pulpit-centered, but not pulpit restricted.”   Some of us may quibble about “pulpit-centered” but his point about the centrality of the Scriptures is certainly a needed one, as even our most sacramental church leaders are insisting.

Keller summarizes the interplay of various sorts of Bible reading groups and learning communities and teaching ministries:

So there are three levels of Word ministry, and they are all crucial and support one another. The public preaching of Christ in the Christian assembly (level 3) is a unique way that God speaks to and builds up people, and it sets up the more organic forms of Word ministry at levels 1 and 2. Likewise, the skilled and faithful communication at levels 1 and 2 prepares people to be receptive to preaching. This volume will speak to all those who are wrestling with how to communicate life-changing biblical truth to people at any level in an increasingly skeptical age. It will also serve as an introduction and foundation for working preachers and teachers in particular.

There are very important things in this short book that I wish every preacher, teacher, and communicator would consider.  I suspect it won’t be as universally agreed upon as the good Dr. Keller will wish, but even if you don’t agree fully with every conclusion, he is certainly right to hold up these major, major conversations.  Agree or not, this is splendid stuff for preachers to consider.

For instance, one chapter is called “Preaching the Gospel Every Time.”  This does not mean that every sermon must have some Billy Graham -type altar call or be essentially evangelistic, but it does mean that Christ must be lifted up, that grace must be clear, that the sermon must resist “legalism” or “moralism” but must be clear about the good news.  He reminds us of the dangers of preaching even a sermon on Christ that misses the gospel, or a sermon on the core truths of the gospel without proclaiming Christ. Fascinating!  His insistence that the gospel is the core of the canonical message, that the whole narrative of the Bible coheres, is a major theme here, and oh how I wish preachers would review it regularly. 

“Preaching Christ From All of Scripture” is another related chapter and it will not surprise those who know that Keller studied at Westminster Theological Seminary in the 70s under the great Edmund Clowney. (Dr. Clowney’s The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament (P&R; $12.99) is still a standard text in this movement.)  Regardless of genre, Keller explains, one must see how each part of the Bible points toward Christ in particular ways.  Also, through “every theme of the Bible” and in “every major image of the Bible.” On and on, this succinct chapter shows how this works and is itself worth the price of the book for anyone who reads the Bible, and certainly for anyone who teaches the Bible.  There is some push back these days against this Christological hermeneutic, I realize, but, agree fully or not, this is sweet and fruitful stuff, I believe, and advice that most preachers, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, camp counselors, campus ministers and Christian counselors of all sorts need to regularly recall.  It is, after all, the method Jesus used to set on fire the hearts of those walking with him in the lovely passage about walking on the road to Emmaus.

Despite this thoughtful and important Biblical content, I suppose one might say – if one is particularly well read in journals and books and blogs amongst certain circles – that this is increasingly commonplace and often said.  Well, I believe this Christo-centric, gospel-centered view is not expressed this well or this clearly or this urgently, and commend it even for those who are familiar with this classic approach. 

However, there is other teaching in this book that is nearly rare these days, and I am so grateful for Keller’s contribution.  For instance, he has a chapter about “preaching to the heart” and as I am sure you would suppose, he is neither sentimental nor simplistic. He explains the importance of the affections, and invites us to preach and teach “affectionally.” While we don’t want to promote flat or dry preaching, of course, a preacher making clear his or her own heart-felt engagement with the truths of the text, for Keller, is not primarily about emotions.  He reminds us,

Teachers and preachers of the Bible are often so focused on preparing and presenting their content that they don’t realize the degree to which people are not just listening to what they are saying but are also looking at who they are as they preach. People are examining motives without even being aware that they are doing it. They can sniff out if you are more concerned about looking good or sounding authoritative than you are about honoring God and loving them.

Get this: Keller proposes in Preaching that if preachers are overly concerned about their style and passion that “even people who are moved on one level by your performance will subconsciously resist it at another level, the same way many feel cynical at sentimental advertising even as they fight back tears.”

So, please realize, much of the book is about “preaching to the heart” and “preaching from the heart.”

It sometimes invites us to ponder our own faith formation, calling us to be – as in Nouwen’s famous phrase, perhaps, “wounded healers.”  How are we living out the Kingdom vision in our own lives? In what way have we ourselves struggled to resist the idols of our own hearts?  How are we living into Christ-likeness? He doesn’t push hard, but implies this.  For instance, listen here as Keller suggests these themes, powerfully and provocatively:

Half this book is dedicated to preaching to the heart. You certainly understand by now that you cannot hope to do that unless you are consistently preaching from the heart. What you are calling people to experience you must be experiencing yourself. What the Holy Spirit is to do in the hearts of your listeners he will normally do first in and through you. You must be something like a clear glass through which people can see a broken but gospel-change soul in such a way that they want it for themselves.

Tim Keller insists that we must also preach and teach “imaginatively” (recall Lewis on this – rational and romantic, offering “reason and imagination.”) Keller himself uses good illustrations from the history of great preachers, and from Biblical stories themselves as he unpacks this important component to our witness. He writes about preaching “wonderously” and draws on Tolkien’s famous essay “On Fairy Stories.”   I am sure you will enjoy this, and be challenged to live more wonderously, even as we proclaim the beauty and awe of God’s character and work in the world.

Later, Keller offers very practical ideas for sermon preparation, and I found these portions to be really interesting and surprisingly helpful.  If you’ve been at this a long time, I suspect you’ll appreciate it.  If you are a younger communicator or recently ordained preacher or new to the teaching ministry, these suggestions will save you time and energy and perhaps even embarrassment.  Preaching: Communicating Faith… offers wise counsel, good ideas not often found even in standard homiletics books.

We have more than a hundred books on homiletics at our shop and I’ve read a number of them. There is much to be said about this perennial problem, how to proclaim the gospel in clarity, bearing fruit, being faithful, standing “between two worlds” as John Stott put it. There are books about the role of preaching within a worship service, studies about various styles of communication. (I’ve just recently re-read Doug Pagitt’s creative book on dialogical “sermons” called Preaching in the Inventive Age which offers a very different take then Keller, but is quite stimulating, audacious as it is. Keller understandably is critical of it and its predecessors such as The Roundtable Pulpit and the work of Lucy Rose.)There are many different perspectives and angles and trends, curious things to ponder and clever new approaches to consider and I learn and am forced to think as I read from various viewpoints.  I read old school stuff, lots of mainline/liberal textbooks, and try to dip in to dense tomes of communication theory, not to mention compilations of sermons, from Barbara Brown Taylor’s several collections, to, for instance, Brian Walsh’s powerful, must-read St. John Before Breakfast which are sermons (and liturgies) offered at the University of Toronto’s campus ministry morning Eucharistic service called “Wine Before Breakfast.” Of course, Walt Brueggemann has several collections of sermons, and several books about preaching — Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation may be his most popular — and they are well worth reading.  We stock some interesting, practical ones such as Alyce McKenzie’s Novel Preaching: Tips from Top Writers on Crafting Creative Sermons.  I really enjoy reading these kinds of resources — even though I most create talks and essays and the lessons for a small Sunday school class I sometimes teach.

For what it is worth, Keller interacts with ancient, historical sources more than with more recent ones (and does so well, showing the preaching insights of Calvin or Melancthon, Stibbs, Whitefield, Edwards or Lloyd-Jones without too much of the contemporary ecumenical literature about homiletics, although he does a bit. Those familiar with David Buttrick or Fred Craddock or Eugene Lowry with be fascinated with his observations about mainline denominational approaches these days… as you might guess, he cites Thomas G. Long and his important volume The Witness of Preaching.

The bibliographic suggestions, citations, and endnotes in this book could provide a lifetime’s worth of study, and, for those called to this work, is, again, worth the price of the book itself. Wow –I can’t wait to more carefully work through these many suggestions and recommendations from Keller.

And, speaking of recommending resources — I keep talking about the wonderful Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. anywhere there are preachers or teachers who allow me to say so as it is such a splendid, important, lovely, lovely book.  Oh my, how I wish folks would take it to heart.  I wish Keller would have cited it!

Since talking about faith — and teaching and preaching — is central to our gathered Christian communities, it strikes me as odd that we don’t sell more of these kinds of books.  Heck, I am not ordained to the pulpit ministries, but find these books fabulously interesting and often quite useful.  That preachers and teachers and ministry leaders don’t buy them much is just baffling.

Whether you regularly read this genre or not, why not pick up this one by Tim Keller? Give it a try and see if you don’t enjoy a sustained study of the power of the Word and the call to teach and share the gospel in effective ways. No matter your own calling or role, I bet you’ll learn a lot and be a better communicator and a more astute listener of sermons and Bible lessons, too.

And, of course, if you are a teacher or preacher, I really hope you consider this brief but potent work. It will be a good companion for you, I’m sure. Send us an order today.

BookNotes

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