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.”