I don’t know if you care for podcasts much, but my dear friend Phil Schiavoni, who works for the CCO (the campus ministry organization Beth and I serve) is my conversation partner every other week in our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast. For a while a year ago we did three random books that I wanted to tell about but these days we usually do a themed approach. We’ve done podcast conversations on books about play and hobbies, about racial justice, about reading the Bible well, about living in our bodies; we’ve done a few episdoes listing three books by or about an important author (for instance not long ago we did an episode on the books of Malcolm Guite and another on Dallas Willard.) It’s been fun and and few folks have said they love listening in.

We have two primary audiences — one group is those CCO staff who find keeping up with books I’m recommending to be a simple bit of professional development for their work with young adults. The other is more general — those who find us via Hearts & Minds, which is a broader reading community. Like many podcasters, we do it over Zoom so you can watch us chit-chat on YouTube (and see me hold up the books) or you can just listen by finding the “Three Books…” pod at Apple or Spotify.

On the most recent “Three Books…” we focused on three titles about the church. CCO is unique among campus ministry organizations in part because they partner with local congregations whenever they can, finding theologically conventional churches near campuses who hire CCO-trained folks to do evangelism and disciple-making at that near-by college. Even though they study ecclesiology and really value faith communities that can enfold seeking young adults (not every church has that capacity) I thought it would be fun to give  shout-out to three sort of specialized books about certain parts of church life. This BookNotes expands on that.

THREE BOOKS FROM HEARTS & MINDS PODCAST

You can find this “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” episode and my enthusiastic promotion of Strip Mine Jesus by Charles Cotherman, the delightful novel about a small church,  Love Big Be Well by Winn Collier, and the heavy Baal and the Gods of More by Andrew Root HERE (watching on YouTube), HERE (listening on Apple), or HERE (listening on Spotify.)

I want to circle back to those three in this BookNotes for those who didn’t listen and might appreciate the more conventional, written book review format here. I’ll add some others about the church to make this a pretty useful post for almost all of our readers. So here ya go, a Baker’s dozen of mostly recent books about the church, the spaces where congregations exist, the liturgical year, worship, and a few recent ones on pastoring. Don’t miss the last two — one on children’s ministry and on the aging population in our churches.

Please order these from us by clicking on the secure order link at the end of the post. We appreciate your support.

Strip Mine Jesus: Hope for the Rural Church, Small Towns, and Overlooked Places Charles E. Cotherman (Baker) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I yapped about this at the podcast, but it is one of my favorite books of 2026 so I have to write about it here, now, too. Brand new, it is the result of years of work that the author did as director of the Center for Rural Ministry (located on the campus of Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.) Charlie has helped do both sociological research about and spiritual formation for pastors of small congregations and has deepened his awareness of the nature of various sort of small churches in various sorts of places. This book is both about rural and small town life and about doing church well in this “overlooked places.”

Which is to say, whether you are in a rustbelt town or a rural location, whether you find yourself in a deteriorating suburb or a struggling church in a typical small town or village, God cares. Jesus sees you and is glad for your work. Christ reigns over his whole creation and my, my, a whole lot of spaces in America (not to mention around the globe) that may be hurting, are God’s territory. And His own body — the church — is often struggling in those places. Again, Christ has not given up on His people. The zippy megachurches may or may not be doing well, but they serve a minority of God’s people: most churches are, in fact, not large. Ordinary churches often serving in less than exciting locations, are the norm.

There are a great handful of books about small churches and we have most of them. And there are (thank goodness) more books lately about the rural church as well. Of course we have books (even secular ones) about rural and small town life, about the heartland and the fringe places, and Cotherman’s great new book covers it all. He does indeed look at the smaller church and he is exceptionally aware of the context, the setting, whether that is rural spaces or small towns, country or rustbelt or whatever.

Charlie has been an important figure, oddly enough, in another aspect of our interests, because his first book was a study of the rise of Christian study center ministries at elite and research-oriented universities. In To Think Christianly he documents the expansion of a vision influenced by the likes of early Francis Schaefer and James Houston of British Columbia’s innovative Regent College into what is now the Consortium of Christian Study Centers. Charlie cares about the mind, about bearing witness with a sharp Christian presence in major universities and, interestingly, he cares about the roughshod places like his own Western Pennsylvania town (of Oil City, PA, where he pastors a small Vineyard congregation.) He also edited a book about church planting (Sent to Flourish) which is yet another area of expertise this renaissance man exhibits.

Strip Mine Jesus does, as I’ve hinted, two really important things. First, it explores the geographical terrain of “forgotten places” that may be overlooked (or romanticized) in the popular imagination. Whether it is the rural places explored in a book like Brad Roth’s excellent Flyover Church or the locations explored in The God of Small Places — a Rural Church Institute Resource edited by Glenn Daman & Jeffrey Clark or even the lovely little book (also set in Western Pennsylvania, I think) by Ronnie Martin & Donnie Griggs, Pastoring Small Towns: Help and Hope for Those Ministering in Smaller Places, Cotherman has read widely and studied diligently and writes fabulously. His book is simply not one to miss, almost no matter where are. Unless maybe your life and ministry is in Hollywood, Manhattan, or Palm Beach, almost all our BookNotes friends would benefit from this. You will appreciate his incisive teaching about cultural idols and how it is that our social imaginations are deformed by assumption in our modern Western society.

Secondly, I want to be careful how I say this as Charlie does not use this language himself, exactly, but I almost want to call this a liberation theology of the forgotten places. At least insofar as he insists that God has some special heart for the discouraged and neglected. At least insofar as he insists that Christ’s Kingdom comes in surprising ways — “not by power, not by might” says Zechariah, right? God is bringing God’s own healing and transformative influences to restore the broken, bring liberty to the captives, hope to the dispossessed, with gospel-rooted churches embodying real care, justice, and a passion for the common good. It is no accident that the back cover of Strip Mine Jesus uses the word “exploited” as that sort of extractive influence is exactly what has happened in many places. Just read the latest Wendell Berry novel, Marce Catlett to see one way that played out in Appalachia. (Or, for that matter, pre-order his late October forthcoming release, Dispatches from Rural America: Sixteen Essays.)

Cotherman does, this, though, this embodying a liberative vision for the ignored and even exploited geographies, by showing how a flourishing community can bring a new verve to isolated places. Most books on small church renewal celebrate the unique way many smaller churches are more personable (“where everybody knows your name”) than bigger institutions, but he wisely takes that a bit further. He uses as a case study the L’Abri community of Edith and Francis Schaffer in a small village in Switzerland, which was very nicely done. Charley knows a bit about what we sometimes call “intentional community”and has a really fun section telling of his first visit to inner city Camden NJ and the Simple Way community (led by Shane Claiborne, long before most knew who he was.)

There are three core chapters here, in a way the heart of the book: The Beauty of Community, The Goodness of Stability, and The Truth of our Identity. Linking community, stability, and identity to beauty goodness and truth is simply brilliant. Applying them to the “suffering and hope in small-town America” is spectacular.  Not bad for a kid who (he tells us) grew up wanting big things — bigger dreams, bigger places, bigger impact. I suppose it is hard, even now, for young adults to escape the metaphor of saying “he will really go far” as if to make something of oneself necessarily means to go away. Anyway, Charlie gets that, has lived that. And now he knows that God words in extraordinary ways even among the mundane and ordinary. Hooray!

His concluding chapter? It’s called “Living Toward Hope That Lasts.” He invites us to “attentive expectation.” Drawing on country Mennonite writer Brad Roth and urban Reformed thinker Tim Keller and a lovely line from the singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson, he pushes us to a hope of creation renewed and what it looks like to pay attention. I was cheering by the end, believe me.

In this now-burning world, we all live in “strip mined” places. And there is hope for us all, as creation groans, as our churches forge real fellowship and we embody a new way of seeing and a new way of being, right where we are. Start by applying some of the ideas of this great book.  You will discover a “simple goodness” in what Cotherman calls “the Great Horizon.”

HAVE YOU HEARD OF WEE KIRK?

{By the way, for those interested in a gathering for those in small congregations please know that we are involved in the Northeast Wee Kirk Conference, this year held in October 12-14 at a great camp and retreat center in the moutains a bit east of Pittsburgh. Here’s a little facebook video I did inviting folks to come. It’s low-key and a lovely time. And we take a lot of books!}

Love Big Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church Winn Collier (Eerdmans) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I mentioned this short novel in the Three Books podcast even though it isn’t brand new. Most of what we highlight here tends to be newer books, and when this was new (in 2017) I raved about it. I keep taking it to conferences and events and mention it when I can. There are a few literary memoirs about small town pastors (everybody should know A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry Garrett Keizer) and a few novels (Incorporation by Will Willimon is a fictional account of a big church in a small town, and is quite the take-town of the underside of megachurches.) I think the best story of church life I’ve ever read is this lovely little epistolary novel by a great writer, the authorized biographer of Eugene Peterson, Winn Collier. (Collier wrote the book about Peterson called A Burning in My Bones, some of which nicely unfolds in a small congregation in the suburbs of growing Baltimore.)

Love Big is about a less than stellar small town church looking for a pastor who calls a less than upbeat retired guy who wants to pare down the church and become more focused on just loving each other by worshiping God. In the drama that unfolds — and there is plenty that we learn through this pastor’s monthly church letters — we fine an honest story of a real church “trying to figure out how to live faithfully in the particular, everyday places of our lives.”

The great writer Robert Benson says “Collier writes strong and true, happy and sad, funny and wise, heavy and light.  I never fail to read anything that he writes. If you are a lover of words and wisdom on the printed page, you should read him too.” Seth Collier (author of the recovery memory Coming Clean) says “There are some stories that are so well-written, so layered with meaning, so humble and true, that they should be read, reread, and reread again. Winn Collier has written that kind of story.”

Pastor Pete himself, by the way, called it a “tour de force” which is a powerful phrase for a quiet little book. Eugene continues, saying Love Big Be Well is “an angle on understanding the life of both congregation and pastor that exceeds anything I have ever read.”

“Love Big Be Well is an angle on understanding the life of both congregation and pastor that exceeds anything I have ever read.” — Eugene Peterson

Traumatized Church: What Paul’s Relationship with the Corinthian Church Teaches Us About Helping Those Who Are Hurting Scot McKnight and Adrienne Gibson (Zondervan Reflective) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Our staff chuckle and sometimes debate where a book should be shelved and a few years ago we had this quandary when Brazos Press released Scot McKnight’s Pastor Paul: Nurturing a Culture of Christoformity in the Church. McKnight is a Biblical scholar who also writes good books about ordinary discipleship and about church life. For instance, his two lovely books on building safe, trusting, healthy congregational cultures — A Church Called Tov and Pivot — we put under church life, obviously.) But Pastor Paul? It’s a fairly scholarly study of pastoral passions to help others become Christlike as found in a close reading of Paul’s epistles. Does it go under New Testament studies or under being a pastor? Well, this brand new one is similar. It is a careful reading of Paul’s letters to the deeply troubled folk in Corinth. But yet, co-written with a therapist, it seems a very exceptional blend of NT explication and practical counsel. As one reviewer put it, it is “compelling and complex portrait of the agony and angst Paul went through when he was dealing with the Corinthian church.” Lynn Cohick, a distinguished New Testament prof and scholar says “We meet St. Paul as we’ve never seen him: as a traumatized apostle.”

Adam Hamilton writes,

If you’ve known pain in your church or in your ministry, or if you’ve struggled with Paul, you will find this book a remarkable gift.

I love the work of Chuck DeGroat and he says, “Traumatized Church reminds us that holiness has never required superhuman strength — only honesty, humility, and hope.”

If you want to understand trauma, especially as it has manifested in the church, and if you want to promote safer conversations among congregants, and if your hoping to heal harm and embrace restoration (not add to further trauma) this book ought to be in your hands. It asks “is your church a place of healing or hurt?”

It is deeply engaged with the story of Paul and the pain in Corinth. Some of it reminds me a bit of Pastor Paul and that serious work on Christoformity. But this really is less a first century cultural survey or Biblical study as suc but is an up-to-day and poignant exploration of what it means to (as they put it) realize, recognize, respond, and resist the ugly stuff of fractured relationships and navigate the wounds within the local church.

When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis Shaunti Feldhahn & James Sells (Tyndale Refresh) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Speaking of which— although we have good, serious help from the above mentioned Biblical scholar McKnight and the trauma counselor Gibson, this recent release might be ore practical for some readers. Feldhahn is a popular evangelical writer and James Sells is a psychologist, counseling prof and scholar of mental health from Regent University in Virginia.

The easiest way to explain this upbeat and clear-headed book is to quote this from the publisher’s marketing explanation, noting that people “are hurting on a scale we’ve never seen. They’re dealing with an onslaught of issues like anxiety, grief, mental health illness, family troubles and hopelessness.” I think we all know this is true. Can this book help?

Some say that congregations that work to become known for understanding and caring about the anxiety of members and guests will be stepping up to a great opportunity. Maybe we need to help our members become more savvy about what people are going through and a faith-based, gracious response.

Here is what they say they offer:

When Hurting People Come to Church will share how this works, and equip you as a busy leader to:

• understand the mental health crisis in your community
• raise up motivated lay people within the church to help address the spiritual and emotional needs of the hurting
• partner with counselors and other mental health professionals most effectively
• organize the church’s time and resources to reach the most people, while freeing you to step in where you are most needed
• grow your outreach to your community

Whether this is a “church growth” strategy or not remains to be seen and it should be obvious that we care about people because we care about people. And we care because of God’s love. Helping others with their deepest hurts and fears isn’t a strategy for something else, or a means to our own ends. Having said that, they aren’t wrong that people want to belong to places that truly care and have some clue about their concerns. This book can help get that conversation started.

Baal and the Gods of More: Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry Andrew Root (Baker Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Well, speaking of church growth — as the ad copy on the otherwise fine book above suggests — this new Andrew Root project is one of the most dense I’ve read in a while (and I am not finished) but, man, is it provocative and rewarding. As we’ve come to expect from Andrew Root he brings incredible insight into a truly Biblically-shaped form of ministry and church life — radically rejecting the ethos of our time and the attitudes and techniques that have emerged from the church drawing too unquestioningly from the culture’s ways — and offering us a exhilarating journey into the social sciences and cultural critics who give us eyes to see what we’ve too uncritically absorbed. The new one does that brilliantly.

Since it is a critique of church growth (helping us reform our understandings of the nature of growth and ethos of progress / growth motif) he has to look at the long-lasting, but mostly 20 and 21st century understanding of economics. Capitalism reduces things to the metrics of numbers, of quanity over quanity. He has to draw on thinkers like, oh, say, Hernando de Soto and Robert J. Gordon and Max Weber (of course.) When he shows how this faith in growth combines with techno-optimists he draws on the work of Manuel Castells. Did I say that Root is brilliant? I hear his podcasts are a blast, which is fun, having such a friendly guy who is so learned.

(Speaking of podcasts which I don’t listen to much, I had to hear [after I wrote this] the Holy Post interview with Andrew Root. In the introduction Skye Jethani says that in this book Root shows how “capitalism over the past 150 years has deeply shaped the church to mimic the efficiency of a machine rather than the relationality of a family.” Well put. That Holy Post interview can be found here, about 30 minutes in. Be sure to come back and read the rest of BookNotes, friends!)

Although he has always been theologically deep and often surprising — think of his captivating 2014 book Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker — his super-sophisticated approach began in earnest in 2017 with the “Ministry in a Secular Age” series which put deep theological considerations about church life in conversations with the complex theories of philosopher Charles Taylor (first in Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding the the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness and then in 2019’s The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God, and then in The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life.) In subsequent, perhaps even more dense works, Root draws heavily on thinkers Hartmut Rosa and Byung-Chul Han. Whew!

(I have joked that I wonder if he is on the board of the major academic publisher, Polity Press as he cites all of their authors, over and over. Maybe he gets free ones or something, but, man, he does know his stuff, with long footnotes delving deep into questions and conversations about nuances of critique. The word enchantment comes up, as it does.)

And so, as I tried to say on the “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast this new one, while intellectually demanding, is brilliant. And his study of 1 Kings and the Elijah narratives is spectacular — a bit Brueggemann-esque, I might say — as he draws on the prophets denunciation with the gross syncretism between Baal (a god of fertility — the sexual bits of the clay statues he shows in the chapter “Memes and Museums” are not meant as erotic, but practical. Baal produced the goods, more fruit) versus Yahweh, the true God who meets the people in the desert with just enough Manna. We think we need growth, more tricks and techniques and miracles to bring more people to our church— crassly measured with butts in the pews and funds in the offering plates — when, in fact, we need a humility and sober trust. He has a picture of a clay idol of another such fetility idol, like Baal, but of Artimas (one of those famous ones seen in some Bible dictionaries) with dozens of breasts and he contrasts that with a famous icon of Mary and Jesus. Does the church have a Baal problem?

Do economics and stabilization and anxiety about survival and escalation/growth — deep in our worldviewish imagination — show up between the lines, the real idolatry in our congregational lives? Is there a relationship between the bull (a Baal-like symbol of ancient fertility cults) and our modern Wall Street symbol of bullish markets. You will be amazed by his original and brilliant insights about the Jezebel spirit, which is deeply economic.

In a way, this brilliant study of the ways we tend to prefer the gods of Baal rather than the suffering son held by the grieving mother Mary, picks up themes in his previous book called Evangelism in an Age of  Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness which offers a “theology of consolation” can shape how we think about evangelism and hope and the community of Jesus into which we are inviting folks.

Like Evangelism… and a few others, Baal and the Gods of More not only has rigorous social analysis and deep Biblical study, it has delightful fictional bits. (They are in italics and although he swears they are capturing more or less real conversations he’s had with real people they are a fictional device.) This playful bit of imagined characters and case studies makes the book lively just when it is getting too dense.

I am not sure that all of the congregations I know of, especially not some of the mainline ones, are, in fact, frantic in their fixation on growth; although the back cover shouts “the endless pursuit of ‘more’ won’t save the church” I am not sure that most of us directly have relentless commitment to bigger and better. Small churches are often happy for their size. Mainline folks often reject the mega-church “bigger is better” tone. But yet, why are we exhausted all the time, grumbling and fearful. Maybe late modern capitalism has seeped into our souls as the assumptions of growth like air we breathe and we aren’t even aware of our ”transactional” imaginations. Maybe we are more seduced by Baal than we even know.

If Root is even only half right about the Baal fertility gods and the modern equlivents, this book is urgent. God offers us a better way. Andrew’s invitation to the life of Mary is instructive and inspiring. We will never find a more vibrant and authentic faith until we disentangle ourselves from our fascination with modern idols of growth and data. Baal and the gods of More will help, if we take the time to study it. The preface and first chapter are priceless.

Ordinary Time: The Season of Growth Amy Peeler (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

In Root’s pivotal engagement with philosopher and social critic Charles Taylor, one of the ideas he ponders in The Congregation in a Secular Age is that “in the wilderness of high modernity” we need to reform our social imaginations, our ways, particularly in our view of time. He invites us to “keep sacred time against the speed of modernity.” I don’t recall if he cites the marvelously rich book by Taylor-esque philosopher James K.A. Smith called How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now but I sure recommend it.

Which is my plug not only for the deep Root volume, and the serious but wonderful Smith volume, but any books that help us capture a sense of time in a new and different way. What could Root mean by “sacred” time?

Certainly one of the ways we can think about and embody and imagine time differently is at least by paying some attention to what is called the church calendar. This is not all to the story — which is why I so value Jamie Smiths How to Inhabit Time — but it is a great compliment, an aid along the way. Arranging our lives through Advent into Christmastime and Lent and then Easter into Pentecost, will help us focus on the life of Jesus, writ big. As Diana Butler Bass explores in a one year batch of 52 meaty devotionals around the church calendar (A Joyful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perserverane) keeping the seasons intentionally and learning a bit about feasts and fasts and living well into the seasons can help counter the increasing secularization of our sense of time. It’s countercultural and a meaningful prop to family life and our experience of church and worship.

Enter this new volume on what is called Ordinary Time, which is typically understood as about half the year, the slow slog through the time after Pentecost (in the late Spring) into Advent in December. Ordinary Time? What’s the big deal about ordinariness? As some pundits put it, compared with the drama of Advent or the glory of Christmas or the intensity of Lent and Easter and Pentecost, not much happens. Exactly.

Black scholar, professor, writer and Anglican priest Esau McCaulley has edited and curated a small series of books on each of the major seasons of the church year. He was not raised in a liturgical church so it was sort of new to him, and as he became increasingly shaped by this rather unique view of time itself, he wanted to spread the news. He developed this “Fullness of Time” series with a short hardback on each of the main seasons. I have told you about all of them and have raved about them all. Now, a few months ago, the latest small volume released and it is Ordinary Time: The Season of Growth by Wheaton College (and Anglican priest) Amy Peeler.

If you know this series you surely will want to have this one to finish the collection. I adored the Advent one (by Tish Warren) and really loved the Christmas one (by Emily McGowin). Wes Hill did a fantastic job on the Easter one; the famously eloquent and hard-hitting Fleming Rutledge did the great Epiphany one, one of the best. Now we have this understated season. I hope you don’t miss it.

Ordinary time is a time of growth. I’ll say this, in case anybody wonders — the sort of growth Peeler means is not at all the same as the fascination with the idols of “more” that Andrew Root writes about (above.) The sort of “growth” he means, is not at all what Peeler tells us about in this little volume. This call to experience God in the ordinary times of Ordinary Time is to grow spiritually, to mature, deepen, grow in quality to speak, not quantity. She doesn’t at all talk about “church growth” or the metrics of measurement of the life of faith (as if one even could.) No, her invitation it so a spirituality of the commonplace, pulling us gently towards a quiet sort of season that is about maturity in Christ. Depth in the doldrums, as I’ve sometimes put it.

Diana Butler Bass, in the aforementioned A Joyful Year, notes something I never quite pieced together, that the first half of the church calendar is based on the life of Jesus (yes, obviously) but the second half is our response. That is, it is somewhat about us, our response, our call to discipleship, our, as Peeler puts it, “true colors” and “true freedom.” As Peeler tells us a bit of interesting stuff about the history and significance of Ordinary Time she reminds us that it is a season of spiritual formation.

She explains about some of the most common readings in the lectionary (“Propers”) and the season’s prayers and collects. The book is loaded with Biblical exploration, too. I had no idea this time when not much happens could be so rich. Even for those who sort of know this, it is important for me to be reminded. Ordinary Time is about the “fullness of time” as well, especially as we lean into daily faithfulness. She notes that deep trust, even in the face of death, “becomes our new ordinary.”

Why We Worship: Experiencing Heaven on Earth at Church Adriel Sanchez (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This isn’t the place to air my grievances about Sunday worship but I’m sure you, too, have sins to confess about Sunday morning grumpiness or lackluster attitude in the sanctuary. I think this book will help (and might be a good resource for an adult ed class or small group or, if you are that kind of church, for your worship team to study together.) Let’s at least hope your worship team leaders or liturgists or officiants or whatever you call them, know this kind of stuff. Why We Worship is brand new and looks warm and wonderful.

I actually like heady books about serious worship. I was recently re-skimming Brazo Press’s Grand Entrance: Worship on Earth as in Heaven by the great Presbyterian turned Orthodox scholar, Edith Humphrey. (I told a friend that I smiled when I see that the back cover has blurbs from a Catholic scholar, an Orthodox participant, a non-Reformed evangelical, a CRC Reformed leader, and another Catholic.)  I’ve been dipping into Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology by David W. Fagerberg (published by Hillenbrand Books, a scholarly imprint of the upbeat Catholic LTP.) I’ve written before about the thoughtful “Dynamics of Christian Worship” series done by IVP Academic, especially Worship in An Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for Healing by J. Michael Jordan, an ordained Wesleyan pastor who is now the Dean of the Chapel at Houghton University. There are a lot of good books on worship — we have hundreds!

Do you remember when I told you about the very interesting and useful How to Worship for All Its Worth: A Guide for Pastors, Worship Leaders, and Students by Steven Felix-Jäger (Zondervan Academic; $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39)? I explained how it offers a handful of principles about good worship; for instance, he explains why even contemporary worship services should be biblically faithful; aesthetically rich yet appropriate; theologically sound and robust; and pastorally sensitive but challenging. Then the second half of the book takes you on a lively visit to several different worship services which serve as case studies to evaluate the strength and weaknesses of these various worshipping communities. He looks at what we can learn from “Evangelical Worship”( Park Avenue Baptist Church, Titusville, FL),  creative Reformed Worship (Pillar Church, in Holland, MI), Pentecostal Worship by way of a visit to Life Church in Lancaster, CA,  Black Gospel Worship at an AME Church and, uniquely, a parish which offers a charismatic Catholic mass.

Well, anyway, all of that is too bring me to the brand new Why We Worship and my hearty recommendation for it. It presents a strong theological summons but seems very warm and inspiring; it helps us remember, as Justin Holcomb puts it, “that worship is an ascent into the presence of the Holy Trinity, entering another world, to worship the living God rattan than chasing religious inspiration. This is timely, gracious, and bracing invitation to be re-formed by the gospel as we gather.”

The book is arranged in three parts (Going to Church: Ascending the Mountain At Church: The Summit, and Descending the Mountain: Back Into the World.) These three sections frame the topic excellently (and the appendix about taking your kids to worship is very good.)

As you might guess, the heart is the middle portion what explores the meaning of things like the Call to Worship, the Confession, the role of musical worship, the sermon and benediction. There’s a good chapter on communion and a great chapter on the benediction. Who know that you needed this?

Listen to the thoughtful, Reformed thinker and writer Joni Eareckson Tada who offers this encouragement to read this book:

“As you wit with each chapter and meditate on its principles, you will understand worship for what it is — a God-centered response to God’s revelation of himself, all of it superintended by his Word and listen high through Jesus Christ.”

There is no doubt that in most of our congregations, our experience of church and our experience of worship is primarily mediated by the pastor. Granted, worship involves much more than what the pastor does and leading worship and preaching is only a small part of what most pastors do. But, let’s face it: the pastor is important in worship and in church. I’m going to name three new books about pastoring, and although I have named them before, they are each exceptional. Get them for your pastor, your pastor/parish relations committee, your search committee if you are looking for new congregational staff. This is the kind of stuff that can energize all of us as we learn to love our pastors well.  I won’t say much, but these are each fantastic and Highly recommend them.

Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work Matt Austen (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wish I didn’t have to say this, but if your congregation is going to be faithful to its call to send out ordinary folks to “love and serve the Lord” into all areas of life, this book is essential. That ordinary work is not mentioned much in most churches is an indictment of our puny vision and dualisms and dichotomies and such; it is a blindspot we simply have to allow God to correct. Why do so many folks feel a gap between Sunday and Monday, between worship and their work? What can be done? How should a typical clergy person not fall into what one pastoral called “professional malpractice” by missing this core concern? The library of fabulous books on ordinary church people stepping faithfully into their callings in the work-world continues to grow, but most of them are books pastors just aren’t reading.  Maybe they feel ill-trained (since a robust theology of work isn’t taught in most seminaries) or maybe it’s just too huge for them to consider. In any case, for ordinary pastors of any denomination, Pastoring for Monday is a god-send, an answer to your questions about how to lead and preach and pastor as if God cared about your church members work-lives. This book helps pastors see that faith integrated into all of life, including vocations in careers and other callings, as a necessary focus of contemporary ministry, “not an optional add-on.”

Anyway, most readers of BookNotes won’t be surprised when I promote this good one. Spread the word — we have it here at our 20% off.

Armed with Austen’s tool-belt of strategies and practices, clergy will learn how to effectively support and relevantly communicate with their members as they navigate many common work-related struggles.  — Amy Sherman, author or Kingdom Callings and Agents of Flourishing

This truly outstanding book is a remarkable gift to the church and a must-read for every pastor. — Tom Nelson, founder of Made to Flourish and author of Why Your Work Matters

The Pastor as Midwife: Life Giving Leadership for the Healing of the Church Shawn Singer Gaines (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I raved about this about a month ago and I wanted now to circle back and underscore it again. I have long used the midwife metaphor (haven’t you?) when talking about ministry, in or out of the institutional church. We strive to participate with God in union with Christ, empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to get stuff done. To bring life, new life!  Right? I am surprised that there isn’t more written like this, richly plumbing the nuances of the work of a midwife to show how the life of a pastor can be enhanced by keeping in mind these women who catch babies for a living. What a parallel!

I appreciate Shawna Gaines and her vision “life-giving leadership.” I like that she names the pain that many of us and our institutions are in, which, frankly, is part of the whole childbirth thing, right? As it says on the back cover “the church is in pain, but God tells us that pain is pregnant with possibility.”

It is sort of interesting, she suggests, by the way, that the shepherding metaphor worked well when congregations were full and pastors saw clearly where they were headed (and what hazards to steer people away from.” In our different moment, the church needs more than a gentle guide, a pastoral shephard. We need a labor coach.

This book is very wise about the state of pastoring these days. Gaines has her DMin from Lipscomb University and is lead pastor of Trevecca Community Church in Nashville, TN. Like some artists of midwifery I know, she seems calm and grounded, wise for her age. Can we help navigate labor pains of the new world God is bringing in being? She is a lovely writer and this has been called by Scott Daniels, the General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene,  “fresh and biblical.. a creative way for pastors to frame within ministry as they participate in the birth a community that reflects new creation.”

Author Shawn Singer Gaines has a nice line in her acknowledgments that reminds us of the good marriage and co-parenting approach she has with her husband (who has labored together with her not only in congregational ministry but in higher education and neighborhood work.) She says to him, “While I was writing this book, you displayed the intuition of a midwife, knowing when to coax me to take a break and breather, and when to press me to push harder.” Exactly.

Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry Matthew Erickson (Eerdmans) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I have highlighted this more than once so will not go on and on here, raving more than I already have. But I will remind you quickly about several thins I love about this fabulous book.

First, it is just so well written, truly lovely, inspiring as the gracious words form into gracious paragraphs, inviting us to ponder and muse. It is one of the nicest professional books for pastors I have read in a very long time. There is no accident that he shares much with Eugene Peterson’s books about pastoral ministry, but he is a better writer.

Secondly, although it is obviously about pastoring, it really will be of interest to anybody who cares about church life.  I’m not kidding.  As my friend Vincent Bacote (a black theologian from Wheaton and a wise scholar of  Abraham Kuyper and other socially-engaged public theologies)  has said, “this insightful, catalytic, and personal book will bring great benefit to all who love Christ and his church.”

Thirdly, the restorative vision underneath the gardening talk really will be of interest to many and, rather like the midwifery metaphor, above, it is a fresh way to frame and approach the work of ministry. Whether you think the slow work of patient tending of the garden or the ways in which it involves us in “partnering with miraculous things” or understanding older ways of doing good work that isn’t primarily shaped by techniques and technology, The Pastor as Gardener is sure to be helpful. And stimulating. Whether you have read deeply in the agrarian worldview of Wendell Berry or not, this urban pastor’s introduction to this sort of metaphor will be generative. I promise.

It’s time for pastors to return to this old agrarian metaphor. It’s time for us to take up our rudimentary tools — our Scriptures and our prayers and our faith — and get back to our fields. This is serious work. This is joyful work. This is loving work.  — Winn Collier, author of Love Big, Be Well

Wet Cement: Inclusive Children’s Ministry That Leaves an Impression Julia Dennis (Friendship Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, this is a fun and fiesty little book that is a pleasure to read and easy to take in. I know some of our readers will be a bit out of their comfort zone with this one, but hear me out. Julia Dennis and her husband are creative types raised in homes where the parents were fiercely supportive of them and who entered church with a fairly mainstream Protestant sort of care for everybody. She was raised United Methodist and we learn early on that her mom did all sorts of good stuff — saving the freezing unhoused in urban Baltimore, standing up against racism and injustice, preaching against war. (And some who didn’t appreciate her not only threatened her physically, but slit her tires. There’s some fine-looking “Christian” response to a liberal pastor, eh?) So as a youth this energetic gal saw it all. When Ms Dennis went away to college she was shocked to meet gay and queer friends whose parents had kicked them out of the house, even renounced them. How can a parent ever be so cruel to their own children? How can churches be so ugly?

Long story short — as she colorfully tells in this upbeat handbook that reads like a memoir — she adopts a progressive and inclusive sort of faith and ends up becoming a UMC children’s ministry, joyfully and boldly teaching children about the Bible’s overarching story about God’s goodness and grace and our radical response in working for social righteousness and public  justice. There are some things I would have wished for, but, mostly, this is a useful resource.

And then there is this: she herself is a bit ADHD, maybe on the spectrum, as some say. One of their own children has autism which inclusive folks now call neurodiversity. Julia Dennis is so compelling about this in Wet Cement because it is very much her own story. In Wet Cement she wants to help congregations be welcoming places for all children and youth and part of this is adjusting our normals to fully include those with what some call disabilities. She wants us to learn from her story so congregations can incarnate the big mercy of God. She wants us to be advocates and allies. Her book is to help us be more intentional about our compassion and our inclusion and our working hard to challenge exclusive systems.

I do like how the publisher explains this, exploring the “wet cement” image:

In Wet Cement, Julia Dennis challenges church leaders, Sunday school teachers, and spiritually curious parents to approach children’s ministry with a view of the lifelong impressions we are leaving on our children’s faith. With honesty, passion, and practical guidance, Dennis reimagines a faith formation that is child-led, radically inclusive, and rooted in the boundless love of Jesus.

Can unusual children be known not problems to manage but gifts to cherish? Can we help them enter into the Biblical narrative in a healthy way, not driven by fear of punishment or a wrathful God? Wet Cement: Inclusive Children’s Ministry That Leaves an Impression was recently released by Friendship Press (the publishing arm of the National Councilor Churches.)

A Vision for the Aging Church: Renewing Our Ministry for and by Seniors James M. Houston & Michael Parker (IVP Academic) $30.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.79

I suppose if I dig into older books that I love about the local church community I’d list a dozens. But for our purposes here, offering a short list of mostly new books for those who love their congregations and pastors, and want thoughtful resources about refreshing our ministries, I just had to put something in about what some call “seniors” or the “aging population.” The elderly.

Not sure what phrase to use that suggests the challenges and opportunities of those in this late season of life but I love this book for several reasons. It came out several years back and isn’t new, but wanted to end this list with it because it is rather rare and pretty unique.

First, A Vision for the Aging Church balances between serious sociological and theological reflection and practical stuff to do, to deepen integral ministry for the older folks in our churches. There are plenty that are more simple — devotionals for those in care facilities or Bible readings about growing older, sure. And there are a few academic studies about the “graying of the church.” This blends mature thinking and som practical insights making it ideal for many Hearts & Minds customers. Yay.

Another thing I like about this is the subtitle: the ministry it explores is both for and by seniors.  A very good point.

Thirdly my hat is always off to one of the great geniuses and behind-the-scenes evangelical leaders of our time, the wide (and quite elderly) founder of Regent College in British Columbia, the mystic and leader James Houston. (I mentioned in our lead book review above that Charlie Cotherman, author of Strip Mine Jesus had an early book on the rise of the Christian Study Center movement, and Jim Houston plays a major role in that well-told book.) Anyway, anything James Houston writes is something we are interested in stocking. His 2019 auto-biography — with some world historical stunning moments — is called Memoirs of a Joyous Exile and a Worldly Christian.

Fourth, there are several appendices that are questions to use in a church survey, some more general for the aging person but a vital one about church life and services. It’s worth the price of the book, almost, for that good list for a useful church survey.

Houston and his colleague Michael Parker did a sequel to this for the individual aging Christian which looks good. (We have a whole bibliography of books on agin faithfully. Send me an email if you want us to share it.) I celebration this one, A Vision for the Aging Church here, though, since it is one of the rare ones about the local congregation and ministry. Highly recommended.

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