Some years, after the massive and important Pittsburgh Jubilee conference (put on, with a bit of help from us, by the campus ministry outfit the CCO) I write a reflection, reminding readers how much fun the hard work is, how many books we sell about all manner of topics, and why, for many churches, the vision promoted at this conference about living into God’s promises of new creation — thy Kingdom come, on Earth! — is still underdeveloped. The CCO’s team putting together great keynote talks about the good creation, the seriousness of the fall into sin, the life-changing nature of Christ’s redemptive work, and the hope of living now in anticipation of God’s cosmic restoration, coupled with dozens of workshops on everything from science to journalism to the arts to business is nothing short of genius.

You can read some of my older celebrations of this event and how much it means to us (and our business) HERE, HERE, or HERE. Sorry, the sales mentioned are long over. Ha.

You can watch or listen to the last handful of our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast where I talked over a series of episodes about some of the seminal thinkers and best-selling books over the course of the conference’s last 50 years. Listen at Apple or Spotify or watch us on YouTube. The Jubilee ones start with Episode 48 and I’m doing another one soon.

AND, if you want to know even more you can enjoy any number of episodes of the podcast “Fifty Jubilees Story Project” made by the great Jen Pelling for the CCO (again easily found on Apple podcasts or Spotify. ) I’m in the very first one, in fact, as these conversations tell stories of former staff or participants in the yearly conference. I know every one of the people involved in these fun interviews and I’m not going to lie — a few of them brought tears to my eyes. It may seem like insider baseball, as they say, but if you are interested in the best ways to bring God’s Kingdom transformation to young adults, enjoy these fabulous chats.

For those who were praying for us and the stamina needed during the weeks of very hard work running the pop-up bookstore there, thank you. Beth and I both survived pretty well with the help of a large team of volunteers. Two of our best friends and H&M supporters came in for four days before the event to help us pack and lug and load boxes into the big rental truck. We are grateful that so many from all over care about our work here and the Jubilee conference is one dramatic example of our vision and vocation.

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A DOZEN NEW BOOKS YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT — on sale, now.

After the Lenten list last week, I’m eager to curate another list of what we think are vital resources for those who making reading a spiritual habit and for those who want to know about some of the important resources for this end of February in the year of the Lord, 2026. You can order by clicking on the link at the very bottom. Please and thanks for doing that.

God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal N.T. Wright (HarperOne) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I hardly know what to say about this other than it may be the most important theological /Bible book of the year. If you like the way I described the Jubilee conference, above, inviting students to think of their studies, their sports, their shopping, their work, their relationships, their future callings as citizens and employees and church members (etc) in light of the redemptive trajectory in the Bible towards God’s renewal of all things, then this book explores that with Biblical detail, fleshing out at least some of the feisty implications. The final talk from the Main Stage at Jubilee, with praise songs capturing this very theme, is laden with hope for an embodied future, a new earth and Wright here shows that this isn’t some quirky schtick of the CCO but is the very heart of the gospel message. As I often say here, if your church doesn’t proclaim the incarnational nature of the Kingdom of God then they aren’t proclaiming the real Bible message. Personal salvation alone is not the gospel. Social transformation alone is not the gospel. We live with a story and in the Bible that unfolding drama goes from a good creation fallen but restored into a new creation. Wright is the one who helps us see this, maybe better than anyone writing today.

He has always had a fairly wholistic and Biblically faithful approach to the multidimensional realities of the story of Israel’s God and the church of Jesus Christ. He’s never preached a personalistic or overly pious pie in the sky sort of faith. He filled in some fabulous details with this Kingdom teaching in How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels which he preached about, some of you recall, in the backyard of our store, but spelled out the details of a renewed creation in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (which hit the shelves in 2008 and people are still talking about it.) In a way, this new God’s Homecoming might be considered a sequel or follow up to Surprised by Hope. He seems to be saying that while he has long rejected the dualism (taught by the likes of Plato or Aristotle and too many church thinkers) between body and soul that leads to a hard dualism between the secular and sacred, even heaven and earth, he wants to say now that God’s plan and promise to reunite heaven and earth is *the* key to unlock so much of the Bible’s message.  The story of creation to new creation is the Biblical story and the hope of the gospel.

Here, the vivid thinker Time magazine called “one of the most formidable figures in the world of Christian thought” explores all kinds of Bible teachings and themes and shows how new creation insights bring into focus the real meaning of topics from glory of God to the temple, the meaning of exile and the nature of the gospel accounts. He is helpful with a nuanced view of the Kingdom and, of course, wise ways to understand Paul and the early church. He ends by showing how we “switched the script” and how to re-read the texts faithful. There are big implications for worship, evangelism, and prayer, vocation, work, and the running of our churches. My, my, this is, maybe, a deeper dive and summary of much of his life’s work.

I haven’t studied the details or even the footnotes very carefully yet, but three other books (besides Wright’s Surprised by Hope) come immediately to mind. Although I wouldn’t say that God’s Homecoming is only about eschatology (a study of the end times) it obviously is exploring how our vision of the final restoration of creation must influence our current understanding of the Bible, our faith and daily discipleship, and our mission in the church as God’s vanguard of the coming Kingdom. The book that is doubtlessly the best undergirding for Wright’s hopes is J. Richard Middleton’s groundbreaking and hefty A New Heaven and New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Baker Academic; $31.99 // 25.59.) It’s big and a bit dense but it is a must. (His epilogue about why all this matters is wonderful and his exploration of the implications of the Year of Jubilee, there, are brilliant!)

I suppose you know my appreciation for another hefty, rich volume called Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger & Brian Walsh (Eerdmans; $39.99 //OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99) where they explore the notion of original home-making (and fallen home-breaking and redemptive home-coming) as motifs for our stewardly care for the world. It unpacks this wholistic vision (by way of talking about the housing crisis and homelessness as well as the carelessness with which we experience place and creation-care) better than anything I know. Brian has often talked in detail with Wright about these things, which Wright has often acknowledged. (It is notable, I think, that the book Brian and his wife Sylvia Keesmaat wrote on Romans called Romans Disarmed is cited by Wright in his concise Into the Heart of Romans.) Anyway, Beyond Homelessness is generative and I suspect that it influenced N.T. a bit.

A third volume which obviously opens us up to the “homecoming” of God is The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything by Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz (Brazos Press; $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00.) It came out in 2022 in hardcover and was just released a few months ago in paperback. I can’t wait for a review of Wright’s God’s Homecoming by Volf — that would make perfect sense, eh?

As it says on the back of God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal:

“Everything changes when you begin to believe God’s plan has never been to leave the world he created and loves, but to dwell with us.” Indeed.

 

Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church G.P. Wagenfuhr & Amy J. Erickson (IVP Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Holy smokes does this look mighty. Serious and scholarly, but with a fine writing style and practical sections, this seems like an incredible work, blending insights discerned with fresh and rigorous Biblical scholarship and good stuff for ordinary folks (and pastors or anyone working in congregational or parachurch leadership.) There are even discussion questions for brave groups willing to work through a 250 + page volume.  Wagenfuhr is a Presbyterian pastor in Yakima, Washington and Erickson lectures in theology and ethics at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre in Australia.

Although I’d categorize this as a book of Biblical studies, it is clear it provides research offered for sake of the harried and hurting. It is for pastors who are hyperactive and ordinary folks who are exhausted. It offers a rejection of the idols of the culture — more and more and more! — and invites us to “anticipate the true rest that only comes in God’s reign.”

I mentioned, above, the Jubilee conference that has been going on yearly for 50 years. When we named the conference back in 1976 a Dutch neo-Calvinist philosopher was guiding us through the famous book The Politics of Jesus by Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder; it showed the link between Jesus’s first sermon (Luke 4) and his text of the day (Isaiah 61) which draws on the Jubilee initiative in Leviticus 25. Not having done much reading from Leviticus, I had never head of the Year of Jubilee. Sabbath Gospel explains that, too, inviting us to notions of ultimate rest (think of Hebrews) to which we are invited. Yes, in Christ the Jubilee rest is gifted. Yes, in Christ, we can experience — now but not yet, here but not fully — the regime of shalom, rooted in rest. We don’t have to earn or achieve or try to deserve it. Sabbath, as explored by this wonderful book, is gospel language — gift and grace.

Yes, these authors are indebted to NT Wright. They quote remarkable books, from Seeing Like a State to early works by Jacque Ellul (and Marva Dawn on Jacque Ellul) to the rare book, Sabbath Economics by Ched Meyers.  Of course they love the respected old Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel and his work The Sabbath and cite, importantly, Sabbath as Resistance by Brueggemann.

You may need to rest after working through Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church but, believe me, you will rest better than you ever have, getting this stuff in your bones. We recommend it highly.

Becoming Neighbors: Common Good Made Local Amar D. Peterman (Eerdmans) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

This little book came just today and although it is slim (under 100 pages) it is potent and wonderfully done. I think it would be ideal for outreach committees or adult ed classes or book clubs or small groups. There is a great foreword by James K.A. Smith which shows how important it is and the blurbs on the back are stellar. From Eboo Patel to Karen Swallow Prior, many have raved about the beauty of the words and healing, hopeful count. Hannah Reichel (For Such a Time as This) calls it “provocatively practical.” Joash Thomas (The Justice of Jesus) says it is “a hope-filled, prophetic reimagination of what the church was always meant to be.”

My friend Stephanie Summers (of the impeccably balanced Center for Public Justice) says very nice things about it. So does the eloquent Anne Snyder (of the equally eloquent Comment magazine.) So does John Inazu, who did a fabulous job, by the way, at Jubilee with his thoughtful book of legal theory (Confident Pluralism) and his delightful “year-in-the-life” book about being a professor on a conflicted campus, Learning How to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect. Talk about local!  Anyway, if Inazu recommends it, that’s worth listening to!

Amar Peterman was a leader in the civic networks movement of InterFaith America and founded Scholarship for Religion and Society. He holds an MDiv from Princeton Seminary (and I think is doing a PhD at the University of Chicago.) He’s convinced that we can best cultivate the common good by starting in our own neighborhood. He offers five wonderfully written and provocative chapters, each inviting us to care well for our neighbors and our neighborhoods. It’s beautiful and potent, not dense but perhaps what might be called thick (that is, not a thin telling.) He cites the likes of Norman Wirzba, Christian Wiman, Oliver O’Donovan, Hartma Rosa, William James Jennings, so he’s delightfully brainy. There is even an old Rubem Alves quote!  Talk about short and sweet. I hope Becoming Neighbors is discussed often, all over.

Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagine Faith Rachel Held Evans (HarperOne) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I guess most of our readers (whether they appreciate her much or not) know who Rachel Held Evans was. Her first book was a memoir about growing up in a strict fundamentalist family and church in Dayton, Tennessee, the town famous for the Scopes Trial. First called Evolving in Monkeytown, I suspect that many potential readers didn’t know what that meant so they changed the title and reissued it as Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions. She wrote several books poking fun at legalism and strict configurations of faith, whether it was A Year of Biblical Womanhood or the poignant Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. We met once and had a few deep conversations; we debated a bit and she was funny if firm. She has become sort of the poster-girl for a generous faith that rejects toxic formulations and invites gracious, inclusive, generous practices. She was dubbed by The Atlantic, “the hero to Christian misfits.”

Jeff Chu, author of Good Soil, one of our favorite books of last year, was devastated when his good friend and comrade died unexpectedly. I can’t imagine how hard it was, emotionally, but he responded to Rachel’s husband’s request and finished Rachel’s last manuscript, in her spirit, knowing much about her writerly style and trajectory. That book was called Whole Hearted Faith and I’m sure I said somewhere that it was her last book.

Happily, if bittersweet, her good friend Sarah Betsy, edited and brought together a whole bunch of Rachel’s previously unpublished [in book form] essays, articles, chapters (maybe journal entries?) and serious facebook postings and nicely put them together as only a good editor can, and we now have what I really do believe will be the final posthumously published book by Rachel Held Evans. The chapters are short but compiled well, bringing various pieces together in what truly feels like a major contribution to our reformulations and reconsiderations of faith both public and personal.

There are six major units or parks, each with maybe a dozen or more chapters. They include:

• An Evolving Faith: Essays on Doubt, Asking Questions, and the Cost of it All
• The Unholy American Trinity: Essays on Patriarchy, White Supremacy, and Religious Nationalism
• Casseroles, Evangelicalism, and the Kingdom of the Hungry: Essays on the Church
• All Right, Then, I’ll Go toHell: Essays on Gender and Sexuality
• Still a Bible Nerd: Essays on Scripture
• Telling the Truth: Essays on Life in the Midst of It All

Throughout, in each of these sections, are a few very appropriate pieces by friends and conversations partners such as Matthew Paul Turner, Shauna Niequist, Sarah Bessey, Scot McKnight, Shane Claiborne, Lisa Sharon Harper, Kathy Khang, Jen Hatmaker, Osheta Moore, Micha Boyett, Cindy Wang Brandt, Pete Enns, Kaitlin Curtice, and many more. All are exceptional writers and dear, dear people of character. You won’t want to miss her “meditation on nursing”, a penultimate piece called “Lent for the Lamenting” and the final chapter, the first I read, “Her Last Act as a Blogger: A Reflection by Amanda Held Opelt” (her sister.)  Sarah Bessey’s afterword “Go Forth, Woman of Valor” is beautiful. Braving the Truth is a very special book, mostly her own words and yet plenty of tribute, plenty of grace. We recommend it.

Lit Up With Love : Becoming Good News People to a Gospel-Starved World Derwin L. Gray (NavPress) $12.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

I know not everyone has time or disposition to wade through major hardback texts. I know some want a short and succinct shot in the arm (or what Dylan called a “shot of love.”) Or maybe you want to share a book with somebody but it can’t be too thick or pricey. Or maybe you’re looking for an accesible little book for a small group or one-on-one mentoring session. This little book is a gem and we’re happy to tell you about it. I hope it sells like hot-cakes.

If I were to say it is about evangelism, I suspect that will be a less than winning selling point so I’ll try not to use the E-word, even if that is how I’d best describe it. But please forget the bad images of pushy big-mouths or the person who is “that guy.” The world is hungry for answers, creative, winsome people with a big vision of life’s deepest meaning really can — when lit up with love — bear beautiful witness to the work God is doing in the world. If any of the above titles makes sense — reimagining apologetics, embodying faith, living into the story of new creation, caring for the brokenness of the world, working for racial and multiethnic reconciliation, affirming a high view of work and our callings in the world — then this little volume by a well-known black pastor will scratch where it itches for you and your friends. I’m sure of it.

Lit Up is a book about how to be the sorts of communities that when they talk about God people response well because they think it makes sense.  It is rooted in a full-orbed vision of the Kingdom, not a truncated, bullet-point formula of faith. It shows how we can become people who “develop a heart for the hurts and longings of the people in our lives” and are “living the adventure of being an everyday missionary.”  I won’t use the high-powered marketing lingo of this starting something like a catalytic movement or how “living loved” will change the reputation of the church in your community and therefore transform the world. But it sure can’t hurt, eh? Who doesn’t need a little help learning to love well and share faith in honest ways? And it is fun that Derwin Gray used to be a pretty significant NFL star who came to faith as a professional football player and eventually went on to study theology and church planting. Very cool.

This has 10 short chapters each followed with some “holy habits” and some discussion questions and a closing prayer making it fantastic for a small group or book club. There is also a fee church hit. With small-group curriculum videos, even possible sermon outlines for those who want to go big with this little guy. Gray is the cofounder and lead pastor of Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. N.T. Wright says that his “passion for Jesus and the gospel leaps off every page.”

Discipling the Diseased Imagination: Spiritual Formation and the Healing of Our Hearts Justin Ariel Bailey (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I often wonder how best to mentor others, to teach and inform and influence. I’m a lowly bookseller and do some public speaking, traveling here and there on rare occasions to talk about the importance of reading widely, preaching about the ways in which being a life-long learner can inform our faith and our visions of discipleship. What does it mean, really, in the famous text, to “make disciples of all nations”? And how do you do it in this day and age?  I’ve got my list of books about disciple-making and this now, is a vital addition. I’ve just started it but it is by far the most provocative and faithful and thoughtful book on the topic I’ve read in years.

Justin Bailey is a professor of theology (and the dean of chapel) at Dordt University. If you’re reading carefully, I alluded, above, to a Dutch philosopher who was teaching some of us back in the mid-1970s when we cooked up the idea of the Jubilee conference. That leader, a flamboyant philosophical evangelist named Pete Steen, had connections at Dordt College and Justin Bailey (when he spoke at Jubilee a few years ago) was happy to be reminded of the connections between Pittsburgh and Sioux Center, Iowa, between CCO and Dordt.

And now Bailey has a brand new book which, it seems to me, will be really useful for those such as the campus workers in CCO (or IVCF or RUF or Cru or Navs or at the Christian Study Centers or Fellows Programs, etc. etc.) who are tasked with guiding young adults in their faith journey. Although not written about shaping the lives of teens or those in confirmation classes, I’d say it offers a grand foundation for those doing that kind of work, too. Do you teach Sunday school? Mentor others in outreach groups? Are you a parent or teacher? This book is for you!

In fact, it isn’t even exactly about teaching others, but about understanding our own damaged imaginations and how our own faith formation can only develop if we reconsider how to find healing for our distorted imaginations.

Bailey’s main point his that the imagination should be at the center of our discipleship (that is, our Christian growth, internally and outwardly, so to speak, informing how we live out our faith.) If it is central to our own sanctification, this sort of intentional attention to our imagination therefore needs to be a part of the effort of those shaping and cultivating and nurturing others in their faith journey. Obviously, growing as a Christian or mentoring others in their own growth as Christians involves a lot more than transferring data, even if that content is Bible-rich and theological sound. Inner transformation is more than learning facts about religion. Duh.

I loved his hefty previous book called ReImagining Apologetics which invited us to reach others in outreach and persuasion by telling a better story than that which they are currently living; that is, apologetics can be more than arguing about the reliability of the Bible or the viability of a life in Christ or the importance of truth. Rather, we can use myth and the arts to rekindle the imagination so as to evoke a desire for deeper more wonderful things. Now, in Discipling the Diseased Imagination it seems like he has written a sequel, rather than focusing on using the imagination to enfold others into the Christian story but to mentor and build up others in the faith by forming not only the mindset the heart and spirit.

The modern sickness of the soul runs deeper than most diagnoses are able to reach,” says Joshua Chatrow, author of Telling a Better Story: How to Talk about God in a Skeptical Age. Of Justin Bailey’s book he continues, “Discipling the Diseased Imagination is the treatment plan the church sorely needs. With a rare blend of intellectual depth, pastoral care, and elegant prose, Bailey prescribes a vision for the Christian life that is honest, humane, and hopeful.”

Oh my. Isn’t that what you want for your life, for your church, for your witness to your unbelieving neighbors and friends? My pal Alex Sosler, who has a new book on hip hop, by the way, says that Justin Ariel Bailey writes artfully and convincingly and that “to reimagine is a moral imperative of possibility.” Yes.

The first chapter is about imaginative perception and the second is about prayer. The third is about resistance and the next is about attention. Do you believe God is still speaking? Do you believe we need to foster a wondrous sense of being alive to that? Listen to Bailey who is orthodox and rigorous and prayerful and yet eager to help us discover a broader spirituality of human-ness, of glory, of goodness.

Desire: The Longings Inside Us and the New Science of How We Love, Heal, and Grow Jay Stringer (Convergent) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Okay, we’ve been suggesting books about living into a grand and robust vision of the gospel which takes fully the Bible’s teaching about the good sturdiness of creation, the radical and debilitation corruption caused by sin and idolatry, and the hopeful, substantial healing promised by Jesus the King of the coming new creation. Our speaker the first night of Jubilee, Drew Hyun, nicely describes the reality of these Biblical motif that we all know in our bones. His book is called Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful. Right? We all have these experiences of a good world gone south and we all need some way to make sense of the hope we long for. Much of this — as Augustine told us centuries ago and as many, many writers and preachers have said of late (many drawing on James KA Smith’s marvelous You Are What You Love)  — all hinges on matters of desire. What do you want, Jesus asks early in the gospel of John. It’s a good question.

Dan Allender, a name who shows up often here at BookNotes, helped start at graduate school of psychology and advance studies of counseling inspired, in part, by this deep perspective on the nature of the heart’s longings, attending to story and desire. How do we cope with longing and loss, how to we live out of our own authentic stories, if we aren’t self-reflective about what drives us, what we want, what we love?

Jay Stringer is an amazing young scholar who wrote a singular book seven or so years ago among a sea-full of mostly ineffective ideas about resisting pornography and other sexual brokenness. This was called Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing (NavPress; $18.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16) and was based not only on his big picture, deep assessment of the nature of longing in the human heart, but on his own survey (one of the largest of its kind) about those who had unwanted sexual issues. “Listen to your lust,” he advised, not because lust was good or acceptable, but because putting a tourniquet on it, saying no, doing what all the other hundreds of books and pamphlets and Bible studies and pastoral messages said do simply wasn’t working. Most know that, frankly, those with unwanted sexual desires, even Biblical Christians empowered by the Spirit to want to do the right thing, find it complicated to break sexual compulsions. Jay invited readers to deep and honest awareness of what’s really going on, below the surface, under the hood. It’s a book we are glad to sell and that we think is for many a godsend.

And now (releasing next week) we have a brand new book that in some ways goes deeper and wider than the quite specific Unwanted. His faith is still evident and his helpfulness as a counselor is obvious, but Desire is a bit of a broader study, at once both more philosophical (about theological anthropology, I might suggest) and scientific (brain studies, attachment theory, etc.) His scope, now, is not just helping people with porn addictions and the like but asking how we even understand this human experience of longing. What is desire, really, and where does it come from?

And how cool is this — the best-selling author Will Guidara, a chef (whose high-end restaurant was the basis of several scenes in the TV hit The Bear) and author of Unreasonable Hospitality has called it  “a master class in caring for the human spirit.” Chef Guidara says that “Desire turns the work of hospitality inward, changing how you understand love, purpose, and what it means to serve those around you, and yourself.” I know Jay lives in New York City but I hadn’t seen that coming. Nice, eh?

Dan Allender, one of Jay’s mentors, has long talked about God’s story and our longings being fulfilled as we allow God to author our story, as we find our meaning in delving into our personal story in light of God’s redemptive story. (That Dan came to faith in part through that Dutch philosopher I mentioned who helped us name Jubilee is not inconsequential; from his earliest days as a collegiate follower of Jesus he was rooted in a philosophy of life and culture and a theology of the human person and grace that saw things others often missed. And so he’s a world-class leader, now, as is Jay Stringer.)

Jay did a massive bit of social science research and tons of interviews (number in the thousands, I’m told) to discover much about what people think about their own desires. We learn, in Desire, what he calls findings and skills and the like, making it researched based but immanently helpful. From a desire for personal growth (and ways we sidestep it) to a desire for intimacy (and how we create “rituals and routines of love” to sustain our affections) to even practical reflections on depression and joy, loneliness and friendship, the search for meaning and faith, Stinger’s years of work have paid off.  He is curious about all of this deeply human stuff and he invites us to fight our shame and be real about it all — can we become curious stewards of our own desires? Do we even know what we want? This book is provocative and a major work to study and discuss.

I’ve only scratched the surface. We can send them out next week when Convergent officially releases it. You should order it now!

Here is a bit of what the publisher has shared about it; I quote:

“Desire drives our search for intimacy, meaning, and joy, but it can also lead to shame, betrayal, and self-sabotage. Too often we are encouraged to silence it, distort it, or treat surface-level symptoms like loneliness, low desire, or porn use — without listening to what our longings are really telling us.

In Desire, Stringer shows how to decode those clues and transform your story. Drawing on unforgettable stories from his clinical practice–individuals and couples navigating everything from childhood scars to purity culture, professional exhaustion to sexual difficulties, codependency to self-doubt — he shows you how to ask the questions you’ve been avoiding and move toward the healing you didn’t know how to seek.”

Jay Stringer brilliantly invites us to a well-researched, richly imagined, and compellingly written understanding of what he calls the inner civil war of competing desires. His scholarship and personal honesty will give you a new path to offer kindness to your soul and the conflicts that have beset you. I say with no fear of exaggeration — this will be one of the most important books you will read for knowing yourself and others. — Dan B. Allender, PhD, professor of counseling psychology, founding president of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology

Jay Stringer wants to give you permission — permission to stop running; to stop trying so hard; to stop the self-criticism; and, most of all, to start desiring again. This book is a much-needed corrective to strategies that get you almost there — but never quite feeling free and healed. Desire has the immense power to actually help people change and grow. Take this invitation to excavate buried desires and move toward an authentic, whole, and integrated you! — Sheila Wray Gregoire, author of The Great Sex Rescue

Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice L. Daniel Hawk (IVP Academic) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I have long said that IVP and IVP Academic have been the premier evangelical publisher and, at the same time, also the premier Christian publisher doing readable, useful, transformative book on racial reconciliation and racial justice. In recent decades all legitimate publishers everywhere joined in and nearly every faith-based publisher has something in their catalogues about race, anti-racism, or ethnic diversity. IVP has been publishing these kinds of books since the 1970s.

Early on, IVP — perhaps because of their connection to the evangelical campus ministry outfit IVCF which has worked on large city campuses since before there was an IVP publishing house — have done books for Asian American’s navigating Christian faith and for Latinos as well. Hooray. And, in recent decades they’ve pioneers books by and for and about indigenous peoples (such as Saving the Gospel from the Cowboys and books on diversity by Native leader Randy Woodley.) This past year they released the First Nations Translation New Testament and the First Nations Translation: Proverbs and Psalms. We stock those in hardback and paperback and a nice imitation leather.

Which is just to say that it makes sense for IVP to do this extraordinary scholarly history of white settlers spreading across North America and how they “crafted and enacted an epic story of their God-given dominion — over the land, over Indigenous nations, and over the future.” As Hawk explains, “Their narrative constructed a myth of innocence that justified a massive program of violence and dispossession by suppressing a darker history. That history still reverberates today.”

Daniel Hawk, with a PhD from Emory University, is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio.  He is considered a published expert in postcolonial Biblical study. Here he is doing the necessary backstory to the turn in postcolonial theory and simply writes — as a descendant of White settlers — American history (with theology and Biblical scholarship combined) to show how to bust up the myths of Manifest Destiny.

Every Moment Holy: Rites of Passage Douglas McKelvey, illustrated by Ned Bustard (Rabbit Room Press) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

This just arrived today and we are thrilled. This is not the time to do another extended review of the previous three editions, or discuss in detail the glories and wonders, the theological depth and  quotidian, prayerful usefulness, the aesthetic richness of language and the artful classy design of the first three volumes of Every Moment Holy.

I hope you know the belovedness of the three full-sized, leather-bound hardbacks and their smaller, flexible, leather-bound compact editions, as well.  Their popularity has nearly created a movement of liturgical prayer in houses, markets, college dorms, businesses, playgrounds, garages, workplaces, bedrooms, kitchens, yards, cars, and more. The taupe-colored first volume (in larger or smaller versions) include random liturgies and prayers for every imaginable occasion, some whimsical, some incredibly wise (if rare) while others are sort of standard (for hospitable visits, first days school, various hard moments.) The second — in those gorgeous tan editions — focuses on loss and lament (those were the most used, it seems, in Volume I so in Volume II they did more prayers for loss and sadness and complicated moments, richly illustrated with Ned Bustard’s striking graphics. Volume III (in large or smaller) is the bright blue one, with prayers and litanies composes by a variety of poets and pastors and the artwork (while still that black and white linocut /woodcut style) is by a handful of artists. Ned still designed the layout, the parts in red ink, the ribbon marker, and so forth. The three volumes (each in two sizes and prices) are precious and beautiful and have sold everywhere we go.

At last there is now a fourth and it is just a tiny bit different to behold and use. Every Moment Holy: Rites of Passage could be described as prayers and liturgies for young adults in transition. They have called it “a companion for early adulthood” and there are prayers about the unique day-to-day trials, joys, hopes, and griefs of these “critical years.”  There are more than 150 prayers  and liturgies for classes, graduations, dating, anxiety, job interviews, seasons of doubt, travel and more. There are over 30 illustrations by Ned Bustard.

The size is just a little different two. It is a leather-covered hardback, like the larger editions of the first three, but just a bit more trim in size, a bit thinner. It’s a fabulous size, in a rich brown with a Bustard linocut on the front. Not as small and chunky as the smaller editions but not as large as the bigger hardback editions, it feels just right. Hooray.

And guess what? Most of us are in transition and could use these prayers and litanies for knowing how to make good choices, for hosting our doubts, for seeking God’s will, to pray before an awkward social gathering, for cultivating gratitude, consuming media (for solo gamers.)

On the dedication page it reads:

For all who heed the wild call

to set foot upon this pilgrim road,

to take up your cross and follow Christ

wherever he might lead.

Run hard. Finish well.

 

Let’s gather at the Wedding Feast.

Strong Allies: Creating, Cultivating, Restoring Leslie Anne Bustard & Théa Rosenburg and others (Square Halo Books) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’m pretty proud of my pal Ned Bustard, a dear friend and admired artist and “Barnabas” for artists. He and his teams founded Square Halo Books, run out of his Lancaster home office, in part, to deepen the literary contribution of artists writing about aesthetics, creativity, art history, and the importance of ordinary saints doing culture-making in our good but fallen world. In his own other job as graphic designer and printmaker, Ned has helped with the extraordinary success of the Every Moment Holy prayer books (see above) we couldn’t be more pleased to see his rising reputation.

You may recall us sharing about the death of his wife a few years ago. She was his ally in writing and publishing and curating their Square Halo Gallery in downtown Lancaster and was a poet and essayist in her own right. We have enthusiastically promoted her co-authored must-read Wild Things and Castles in the Sky a “guide to choosing the best books for children.” We so very much appreciate Tiny Thoughts I’ve Been Thinking: Selected Writings that include her essays and poems, published posthumously. Poet and her friend Malcolm Guite called it “a little trove of beauty and wisdom in the midst of ugly and confusing times.”

Well, one of the things Leslie and I (and Leslie and Beth) talked about from time to time was the Biblical / theological discussion about properly understanding gender roles and, particularly the vision and vocation of woman. She tried hard to develop what she and I more than once called “a third way” beyond the polarizing dogmas of the far feminist left and the far evangelical right. She herself was part of a lively and artful PCA congregation so we disagreed about some considerable matters, but I valued (really valued!) Her efforts at bridge building and discerning a Biblically solid and Reformed theological alternative to women-despising misogyny. More than polemical, too, she wanted to invite women into a generative and active role as women. The subtitle in this new collection of her pieces — finished by her close friend Théa Rosenburg — is important Strong Allies is not merely a “position” in the discussions about gender roles, it is a vivid and delightful and restorative call for women to be collaborative with others (male or female.) This really is Leslie’s gentle and lovely manifesto, written as only she could have, with plenty of strong insight and plenty of charm and grace.

The title is important as Leslie felt she had come up with the key to her particular take on the vocation of women, and that is the Hebrew word ezer, used in Genesis 2:18. It is often translated as helper (or in King James language, “helpmeet”), but that sometimes is used in ways that seem merely an assistant, not mutually valuable. She shows that the only other times that word is used is when the Biblical writers use it to describe God. God’s helpful, faithful, cultivating, creating, restoring power. Obviously, the linguistics of this part of being made in the very image of God suggests no secondary servant status. Ezer, Leslie realized, is a word loaded with fresh insight and poetic power.

Since she never fully finished her manuscript during her cancer years, Théa, with Ned’s full approval, found other women to weigh in, to share their insights, to tell stories, to make this whole vision of collaborative femininity for God’s reign become real, practical, down-to-Earth. So we have well-known writers and friends from Luci Shaw (perhaps offering her last written essay) to Margie Haack to Christie Purifoy to Karen Swallow Prior and many others, each sharing a story or insight. The book is visionary and thoughtful but also tender and practical; it is written for women and men, I’d say. Yes!

(And, for the record, for the three people who might care about this, she cites the rare book by Creation Regained author Al Wolters, a collection of scholarly pieces on Proverbs 31 called The Song of the Valiant Woman published by Paternoster in the UK. Just saying.)

No matter ones social status, stage of life, career, constraints or talents,  “Strong Allies calls women in every walk and stage of life to love the people around them in the places where he has planted them…”

I love the blurb on the back saying “countless books have been written about what women can and can’t do. But this book asks the question: “What did God make women to be?”

Leslie’s beautiful book not only shows us Scripture’s strong vision for women to be strong allies, but brings that vision to life in the stories of dozens of women then and now in a wide range of life circumstances. Personal and tender, practical and inspiring–we finally have a guide to biblical womanhood! — Carmen Joy Imes, author of Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters

Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest James Martin, SJ (HarperOne) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I could write about this for pages and pages but I’ll say just three quick things. I suppose you know of James Martin, a famous and often very funny Jesuit priest who sometimes appears on Colbert and has written many titles, including good ones on Jesus, on pilgrimage, on prayer, and on the Jesuits. He’s a fine writer and a good, good guy. This is his memoir of coming of age, his many summer jobs, and discerning his eventual call into the priesthood, which sort of surprised everybody. It’s a great fun read.

So, point number one: it’s a great fun read by an important Christian writer so you ought not miss it.  If you don’t buy it from us, visit your local library! It’s a delight to read, inspiring, and upbeat, humorously written with lyrical moments of lovely insight. Although I spend some of my days reading some heady stuff, I so enjoy dipping into this each night and I’m going to miss his clever voice when I’m done. Enjoy!

Point number two: it’s about work, summer jobs, all kinds of dumb and enchanting occupations, written about with zeal and idealism (except, well, when he tells about his often hilarious goof-ups and oddball antics — like being a caddy at one of the fanciest old country clubs in the country while not knowing a single thing about golf. Or trying to collect payment for a free paper he delivered to people who never requested it.) Anyway, we all need to honor the work of our hands (and the word of others hands and the theological conversation about workday callings and careers often skews to the professional and corporate. What fun to read about odd jobs and the life of a teen trying to make sense of the value and dignity of common labor.

Thirdly: Jimmy Martin grew up in the 1970s in a wonderfully colorful very middle class neighborhood outside of Philadelphia and describes childhood games and youthful anxieties and teen problems. And he nails it! I am not quite a decade older but this resonated so much, a fabulously fun glimpse into a world not unlike my own growing up. From the avocado colored decor and shag rugs (none of which we had) and saving money to buy 45s and albums and paperback books, and talking about the concerns about money (there were some rich kids around, but not many) and status and class and dating, it all rang so true.  This coming of age story — told through the jobs he had — is not merely a nostalgia piece (although it is charming to reminisce so well) but, like any really good memoir, a glimpse into the interior lives of folks making their way in the world. The remarkable memoirist Mary Karr notes in her rave review that “there is no greater quest or romance than this.”

I won’t even talk about what would be a major fourth point: Martin goes to the University of Pennsylvania, graduates from the Wharton business school and does sort of grow up. He becomes a corporate tool for a while (his word) spending time in New York City and eventually, even famously, discerning a call to ministry. I’ve not finished the story yet, but I see it coming. I do not think he will wax overly spiritual about how being called to what Catholics call the religious life is somehow better than so-called secular life. For him, though, becoming a Jesuit was finally a sweet spot and we can all be glad. That he finds God through it all is lovely and good; that he isn’t done writing yet might indicate that his priestly vocation also includes being a very good writer. Hooray!

Start with a Word: On the Craft and Adventure Writing Marilyn McEntyre (Eerdmans) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I sure hope I’ve done our job here as (at least one of) your book guys by highlighting the prolific work of the lovely and wonderful writer Marilyn McEntyre. I’ve often shared that she has been a literature prof working at a med school, helping wanna-be doctors and medical researchers understand more deeply the humanity of it all, reflecting on classic and modern literature and poetry and essays on illness and grief and bodies and hope. She knows how to use words well and uses them in this extraordinarily important work. Obviously we are fans.

Further, I think in every talk or class I’ve done on the reading life I’ve done since the summer of 2009 I’ve cited her fabulous book (originally given as the esteemed Stone Lecture at Princeton) Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. When I get carried away here, I recall her chapter (one of her “stewardship strategies” for words) is to “love the long sentence. Ahem.

Just recently I had reason to revisit Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict and at Jubilee a weekend ago I pressed her When Poets Pray into the hands of a young writer. From daily devotionals to Biblical pieces to literary criticism, she has created a notable body of work. And now she tells us, in her eloquent prose, just how it’s done.

One would think that reading a book about writing by a master writer would be a coup de state. But, alas, not every good writer shows their finest prose in teaching about their craft. Some are wise and useful, others are pleasantly delightful but more rare are those books about how to write that are a joy to read. Enter Marilyn McEntyre, a profoundly Christian thinker with a wide palette of reading and a broad vision of being a good writer.  This, I am sure, is going to be a favorite book of the year, although I’ve only dipped in. It is very new and you are among the first to hear about it, so enjoy! Buy it now, even if you aren’t an aspiring writer (and certainly if you are.) I need it, in more ways than one!  You too?

I know I might sometimes overstate the importance of who endorses a book, although it remains an important keystone for my initial evaluations. Marilyn has had writers and reviews far more important and skilled than I praising her work. From Reformed writer Cornelius Plantinga to the interfaith mystic Carol Zaleski; from thoughtful, evangelical singer-songwriter Michael Card to the famous Catholic activist Richard Rohr, so many have appreciated her work. I love a long blurb on the back of this one by Scott Cairns, the extraordinary Orthodox poet. New York pastor and poet (and half of the band The Welcome Wagon, who has played with Sufjan Stevens, by the way), Vito Aiuto, says that “studying with Marilyn McEntyre helped set the trajectory of my creative life.” Wow. Now we can all take in her instructions with what looks like a great, great resource.

By the way, the very first chapter is, not surprisingly, to “read like a writer.” Yes!

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If you enjoyed this newsletter feel free to share it with those who might enjoy it as well. If you want to purchase any of these we sure hope you’d send the order our way. All books mentioned are 20% off. Click on the link below. Happy reading in these hard times.

  

FIFTEEN BOOKS TO ACCOMPANY YOU ON YOUR LENTEN JOURNEY

If you’ve read our last several BookNotes you know there have been some trying times in the Borger household, and, also, that we have been consumed — as we always are in February — with prepping for and (with a lot of volunteer help) running the largest off-site book display we do each year, offering a pop-up bookstore for the CCOs annual Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh. Maybe you’ve seen a few Facebook posts (a couple ended up at our store’s group page) and I know more than a few of you were praying for us as we sold books about the wide-as-life transforming vision that undergirds the CCOs work of helping college students understand their majors as holy vocations. It is a joy to see others (especially young collegiates) buy books so they can think Christianly as they take up their places in God’s world, living into habits that allow them to be agents of God’s redemptive work from the workplace to the neighborhood to the public square.

Which is just a long way of saying we’ve been busy and are, as I’ve said to some friends who’ve asked, “exhilarated but exhausted.” Still, I feel badly that we just haven’t gotten a big Lenten list to you yet. Thanks for your patience as we all now shift into this season of sober spirituality, heading towards the cross.

We’ve done some pretty hefty lists in years past and many of those titles are still very useful. We even have some of them in stock now, and we can usually get more in a matter of days. Go to the BookNotes tab at our website and put “Lent” into the search box and see what comes up.

Check out these (mostly) new ones and send us an order if anything catches your attention. And if you wonder what this whole business even is, try our favorite introduction to the reason for the season, Lent: A Season of Repentance and Renewal by Esau McCaulley (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59. It’s one of several in the great Fullness of Time series. It makes a nice little gift this time of year, too.

TEN (mostly) NEW ONES

Here are ten Lenten ones that are new this year and the five more that just seemed good to tell you about. As always, all are offered to you here at 20% off. We’re grateful for our online friends and enjoy our mail-out ministry. Thanks for your partnership. Read on!

Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten Lands with the Inklings Malcolm Guite, Julia Golding & Simon Horobin (Canterbury Press) $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

As we await the first volume of the extraordinary epic telling of the King Arthur legend redone by Malcolm Guite coming in April, we can dip into this, a great little Lenten reader which is arranged nicely as an introduction to various writings of the collaborative fellowship of Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and others (and their heros, including George MacDonald, T.S. Eliot, and G.K. Chesterton.) Each entry describes the particular writer in view, a survey of the part of the story under consideration (say, the Turkish delight scene from Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe or something from the Ransom “space trilogy” or a spotlight of Sam from LotR as “one who serves.”) This book would be fun and formative to read anytime, but the 40-day Lenten format, complete with Biblical texts and a prayer, makes it ideal for this season.

Christ in Our Midst: Daily Lenten Reflections Through Scripture & Gregorian Chant Paraclete Press $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This handsome hardback is unlike any Lenten devotional we’ve seen in ages. There are QR codes throughout that link each devotional reading to a recording of a Gregorian chant, richly and traditionally performed. The publisher has a robust collection of award-winning chant recordings and it is nice to see them applied in a book. Each day’s reading offers a Scripture, a meditative reflection, and sacred chants to hear (and, dare I say, sing along with.) As it says on the back, “On this journey toward Easter, you will discover a wellspring of peace, stillness, and joy that is both ancient and ever new.”

Meeting Jesus on the Road: A Lenten Study Cynthia M. Campbell with Christine Coy Fohr (WJK) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

A short, compact-sized resource from the beloved Cynthia Campbell, this is a lovely looking volume designed (as Kara Eidson puts it) “with reflections and practices that encourage full integration of mind, body, and soul.” Dr. Campbell is former president of McCOrmick Seminary and retired pastor of a large PC(USA) congregation in Louisville. She and Fohr collaborated before in a previous Lenten book called Meeting Jesus at the Table.

What’s also fun about this is there are introductory videos for each chapter (for group or individual use, of course) on YouTube. This really is a “come and see” invitation to pilgrimage with the Master.

When Did We See You? A Lenten Exploration of Poverty & Wealth Elizabeth Mae Magill (WJK) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

If you know your Bible even a little bit you know that concern about wealth and poverty is a major, unavoidable concern. The title of this book, of course, comes from Matthew 25. I want to suggest that this release is not done by a publisher grasping at wild straws to come up with a trendy Lenten curriculum. It’s not a liberal author trying to be radical for some hip marketing reason. No — it’s solid, Bible stuff, theologically grounded in gospel teaching.

And, you know, old-timers use words like charity and chastity and almsgiving in this season. When Did We See You is a Lenten book that was waiting to be written.

Like most of us, it seems that this author, a Disciples of Christ pastor with some experience with the underserved and poor), struggles to cope with the tensions the texts bring to us. Is it wrong to plan for the future? Is a saving account an act of holding (as the early church fathers might say — read Chrysostom!) How do we engage with matters of economic justice?

Anyway, this offers a chapter for each week of Lent with reflection questions for each day. There are litanies for Ash Wednesday and for Good Friday. She’s added good stories from real congregations and offers lots of practical ideas about how you and your community might get involved to alleviate poverty. There’s a lovely epilogue for Easter morning, too. Hallelujah!

Sacred & Still: Embrace the Holy Rhythms of the Lenten Season Julie Fisk, Kendra Riehl & Kristin Demers (Tyndale) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a very handsome hardback with some nice design touches, making it a volume you’ll want to pick up and hold. It has a slightly classy feel, with two color ink, a reflection piece to ponder after the reading and prayer as well as a practice or application they called “sacred rhythms.”  As we surrender to Christ more deeply and make spacer God to work, we will perhaps understand Easter afresh.

Maybe this year the sacred beauty this season will bring healing and purpose in His presence.

Everyday Gospel: Easter Devotional Paul David Tripp (Crossway) $7.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $6.39

Paul Tripp is a pastor in Philadelphia who has written bunches of popular books and who drills down on the gospel-centered life based on the grace found in appropriating the cross of Christ for our inner formation. His New Morning Mercies is one of the biggest selling yearly devotionals in years, and his more recent one, Everyday Gospel is another intense hardback set of 365 reflections. This new Lenten one is adapted from portions of that.

It is curious that it isn’t called a Lenten devotional. I’m guessing his deeply Protestant / Reformed orientation makes him and his publisher reluctant to use that word that seems Roman Catholic. I’m just guessing, but this four-week set of 30 daily readings is not for post-Easter reading or about Eastertide. It’s a two-pages-a-day devo leading up to Easter.  It draws from all of Scripture from creation to new creation and offers a rumination and prayer for each day. Nice.

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter — Revised and Expanded Plough Publishing $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Hey — notice this! The fabulous Bread and Wine has been considered one of the great anthologies of our generation (a companion to the equally wonderful Advent reader called Watch for the Light) and it has now been significantly expanded with dozens of new readings and new authors. Brilliant. Man, the folks at the Bruderhof community do good work; we stock almost every book they’ve done. And this significantly expanded new edition is well worth having, especially at our sale price.

If you don’t know, this handsome hardback has short excerpts of primary source readings from a delightfully wide range of voices from throughout church history — from Augustine to Chesterton to Madeleine L’Engle to Bonhoeffer. You’ve got bits by Merton and Dorothy Sayers, Howard Thurman and Wendell Berry, Watchman Nee and Edith Stein and John Stott. The new excerpts represent, again, the best classic and contemporary Christian writers. Importantly, the new expanded version takes readers through Eastertide to Pentecost.

Thanks to the good folks at Plough (I hope you know their classy magazine by the same name.)

A Just Passion: A Six-Week Lenten Journey Ruth Haley Barton, Sheila Wise Rowe, Tish Harrison Warren, and others (IVP) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I know this one is not new and I’ve mentioned it before but it is relatively inexpensive, easy to use, and includes an incredible array of our favorite authors. Created from the stable of IVP authors, it offers excerpts of various books, nicely curated and arranged with breath prayers for each week. There is a lovely (sometimes subtle, sometimes less so) on social justice and a Biblical call to public righteousness and servanthood. More than a few are writers of color.  I’m such a fan I have to mention it again. Please consider A Just Passion.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein (Paraclete Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is another repeat from other years — there are so many good older titles — that I find so interesting and unique that I wanted to name it again. Yep, it is a Lenten devotion, each reading inspired by a different animal. Endangered species, actually. The Bible says the whole creation is groaning, waiting for redemption (see Romans 8) so this makes perfect sense and I’m grateful for the authors and publisher for bringing this to us, relating creaturely delight to the dangers of being vanquished, to the hope of redemption. In a way, this is just lovely natural history with fun stuff to learn about. But with Gayle Boss’s wise ways, it really does become a Lenten resource. And the wood cuts are truly excellent.

Wild Hope is a companion volume to the very lovely Advent book about hibernating animals, All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings, also illustrated expertly by David Klein. Boss lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Ignatian Workout for Lent: 40 Days of Prayer, Reflections and Action Tim Muldoon (Loyola Press) $5.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $4.79

This mass-market sized paperback is a sharp little resource, a 40-day guide offering “40 ways to grow closer to God.” Obviously, it is rooted in the Ignatius method, reminding us that Lent is not primarily about giving up something but a time of seeking internal change — realigning our wills with God’s will by taking on the heart and mind of Christ. Not bad, eh?

We’ve got quite a lot of Ignatian resources here at the shop, and this little one looks very useful. We only have a few of these but hope more will arrive soon.

FIVE OTHERS FOR THIS SEASON

Praying the Psalms with Augustine and Friends Carmen Joy Imes (TUMI Press) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I adore this well designed book in the bigger “Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics” series produced by an urban ministry team at Taylor University. Carmen is a good friend and grand supporter of Hearts & Minds and — hooray! — did one of the best Jubilee talks last weekend in the history of the storied Pittsburgh conference. (More on that next time.) Dr. Imes is a respected and beloved Old Testament professor and prolific author. This is a book which is perhaps not as well known and it’s a shame as it is a treasure.

Praying the Psalms with Augustine is not a Lenten resource (although it seems so very apropos) and it will take you further than the Lenten season. (There are eight sections here.) Besides the insights drawn from Saint Gus and other early Christians, Carmen teaches us well, opens up the Psalms as a prayer resource, and then offers a fabulous ending section of further resources and guidance to “continue the conversation.” This is a book, as they say, of “soul work and soul care.” Thanks be to God.

Wisdom’s Call: 100 Meditations for a Life in Christ K.A. Ellis (Moody Press) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

What a delight it was to be greeted by Karen Ellis at Jubilee this past weekend. She did one of the most creative presentations ever done on that main conference stage as she did an eloquent one-woman retelling of the death of Christ, leading to an incredibly moving singing of an older black spiritual and “Amazing Grace.” What a way to invite people into the redemption story.

Dr. Ellis is a serious scholar of global Christianity (and has travelled to marginalized communities the world over.) As a black theologian she has focused deeply on the spirituality of public witness and social ethics. (Her husband is old Jubilee friend Carl Ellis, author of my favorite book of black history, Free At Last.) This handsome recent hardback offers 100 meditations about our union with Christ, inviting us to ponder the deeper meaning of being a follower of Jesus, born from above and in solidarity with His Kingdom. It is, finally, a book about life, about God’s ways, about wisdom.

You could read two a day (morning and evening, maybe?) for Lent, even if it isn’t exactly designed as a Lenten resource. It sure feels like an ideal book to read this season, leading to Holy Week, eh?  Wisdom’s Call.

Heaven Meets Earth: A 40-Day Journey of Transformation Through the Nicene Creed Josh Nadeau (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Oh, wow, this is very cool. A nice, trim-sized hardback with glossy paper and full-color illustrations (done by Nadeau who runs something called Sword and Pencil.) Of course it has a short phrase from the Creed, a meaningful meditation, and a bit of original art. I like how the reflection sometimes explains a feature of the illustration, helping us really use the art in a reflective manner, and seeing how it illumines the ancient words for modern times.

The back cover invites us to “step into a sacred rhyme that blends ancient tradition with a present-day insight.” You know it was the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed’s formation (in 325 AD in Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey.) It’s not Lenten, precisely, but it sure seems apropos, doesn’t it?

Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate Steven Garber (Paraclete Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I have shared much about my deep appreciation for this author and this major work. Maybe you saw our conversation online that was shared as a webinar — it’s at our store’s Facebook page. Steve is a good friend and one of the most interesting people I know. As joyful and hopeful as he is, he knows well the hurts of the fall, the wounds of the world, the wages of our idolatry. If there was ever a book that was germane and appropriate for a Lenten read, this is it. Garber leans into the cross, hopes for heaven, but for now he writes wonderfully about the trials, the distortions, and sadnesses of our messed world.

Do you feel alienated these days, maybe even from family and friends, from church, even? Are you weary? Do you want to make sense of life and seek a coherent and truthful way to know? Do you want to embody what you really know in honest ways? Hints of Hope is about this (Lenten) theme of the proximate. We may not “give something up for Lent” but we do need to take up practices of wrestling with the difficulties living well in these days.

I will keep reminding our customers of this eloquent, profound book, so you might as well pick it up now. Lent is a perfect time to ponder making peace with this wacky world and embracing the pains of the world as a spiritual practice. Read it slowly, perhaps with others.

Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole Micha Boyett (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

If you are seeking solace or leaning in to this Lenten season with some sort of hope for a renewed faith, this lovely, beautiful book — part memoir, actually about longing and hope and the Sermon on the Mount — will be a great companion. A true companion, I’d say.

Memoirist Mary Karr says it is a “graceful, moving book that should required reading” that “conjures spiritual solutions for very real problems.” Nadia Bolz-Weber calls it “breathtaking.”

I will quote the back cover to explain it succinctly:

When Micha Boyett’s son was born with Down syndrome and later diagnosed with autism, she was drawn into the ancient teachings of the Beatitudes. There, she found an invitation to honor her limits in a world that values performance, perfection, and strength over mercy, meekness, and the longing for justice.

In Blessed Are the Rest of Us, Boyett invites us — especially those of us who are burned out, tired of performing, living with grief, feeling exhausted, or powerless — to discover our wholeness not in our own accomplishments but in the dream God has for the world.

  

The first month of the new year — which delightfully started with Christmastide and carried us into the light of Epiphany — kept us busy, doing what seems to shape my early days of January, naming my favorite books of the previous year. In two large BookNotes I named personal favorites and “Best of…” titles, awarding those I felt I simply had to highlight for you. I missed a few good ones, skipped some for some quirky reasons, but, by and large, curated for you a great, great batch of books. I’m sure you care about your reading habits and we are honored that you allow us to speak into your life, suggesting titles both serious and fun.

Thanks to those who are praying as Beth goes through her weekly chemo infusions. She’s switching the meds around a bit and shifting to every three weeks (for about a year, yet.) So far, she’s coping well. Pray for her strength, please, as she needs extraordinary stamina for the big book display we do at the Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh next week. It’s been a concern ever since the treatments began last fall.

We closed the month with two webinars, live on-line conversations, first with author and photojournalist Dorthy Greco (who Beth and I like very much) about her powerful book For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America Zondervan; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.)

Sadly the tech gods failed us and we were unable to get a usable recording from that memorable night. We thank everyone who watched, live, and for those who purchased the book from us. It’s important.

Earlier this week we had an almost hour and a half conversation with my long pal and serious conversation partner in life, Steven Garber, celebrating his new book Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate (Paraclete Press; $24.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99) HERE is the recording of our tender and often touching conversation. I really hope you find time to watch it; Garber is too good, honest and gentle and thoughtful about the things that matter most.

With all that, we’ve got some ground to cover. January started with some really good-looking titles, books that seem just right for our Hearts & Minds community of fans and friends. Let’s get to it.

All the books mentioned are 20% off. Use the link at the end which takes you to our secure order form page. You can safely enter credit card info or, as we say there, we’re happy to just send a bill so you can pay later. We also say there that we can send almost anything almost anywhere so if you’d like us to gift wrap or tuck a little note in for a special recipient, don’t hesitate to let us know. Please remember we have tons of stuff we don’t write about here. Let us know whatever you might be looking for.

TEN GREAT NEW BOOKS – ALL 20% OFF

Of Prophets, Priests, and Poets: Christian Formation at the Gates of Hell Brian J. Walsh (Cascade) $23.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.40

I want to lead off with this because it may be the book I care most about this new season. As some of you know, Brian is a friend and a writer I respect deeply. He was influential in my life when I was in my mid-twenties, and he was one of the early people we brought to Hearts & Minds, back when The Transforming Vision came out, the seminal work he did with Richard Middleton. (If you follow our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast you may recall my naming it a few episodes ago as an important book for those of us who have worked on the Jubilee collegiate conference in Pittsburgh.) Anyway, this is a new collection of a handful of very important sermons, essays, speeches. It is, as always, creatively written, astute, provocative, and righteous.

Last year Brian did a book I reviewed at BookNotes and then re-reviewed in my Best Books list a month ago. We really do recommend Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of the Biblical Imagination Cascade; $23.00 // OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $18.40) and I can’t say enough about its nearly brilliant insight into both Cohen and the Bible.

You may know that I’ve touted the two big Bible commentaries he co-authored with his wife, Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed and Romans Disarmed. Both are unlike anything you’ve ever read, I promise you. I return to them regularly.

A number of years ago Brian left his innovative work as an urban pastor (he spent a year as a “theologian in residence” at a homeless shelter) and was also a campus minister for the CRC at the University of Toronto. The first chapter (and the book’s title) comes from his autobiographical reflections shared among his campus ministry friends when he retired which was later posted at the Empire Remixed website. I had read it there and was blown away. If you have anything to do with campus ministry, it’s a must-read; check it out either there online or on this valuable little volume.

The rest includes previously published stuff on public justice, on poverty, or the Bible (always the Bible) and a few are important discussions about the way in which the world “worldview” has changed over recent decades and his own disillusionment with some of the conversations about relating faith and learning.(A fabulous piece from The Christian Scholars Review co-done by ecologist Steven Bouma-Prediger is nicely included.) There’s a great fictional conversation about trying to “think Christianly” without a clarity about living the gospel, even in hard places. Resisting the idols of the culture is a Biblical call that is important to him — perhaps more than anyone I know, which says a lot — and a critique of ideologies and unsustainable practices pervades the book’s prophetic insight and fuels its prophetic power.

There is, of course, as Brian has long known, power in the arts and the imagination. (He gets some of this from The Prophetic Imagination but has been teased about the regular Bruce Cockburn quotes in his early books, although he has done brilliant sermons inspired by texts from other bands and singers and poets.) So it doesn’t surprise us that he does his modern-day equivalent of the ancient Jewish preaching technique known as targums — a live (improvised?) and relevant, expansive updating of Scripture, and, man, his poetic targums are something. The last one, inspired by verses in Colossians after the election of Donald Trump, made me weep.

As socially incisive and prophetic as this book is, it is, deeply, a book of joy and a book of love. As he ruminates about the need for a less thin sort of discipleship, for a process of being formed into a Christ-like community, he both explains his passion for the displaced and homeless, and offers a better vision for us all, about homecoming and joy.

I cannot explain all of this now, but I know there are those longing for some sane way out of the idols of white Christian nationalism and the ungodly stuff many American evangelicals have fallen for. The Spirit is calling us to join God’s work in repairing the world. This book will inspire us to get going in these disorienting times.  It is dedicated to his good friend and academic colleague when there were at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, James Olthius.  Nice!

Light for the Way: Seeking Simplicity, Connection, and Repair in a Broken World Sojourners (Broadleaf) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Had this released in December — it is brand new in January — we would have raved about it and suggested it both as a great gift for those looking for a justice-minded, profoundly Christian, but rather progressive daily devotional or who would like such a volume. I supposed it isn’t exactly a daily devotional, but it is a rich anthology, a collection of some of the finest pieces that have appeared in Sojourners magazine (one of the view journals we used to sell in our store and that was very formative for us in the last decades of the 20th century and into more current years.) Jim Wallis — their founder and the first author we ever hosted in our bookstore in the early 1980s, I think — is no longer with them, and new issues and new ecumenical voices continue to offer often powerful and beautifully written essays and journalism for our jagged times. This book celebrates their last 50 years. A few of us might remember that they started as The Post American and moved to DC a half a century ago, now, forming an intentional community amongst the poor and agitated for peace and justice and social righteousness there and increasingly, around the world.

Here we have some of their best essays, from old timers like Wallis and Daneil Berrigan and  Rabbi Arthur Waskow and the ever present Rose Marie Berger. What a delight to see a memorable piece by children’s author Katherine Paterson and long-time reporter and Sojo friend Julie Porter interview literary memoirist Kathleen Norris.

Many of these essays and columns (arranged by theme) are by younger, contemporary voices. Sure there’s Bill McKibben and Brian McLaren and Walter Brueggemann, but there is wonderful writing by recent writers, from J. Dana Trent to Isaac Villegas to Mike Kim-Kort. I loved that Kaitlin Curtice and Kat Armas are in here. There are standard Sojourners-type pieces like Ched Myers’ “Jesus’s new Economy Grace” as well as unique ones like Mitchell Atencio’s “A Black Christian Approach to Veganism – An Interview with Christopher Carter.”  From Rose Marie Berger’s interview with Wendell Berry to Margaret Atwood’s “What About the Meek” you’ll find some high-profile folks, but many of these essays are quiet meditations and wise proposals.  Kudos!

At the moment, I cannot think of a better tonic for the spirit than this new collection from Sojourners, which has been in the business of encouragement for as long as some of us have been alive. Whether you are ready for refreshment from some of your favorite authors or on the lookout for new sources of inspiration, you will find them here.             — Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Leading Worship for Workers: How to Design Liturgies for All of Life Matthew Kaemingk and Kathryn Roelofs (Baker Academic) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

In our online conversation, Steve Garber and I hinted on occasion, and got explicit from time to time about a huge theological and spiritual impulse that drives both of us, namely that there is an integrated connection between worship and work. God is redeeming, in Christ, all areas of life and this means we who have a missional vision of whole-life discipleship can bring God’s light to our careers and vocations. As Garber put it in the conversation, we need to help “butchers, bakers, and candlestick matters” learn that their work matters to God.

This is, as you may know, one of the big themes that drives the Jubilee conference that the CCO hosts out in Pittsburgh next week and is the biggest thing Beth and I and our volunteer team do all year. We will see Steve there as well as Matthew Kaemingk, co-author of this splendid and rare brand new resource co-published by the good folks at Made to Flourish.

Kaemingk, along with his Calvin Seminary prof Cory Wilson, did Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy, a hefty and extraordinary volume that does the heavy lifting of helping us think about the ways in which church worship can equip ordinary folks in their ordinary jobs.  It was meaty, with some very useful tools, prayers, litanies, songs. It is a must-have for anyone in congregational church leadership and certainly for anyone who helps plan or lead worship.

The brand new Leading Worship for Workers is the handbook just filled (23 chapters and more than 230 pages!) with vital, even transformational resources. It just arrived (just in time for Jubilee) and we will have to review it more carefully later, but we rejoice in this one-of-a-kind volume. It really is, as one reviewer notes, “wonderfully grounded in the realities of local church life.” No matter your worship or liturgical tradition or style, it’s important for you.  How many do you need?

Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church G.P. Wagenfuhr & Amy J. Erickson (IVP Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

With the big Jubilee conference coming up in Pittsburgh next week, we’ve been naturally thinking about the Biblical call to sabbath, the seven days that in Hebrew literature become seven months and seven years, and then — the glorious 7 x 7 49th into the 50th year — which was to signal the great and radical social restoration outlined in passages like Leviticus 25.  Isaiah dreams about it and Jesus uses His Spirited words as the text for his inaugural address (in Luke 4.) Jubilee has come! The Kingdom of God is breaking loose among you.

That is only a part of this hefty and amazing work. The heart of it is laden with Jubilee themes, it seems to me, but the main point is this: the major call to keep sabbath is given by God twice in the Old Testament. The first time it is said that we are called to rest because of God and God’s ordering of time in creation. God rested, after all. But the second time the law is given and sabbath is proclaimed — remember Exodus? — the reason we are told we are to rest is because of the liberation from Pharaoh. That is, Sabbath (as Brueggemann boldly puts it in Sabbath as Resistance) is a call to resist the brick-making quotas, the machinery of extractive capitalism and workaholism and the consumerism that demands it. We don’t have to live like that, “enslaved” to the system of more and more and more. If the creation story funds the one call to sabbath, the liberation story funds the other.

Wagenfuhr (pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Yakima, WA) and Amy Erickson (a lecturer in theology and ethics at St Mark’s National Theological Centre in Australia) combine here to teach us a lot about the Hebrew Scriptures, the way sabbath themes are threaded throughout the ongoing Biblical narrative and about Jesus’s fulfillment of this promise of true rest and social transformation.

Theologically profound yet practically grounded, this work casts a compelling vision for individuals and communities striving to live with faithfulness and sustainability amid the hyperactive pace of contemporary life. — Alan Hirsch, Reframation: Seeing God, People, and Mission Through Reenchanted Frames

Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian Miroslav Volf & Christian Wiman (HarperOne) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I love everything about this new release — its shape (just a tiny bit smaller than typical) and the two authors (one of our great poets and essayists and one of my favorite theologians.) I even love its epistolary style. (Yes, yes, I, too, have been smitten by the novel of letters called The Correspondent by Virginia Evans so I’m all for this, a real-life correspondence.) This Glimmerings just glimmers, with thought, with wonderful writing, with friendship.

I hope you know Volf, a thoughtful theological writer who teaches at Yale Divinity School and helps run the Yale Center for Faith and Culture which has researched and advocated for everything from a Christian view of the arts to the nature of human happiness to a meaningful engagement with public life, even pop culture. Anyway, Volf brings scholarly work down to nearer ground level and that he would take up a set of letters with one of the era’s great poets is not that surprising.

Wiman, as you may know, was known and respected as a top-shelf poet and editor of poetry magazines; now he, too, teaches at Yale and writes for the likes of The Atlantic, The New Yorker and Commonweal. His return to something akin to his childhood faith (after getting a brain tumor) was chronicled in the moving memoir My Bright Abyss. He continues to do essays and poems (like Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair.

And here they are, in what is going to be one of the most cherished books of the year. Believe me.

Beautiful, glowing. even impassioned reviews and endorsements are from Mary Karr (who says it is “destined to become a classic’) and Rowan Williams and Eliza Griswold and Pádraig Ó Tuama Nicholas Wolterstorff. Nick says “I know of nothing like it. Take, read, and savor.”

Weathering Change: Seeking Peace And Life’s Tough Transitions Courtney Ellis (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Hooray — this book just arrived and while I haven’t read it yet, I’ve been waiting and I’m glad it’s here a bit early. Courtney Ellis is an active social media voice and, more importantly, a pastor at Presbyterian Church of the Master in Mission Viejo, California. She’s written several earlier books; they were lovely and basic; one on happiness, one on mothering, another on decluttering. Good, playful, well written. But then she experienced some serious grief and wrote about it in an excellent, excellent book called Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope Through Grief which so many people loved for so many reasons. It was well written, sweet on stuff about birding and the life of loving the outdoors, and it was a memoir of grief. It was a great read.

This new one is about change, about transition, about the unexpected (or maybe we see stuff coming.) She notes that some changes we look forward to and celebrate (think of a wedding or the birth of a baby.) Others may be “a shift we fear” and of course there are those things like moving or changes that come with a broken relationship or aging. Tell me about it.

The key to Weathering Change, I think, is how the natural world — God’s creation which speaks! — is central to our process of weathering change. (The word “weathering” is intentionally chosen, no doubt.)  Like in her Looking Up, she weaves together nature writing and beautiful, even fun, stories of attending to creation, and draws from it healing insight.

Courtney Ellis’s Weathering Change teems with a tumble of life: sage thrashers and ocean tides, falcons and microbes, bears and goldfinches. Amid this kaleidoscopic tour of the earth’s wonders, Ellis reveals a shimmering thread of wisdom about managing change. At a moment in history when change feels overwhelming and pervasive, Ellis’s witty and gentle prose brings nature’s wisdom to bear on our human experience, drawing from her own family life and pastoral ministry as well. Spend a little time with this congenial companion, reveling in delight and wonder and God’s provision, and you will feel more at ease with change-and less alone. Debra Rienstra, Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth

I am sure this is going to be a great read, really well done, thoughtful, and loaded with enduring insights. Who doesn’t need some help and hope in these turbulent times?

Praying Their Way: 24 Prayer Practices for Kids and the Adults Who Love Them L. Roger Owens with Mary Clare Owens (Upper Room Books) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It’s rare when we get to highlight a book by a kid; Mary Clare, daughter of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Roger, was 14 when she wrote this with her dad.  Roger has written other very good books for the “everyday contemplative” exploring how ordinary folks can embrace certain practices of the monastic life and practice “the heart of Christian spirituality.” You’ve got to check him out if you don’t know his readable, fun, useful books.

But this. Wow. He told me he was working on this two years ago (he spoke at the Wee Kirk small church conference in Western PA) and I was intrigued. Now we see just how good it is.

Praying Their Way is pitched as offering a new vocabulary for talking to kids about prayer. Indeed, this is a good guide to how parents can have a creative, gentle, allusive sort of style in doing spiritual formation with their children. Sure, he’s a seminary prof, but this isn’t about imparting doctrine 9at least not directly) but inviting kids to find those liminal spaces where God is showing up. This is about prayer practices to try with kids from, oh, say, maybe 9 or 10 years old up to 14 or so

As it says on the back:

Whether you’re a parent, pastor, Sunday school teacher, or other adult seeking to raise kids in a life of faith, Praying Their Way will equip you to embark on a joyful journey of discovery and holy connection with the kids you love.

As you explore these practices with our children, you may find that your own relationship with God is deepened and enriched as well.

After each chapter, Roger invites his daughter to offer her own input as she writes about doing this thing. 

The first twelve fairly short chapters are about friendship with God; it is on prayer. The second six are more specific practices about various places and styles (from praying with your body, praying in nature, praying for justice, and, of course, praying the Scriptures.) Join this daughter and dad as they learn together. Very nice!

Generously Reformed: Theology Rooted Deep and Reaching Wide J. Todd Billings, Suzanne McDonald & Alberto La Rosa Rojas (Baker Academic) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

We’ve had a few people on a waiting list for this and we were delighted to get to send it out a little early. Brand new — and I haven’t touched it yet — I am sure this is a book that will be discussed and applauded (and criticized) for the rest of the year. It’s important and I’m sure just the sort of thing we need.

I’ll just say two quick things. All three authors teach Reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland Michigan. I love that place! Rooted in the tradition of the RCA (the Reformed Church in America) it is known for both a robust sort of wide-as-life redemptive vision of neo-Calvinism and a generous orthodoxy. They host, just for instance, the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination, which says something, eh? Billings became known for the hard, hard story of his starting an academic book on the lament Psalms when he was diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor and as the book came to life it was lauded from all quarters. Joined here by two colleagues at Western (McDonald teaches systematic and historic theology and Rosa Rojas is director of the Hispanic Ministry Program and a professor of ethics) which models a collaborative spirit. That’s a good start, I think.

It has already earned raved reviews from people I respect. Rich Mouw calls it “a wonderful book that is surely destined to take its place among the classics of Reformed theology.” Jennifer Powell McNutt of Wheaton says it is insightful and thought-provoking, “a gracious response to the question of what it means, and does not mean, to be Reformed.” Kelly Kapic not only applauds the content but “the gracious tone.”

Longtime devotees and the newly curious alike will find much in these pages that clarifies and commends Reformed theology’s deep roots and expansive vision of God and God’s commitment to us. — Kenneth J. Woo, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, author of John Calvin: Refugee Theologian

We have needed this book for years, and at long last we have it — a generous, thoughtful, accessible introduction to the Reformed tradition. A must-read for Christians today. — Kristen Deede Johnson, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, author of The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance

If you associate Reformed theology mainly with tulips, this book will deepen and broaden your impression. Highly recommended!  — Michael Horton, Westminster Seminary California, author of Core Christianity: Finding Yourself in God’s Story

Set Me Free: The Good News of God’s Relentless Pursuit Lecrae (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Oh man, we’re excited about this, but, again, it just arrived. Just in time for us to take it to Jubilee next week in Pittsburgh. The hip-hop artist and memoirist, Lecrae, has spoken and performed at Jubilee so I’m hoping today’s college students know the fame he had a few years back. It is good to follow such strong, black, creatives in the public square and we respect him a lot.

Lecrae, here, is doing a blend of poetry and essays, spoken word pieces and fine literature. And some polemics. The style seems to range from playful to deadly serious, from obviously spiritual to allusive. It is sure to be of interest to those who may be a bit disillusioned in their faith, “wandering away from the people and places you once called home” He notes that “the wilderness is often a faith-strengthening place.”

This will lead to an encounter with God who “cares for your dignity, both body and soul.” It suggests a spirit of liberation. As before, he writes about freedom.

Set Me Free is a hardback (sans dust jacket) with glossy paper, lots of art and graphics and reverse color ink, a couple of moody pictures, cropped with an edge. It’s very, very cool. It is hip to say it looks hip? I dig it.

Jesus Imagination: Maker / Mender / Minder / Master Leonard Sweet (The Salish Sea Press) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

This is the new one from Len Sweet, a master of remarkable lines, clever prose, creative thinking. He’s a United Methodist pastor and preacher and bills himself as a semiotician. (You know Jesus himself lamented those who don’t know the signs of the times.) Futurist or not, he is socially aware and culturally wise and breathes Jesus, often in ways that might cause others to wheeze. Man, he’s something. I promised myself years ago that I’d read every book he does, and I’m trying to keep up. (His last one was about football and I haven’t touch it yet.) This one is really new and it ain’t slim. But the print is an easy-to-read size, there’s that.

He suggests here that Jesus’s greater miracle may be his imagination. He envisioned the world differently (and his vision changed everything!)

As it says on the back, Sweet “invites readers into a creative consciousness of Christ — the tekton, the artisan who didn’t just fix what was broken but reimagine what it meant to be human. Jesus didn’t see the world as a machine to manage but as a garden to end a story to retell, a masterpiece still in progress.” Wow.

Maybe, he suggests, reading this book won’t just offer new ideas, it will be an initiation. He also calls it a summons.

I  studied his numerous footnotes and was (as always) intrigued and almost jealous of his wide reading and memory and capacity to use just the right quote. There are lists and blessings and short, punchy sections on all kinds of related stuff. Put on your seatbelt, it’s a wild ride, although he offers helps — “dance steps” and discussion guides and outlines. I opened it at random and read some pull quotes; one made me smile, one made me roll my eyes, and one blew me away. Jesus used parables and metaphors to evoke a holy imagination so Sweet is in good company. And evoking this is, I think he’s saying, the redemptive mission of God.

To be clear, I don’t think this book is necessarily for creatives or those interested in big ideas although he offers many. I think it may be for anyone interested in Jesus and who is “navigating a world flattened by algorithms and starved of wonder.”  As he says,”step into the divine workshop.”

I think it may be for anyone interested in Jesus and who is “navigating a world flattened by algorithms and starved of wonder.”