The big Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh is over (except for putting away all the unsold books – thousands and thousands. Yikes!)  We thank you for your prayers and encouragement; we were stressed and aching from all the mental work of curating the selections and from the physical labor of lugging the boxes and in the middle of the chaos of setting up last Thursday and Friday we almost wanted to walk away and give up.  Our staff back at the store worked really hard getting us there and our CCO friends out in Pittsburgh are so supportive, and a number of good folks volunteered yet again this year.  (Chris Carson and his Jubby team are always so good directing this big gig geared  to college students.                                                                                 some of our boxes and a list of categories

What an incredible event they create! Here is a short, energetic “highlights” video which will give you a little glimpse.)  By Friday late afternoon the students and others started to show and it was glorious. That I got to preach on Sunday morning besides my more customary book announcements (10 books in 7 minutes!) made this 40^th anniversary Jubilee really meaningful for us.

To think of all those books that we sold being read by students and their friends (the conference attracts young professionals, college profs, church leaders and older fans) should bring you great hope. 

I do plenty of hand-wringing about the decline of reading in American culture, and even at Jubilee, standing in front of some of the very best titles I’ve ever seen, on topics where Christian books are hard to find, still some people still don’t take us up on the offer to buy.  Tolle Legge? Not so much, I’m afraid.  And there’s lots of picture-taking of titles, probably so they can buy them from the faceless porno dealers over at Amazon. Sigh; it is so discouraging and feels unfair. Even now, in the triumph of a great event, and with lots of great books now in the hands of eager readers and rising leaders — just think of the ripple effect of that, the maturity and blessing and impact of the righteous ideas found in those books being circulated and promoted and discussed and incarnated – -we realize that it is possible that our bookstore work may have peaked, so to speak. Fewer people buy books these days, fewer people have learned the habit of browsing bookstores (and there are fewer quality Christian bookstores, at least, in which to seriously browse.) But as Jubilee wonderfully illustrates, there are a lot of great speakers and teachers, and lot of folks interested in good stuff, and plenty of quality books being published. Reading and talking about books together as a component of Christian learning and growth is not what it once was, it seems to me, but we’re proud of what CCO does and honored to be a part of their good efforts.

So, at least in Pittsburgh again this year, we’ve seen God work, the Spirit wooing folks to a richer, deeper, more thoughtfully engaged faith, with books seen as helpful tools for on-going discipleship. We are encouraged, even if aware of the daunting task of deepening the worldview and sense of vocation of a rising generation of serious Christians.  Will you join me in saying a prayer for those who bought books, that those books would be read, that each author’s insights would hit its mark, that the act of reading would stimulate and inspire and provoke so that Christ’s Kingdom would be advanced, that young readers would become fruitful leaders even in these hard times, for God’s glory and the common good.  Pray for the CCO staff and other campus workers who brought students to Jubilee to learn about this “all of life redeemed” hopeful vision of a good, fallen, but restored creation, this worldview that believes God is “transforming everything.”  May that event, and the books they cart home, stimulate big hope.

And I invite you to re-double your efforts here in the fast-paced digital age to deepen your book buying and book reading habits.  Start a book club if you don’t already have one.  Even a pair of serious readers can help one another grapple with significant work, and learn more about faith, about discipleship, about our culture, and about God’s mission in the world.  From novels to theology, media studies to spirituality, Bible commentaries to ruminations on work and vocation, there are so many resources that call out to be studied together, whose benefits are gleaned best when not read solo. Get a friend, grab a beverage, turn some pages.  Jubilee kids are going to be doing it this next month, we trust.  Why don’t you?  

Below I list a few brand new ones that we could recommend for some healthy book club reading. Or maybe after hearing about the high-energy, all-of-life-redeemed Jubilee vision you might want to take up conference classics like Al Wolter’s Creation Regained: The Biblical Basis for a Reformational Worldview or The Call: Finding and Fulfilling Your Life’s Purpose by Os Guinness, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (the provocative sequel to an older Jubilee classic, Transforming Vision by Brian Walsh & Richard Middleton) or our Book of the Year a year or so ago, Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good by former Jubilee conference director Steve Garber. Or try something by N.T. Wright, such as his accessible Simply Good News or the very important How God Became King or one of his most popular, if a bit tedious at times, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. (Each of these were mentioned at Jubilee, by the way, by me or by a workshop leader or two.)

Or, if you want a very brief booklet that will knock your socks off, why not order A New Heavens and a New Earth: BIblical Picture of Hope by N.T. Wright? It’s an inexpensive booklet we order from England because it makes the case for God’s renewal of all things and the new creation vision that we are convinced is transformational once folks grasp it.

Or, try this, one of my all time favorite Biblical studies books — it used to be used among CCO staff in their own training years ago to help them get this radical, Biblical vision of God’s promise and deliverance, Christ’s Kingdom coming on Earth into their bones. Richard Mouw’s little When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem is a short volume published by Eerdmans that unpacks this notion that the new creation will be physical, and therefore cultural, and therefore our own efforts for social and cultural restoration and healing are valuable and honored by God. Some of our work now may make it into eternity!  He draws on a significant chapter in Isaiah and shows how this points us to creation regained in the new City.  What a book!  We’ve had folks buy it from us and come back all hopped up, wondering (a) why they’ve never been taught this before in their otherwise Bible believing churches and (b) what next?

For someone wanting to enjoy a delightful, upbeat and utterly engaging read on some of these themes, join the many Jubilee-attendees who bought Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human by John Mark Comer.  It’s a fun one, conversational and, yet, for those wanting a light intro to this wholistic Kingdom vision, it could be truly life-changing. I featured it at the adult pre-conference called Jubilee Professional and up front the first night of the main conference.  Garden City – yes!

I can’t tell you how exciting it is when we hear of book groups or Sunday school classes or campus fellowship groups or church leadership teams who read one of these books together and realize that the implications are significant and nearly endless, that there is some re-thinking to do, that we live in a time which calls for repentance and refreshing for authentic, fruitful, missional living.  It happens, you know – church leaders catch a fresh vision around these very things and realize that church-as-usual will no longer do.

To explore this very matter in the local church I sometimes suggest Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work by Rev. Tom Nelson for telling the story of his own church and congregants (he doesn’t call them “laypeople” as he rejects the clergy/laity dualism) took up visions of vocation, and increasingly focused on the work world and careers of the people as the primary locus of God’s work and their ministry.  Tom and some of his congregants have been to Jubilee in past years, by the way.  Or, recall my review a month or so ago of Radical Sending: Go To Love and Serve by Demi Prentiss & J. Fletcher Lowe, two Episcopalian authors who invite mainline parishes to think about work, calling, vocation, the missio dei, and how congregations can facilitate ordinary folks serving God in their work-a-day lives.  As the conference slogan declared a few years ago, “this changes everything!”

From the most progressive mainline churches or advocacy groups to the most orthodox Gospel Coalition folk, from the most edgy emergent communities to the most conventional traditional congregations, from large and spiffy neo-mega-churches to small, old fashioned, rural “wee kirks” we are convinced that these kinds of books are foundational, vital, urgent, offering a framework and vocabulary to help folks live out their faith in our time with integrity and purpose.

Okay, I’m jazzed up about all those books we sold to the CCO folks and what might happen if even half of these eager young Christians take them seriously.  And I’m nervous about what happens if they don’t.  I know church renewal and cultural restoration is God’s final work and that we on our own simply cannot improve our world very much, and we certainly don’t “redeem” anything.  Order Os Guinness’ recent Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times if you struggle with this – it is a rich reminder of first things, of trusting God, of being faithful in little things even as we hope big hopes.  And, also, perhaps in tension with that wonderful resource, I’d highly recommend reading with another a book to which I alluded in my Sunday morning talk at Jubilee: Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times by Sun-Chung Ra.  It is both an astute and anguished cry of the heart about the injustices in our land, and a fairly serious study of the book of Lamentations.  I don’t know if you can sell that one on your people -” Hey, wanna get together and study a book of the Bible you maybe have never heard of, let alone read?”–but it’s worth a try.  It’s a great book, the first of a series where the books will be an interesting blend of Bible commentary and cultural engagement. 

So, yes, both the hopeful, astute Renaissance and the sad, gripping Prophetic Lament remind us that even with our efforts to help others learn, even with all the books we sell and learn form, even with all the great events like Jubilee, we need God. We. Need. God. 

But books can help push us in the right direction, right? Yes!

So — to the new list.

Create vs. Copy: Embrace Change, Ignite Creativity, Break Through with Imagination Ken Wytsma (Moody Collective) $14.99  Jubilee has, some years, and certainly this year, a strong message of inviting folks to be innovators, cultural entrepreneurs.  Friday night opened with a Biblical reflection on the goodness of creation, of all the potential God has packed in to this abundant world, and how, made in the Holy Triune One’s image, humans can make stuff.  (Do you remember how I reviewed last summer a groovy book called Jesus, Bread, Chocolate by John J. Thompson?  It is about what some call “maker” culture, the DIY trend fighting mass marketing and mass consumption and offering instead creative, authentic, artful and often local, sustainable lifestyle choices.  I think of this now as it is a nice, practical, fun way into conversations about what it means to be creative, imaging God in an age stuck with the idols of economism and technicism, to use the language of Transforming Vision.)  Anyway, Ken Wytsma is an amazing writer, a leader who seemed to come out of nowhere (I know that isn’t so; he’s obviously paid big dues) when he founded exceptional, huge, nationally-known The Justice Conference a few years back and followed it up with his flagship book Pursuing Justice.  His second book was called The Paradox of Faith and it had a rave, rave endorsement by philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff which immediately caught my attention.  What a thinker, what a writer, blending smart, good stuff in an accessible, interesting style.

This brand new one – oh how I wished it had come a week earlier so we could have featured it at Jubilee! – is small, fun, a really fine reflection equipping us to be more creative, more innovative, learning the ability to “adapt and innovate and to inspire the same in others.”

It seems to me that Create vs Copy might appeal to those who like the high-energy, punchy, passionate brevity of writers like Seth Godin or start-up gurus like Guy Kawasaki or  life coaches like Martha Beck or Pamela Slim.  Wytsma cites educators such as Sir Ken Robinson and explores the science of creativity by drawing on the likes of Daniel Pink and Robert Epstein. (And, though-out, he comes back to C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, over and over.)  This is a rich, interesting, energetic little book and I’m excited about it.  Bob Goff writes that it is “a terrific book on the power of imagination to shape our lives, world, and faith – by one of the most creative guys I know.”  And if Goff says Wytsma is creative, well, Wystsma must be creative.  And this book will help you, in your personal comings-and-goings, I’m sure, but also if you are in conflict at work, in the doldrums at church, or needing to rediscover why you do what you do and just do it better.

If you read this, and I hope many do, here is a thing to wonder about: what if we were to back up and ask what cultural and philosophical baggage the very notion of creativity brings with it, and ask if those a priori assumptions are themselves consistent with a Biblical worldview?  Calvin Seerveld, the premier scholar of a Christian perspective on aesthetics, might have something to say on this topic (see my lengthy piece about him and his work here) and I wished Wytsma dug a little deeper on this seminal matter. Still, it’s surely a great little book, designed wonderfully, with good discussion questions at the end of each chapter.  It really looks fun, and others like Claire Diaz-Ortiz, a Silicon Valley innovator herself, says Create vs Copy is the gold standard for inspiring leaders to make their mark.”

My friend C. Christopher Smith (author of Slow Church and a person I trust much) says “Create vs. Copy will electrify our imaginations as it challenges us to new, redemptive ways of seeing and steers us toward the flourishing God intends for the world.”  The ever-brilliant Aussie cultural critic Mark Sayers declares that “Create vs Copy is an essential resource for anyone engaged in partnering with God as He re-creates the world.”

Revelation: A Search for Faith in a Violent Religious World Dennis Covington (Little Brown) $26.00  It is a good day around here when we get books by authors we admire and whose writing we are just mad about.  It is a great year when Dennis Covington releases a new book.  You may know his stunning memoir called Salvation on Sand Mountain which explored his reporting on and then involvement with a snake-handling church in Appalachia, or his eloquent, profound book co-written by his wife at the time, the extraordinary essayist Vickie Covington, called Cleaving, about their good but troubled marriage. I loved his wild ride of a nutty book about trying to re-claim Florida land his dad had been bilked out of called Red-neck Rivera which below the surface (not unlike the more intense and beautiful Sand Mountain) seemed to indicate his nearly pathological draw to dangerous stuff. To say his book writing is “high octane” puts it mildly.  And, once again, in this new one, it seems that he is drawn to danger.

I got home from Jubilee bleary-eyed, exhausted, with a belly full of bad road-trip coffee and ears still buzzing from the sound system, and just wanting to go to bed. We unloaded some stuff back into the store, my eyes fell on this book on our new release table, and I felt like it was one of those moments: the new Dennis Covington book!  If I start this now I will be up all night – should I even touch it? Read the first pages?  Covington is an “astonishing” writer and here he is apparently raising huge questions of doubt and faith and of the role of toxic, even violent, religion.  Another high-octane, truly astonishing writer, Mark Richard, author of the unforgettable House of Prayer No. 2I, says, “Dennis Covington empathically inhabits the victims of the violence he meets, and in a fleeting instance find the grace that sustains them and the despair that transcends them beyond our reckoning. Touched by his epistles, we are somehow encouraged, even when all we have is God.”  

Kim Barnes (another of my favorite writers, another of the most unforgettable memoirists I’ve ever read) says “From the first sentence on, you understand what Dennis Covington brings to the page is something raw, terrifying, brilliant, and necessary. Vivid, tense, and compelling, Covington’s story bears brave and unflinching witness to one of the most threatening conflicts of our time.”  

I’m telling you, the blurbs on the back of this book themselves might keep you up at night. Listen to Alan Weisman, who writes,

Once again, Dennis Covington, author of the astonishing Salvation on Sand Mountain, rushes headlong into abysses that the rest of us flee, from the most brutal spots on earth to the rawest truths in the mirror. His obsessed, haunted question scours the depths of madness — his, ours, this century’s — yet somehow salvages faith from the most fearful despair. This brave book is a Revelation, indeed.

The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance Bethany Hanke Hoang & Kristen Deede Johnson (Brazos) $19.99  What a thrill to help launch this brand new, very handsome hardback book at #Jubilee2016.  Bethany has been to Jubilee before and her role this year as a workshop leader was exceedingly important – she basically did a serious-minded Bible study, explaining the Biblical and theological foundation for working for social change.  Her MDiv is from Princeton and she continues to work with the premier anti-trafficking organization, IJM (International Justice Mission) where she directs the Institute for Biblical Justice. Her vibrant co-author is associate professor of theology and Christian formation at Western Theological Seminary in Holland Michigan. While a prof at the nearby Hope College (a Reformed Church in America college) she helped create a program dedicated to upholding the significance of theological formation, spiritual growth, cultural engagement, and vocational discernment.  Which is to say both women are exceptionally well-schooled and committed to educating for lasting, formational transformation in learners so that they might be the kind of people who are empowered to be healthy activists in church and world.  They understand the big flow of the Scriptures, the story, as we say, and place God’s relentless call to do justice in that context.  Andy Crouch has called it “a deep, wide, wise contribution to a truly comprehensive Christian understanding of Justice”  and says, “I can’t imagine a better biblical and theological introduction to the topic of justice.”

The chapter titles of this new book illustrate the artful way it is written and the profound way it develops.   The footnotes are extraordinarily interesting; there are nice pull quotes throughout making this quite useful.  (If only there were discussion questions at the end of each chapter – I assure you, though, that there is so much stimulating information in these pages that your group would have plenty to talk about!)  This really is a fabulous new book and we can’t recommend it more heartily. 

Contents

Introduction: Justice and God

1. Engage the Whole Story

Justice and Righteousness

2. Receive God’s Vision of Flourishing

Justice and Creation

3. Move toward Darkness

Justice and the Fall

4. Lament

Justice and Israel

5. Live as Saints (Not Heroes)

Justice and Jesus

6. Be Sanctified and Sent

Justice and the Church

7. Persevere in Hope

Justice and All Things Becoming New

Conclusion: Abide in Jesus

Justice and Perseverance

Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life Full of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing (Andy Crouch) $20.00  We have announced this previously, inviting people to pre-order it from us, and we are thrilled to report that the book has shipped out to stores and that we had it at Jubilee – right from the printing press to the convention center in Pittsburgh.  Andy has been very supportive of Jubilee over the years and although he wasn’t there this year, Strong and Weak was almost the top seller there.  (We sold more of Good Faith by Gabe Lyon and David Kinnamon we we had a supply of for the event; they were both there so that was expected.  And we are taking orders for it, since we cannot sell it here in the shop until the national release date, March 1st.)  That Andy’s new book was of such interest illustrated not only that he’s an important writer whose name people know, but that the topic – power, vulnerability, leadership, authentic human and cultural flourishing – resonates.  In a way it is a sequel to the very, very important Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power (which, in turn, follow-ed up quite nicely his classic and exceedingly significant Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.)

If you do not know Mr. Crouch’s elegant and very interesting style and remarkable message, watch his Friday night talk from Jubilee a few years back — then order all three books, asap. It’s 30 minutes, starts a little weirdly, and you will love it!  You might even get choked up a bit when he plays and explains Bach at the end.  Yes!

Or, watch this short less than 2 minute clip of him explaining the heart of Strong and Weak or this lovely  2 minute one called “Making Space” that hints at much from the book, much that I myself need to learn  You?.

John Ortberg writes of Strong and Weak

This book is going to have a profound impact on our world. It’s built on a clear, deep, life-changing insight that opens up vast possibilities for human flourishing. Classic, elegant, and utterly illuminating.

Beth and I think it is one of the most enlightening and enjoyable and generative books we’ve read in quite a while and we are hoping you will order it soon.  You will be taken in by its good, good prose and you will be impressed by its warm, thoughtful tone, and you will never forget the premise. He not only writes plainly about each point, but he tells great stories, and exhibits a splendid familiarity with folks around the world – one story will be from India or Bolivia, another from an urban, historically black church, another from a mature, slow, orthodox educational ministry at Cornell called Chesterton House. And there’s a rock climbing story.

Crouch’s quadrant diagrams, his expose of false dilemmas and unhelpful tensions (between warmth and firmness, for instance) are incredibly helpful. (The first chapter is called “Beyond the False Choice.”) His chapter on suffering is great, his piece on “hidden vulnerability” is beautiful, and the chapter on “descending to the dead”–what he calls “the greatest paradox of flourishing” — is brilliant.  By the end of the book you will know exactly what he means by “up and to the right” and you will pray for friends to help you, for God to guide you, and for personal courage to make that shift.  Up and to the right.  It’s the way of love and risk.  Praise be to Christ who modeled this, and for inspiring Andy to give us this wise, good book.

The Future of Our Faith: An Intergenerational Conversation on Critical Issues Facing the Church Ronald J. Sider & Ben Lowe (Brazos) $18.99  What a book!  On the heels of #Jubilee2016 this is perfect for me, since the conversations within circle around a huge question for many of us: what is the future of the evangelical movement, in what ways do the rising Christian leaders see things similarly or differently than older church leaders, and what are the burning issues pressing on us now, and looming on the horizon.  Sider, as I hope you know, is one of our favorite gentleman and authors; he is impeccable theologically and holds to fairly conventional historic, orthodox doctrine, even if he has a reputation for being a progressive advocate of peace and justice causes. (And even in his robust calls for simple living and creation care and nonviolence and racial justice and such, he is deeply Biblical and theologically sound.)  Ron has been a mentor to me from afar and has been a long-standing friend of Hearts & Minds. He is the founder and president emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action.

Ben Lowe is another friend, a younger guy, a Wheaton grad who has published books such as the lively Green Revolution and the very wise Doing Good without Giving Up.  He now is the founding spokesperson of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (and he ran for office a few years back.) Ben was recently orained in the CMA denomination.

So here’s the simple version of the book: the first half is mostly Ron writing about his hopes and concerns for the next generation of Christian leaders.  He is candid about his own passion for Biblical principles (he is traditional, by the way, on matters of same-sex marriage and is pro-life; indeed, being consistently pro-life has been a major emphasis of his. He is interested in apologetics and values mature, Biblically-shaped theological study. And pushes us all to live what we believe, not just “talk a good game” as we they say.

At the end of each chapter, Ben replies, offering his own sense of his own generation’s response to Ron’s old ways.  Granted, Dr. Sider is no Jerry Falwell or Martin Marty or Marva Dawn or Eugene Peterson, which is to say he isn’t perhaps the most quintessential retirement age church leader,  but his concerns certainly represent the concerns of many standard, moderate, thoughtful evangelicals.  And Ben isn’t Shane Claiborne or Katelyn Beaty of CT or Gabe Lyon of Q so he doesn’t quite represent all of his generation, either (although he is friends with each of those aforementioned younger evangelicals.)  So this conversation seems tilted towards those interested in public faith, in cultural issues, in embodied, whole-life discipleship committed to social change.

So if the first half is Sider offering gray-haired warnings, and young Ben replying, the second half is equally interesting: Ben writes his manifesto and, chapter by chapter, Ron replies.

And, through it all, other voices contribute, too. Christena Cleveland on race and reconciliation, Jenny Yang on immigration, Jim Daly on focusing on the family, Chris Hall (now President of Renovare, the spirituality ministry started by Richard Foster),  Nicholas Wolterstorff and others grace these pages, being held up as examples of ways to think well about the many vexing matters picked up and explored together – intergenerationally! – in this fine, fine, and very honest book.

I believe The Future of Our Faith is a spectacularly useful book even if all the voices and views represented were not more or less configured around older/younger demographics.  That is the operating vision (Ron and Ben are forty years apart) which brings an extra urgency to it, but I think it is a fabulous and insightful and stimulating book just for creating space to converse well and think together apart from the generational differences. (Of course, I’m an old guy saying that. Ha.)  Karen Swallow Prior, herself a young scholar of literature, says it will be “a blessing to the church today and a model for the church to come.”  May it be so.  Get a bunch and find some older and/or younger friends and read it together. There are great discussion questions included and a lovely reminder at the end about Jesus the Center.  

Katelyn Beaty, managing editor of Christianity Today writes,

A wealth of wisdom, conviction, and hope from two leaders who refreshingly defy tired religious and political categories. If you care about the future of Christian witness in a post-Christian American, you’ll read The Future of Our Faith.

NIV God’s Justice Bible: The Flourishing of Creation & the Destruction of Evil  (Zondervan) $39.99  There have been a handful of niche market Bibles that have come out in recent years — The Green Bible in the NRSV has, rather than certain verses in red letters, texts in green, all the passages about creation and creation-care. There is the Poverty and Justice Bible which is designed with craft paper and has sidebars about poverty, naturally.  There are men’s and women’s and leadership and Holy Spirit Bibles. We don’t really like most of them very much (although the “green letter” is a pretty neat idea.)  We are not so sure that shoe-horning texts into a pre-determined theme or offering sidebars and devotionals that may be fine content, but linked to texts with dubious interpretation, well, it’s just not the best way to read the Bible.

This God’s Justice Bible, though, looks just tremendous. It is made by an international team of 56 global Biblical scholars, which gives it a true study Bible quality — not just super-imposing devotional content here and there. That the “flourishing of creation and the destruction of evil” is a major and appropriate interpretive lens is doubtless, so, again, this could be a major assist in helping people really understand God’s Word.  

Even the back cover copy is good. It says,

God’s justice — his plan for ‘setting things right’ — is a foundational principle in the Bible. His plan for justice to triumph is traced from Genesis to Revelation, and as a theme, it forms the backbone of Scripture. God[‘s plan is to restore the flourishing of creation and to see the end of evil, and every book of the Bible is infused with hints of this powerful and redemptive process.

The book introductions are quite good, the study notes look excellent and speak to many contemporary problems (from sexual trafficking to governmental oppression to financial inequality and more.) There are prayers (a nice touch), there are questions for reflection, and there is a full color interior design that has wood-carving images of trees from around the world. (That’s very, very cool.)

We know some of the scholars who offered input in this, and know of others.  Our good friend, and former co-director of ESA, Al Tizon (of Filipino descent) did the book of Revelation!  Christopher Wright from the UK did Deuteronomy, and many women and men who are scholars who I do not know – from Kenya, Mexico, Taiwan, Argentina, Singapore, India — are represented. Andy Crouch did the notes for Philemon, Ron Sider did Amos, and C. Rene Padilla did 2 Corinthians.  Bethany Hanke Hoang, who we just saw at Jubilee? She did the notes for Zechariah.  (I wonder if she saw the display we had of this at the Jubilee book display?)  What a joy to peruse the insights and Biblical wisdom of these international sisters and brothers!

This weighty, well-made study edition is a good bargain, packed full of helpful study aids. It’s release last week by Biblical and Zondervan is a publishing event.  Hooray.

BookNotes

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

We have been choosing, ordering, pulling and packing, stacking and lugging boxes and boxes of books for what seems like weeks, getting ready for our beloved Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh. You know how hard our staff work in February getting ready for this huge event with more than 3000 college students. It’s no tragedy, I know, but my fingers are bleeding from the cardboard cuts and my weak back is hurting — well, that is a bit serious. Beth’s weird symptoms from what we suspect is the lingering Lyme Disease stuff from years ago are acting up a bit, too, but she’s been working 18 hour days, anyway. And loading a big rented truck even now as I type. Two days ago she made 130-some category signs (like I said, it’s a big display) and has been spending hours prepping our set-up gear, cash registers, paperwork, gift cards, and supplies. Yep, Jubilee is a big deal for us, and, we believe, a big deal for the Kingdom of God.

It has been stressful getting all these books in and getting them organized and packed. And when I’ve gotten discouraged this week I’ve cranked up Wrecking Ball by the Boss Bruce Springsteen, which brings me great courage. And, this year, The Last Waltz and Switchfoot.)

I WAS 22 AND HEARD THAT EVERY SQUARE INCH COULD BE REDEEMED

Forty years ago — I was just 22 years old — I worked for the Coalition for Christian Outreach (now branded the CCO) and I witnessed the evolution (or perhaps I should call it a reformation) of a exciting and flexible evangelical para-church campus evangelistic organization growing into a wholistic ministry that took some of its cues from that famous cry of Abraham Kuyper, the 19th century Dutch Reformed theologian, statesman, and civic leader about Christ’s redemption encompassing “every square inch of creation.”

To be honest, I heard this from my CCO staff leaders in my undergrad years.  Beth and I knew about pietistic fundamentalism and we knew fairly boring mainline denominational churchianity. But this, this was something other.

Like saying the gospel is best understood as “creation/fall/redemption/restoration” and a story of cosmic redemption, God (re)claiming and restoring every square inch of Christ’s beloved creation preaches well —  I usually couple it with Colossians 1:15-20 or Haggai 2:1-9 — and the CCO increasingly took these things to heart, growing passionate about not only personal evangelism but social and cultural engagement, the doctrines of vocation and calling, and the necessity of helping college students think and imagine faithfully how to honor the Lordship of Christ in their college classrooms and future careers.

With my help, even, from time to time (more decades ago then now, although I am still associated with the CCO) they trained their staff to reject the sacred/secular dualisms that come more from pagan Plato than the Bible and embrace a fully incarnational, multi-dimensional, creation-regained, whole-life discipleship based on a Biblical theology, and an understanding of the life-changing impact of the full Biblical drama, the sort of Biblical worldview that Leslie Newbigin famously called, citing a Hindu friend who read the Bible and declared it to be unlike other religions, but “the true story of the whole world.”

TWO INFLUENTIAL BOOKS
I cannot and dare not speak for the CCO, but from my vantage point it I think it is fair to say the among the most significant books that influenced the decades of their staff training, and their vision for developing the Jubilee conference, would be Al Wolter’s Creation Regained: The Biblical Basis for a Reformational Worldview and The Transforming Vision: Nurturing a Christian Worldview by Brian Walsh & J. Richard Middleton. (Richard, by the way, spoke at Jubilee last year about his recent Baker Academic book A New Heaven and A New Earth: Recovering Biblical Eschatology.)

Both Al and Brian taught the material from their books at CCO staff training events before those books ever came out in the late 70s and early 80s. Brian’s little collection of essays and talks given in the wake of The Transforming Vision called Subversive Christianity: Imaging God in a Dangerous Time was last year updated and re-released. It includes a chapter that was given at Jubilee. See?

LEVITICUS 25 – ISAIAH 61 – LUKE 4
Artwork from the blog of Chris Melanie Thompson.
The Jubilee conference was named, of course, from the beautiful blend of personal salvation on the day of atonement and all kinds of societal policy stuff — debts forgiven, prisoners released, land reform, animals given rest — described in the super-Sabbath Year of Jubilee texts of Leviticus 25.  When the ancient Jews never pulled off this blessed social arrangement, years later a prophet named Isaiah showed up and in Isaiah 61 declared that the Spirit of the Lord would fall and cause this holy liberation theology to really happen.  Good news would be announced to the poor and oppressed, slaves would be freed, and those whose eyes ached from being locked in a debtors dungeon would have to squint at the sun when they got out.  It was going to be the ‘favorable year of the Lord” and the prophetic imagination nurtured by the prophets believed it would be so.

Well it wasn’t so. The Jews went back to the destroyed temple in the destroyed Jerusalem but it never returned to the glory Haggai promised.  As N.T. Wright (influenced considerably by Brian Walsh, I might add) often says, the first century Jews knew they were still in exile, spiritually at least.  They longed for a redeemer to come, a Messianic King to put things to rights.

And soon enough, it happened.

I suppose you know that this Jubilee longing from Isaiah 61 was the very first text of Jesus’ very first sermon, back in his own hometown. His inaugural address was short. He read from Isaiah 61, alluding to the healing and wholeness and justice and shalom of the Leviticus year of Jubilee, and his short sermon said that in Him it had just come to pass. In one of the shortest sermons ever, Jesus said it was now the Year of Jubilee — forgive us our debts, indeed! —  and apparently, those who are in His Kingdom get in on it.  As the Nazarene explained nearer the end of the story in Luke 4, Jesus noted that, just like with the covenantal promises of Genesis 12, this was always to include outsiders. The whole world of people groups and ethnicities and outsiders and enemies were going to be invited into this Jubilee Kingdom and the whole earth itself — every good Jew would have known this — was to b
e restored.  The whole creation was going to be set free (see Romans 8, just for instance.)  

Well, that Biblical material was generative for us in the mid to late 70s and naming the CCO’s college student conference Jubilee — a Dutch philosopher schooled in the line of Kuyper named Peter J. Steen suggested it — pointed to an evangelical faith that was lively and robust and spiritually alive but that had as its trajectory an all-of-life-redeemed worldview that dared to imagine what it would look like if followers of Jesus took seriously his claim that this new era of shalom was breaking in to human history.  Like leaven in a loaf, just imagine what might happen if we took historic, orthodox theology and spiritually vibrant evangelical piety and linked it to Kuyperian social insights and a great passion for social renewal? This was missional before the word was ever coined.

HEARTS & MINDS INFLUENCED BY ALL THIS
I suppose you can see the connections between that 40 year old Jubilee vision, the way in which Beth and I were formed by the early years of the CCO conference in Pittsburgh, and why we opened our bookstore as we did here in central PA.  We realized that if all-of-life is redeemed in Christ, if God wants us to serve in “every square inch” and we need to be “non-conformed” to the ways of the world (Romans 12:1-20, that means we’ve got some thinking to do. Books were understood by the founders of Jubilee to be tools to help us engage in this project of learning about being a Kingdom people in a often perplexing world.

That Kuyper quote — “there is not one square inch of creation over which Christ does not declare “mine!'” — is preceded by a reminder that, “…no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest…”

Kuyper gave that call to submit to Christ’s claim over “every square inch of creation” at his inauguration address of the founding of a Christian university (the Frije University of Amsterdam where, eventually, the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd taught, a scholar whose work influenced Francis Schaeffer and some of the early CCO founders.)

You see, our deepest heart orientation influences our thoughts about things give which give rise to our cares and loves (and our cares and desires and loves likewise influence our thoughts and theories) all of which influences the distinctives of our practices; how we live.  As a person “thinks in their heart” is how Proverbs 23:7 puts it — so he or she shall be!  So our loves and desires (cue the ad to pre-order Jamie Smith’s You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit ) and our theories and believes about things all matter.  We called our store Hearts & Minds for a reason, after all. Kuyper was right — God’s presence and claim on our hearts and minds means that we need to honor God by being in synch with the principles of the Bible and the realities structured into creation itself, and developing uniquely Christian ways of being in the world, engaging our vocations and callings, thinking Christianly, so to speak, so we might offer at least a faithful presence in our workplaces, sphere’s of influence, and neighborhoods.

(Here is a very interesting youtube overview of Smith’s forthcoming book. I don’t want to distract you from my Jubilee essay, but Smith has been a keynote speaker there, has served CCO staff in training sessions, so although he’s not speaking there this year, it is utterly germane. You can pre-order it from us, of course, and we would be pleased to off a a discount for you.)

WE NEED BOOKS: TOOLS FOR THE KINGDOM
We need books to give us insight about what it might mean to be faithful followers of Jesus, to live out the implications of the Kingship of Christ, in a pluralistic, secularized, post-Christian culture, across every zone of life. 

I hope you indulge me to remind you that we here at Hearts & Minds have books — unlike most Christian bookstores, or so we have been told — on art, science, business, politics, urban design, architecture, gender studies, counseling, education, engineering, environmental science, philosophy, sociology, sports, dance, media, film, business, video gaming,economics, legal theories, and on and on. 

Sadly, most American church folks don’t share our enthusiasm for Kuyper’s worldview and vision for social renewal, and seem baffled when we say that we are neither conservative nor progressive, that we are seeking a Biblical third way beyond the customary assumptions in North American culture, and that the books we stock — diverse as they are — can help ordinary Christian folks live out a truly redemptive faith in the gospel in every area of life.

We believe churches can (must!) help in this, and we are forever grateful that unlike some campus ministry organizations, the CCO partners with local congregations, helping local churches serve their local student populations.  We believe that at the heart of the wide-as-life Kingdom of God, coming on Earth to restore the creation in the risen Christ, is the local body we call the institutional church.  Yes, yes, spiritual renewal is happening all over, and God cares about it all — it’s why I so appreciated Diana Butler Bass’s last book, Grounded: Finding God in the World, just for instance.  But the ordinary local church is, as one of my favorite books by Howard Snyder puts it, “the community of the King.”  Churches that are worth their salt help congregants see themselves as sent, as Kingdom people, as servants of the Lord in all they do.  Every. Square. Inch.

JUBILEE REVISITED
We learned most of this from Jubilee, or speakers at Jubilee.  For 40 years the CCO has been challenging us and inspiring us to be bold for God’s Kingdom, thinking and reading and learning and serving and taking up the high calling of making a difference wherever we find ourselves.

(There have been musicians and artists, too, by the way: it was at Jubilee years ago that I got to hang out with the late Mark Heard, met Bill Mallonee, was blown away (but not for the last time) by Pierce Pettis, introduced CCO to my friend Brooks Williams, heard Justin McRoberts live, and in recent years have come to admire the wonderful singer song-writers Joy and Peace Ike, and was lead in song for many a year by the legendary James Ward who served the conference for decades.)

I will never forget in the mid 70s hearing a lovely but incisive evangelistic speaker, an African American gentleman named Bill Pannell, talk about urban poverty and white privilege. I was transformed by the powerfully passionate preaching of Tom Skinner, another leading black evangelist who died too soon, and later hearing his wife, Barbara. I think it was there that I first met Calvin Seerveld, whose books on aesthetics we often mention. A life long hero of mine
is former Dutch Parliament member Bob Goudzewaard who I met at Jubilee. In the early days of Jubilee we heard R.C. Sproul and C. Evert Koop and Carl Henry and other world class women and men. Wow.

William Diehl was a Lutheran who was an executive at Bethlehem Steel and he chided us to quit saying “thank God’s it’s Friday” because it betrayed an unbiblical, low view of work. His book was called Thank God It’s Monday and it was very, very influential. He was a pioneer, and we may not today have Tim Keller’s remarkable Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work if it weren’t for the influences of Jubilee and William Diehl rippling out from Pittsburgh to places where Keller was paying attention. 

I will never forget hearing Senator Mark Hatfield, an anti-war Republican of considerable renown, talk about “stewardship” and I was on the same page when he explained that for many religious folks that word implies just giving money or time to the local church. Biblically, though, it means — think of what it says in Leviticus 25, again — the land is not for sale. We are merely managers, stewards, not owners. Hatfield offered a faith-based, non-partisan stewardly energy policy from the stage in Pittsburgh and it was written up in the Washington Post.  College students grappling with innovative visions of fresh policy proposals out of their evangelical faith? A national news story!

So many great speakers have crossed our paths in Pittsburgh, and when we even now sell their books I think fondly of them — authors such as John Stott, John Perkins, Al Wolters, Becky Pippert, Bryan Stevenson, Soong-Chan Rah, Os Guiness, Brenda Psalter McNeil, Chuck Colson, Lauren Winner, Harvie Conn, Shane Claiborne, Richard Mouw, J. I. Packer, Lisa Sharon Harper, Jim Skillen, Luci Shaw, Gary Haugen, Bob Goff, Mako Fujimura.  

I will never forget hearing Dr. Harold Dean Trulear whose charge to students I’ve used over and over: “Our scholarship and our worship ought not be ships merely passing in the night.”  He called for an integrated vision, relating academics and faith. Amen?

And who who has heard Tony Campolo preach that “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s comin'” can ever forget how rousing it was to hear a socially engaged, intellectually aware, Baptist preacher that made us laugh and invited us to live our faith in thought, word, and deed?

YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS
The CCO has developed a lovely brochure that I’d love for you to open up — it’s very, very cool, and easy to open — that shows some of the impact Jubilee has had over these last 40 years.  

This is an organization with whom we work about whom we are proud, and whose influence on us and our work has been considerable.  I’m sorry I’m not highlighting particular books right now, but as we pack the truck tonight and tomorrow, and get ready for the demanding two day set up, I invite you to check this out. And pray for us, please.  

Click on this: Celebration of 40 years of Jubilee booklet

THIS YEAR’S PROGRAM BOOK
If you want to see what they are doing this year, here is an amazing, artful, program booklet that opens nicely and you can click through like a real magazine.  Notice the four articles written by young friends within the CCO — creation, fall, redemption, restoration.  Somebody saw it and wrote to me saying “your fingerprints are all over this.”  Well, I don’t know about that, but the good writers who did those essays all bought books from us.  So we’re glad for that!  The program booklet itself is a work of art, and the essays are good.

Click on this: Browse the Jubilee 2016 Program Book.

Check out all the workshops in this booklet — engineering, sports, pop music, science, politics, film-making, sexuality, global development, calling and vocation, working in the industrial trades, food, social work, medicine, business, leadership, education, urban ministry, creativity, gospel-centered discipleship, emotional life, lawyering, and more.  When we first cooked up the idea for this conference, we determined to invite students to relate faith to higher education, to help them imagine God’s will for their future careers, and wanted to offer time to interact with real folks living in the rough and tumble of the real world.  You’ll see why some adults come back to Jubilee year after year, to be around such winsome servants of the Lord who are relating faith to work, callings, public life.  It’s the kind of stuff you, if I may be frank, don’t hear much about in many churches, I’m afraid…

You’ll enjoy and be inspired to see the speakers — from student leaders (an international undergrad who, inspired by her evangelical faith, started what has become the largest organization for Mongolian students in North America!) to some famous authors. Gabe Lyon and David Kinnaman will be talking about their soon to be released book Good Faith, which we will have there.

Jena Lee Nardella will be describing her work as chronicled in her great book A Thousand Wells. (It was a BookNotes “Best of 2015, by the way.)

Steve Garber — who used to direct the Jubilee conference years ago and cares for Jubilee as much as anybody — will bring his wisdom to a large group of students as seen in his eloquent, wise, and profound works Fabric of Faithfulness and Visions of Vocation. Of course, Derek Melleby will be explaining what led him to write (with Don Optiz) what is essentially a Jubby must-read, Learning for the Love of God: A Student’s Guide to Academic Faithfulness.  

Four final things:

• On pages 69 – 70 you will see the speakers at Jubilee 2016 who have written books.  We’ll have big stacks there for the crowds that easily surpass 3000. Let us know if you want to order any and we’ll give you the Jubilee discount.

• See on pages 71 – 72  a short list of key books that I’ve curated for these students. You can see the basic categories and my descriptions.  Hope it gives you a nice reminder about some very nice books. Again, we have plenty of most of these and it would be a delight
  to send some out for your reading pleasure.

• You might notice Andy Crouch in that first link offering his endorsement for the conference. He has spoken there before (indeed, his talks on the impact of creation and culture-making embedded in the Genesis narrative is seminal.) We will have, at Jubilee, the very first boxes of his forthcoming book Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing (IVP; $20.00.) and will be releasing it to the conferees there.  When we return on Tuesday, February 23rd we will start sending out the pre-orders we received back when we announced it at BookNotes last month. If you want to be among the first to get it, let us know asap.  Here is a several minute interview with him that explains the insight of this new, very, very good book. 

• Our dear friend Dan Dupee is the President of the Board of Directors of the CCO, but for years has their El Presidente. Besides offering good leadership to this fabulous organization, he spent some time doing some research — namely, pulling together punches of focus groups to talk with parents of college age students.  And, talking to the many college age students he came to know through the CCO staff that serve on campuses all over.  His book — which we invited you to pre-order — is called It’s Not Too Late : The Essential Part You Play in Shaping Your Teen’s Faith (Baker; $15.99.)

So, there you have it. 

Except this, if you are still with us: please pray for us not only that we would set up our book display without too much stress (we most likely have too many books for the remarkably generous space… we always over do it, it seems) and that we’d have good conversations with our customers, but also for my sermon Sunday morning.

Yes, I have the great, great privilege of speaking Sunday morning at Jubilee 2016. I’m not sure if a conference speaker should be called a preacher, but, with God’s help, I’m going to bring it. I’ll be inviting folks to big hope, to understand a bit about the restoration of creation that is the ultimate hope of those of us who believe Christ’s Kingship is truly coming “on earth as it is in heaven.”  End times details aside, I’ll be inviting folks to live into this dream of a better world, taking up visions of vocation that last, bearing witness to what we most deeply believe.  All things (re)newed.  Every. Square. Inch.  Maranatha.

Thank God for the CCO, get excited about the 40th anniversary of Jubilee, and pray that we sell some books that help people respond well to God’s gift of transformation. And that I am able to be a useful vessel for God’s truth to be proclaimed on Sunday morning.

We are grateful for your support, glad for your interest in our work, and truly blessed by your prayers.

In the meantime, pray also for our good staff here at the shop who make all this possible. Beth and I would not be able to do half of what we do without our colleagues in book-selling, Amy, Patti, Katy, our mail-out specialist Diana, and our book-keeper, Robin.  And whisper a prayer for the sales reps and publishers without whose help we wouldn’t get to set up these big off-site pop-up bookstores. And those UPS and FedEx and USPS folks. Thank them for doing some of the heavy lifting.

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This is a little review we did prior to this book coming out, inviting folks to pre-order it. After College is now available and we are so glad.  We had a little “launch party” for the book out near Pittsburgh with some of Erica’s colleagues in the CCO in late July. Now, we are sending it all over the country as folks are giving it to college seniors or those who have recently graduated. I can’t tell you how glad I am to promote this, how good it is, how very well done.  It is a “must read” for those leaving college and a fine read for college seniors.  Give it now this semester or wait til Spring semester nearer graduation but do give it away to any college students you know who are soon leaving college and who want to honor God in healthy and sound ways.

After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships and Faith by Erica Young Reitz (IVP) $16.00 

Hearts & Minds SALE PRICE  $14.40

We announced this a month ago and took a few pre-orders, glad to be able to give an early shout out about David’s forthcoming book. Now it is here, and I’ve been itching to write about it. More, I’ve been itching to read it. Some circles of the internets have been been happily ablaze with discussions of it.  Our friends over at Englewood Review of Books have offered a free chapter.  Pathos has pushed it.  I’ve seen the cool-looking, hot red cover on twitter every day for two weeks.

He likes that word, from the Greek apolalypsi, which means revelation. He won considerable fandom when he struck a chord decades ago with his first book Everyday Apocalypse which makes his conviction and experience clear, in an artful, creatively written style in which he offers ruminations on pop culture’s ability to reveal truth.  Indeed, the subtitle is The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, the Simpsons and Other Pop Culture Icons. It helped kick off a cottage industry of publishing nifty books about gospel insights found within all manner of popular films, TV shows and such; if they don’t cite Dark, I suspect they aren’t as insightful as they should be.

And, man, it’s beautiful stuff.  His own religious journey has been fascinating. David generously describes a hilarious episode of wolfing down Saltines and Welch-aid in a Kroeger’s parking lot (you can imagine why) and being scolded by a pious grandmother for making promises like “see you later” without qualifying it with “Lord willing” and some incredibly dear tellings of his love for the Bible (“as long as everybody gets to talk, I’ve never been to a Bible study I didn’t like.”) Whether this is your weird story or not — he’s convinced most of us have some weird stories — you will enjoy, perhaps be deeply blessed as I have been, by reading about an evolving faith development without shame or bitterness or anxiety. This stuff is splendid, and it is Dark more joyous and (dare I say it) upbeat than ever before.

Prepare to have idols smashed. David Dark renders futile the cherished modern ambition to opt out of human religiosity.

Yes, this a love letter to those who don’t like religion, but it also is a witness to how to approach what Charles Taylor calls “the secular age.” If you recall the last section of James K.A. Smith’s overview of Taylor’s heady and hefty tome, How (Not) To Be Secular, Smith calls (as does Taylor) for a new way to do apologetics, a culturally-engaged, more artful way to think about faith conversations, pre-evangelism and evangelization, about bearing witness to God’s redemptive work here within God’s good but torn creation. Without saying so, Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious is just this kind of project. It is one of the very important new books of this new era. It doesn’t do everything, but for what it is, it is nearly pitch-perfect, delightful, challenging, edifying, inviting.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to David and his publisher. This is sheer gift. Pay attention.

BookNotes

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