While the last BookNotes started with a bit of an essay about cultural reformation and Christian thinking about our vocations in the world, that was prelude to my list of 10 recent books about the church. A few were about those leaving the faith, or at least the local church, and why that might be and what the local congregation can do. From the vital Galvanize Your Church to help parishioners learn to think faithfully about their work world vocations to the lovely pair from our friends at Englewood (The Shape of Our Lives: A Field Guide for Congregational Formation and The Virtue of Dialogue: Becoming a Thriving Church Through Conversation) to the others I reviewed, it was a strong, good list.

All of our previous BookNotes are archived at the website (just click on BookNotes.) Unless we say otherwise, the discounts are usually still on.

All of which got me thinking of church leaders — who buys these sorts of books (not as many as you might think, at least from us) anyway? And for those who might be interested, what fairly recent ones could I suggest for those serving local parishes? If the last list was about the church, this is for church leadership, clergy and others.

Of course our BookNotes readership and Hearts & Minds customers are an ecumenical lot — so not every sort of book is as useful as it might be for another sort of congregation. We’ve got progressives and conservative evangelicals, we’ve got non-denoms and highly liturgical folks; as we mentioned describing that one book last time, we’ve got folks in para-church ministries. Some of our readers are involved in small churches, some enjoy their medium sized places, and a few attend or lead large churches. Some are a little skittish about any kind of church.  We get it, believe me.

For fun, on the heels of that last list of new books about church life, I’d like to name a few that are, generally, fairly recent. Most are not brand new, but I don’t think I’ve highlighted these. There’s something for everyone, no doubt. ALL ARE 20% OFF.

Skip down to the very end of the colum to click on the link to our secure website — using that to order is ideal. And there is that note asking you to tell us how you want them shipped (or if you are picking them up here in Dallastown.) And please note that important announcement about being closed for in-store browsing right now. Sorry….

We have shelves full of books about congregational life, church renewal and health, and tons about worship, liturgy, preaching, music, pastoral care, books for ministers and for anyone involved in church life. Give us an email or phone call if you need something special or have particular needs. You know we’re here Monday through Saturday, 10 – 6 Easter Time.

Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age James Emery White (Zondervan Reflective) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Before the Covid outbreak in 2020 few churches were streaming their services or had much of a social media presence. After the pandemic, nearly everyone did. Some have given that up, but I believe it is fair to say that most churches have some sort of presence on-line and many have continued to stream their services or adult classes on Facebook, etc. This recent book not only examines how that works (and why it is important) but combines with it an analysis of our post-church culture.

Regardless of your theological tradition, you know that the numbers of church attendees is down (and maybe your church numbers aren’t growing.) You surely care about reaching the unchurched in your town or area. In this post-Christian and post-pandemic era we must resist the temptation to return to “ministry as normal” and must continue to embrace digital technologies and use them well.

There are many other books that explore the question of digital church and online worship and the like. Nobody disagrees that we are an embodied people and that face-to-face relationships are a vital part of congregational life. But the question remains: do we want to reach those for whom online participation might be the only viable option? Are there unique missional needs in this digital culture that demand a hybrid church? Can we be a vibrant community for the unchurched and online folks?  It is where many people practically live these days and we should ponder how to engage them well.

I respect this author, enjoyed this book, and agree fully or not, it would be a great book to read with church leaders or staff. It’s energetic and compelling. Hybrid Church can help.

Open-Hearted People, Soul-Connected Church: How Courageous Authenticity Can Transform Your Relationships, Your Community, Your Life Tom Bennardo (Baker Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I almost listed this in last week’s list about congregational life since it is, finally, about “the secret to experiencing genuine Christian community.” But yet, it seems to me that leaders set the stage for, caste a vision for, help created an corporate ethos where becoming a congregation that values relationships and nurtures deeper community are the ones who most urgently need a book like this, I’ll list it here for those wanting to help their congregants discover greater intimacy and supportive friendships in church.

One reviewer — Jen Pollock Michael, herself a very good writer — says it is for those who are tired of “playing church.” How do we get heart-level honesty and generous relationships in our local congregations? This helps you (and those you lead) understand soul-level connections and will help folks understand what it means to be in deeper communion with God, self, and others. Yes!

Spiritual Care First Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community Cody J. Sanders (Fortress) $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

I was afraid that I was being overly idealistic in suggesting this to a conservative evangelical pastor wanting to think more deeply about spiritual care among the hurting in his church. I explained that this was written by a professor of Congregational Care at Luther Seminary in St Paul — not exactly a conservative thinker and certainly not situated in the buckle of the Bible Belt — and that as gifted and interesting and gracious as Sanders is, the book was framed within the context of mainline denominational churches, including members who self-identify as LGBTQ. My guy was open-minded and said he mostly loved it, at least in terms of offering a useful model and a thought-provoking “all hands on deck” framework. This “toolkit” (as they call it) offers insights about “hearing, helping, and hearing” and suggests that such a training resource would be used by pastors who want to invite and equip laypersons to be involved in spiritual and pastoral care.

There are a lot of good ideas here, practical (but a tad scholarly) stuff, offering with a “scaffold of communal care by and for congregants.” As Mindy McGarrah Sharp of Columbia Theological Seminary puts it, Sanders “prepares individuals and teams to hear difficult things, to help immediately while professionals are on the way, and to support healing around life’s deep difficulties.” There 15 serious chapters with practical exercises, reading lists, and a couple of appendices, all in just under 250 pages.

Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities Dr. Andrew J. Bauman (Baker Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It is tragic that such a book needs to be written, and it is not the first book to examine the overt — but more importantly, usually, the covert — sexism in our faith communities. As Sheila Wray Gregoire (The Great Sex Rescue and The Marriage You Want) puts it,

This book will haunt you — and it should. Don’t just read it. Feel it. Grieve it. And then go and do something about it.

This book shows exactly what can be done to begin to fix this situation. It advises, at least, listening well. Bauman, himself a former pastor, draws on first-hand research, lots of in-depth interviews, and detailed listening sessions which allowed women to voice the pain they have suffered. And we need to hear this.

It is important to realize that, as it says on the back cover, many leaders “were often unaware of how their words, actions, and attitudes were harming their sisters in Christ.”

This is an honest look (that, in some circles, maybe be a wake-up call) at how a lack of awareness was off-putting, or worse. Sometimes misogyny “masqueraded as biblical truth.” Safe Church is an important read for anyone in pastoral leadership, but certain for men.

Andrew Bauman has with immense wisdom and humility addressed the exegetical, theological, cultural, and traumatic bonds that need to be broken to create not only equity and safety but flourishing for both men and women. This book is a tour de force for more honest and holy conversation and transformation. — Dan B. Allender, PhD, professor of counseling psychology and founding president, The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, author of Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling

Need to Know: Empowering Female Leadership and Why It’s Essential for the Future of the Church edited by Danielle Strickland (100 Movements Publishing) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

I hope you know this edgy, missional, movement publisher that has released some very useful resources for congregational leaders, church planters, missional leaders. This one is edited by the dynamic Canadian Danielle Strickland who I adore. She, here, has pulled together — curated, as some say — twenty-one authors to explore why we have limited women’s contribution to the Kingdom. As is commonly known, even when women are permitted to lead, in some churches and para-church groups they are frequently overlooked and left out of key decision making.

The twenty-one authors of these various chapters include men and women, mainline folks and independent, North Americans and others. The global church is represented and they together study the “prevailing structures, examine the benefit of empowering leadership, and envision a future where women and men lead together.”

As it says on the back, “This book is an essential resource for every church leader to create a more equitable and thriving church.”

There are women in this book that Beth and I have heard, or met — women we admire such as Mandy Smith, Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, Jo Saxton, and Danielle Strickland. Other admirable leaders are here — Scot McKnight, Mimi Haddad, and Bob Ekblad — and famous authors like Beth Allison Bar (who recently wrote the incredible and much-discussed Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry.) What a great collection of excellent pieces, by great writers and wise leaders. This is an important book and we are glad to suggest it to you.

Let This Mind Be In You: Exploring God’s Call to Servanthood James K. Dew (B+H) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Not too long ago a customer asked for a short list of books on servant leadership. There are a lot that use that phrase and we have any number of titles on leadership from a Biblical perspective. (Think, for instance, of the must-read and transformative Servants and Fools: A Biblical Theology of Leadership by Arthur Boers or even the little Henri Nouwen classic In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership.) But that customer needed something very much about servanthood and very rooted in an easy to read but solid study of the Bible. Let This Mind Be In You was ideal — yes, it is aimed specifically at ministers but it shows that servanthood is “essential to every form of Christian service.”

It looks in an edifying and helpful way at much of the Scriptural witness and specifically at the example of Jesus. We simply must exhibit a posture of Christ-like servanthood. There are 9 solid chapters and a prayerful afterword; I’d say it is “short and sweet” but it is challenging and convicting, as well. Dew has two PhDs (one in philosophy, one in theology) and is President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served as a pastor in several different sorts of congregations.

Swimming with the Sharks: Leading a Full Spectrum Church in a Red-and-Blue World Jack Haberer (Cascade) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Jack Haberer was shaped and formed in his Jesus freaky years by a variety of faith traditions and throughout all he ended up a gifted and upbeat Presbyterian. He was faithful within the PC(USA) for many years… he pastored for nearly a quarter of a century (often preached, he jokes, to real rocket scientists.) He is known for an irrepressible enthusiasm for faith, upbeat and (despite several advanced degrees) down-to-Earth and has authored several good books (including GodViews:The Convictions that Drive and Divide Us, which I still refer to often.) I say all this to suggest that nearly any pastor who reads BookNotes will love this guy, even as he steps on your toes. Agree or not, his words are deeply wise and his strong faith and trust in the Spirit is inspiring for us all.

This book is about navigating the “sharks” among us, which come at most pastors from several places in our polarized and politicized culture. Beyond “blue progressives and red conservatives” there are Biblically faithful options and this book tries to offer a Biblical framework for unity and generosity.

He speaks really candidly here, with fresh and sometimes blunt words, with a degree of wit and charm. He sort of updates GodViews just a bit, for a wider audience.  He tells some great stories. But he is not messing around: he offers “an overlapping set of five aspects of Jesus’s heart and passion for God’s mission in the world.” He wants all on board and shows how to move in that “full-spectrum” direction. He is realistically sober and outrageously audacious. This really is a resource for those seeking a better way, what one reviewer says is “a masterpiece of bridge-building.” Will Willimon wrote the foreword and he is very positive about the book. Feel like you are sometimes swimming with sharks? You need Swimming with the Sharks.

Changing My Mind: The Overlooked Virtue for Faithful Ministry Will Willimon (Abingdon) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Although not brand new, I think this is Willimon’s most recent release and I loved it. Yes, pastor, you can (and should!) change your mind on occasion. Here, our steadfast pastoral leader— who I have followed for forty years, I’m sure, including help host him at an event here in Dallastown, even — tells no only why church leaders need to be open minded and less stuck-in-their-ways, but shares stuff he himself has changed his mind about. This book is a call to good thinking and a “provocative exploration of pastoral vocation.” This is said to be “perfect for pastors at any stage of their journey in ministry.” It is a great read. I like what one reviewer, Nelson Cowan (a United Methodist elder) said about Changing My Mind — “it’s playful and a bit cranky.” It has “all-too-real anecdotes.” Ha.

And, by the way, along the way there are some conversations drawing young Timothy, in many ways, the precursor of this book, with Paul (an older, experienced pastor) offering some guidance to the unseasoned recipient of those two famous epistles. This would be a great read for a leadership time or clergy care group.

Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry Paul David Tripp (Crossway) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

If I were making a more general list about the character and integrity of the pastor I would, of course, list the quartet of books in the “vocational holiness” series by Eugene Peterson (like Working the Angles or Under the Unpredictable Plant or The Contemplative Pastor or the evocative, dense, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Ministry.) I’d recommend a couple of William Willimon books and perhaps any number on burnout and resilience. Pastoral ministry is, more than some may know, a “dangerous calling.”

Paul Tripp is an evangelical who stands in that unique movement they like to call “gospel-centered.” With clarity about preaching the gospel to yourself (as Luther put it) and seeing the cross grow greater as we come to deeper self awareness of our sin and need, it is a certain flavor of Reformed piety that takes grace seriously, even as it takes personal sin seriously. Gospel centered leaders like Tripp — who has been trained as a Biblical counselor as well — are serious and yet remarkably joyful in their loud dependence on nothing but Christ. Tripp has written bunches of books offering this sort of guidance and focusing readers on the very good news that we can be saved and redeemed and restored and sanctified by Christ alone.  One of his most popular is the heady daily devotional (in hardcover or leather-bound) called New Morning Mercies. It seems to me it is solid meat for young Christians and it is solid stuff for older saints. A more recent, handsome daily devotional is the hardcover Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life He also has a book on marriage, one on leadership, one on suffering, one on awe, one on healthy, Godly communication, and more.

This book was written ten years ago and was just this month re-issued with study questions. I suspect that clergy care groups for convivial support might be using it. Maybe it is being used in seminaries that prepare evangelical pastors. He diagnoses the problems some have — pride, theological brains that are too big, sexual stuff, a lack of devotion to God, mediocrity.  He probes a bit, carefully inviting a deeper self-awareness about our self-glory, about our fears of what others think. He says it was the most painful book he has written, in part because he was humbled before God as he grappled with his own soul and dispositions. I get that; I’m no clergy person and am hardly a church leader (and I might find myself disagreeing with Paul from time to time, I suspect.) But, man, this was quite a book to read, and I think I’m going to study it again.

How Change Comes to Your Church: A Guidebook for Church Innovations Patrick Keifert and Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (Eerdmans) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I have mentioned this often before and while it isn’t new, I had to sneak in an older one that seemed important. It came out late in 2019 and I believe nothing has come out in this genre in the last five years that is better. Who doesn’t need some solid thinking and good guidance on how change happens? What church leader doesn’t need “deep wisdom” (as one reviewer called this book? Whether you are a denominational leader or a preacher, whether you are an lay leader in your congregational or a person fascinated with leadership theories seeking adaptive change, if you’ve been in a church for a while and hunger for some helpful practices that are not overwhelming or too complicated, this is a great little read. As John Franke notes, it is “an ideal volume for congregations seeking practical help in the quest for a more faithful and vibrant witness.”

Pat Keifert, by the way, is president and director of research at the Church Innovation Institute (and an emeritus professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary.) Wes Granberg-Michaelson has served as General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America and has worked with the World Council of Churches and other global, inter-denominational groups. He was an early co-editor with his friend Jim Wallis of Sojourners and has been chief of staff of a respected Republican Senator. His most recent book is Without Oars: Casting Off into a Life of Pilgrimage. ˆWe will soon be announcing his forthcoming Orbis release coming this fall; naturally we can take pre-orders even now at our 20% off. It will be called The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action (Orbis; $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80.)

I’m impressed with the ways Keifert & Granberg-Michaelson weave spiritual practices, insights about discernment, and seasoned insights about real congregations into this narrative. There are stories and principles and practices and ideas, rooted in the call to be attentive to the Word and Spirit and how to make space for the formation of the community. Yes!

Preaching and Music: Powerful Partners in Proclamation Catherine E. Williams (Cascade) $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

We have been delighted to stock this for a bit, now, as it is a recent release by a professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary; she earned a Bachelor of Music in Church Music from the esteemed Westminster Choice College of Rider University and studied at Palmer (affiliated with Eastern University in Philadelphia.) Her Doctor of Philosophy in Homiletics came from Princeton Theological Seminary. Wow.

We’d suggest this even if she was not here in central PA — there is not that much written on the relationship between preaching and music in church. Given her background in church music and homiletics, this book called Preaching and Music is just perfect, eh?

In the current conversation about what makes preaching compelling, the back cover provocative notes, William’s insight is rare, her voice distinct. Can music be better used in our conventional church settings? She writes about choir music, about hymnody, about atheism and special music. She also writes about using music in the sermon itself (including drawing on popular music for illustration.) She has some fascinating stuff about ”the musicality” of black church preaching (and Africana music.) There is a forward by Luke Powery of Messiah University.

Preachers with musical training have long intuited the resonance between these two identities, but it is rare to find a book that takes both callings seriously. In Preaching and Music, Catherine Williams offers a unique perspective on the multiple connections between preaching and music, inviting preachers and musicians to fully embrace each other as partners in the work of proclamation. This is a joyful book, reminding us of all the ways word and song belong together. — Angela Dienhart Hancock, Associate Professor of Homiletics, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

In this volume Williams draws upon established homiletical and liturgical voices, but then pulls these to the margins where they can be put into conversation with traditions that have been largely ignored or even disparaged, particularly those of Black and Pentecostal churches. This is not a zero-sum game. Williams demonstrates that when we dismantle the walls that divide our traditions and our roles as preachers and musicians, all can better flourish. — Martin Tel, Director of Music, Princeton Theological Seminary

Preaching to a Divided Nation: A Seven-Step Model for Promoting Reconciliation and Unity Matthew D. Kim & Paul A Hoffman (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Speaking of preaching, there are many (many!) great books on homiletics and I have enjoyed at least skimming dozens of them. They keep coming and we continue to stock them. This is not brand new but it seems important in these hard days. Several pastors have trusted me with complicated conversations about their preaching these days. Believe me, I get it. Whew.

This is not the only book written about preaching in this particular cultural moment (and it was released in 2022, written the year before that, so it isn’t utterly current with the crisis we face now.) But, still, I think during a time of division and polarization this book is a wonderful sort of handbook, a guide to thinking well about the listeners with a deep commitment to faithfulness to Scripture and theology. As Tara Beth Leach writes, “If you want a framework for preaching that leads to reconciliation instead of division, this one’s for you.”

Dr. Kim teaches at Truett Theological Seminary (at Baylor) and wrote a previous preaching title called Preaching to People in Pain: How Suffering Can Shape Your Sermons and Connect with Your Congregation Dr. Hoffman is a pastor (of an Evangelical Friends Church in Rhode Island) and has written about reconciliation in geographies of conflict.

A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church – Year C Wilda Gafney (Church Publishing) $36.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $29.56

I hope you know this four-volume series of lectionary resources. (The first was called Year W, and then she compiled one for each of the three standard lectionary cycles Years A, B, and C.) The National Catholic Reporter called her work “paradigm-shifting” which they suggested would “influence Biblical preaching and teaching for generations to come.”

I don’t know if that is true, but I appreciate this endorsement from one The Christian Century. They write:

For preachers and teachers who are bold enough to wrestle with the word, this resource will raise biblical literacy and illuminate figures and plot lines long left in the shadows.

Rev. Gafney is a Hebrew scholar, an Episcopal priest and former Army Chaplain. Her degrees are from Howard and Duke and she has been pastor in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and currently teaches at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, TX. We stock both volume one and volume two of her Womanist Midrash.(The second volume focuses on the women in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.)

Our Hearts Wait: Worshiping Through Praise and Lament in the Psalms Walter Brueggemann (WJK) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

We find the four volumes in the “Walter Brueggemann Library” to be very well arranged including some well-chosen chapters from his many books and some previously unpublished (in books) essays and journal articles, each pulled together around a theme. This recent one is on Psalms, worship, and especially lament.

In these days it does seem like we need more resources on the significance of Biblical lament and while this is not an easy “how to” resource or a handbook for liturgical use, it does offer the Biblical and theological foundation for thinking about doxology and lament.

A few of the chapters in Our Hearts Wait are pieces I’ve never seen before — two from a hymns journal, another from a Biblical studies journal — so this is thrilling. One is from the very important (and I think woefully under-appreciated) Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology, a few are drawn from From Whom No Secrets Are Hid. Two are adapted from Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to Contemporary Church.

Anyway, I realize this isn’t exactly a book about being a worship leader or pastor, but it would be helpful to shape the Biblical thinking of those wondering about the role of lament in our age, even in our churches.

Bearing Witness: What the Church Can Learn from Early Abolitionists Daniel Lee Hill (Baker Academic) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

There have been a number of books in recent years reminding the contemporary church what we might learn from forebears. A few on the early church have been popular and even influential. (Think of The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider or Strange Religion by Nijay Gupta  We are glad as we clearly are a part (for better or for worse) of a great cloud of witnesses. There is much to learn.

This new book teaches us about four key 19th century black abolitionists who I suspect most of us have not heard of. We are in the debt of Daniel Hill (professor of theology at George Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor) for this outstanding glimpse into the rich legacy of how these four leaders (three men and one woman) served the church and the common good. With all the talk about public theology and justice-work these days, this is a splendid, historical peek at how it has been done.

And much of how it is done, or so this splendid book suggests, is grounded in the teaching and formation happening in the church. Aside from its good word about racial justice, it suggests that we must grapple more with the nature of the church’s mission and what theological training it might take to form folks into people of public integrity and courage.

With wisdom, care, and faithful guidance, this book calls the church to a posture of bearing witness. Hill shows us the profound ways that the ‘blood and sweat’ of David Ruggles, Maria W. Stewart, and William Still ‘still speak’ inviting us to clear-eyed, hope-filled, and catholic listening and action. — Jessica Joustra, Redeemer University, editor of Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures

Today’s Christians have a lot to learn from Hill. His thoughtful analysis of Ruggles, Stewart, Still, and what they teach us about God, ourselves, and our callings in the world shows — perhaps counterintuitively — that righteousness in public life depends to a large extent on evangelical witness (grounded in the Bible) to the Lord’s will with respect to social ethics. Let us make good use of the models and theological wisdom in this book. — Douglas A. Sweeney, church historian, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of Empire Preston Sprinkle (David C. Cook) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay again this isn’t brand new but it is fairly recent and I only highlighted it once, previously. It did not get as much attention as it deserves so I will commend it to you again. It is a solid book about politics, sort of, but more about the church. It is a Biblical study — lively and informed by good thinkers, while retaining a warm, evangelical sort of tone — reflecting on Israel’s exile into Babylon and how that shaped so much of the Hebrew people’s political and social identity. It suggests — drawing on insights from Brueggemann, Hauerwas, Horsley, and others of that ilk, not to mention authors like Michael Gorman and Tom Wright and Richard Bauckman — that Christians should similarly see themselves as foreigners in the country where they live. The gospel of Jesus’s Kingdom, he states, was politically subversive and the churches identity should be “fundamentally separate from the empires where we reside.”

This has been well-rehearsed for decades now (please read Romans Disarmed and/or Colossians Remixed by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh as great examples of how anti-empire themes open up rich interpretive possibilities when studying books of the New Testament.) Such work is often, I’ll admit, written within a certain sort of radical cohort within Biblical scholars guilds or more edgy missional outfits. (Geesh, just think of Michael Frost’s 2006 classic Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture.) What is so fascinating about Preston Sprinkle is that he is a mainstream evangelical and this book is on the quintessential evangelical publisher David C. Cook. Like his serious and compelling book on Christian nonviolence, Nonviolence: The Revolutionary Way of Jesus (Revised from the first edition called Fight), also on Cook, it shows that “the times they are a changin’.”

Be that as it may, this is a book that is provocative, bringing the heat of many serious scholars, in a way that is really readable, interesting, and, dare I say, inspiring. May it inspire many to learn how to separate ourselves from the worldly ways of power and partisan foolishness. I suspect we have readers who know this idea is valuable— that we are not to be at home in this culture, that we are to be “non conformed” and distinctive, that holiness demands some resistance to the ideologies around us, but yet, may not know how to explain it to their typical congregants. Yes, it is somewhat about the relationship of church and state (and there is other stuff I would want said there) but we don’t shelf this in a political science section, we have it under ecclesiology. This is about our identity as the Christian Church, a gathering of exiles.

The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry Austin Carty (Eerdmans) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I’m prone to hyperbole, I suppose, but I want to say that there is hardly a book in the store that brings together so much of what we are about here — just think of the opening remarks I wrote prior to last week’s BookNotes (the list was of books on church life) about culture and the life of the mind. This is a book about reading — hooray! Any book lover will adore it!

And it is a book about pastoral ministry. As I noted last time, we want to invite ordinary church folks to connect their worship lives and their work lives; we want pastors to proclaim the full vision of the Kingdom of God as it breaks into jobs and studios and homeless shelters and theaters and sports fields and neighborhoods and bedrooms. Carty gets this — in part, I think, because he reads novels and poems alongside his Bible and theology books. This book brings together so much of what we love that I just have to name it here, even if it isn’t new.

The Pastor’s Bookshelf is a book for pastors about why reading should be a routine habit in their busy lives. He ruminates on this in lovely ways, giving shout-outs to books he’s read, authors who he values, stuff he enjoys. It’s a fun book, but also really does focus on the very best practices of mature pastors. Although written for clergy, it could almost be called “The Christian’s Bookshelf.” The forward by Thomas Long is brilliant and inspiring. Carty’s little volume is a treasure chest. Maybe you should buy it for somebody you know.

And, drum roll, please….You will be hearing more about this soon, but, for what it is worth, I have an advanced copy of the forthcoming Austin Carty book, coming from Eerdmans in July.

It will be called Some of the Words Are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon by Austin Carty (Eerdmans) $22.99 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $18.39.

I just started it but it is, so far, absolutely wonderful. I mean, I can’t wait to get done typing up this list so I can go home and read more. I suspect it will be one of our “Best Books of 2025” list. Those who have weighed in already include raves from Cornelius Plantinga (whose Reading for Preaching is another must-read if you ask me), Karen Swallow Prior (whose forthcoming You Have a Calling I’ll be telling you about soon), Tom Long, Claude Atcho, Jessica Hooten Wilson, Andrew Root, and more. Scot McKnight calls him “a new prophet for preachers.”

Allrightee-then. Why not pre-order a few today?

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO CLICK ON THE “ORDER” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders. We’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer. Let us know your hopes. We’re not automated, so let’s talk!

Of course the weight and destination of your particular package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $9.00, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.80. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may even take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF