I am not going to extol the value of reading literature or tell why novels are important to our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. I’ve written plenty about reading (and recommended in the last BookNotes that you pre-order Jeff Crosby’s forthcoming book The World of Wonder: The Spirituality of Reading) and while many of our BookNotes readers may appreciate my emphasis on non-fiction here at BookNotes, I know many are eager to hear some good suggestions for Summer fiction.

(If you’re super-duper interested, I created for a clergy retreat I led a while back a list of 50 novels that I appreciate and you can check that big list HERE.)

I’m going to tell you now about 10 recent novels — it seems like a good round number — but I have to say that the first two are indie authors, self-published, no less, which are the most moving stories I’ve read in ages. And, believe me, I’ve read some good ones, most recently a heady 650-page postmodern (I use the term loosely) Irish novel called The Bee Sting and an edgy cool older one called The Dylanist.  And you know Beth read right away devoured the new Fredrik Backman, My Friends.

But these first two that you may not even have heard of are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, easy reads and I hope you give them a try. Support indie writers and a small-town bookstore in one fell swoop — order them today.

All books mentioned here at BookNotes are 20% off.

The Life-Saving Adventure of Gracelyn Gordon and Her Dog Ethan D. Bryan (Blue Cat Publishing) $14.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

Okay, forget about the uninspiring cover. Please. Here is what I wish I could do. I want to tell you about almost every single chapter of this fast-paced, easy to read, utterly charming story written by a good customer and dear friend, a book as earnest and lovely as is the author himself. But I can’t, because I do not want to give away the surprises that await in almost every chapter and, well, because there are a lot of them. There are 40 pretty short chapters and you’ll finish this in a few days or so, I bet; maybe a week. It is hard to put down, believe me.

Here’s the gist: Gracelyn Gordon is an artist living in Missouri. That’s the first thing to know; Ethan has crafted an endearing story about the work of a painter and I think I haven’t read anything so nice about the demanding work of an artist — working for commissions, doing photos and sketches to inspire future paintings, the deeply emotional work of choosing colors and actually making art, the driving passions of one called to this vocation, the overall joy but yet the mundane practicality of contracts and museums and visiting stores to buy brushes and canvases. There isn’t too much about that, and it doesn’t show the darker, painful side that surely plagues the work, but there is enough here about the life of a single, small-town, female painter to bring smiles to readers who are (or who know) working artists. I so enjoyed that part of it.

And here’s the next part: Gracelyn’s mother died when she was very young so she was raised by her upbeat, creative, wonderful father. They had a great relationship. There are lots of fun flashbacks and I think even if your dad was not as generous or outrageously creative as Gracelyn’s dad, it will pull some heart strings. I shed some tears with this one, and I’m glad I got to experience this good relationship between a school teacher dad and his young adult daughter. We need these kinds of models, I think, and even if most of us don’t have Bob Goff-like parents full of whimsy and adventure and faith and kindness, seeing this unfold in the novel is wholesome and good and beautiful. Whew.

But here’s the real situation: as the book begins you realize that Gracelyn’s father has died and he has spent the last year of his life leaving a whole bunch of clues around the country for a cross-country scavenger hunt. He has no idea if she should even pursue this crazy dare, but when she gets to the first place — the Dr. Pepper museum in Waco, Texas (her dad and mom met at Baylor University, there — and is befriended by the owner she calls Mrs. Pepper, she realizes that her father has invested in relationships with these people all over the country, each waiting to greet her if and when she ever shows up. And, as you’ll find, almost everybody is all in.

She gets one thing wrong (a misunderstood clue having to do with the book her English-teacher dad loved to teach, To Kill a Mockingbird and something to do with Atticus Finch) but daunting as some of the trips are, she travels around the country meeting people along the way, some whom become life-long friends. What a great plot device for a story, eh?

I can’t tell you more of where this adventure takes our valiant adventurer as that would spoil the  fun of surprise. She has a girl-pal that goes with her on a few of the escapades, modeling, again, the goodness of real friendship. It was not only enjoyable but inspiring, truly. And there are plenty of shenanigans with her dog, Fagan.

There is an afterword by Ethan saying a bit about how he came to write this tale. He didn’t say what a baseball fan he is (you may know, at least, his Zondervan title A Year of Playing Catch which we’ve touted here) but it made sense that one of the clues her father left took her to a famous baseball stadium. Gracelyn’s inspiration from a little boy with “lucky socks” is just so fun and inspiring I wanted to cheer. Her meeting folks along the way (including stuff tied in to books and music and scenes that will make you clap your hands and wipe away tears of joy) is part of the endearing style of this lovely read.  The Life Saving Adventure isn’t quite an epic journey on par with that taken by Bilbo Baggins, but the brave little Hobbit and their journey does come up. You’re going to love this.

Just for fun, Ethan has enclosed as a book-marker (for a limited handful) a bonus gift of a baseball card (of players from his beloved Kansas City Royals.) That’s cool, is it not?  Ethan’s prose and the story his writing invites us into is inspiring, wise, gracious, kind, good. You will want to be a more gloriously adventuresome person having read this book, even if you never travel (and even if you don’t have the exceedingly good fortune at (almost) every turn that Gracelyn has. You, too, will want to see God’s hand in things, you’ll want to sing and trust and hope. Carpe Diem and all that. You will believe that love wins, that art matters. This book brings it. Enjoy.

I don’t say this often, and I suspect it may never happen, but I want a sequel. The book ends in a lovely, upbeat, rom-com sort of way but I still want to know what happens with a few of the characters. I want to know more about Gracelyne’s developing art and her life. And I want more adventures. The sign of a good book, eh?

The Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville: A Novel John J. Thompson (Gyroscope Productions) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

If the easy-flowing and upbeat prose of my friend Ethan’s poignant story of Gracelyn (above) was the most enjoyable sweet story I’ve read all year, I want to suggest that this indie novel — the author’s first fictional release — is right up there as well. It is equally passionate about the arts and tells a very compelling story, set, however, mostly, in one specific place. If the previous one is necessarily about travel and adventure, The Ballad of the Lost Dogs is, in fact, set mostly in one neighborhood in one run-down but then gentrified section of East Nashville. I think a number of the streets and coffee shops and churches may be real and, as one reviewer noted, it “truly captures the core of the magic of East Nashville.”  That’s from Chuck Beard of East Side Storytelling, an outfit that specializes in helping people tell their stories. That’s a huge endorsement and when he says “I can’t recommend this book enough!” I know what he means. I adored this work and have been waiting for a while to tell you.  It is not soapy like the popular Nashville TV show a while back, but it’s got some of that vibe, a story about making acoustic music in Tennessee.

The backstory: John J. Thompson fell in love with the best (dare I say the most edgy and creative) sorts of contemporary Christian music in the 1980s as a young teen and he’s been at it ever since. He worked at the legendary, artful — some might say radical — Cornerstone Festival outside of Chicago. (Rez Band’s Glenn & Wendi Kaiser make a cameo appearance in one scene in the novel) and formed a band (The Wayside.) He ran TrueTunes and knows his way around all kinds of music. He wrote a fabulous book ten years ago about resisting mass-marketed stuff — with chapters on beer-making and coffee and record shops and finding a creative, localist faith called Jesus, Bread, and Chocolate: Crafting a Handmade Faith in a Mass-Market World. (Which we still stock at our very analog shop here in Dallastown.) He teaches at Lipscomb, now, and, yes, for those in the know, the book is somewhat of a nod to his friends in the alt-rock band The Lost Dogs. And, yes, The Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville is about the power of making real music.

(A fun aside: who has a fictional character in a novel write a fictional song, and then has that song recorded, for real, by guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy?)

The story revolves around Jerry, a recovering alcoholic, wounded deeply by awful experiences in the Vietnam war who works as a tour bus driver where he meets country singers who hate country music and CCM bands who live like heathens. And yet, he meets genuine artists and as he drives bands around he is encouraged to pick up his long forgotten guitar. He plays along with great albums (mostly of the 70s era) from John Prine to Johnny Cash to Ry Cooder. He revives an old lullaby he wrote for his long-lost daughter (now an adult) and plays his guitar almost as a prayer. He’s talented and getting good but nobody knows; he never plays for anyone.

East Nashville was a fairly rough part of town, or so the story tells us, and many of Jerry’s neighbors were black. He grows in his appreciation for R&B and soul and exchanges records with an older black neighbor — they borrow each other’s LPs and they learn from each other; the scene unlocked something in me and I bawled my eyes out reading this lovely little episode. Jerry shows up for his neighbors after the awful 1998 tornados and new friendships are forged.

There is a scene about the economics of gentrification — from the point of view of a working class black man — that explains the injustices of these evolutions in neighborhoods becoming trendy as well as any nonfiction expose. While the artful telling of this plot about Jerry and his love of music is the main thing, the subtext is the changing neighborhood, the longing for authentic multi-ethnic friendships, even the value of intergenerational relationships. Man, there is a lot that comes upon in this allusive, lovely fiction — not as “points” or “topics” or “messages” but just woven nicely into the story. In ways that good stories can, we learn a lot about the multi-cultural neighborhood of changing East Nashville. Which could be almost anywhere in these United States, it seems, where rich and poorer and folks of different faiths and places by necessity come together. Or don’t.

Church looms large in the background of this story, although it isn’t written in a way that seems to be “about” religion or evangelical faith; indeed it may be especially for the exevangelical or “spiritual but not religious” crowd. Yet, as Jerry visits the church of his record-loving Black friend, he connects with an amazing singer — as shy about singing in public as Jerry is about playing in public.

I can’t say all that happens but early on we realize that something significant — really wonderfully magical and big — has happened the night before and a music journalist is trying to interview this band of brothers that have been playing music together on the sly. The back stories of each colorful character unfold and each person — a Mexican-American who plays a mean accordion, a well-dressed African American bus driver (despite his engineering degree he couldn’t get a job in the mid-twentieth century American South) who sings Bill Withers and Al Green and some young white kids with amazing chops, and a spoken word poet named Nadia — has a story to tell about their lives and how they ended up on the streets of East Nashville.

Thompson gets the music stuff right, it seems to me. The occasional lingo about amps and instruments and the description of the needle going down on LPs (and the tons of musicians and records that are name-dropped) is fabulous. I have no idea why, but I was choked up in a brilliant paragraph about the accordion, as the gentleman played it like a prayer for his extended family.

There are some QR codes in the back of this well-designed book which include playlists — tunes from Solomon Burke to Katrina and the Waves, from The Staple Singers to Merle Haggard, from Tom Petty to Los Lobos to Marvin Gaye to Billy Preston and two from Van Morrison alongside bunches more. The unintended band that developed so magically in The Ballad of the Lost Dogs becomes known as Lost Perros. Look up their playlist on Spotify. You’ll really want to read the book, then.

Kudos to John J. Thompson for crafting such a fascinating and large story, set in one neighborhood but which fans out in time and place, asking about the spiritual impact of art, the power of music, the joy and healing in music-making together. And — no spoilers here, really — exploring the question about whether a good thing can last; can a true thing get too big, too fast? Can success compromise even our best intentions at earnest companionship?

For a while we have a few autographed copies.

John J. Thompson’s Ballad of the Lost Dogs of East Nashville is the rock-n-roll fable we all need right now. We need to remember that our neighbors have a wealth of knowledge, and stories that bind us together. While experiencing this book, I wanted to be in that garage, listening to friends from all walks make music. I found pieces of myself in several of the characters. It became real. I went “in”, and wanted to stay. What more do you want from a novel? — Andy Zipf, graphic designer

 

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I hope you don’t mind, but to save your eyes (and so you can get to ordering and reading these fabulous stories) I’m not going to say much about these. We haven’t read them all. I wanted to keep it at just 8 more for this total of 10, so here are a handful. All are 20% off. Enjoy.

James: A Novel Percival Everett (Doubleday) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

I’ve mentioned this before and I hope you know of it — it won the Pulitzer Prize this year. It has been called “majestic” and “genius” and “a provocative, enlightening, work of literary art.” It — as Ron Charles put it in the Washington Post — both “honors and interrogates Huck Finn, along with the nation that honors it.”

James is a re-telling of the story of Huck Finn from the point of view of Jim from the famous Mark Twain tale, and it is not only thrilling and what the Times  reviewers called “soulful” but an entertaining and ambitious work. Wow.

This Is Happiness: A Novel Niall Williams (Bloomsbury) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is not new but came out recently in paperback — it was on many best-of lists and won countless accolades, not least was Beth’s claim that it was one of her favorite books of the last decade. Not a few customers (and my own pastor) have insisted that I mention it. Niall Williams is an esteemed Irish novelist (who lies in County Clare) and he is elegant and exceptional. His artful sentences are worth savoring.

This Is Happiness is set in a small town in Ireland — it opens with rain — and continues to be rural in tone. It is said to be about “the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing” but that is only the broadest theme; it is about place, for sure.  One reviewer called this artful bit of storytelling “a breathtaking tale” which another said is “comic and poignant in equal measure.” The New York Times captures it well saying it is “a big-hearted story, an intimate study of a small place on the brink of change.”

The Collector of Burned Books: A Novel Roseanna M. White (Tyndale) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Evangelical Christian fiction is known for doing inspiring historical fiction and this new one is set in Paris 1940; as you might guess the book’s broadest theme is about the Nazi Party burning books in Germany. As you may know, German writers who were exiled for their opinions (or because they were Jewish) made their way to Paris. I do not know if this is even true, but these exiled writers opened a library meant to celebrate the freedom of ideas and gathered every book on the banned list.

One of the main characters in this well-written story is Corinne Bastien, who has been reading those books and making that library a second home. And, it is about Christian Bauer, a German literature professor sent by Goebbels to France “to handle the ‘relocation’ of France’s libraries. Readers will be surprised to find what this professor conscripted into service does to try to protest whoever and whatever he can.

One reviewer said that Roseanne White is a “brilliant storyteller.” This includes discussion questions, making it good for book clubs.

An American Immigrant: A Novel Johanna Rojas Vann (Waterbrook) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

This is not brand new, but it seems like this is a fine moment to highlight this solid bit of evangelical storytelling. Rojas Vann is a Christ-Award winning fiction writer (and a second generation woman from Columbia.) We are glad to see the Christian fiction industry promoting books by women of color, set in the context of Latina culture. This book is about heritage, identity, and sacrifice, an epic story of generations. The main character, Melanie Carvajal, is a Miami journalist. We are told the author was inspired by real-life events… One reviewer says “this story will have people talking.”

Here are a few of the many lovely endorsements:

A beautiful homage to a mother’s bravery and the grace and grit that is our inheritance. An American Immigrant is a clarion call to water our roots and refuse to allow those we love to be lost in translation.  — Alicia Menendez, MSNBC anchor and creator of Latina to Latina podcast

In a yearning and humbling journey to the place of her mother’s birth, a fictional Miami journalist discovers her innermost worth by yielding to family truth, creative courage, and cultural clarity — which she needs to give both her heart and the hard world her authentic best. An enchanting, brave, and uplifting story of discovery, family love, and determined hope. — Patricia Raybon, Christy Award–winning author of the Annalee Spain Mystery series and My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness

Johanna Rojas Vann takes readers on a journey that brings about knowledge, empathy, relatability, connection, and empowerment. The food and culture made me want to dig up recipes and follow in Melanie’s shoes in An American Immigrant and celebrate the blessings God brings us. Readers don’t want to miss this uplifting story! —Toni Shiloh, Christy Award–winning author

Flight of the Wild Swan Melissa Pritchard (Bellevue Literary Press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Speaking of historical fiction, this came out a year ago in hardcover and we sold a few. It is now out in paperback. It is simply remarkable, and has gotten extraordinary acclaim, and is “a fascinating immersion in the 19th century world of drawing rooms and battlefields, crinolines and leeches.” Yes, it is a fictional account of Florence Nightingale. It has been called magnificent and moving and “a tour de force.”

With blurbs by the likes of esteemed and beloved poet (and memoirist) Joy Harjo — she refers not only to the author’s “exquiste ear for tone and detail in story” but “her gift of mystic perception” — Flight of the Wild Swan has been nominated for major awards and gleaned notable recommendations. It is one of these very well-done, captivating novels called “lush and lyrical” and yet offering a serious study of Victorian era expectations and Nightingale’s Christian faith as she pioneered notions of skilled and compassionate nursing care.

Flight of the Wild Swan offers a fascinating immersion in the 19th-century world of drawing rooms and battlefields, crinolines and leeches. Just as vividly, Pritchard’s tour de force evokes nursing and medicine today, when Florence Nightingale’s pioneering contributions are still felt and in which women still struggle for equality. An enchanting, inspiring, and utterly relevant novel.” —Suzanne Koven, MD, author of Letter to a Young Female Physician

Forty Acres Deep Michael Perry (Sneezy Cow Publishing) $12.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36

I have promoted this before so I will be brief. Michael Perry is an essayist, memoirist, funny fiction writer (see the hilarious Jesus Cow) and an all around smart, rural, farmer guy. He writes beautifully about so much — often the day to day experiences of his Minnesota rural community.

This is a short novella, moving, wonderfully rendered, magical in many ways. I read a part in a workshop I did once for folks in rural communities and thought it might bring insight to the complications of modern-day small farmers. This is vivid and what the Wall Street Journal (of all places) called “beautiful and immediate and elegant.”  It’s a very compelling read.

The plot begins when a northern farmer named Harold awakes with his wife having died in her sleep. There is a terrible snowstorm and roofs are composing. The wintery beauty is stark and his next days are haunting — mundane stuff about the snow and the property and the truck, and some almost funny scenes like his visit to a newfangled coffee shop in town. Perry says it is “seamed with grim humor and earthy revelations” and you will have to read it for yourself to wonder if this story is fundamentally unforgiving or if there are images and impulses to hope.

In any case, there are farmers who are taking their own lives these days — that is how bad it is, and as we know, with the Trump budget just passed, many small farmers and those in rural landscapes are going to have some support and services stripped. Maybe this glimpse into the hard life of Harold may be helpful. It’s a gripping read… small sized and not much over 100 pages.

The Life of Herod the Great Zora Neale Hurston (Amistead) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

When I heard, maybe nearer the end of last year, that there was a newly found (unfinished) manuscript by the great black writer Zora Neale Hurston (author of the must-read American classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God) and it was about Herod the Great, no less, I could hardly believe it. Some have said this was to be part of, or maybe a sequel to, her 1950s classic Moses, Man of the Mountain.

How did just a never-released manuscript come to be issued in what is surely one of the most remarkable literary events of the decade? That, I suppose, is another story.

I have not read this yet, and have intentionally avoided reviews. It does have a strange twist: Herod, surely one of the most notorious characters in the Bible, is, in Hurston’s bold retelling, “not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the ‘slaughter of the innocents,’ but a forerunner of Christ —a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.” Of course he was friends with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, so this is going to be a dramatic and exciting read. But, really?

What is going on here? I have no idea.

One contemporary black writer, Tayari Jones, says it is a “treasure for the whole world”,  writing “The Life of Herod the Great—like Hurston herself—is a masterpiece, a miracle, and a marvel.”

The book concludes with several letters by Zora Neale Hurston herself, with comment by expert in the life and work of Hurston Deborah Plant, who founded and chaired the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida.

Dream Count: A Novel Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

I suppose you know of the very esteemed work of Ngozi Adichie whose book Americanah was considered as one of the top 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century in one big New York Times list.  That was considered dazzling, funny, defiant, wise, brilliant, masterful, cerebral, gorgeous, rare, “witheringly trenchant and hugely empathic.” So this, the long awaited next novel by this remarkable young writer, is now, after a dozen years, is finally here.

The reviews have been celebratory and animated. The Wall Street Journal said it was “tender and wistful” and –Shahidha Bari, in the Financial Times, says it is “moral and furious.”   The plot involves a Nigerian travel writer living in the US and several of her friends (including a fancy lawyer who faces a betrayal and a financier back in Nigeria.) The book is said to be about the choices we make as well as those made for us. I believe you will discover some heartfelt stuff about mothers and daughters.

I adored her small nonfiction book We Should All Be Feminists and the small follow-up that Adichie wrote, Dear Ijeawele, also about the roles and freedom for women. Her latest nonfiction is a reflective essay about grief about losing her Nigerian father.

Dream Count feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author’s first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction . . . . Dream Count succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie’s voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we’re separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction. — Helen Wieffering, Associated Press

BookNotes

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20% OFF

This was going to be a simple invitation to PRE-ORDER a few forthcoming titles that we thought you’d want to know about. One that has an August release date just showed up so while it’s listed on this pre-order BookNotes, it’s now available. How ‘bout that?

(And of course, he says, sotto voce, you can pre-order anything, anytime. Just let us know how we can get what you need. Right?)

In the chance that you are ordering more than one not-yet-released title, it would be helpful, gentle readers and good customers, to tell us if you want us to send each as they release or hold one up until the others arrive; consolidating them into one shipment is a bit more stewardly (resource wise) and cheaper for you. But we can send them out each the day they arrive if you’d like. With these four, I’m sure we’ll have them all a bit early. Hooray.

I hope you have a few lazy hours this summer, some time to get caught up on some long-awaited reading — don’t we all have one or two big stacks we’ve been wanting to get to? We are sure that some on this list are worth bumping up to near the top of that pile. Believe me when I say we’re looking out for you, helping you narrow down the reading options that call to us. You may want to listen to these — some are calling your name, I bet.

You know and I know I sometimes can be a bit enthusiastic in promoting certain books. You may smile and say — oh yeah, another book that Byron says is the best he’s read this year or his favorite read of the season. I know. As the Bear says, I’m working on it. But we’ve got a zillion books here that are fine, useful, swell. I wish I could tell you about some and there are many that are merely ho-hum and don’t need extra promo. For you, dear readers of BookNotes, I want to curate the best of the best, books that really are our favs. I’m not going to waste your time singing out that this book is really mediocre that that one is okay. Why bother? So, yes, these all get my many superlatives and I’m proud of it. I do it for you. I don’t say this sort of glad stuff about all of the books we’ve got, but these? These deserve your attention. You can thank me later.

ALL ARE 20% OFF. Happy summer reading.

(We hope you recall that we do an every-other-week podcast called “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” which you can watch on YouTube or listen to by visiting Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The episode that dropped on July 3rd described three books reflecting on this season of flags and fireworks. I explained about Remaking the World by Andrew Walker, a handsome hardback about the huge trends kicked off in the 18th century in that momentous year of 1776. Then I explained the value of history prof John Fea’s important book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?  I ended the half-hour conversation with a shout-out to How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor by the wise and gracious Richard Mouw. Thanks to good pal Sam Levy and the CCO for hosting our bookish conversation.These are 20% off as well.)

Some of the Words Are Theirs: The Art of Writing and Living a Sermon Austin Carty (Eerdmans) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39 available now

Hooray — this is now here, a month early! And there are woodcuts. What a nicely created paperback this is. The title alludes to A River Runs Through It.

I gave a quick shout out about this then-forthcoming title a month ago, reminding readers that Carty’s lovely, inspiring, funny, touching, informative and very helpful The Pastor’s Bookshelf was one of my favorite reads in years, expressing in clear and enjoyable prose why books matter for ministry leaders; whether one is a preacher or pastor, I concluded, didn’t really matter — that book would inspire anyone to realize how reading novels, poetry, science, memoir, history, comedies, and all manner of fiction and nonfiction can help us navigate our Christian duties to live well in the church and world.

I think you will love this one even more. It may seem an even bigger stretch suggesting this one to a wide BookNote audience (who are, admittedly, mostly not preachers) but I want to say that this book about homiletics — the science and art of writing and preaching sermons — is for all of us. How can I convince you of this other than to tell you how very much I enjoyed reading it.

First, Carty offers such a heart-touching (and at times heart-breaking) glimpse into his own rough and rowdy life that Some of the Words… is a winner for anyone that enjoys memoirs. Man, he can tell a story and oh how he so wisely, so caringly, so tenderly relates his life stories to his instructional stuff about how to write sermons. In a section about revising one’s first draft of a sermon he then enters — in the typeface of an old typewriter — some extra stuff he might have said in the previous section about his life story. Some lines are crossed out, which was clever — you saw, actually, some stuff he apparantly wanted you to know, but, since it had that line struck through it, you realized he didn’t want to include it (in the previous narrative.) My mouth dropped open with this postmodern trick of showing the re-write after the fact.  That’s a hard call that every writer and most preachers know well: what words are most important, which are supportive, and which need to go. Yup.

Karen Swallow Prior (who has written a lovely pair of books on reading herself) says Some of the Words Are Theirs is “stunning” and that “it will inspired you to not only write better but to live more deeply, too. It took my breath away.” Exactly.

This is a book on writing sermons unlike any I’ve ever read. (Please forgive my nerdiness, but I’ve read a lot.) It is not only insightful and helpful, but deeply, deeply moving, without being sensational or sentimental. Like his sermons, he builds stories, often starting with a ironic tip (he calls this hook the Coldplay piece — a nod to the “I hate Coldplay” line from pop culture essayist Chuck Klosterman) and yet is restrained, gentle, honorable. The way his own story that unfolds in each chapter informs what he says or circles back or hints towards the teacherly comments about wise sermon prep is just ingenious. Anyone who likes the intricacies of well-crafted chapters will take delight in reading this (even if you never plan to preach or be a public speaker or develop a lesson. It’s that good…) I predict you will wish it was not finished when you turn the last page. You might just start over and read it all again, for fun and profit.

From allowing the Holy Spirit to guide one towards a sense of gravitational pull towards a certain text or phrase within a lectionary selection to finding what day of the week to write the sermon (he nearly burned out from thinking he could squeeze it in here and there, in bits and pieces, the way I do BookNotes.) He tells of his habits of creating some sort of sacred space for the hard work of writing the first draft, the arrangement of his desk, his favorite mug (and pulling the shades, at the advice of Annie Dillard, who knows something about distractions.)

As a seat-of-the pants writer I was seriously struck by how much of the book was about revision. (Not to mention punctuation and the use of italics. What a blast; seriously!) I think of the drafts after drafts that my novelist friends have done and the significant revisions most nonfiction writers have to do; his lyrical explanation of this work becomes nearly sacramental with this stories and attentiveness to text and cadence.

His simple reminders about knowing well the place and people to whom one is preaching or speaking were so interesting to me; again his care was really moving for me — I don’t even know why. He shows how a first draft of one sermons mentioned “my daughter, Amy” but then realized that everybody in the place knows well that his daughter’s name is Amy and deleted the “my daughter” line as a way to honor that intimacy. Man, this book is loaded with these little tips and were sometimes, mundane as they were, literally moved me to tears.

Yep, you heard that right; I’m not ashamed: this is the only homiletics text that made me bawl. And it made me get up from my outside chair and find my wife and read pages right out loud.  We had talked to each other much of the day about favorite current reads — she was blown away by the latest novel by Niall Williams, This is Happiness and I can’t stop thinking about a memoir about consumerism and hoarding, American Bulk: Essays on Excess by the spunky, surprising, and troubled Emily Mister.) I just had to enter Austin Carty’s gem to the mix and Beth listened and nodded. How romantic, reading a homiletics book out loud to my beloved. I owe ya, Austin!

Seriously, his kind and smart words mean very much to me and I am grateful for his candor, about his ministry, his care for his people, and about his own life — yes, he talks about being a child model, his beloved (religious) father’s alcoholism, and his stint on Survivor. (It was Season 12 if you want to know, the one called Panama: Exile Island. He says he is now quite happy to be a mostly unknown, small town pastor — “unglamorous” he calls it — even.) Anyway, Some of the Words is not what I thought it would be and I can’t stop thinking about how he narrates his story in plain and elegant ways, the sorrow and the grace, realizing it is God who is the final author.

One could hardly find a more honest presentation of the extent to which our sermons emerge from the tragic, grace-filled fabric of the preacher’s own life. — Thomas Long, Candler School of Theology, Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God

You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good & Beautiful Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos Press) $21.99 // PRE-ORDER OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

RELEASE DATE August 8, 2025 we expect it in a week or so

Oh my, this compact sized hardback — think of that lovely first edition of that little Parker Palmer book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation —is a delight to behold, a treasure to hold, a fabulous, fabulous read. I say this from time to time, I’ll admit, on some topics: do we really need another book reflecting on this topic of vocation and call, on discerning God’s ways our lives should go, on work and passion and such? And, yes, yes, yes: this is much needed. And even for those of us in the “faith and work” conversation, who work in campus ministry or with y young adults helping them discern their sense of calling and such, those who know the standard titles, again, yes, this is a must. You will love it if you like this sort of topic and you need it if you don’t. I like how novelist and songwriter Andrew Peterson says she writes with “wisdom and clarity.” Indeed.

“With her usual wisdom and clarity, Prior dives deep into something that we all wrestle with: our place in the world and the work we’ve been given to do. I heartily commend this book.” — Andrew Peterson, singer, songwriter, and author of The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and The Kingdom and Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making

I could frame my recommendation of this book by talking about this broader conversation, as I have sometimes, in the story of the movement of people increasingly naming the disconnect for many between Sunday faith and Monday work, between liturgy and life, worship and work. I could tell our how we arrangement our store to highlight books for Christian workers in nursing and the arts, in education and the sciences; we have large sections on faith-based politics and engineering, psychology and business. All of this – our store and the broader faith and work movement with it’s many centers and institutes all over — presumes some working knowledge of God’s call to serve Christ’s Kingdom in all of life, including the high calling into vocations in careers and marketplaces. As Jim Mullins and Michael Goheen put it, we are all called to play are role in God’s “symphony of mission.”

But what is the difference between the theological / spiritual terms vocation and call? What is the difference between vocation and work? Are we always paid to do what we’re most passionate about? And what should lead us, passion or skill? The need for money or the need for meaning?

Yep, once one reads The Call by Os Guinness or books by Gordon Smith or Steve Garber or high-water marks like Every Good Endeavor by Katherine Alsdorf Leary and Tim Keller or the lovely work by Dan Doriani or, say, the great Tom Nelson, for many of us, our appetites are whetted and we want to dig deeper, read more, reflect in fresh ways. Karen Prior will help you, inspire you, offer a tremendous new angle.

And, frankly, if you’ve read some of this stuff — maybe even you use the one-of-kind resource Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy or have lead people thought the small group Bible study, Go Forth: God’s Purpose for Your Work by Lauren Gill & Missy Wallace  — you may wonder, again, how to say it well, how to slice the differences between vocation and calling, between work and career. These are vital questions and all of us need some guidance.

Karen Swallow Prior doesn’t worry too much about getting the terms just precisely so, but yet she has chapters on each. They are so good. She draws on great, classic stuff — from Dorothy Sayers to Ben Witherington, Os Guiness to Madeline L’Engle — but much of the book is laden with stories, student’s she’s guided, friends she knows, her own journey through much of this. (And, as you might guess, she offers some excellent poems that wonderfully clarify and set us to thinking. Kudos, there, Karen!) I couldn’t put it down and could hardly stop smiling. We all need this kind of clear and inspiring writing and — again — it is ideal for those who are new to all of this and very important for those of us who have started using some of this lingo, framed by this big vision of serving God in all sides of life, each square inch, all our various callings and opportunities.

Let’s face it, we are children and siblings, neighbors and consumers, citizens and friends, church members and most have professional associations or jobs. None of just one call, and that one overacting call — “follow me” from Jesus Himself — is necessary lived out in various times and places and contexts. We have vocations that are other than our jobs.

I adore Karen as a writer and have admired her own story. She reveals more of herself in this little book than in her major work on reading for virtue or the one about the evangelical imagination, a fabulous read about the evangelical history that lead to culture wars and a host of troubling stuff. You Have a Calling is not only her most personal book, it is also, I think her most beautiful. It is a sheer joy.

One of the things You Have a Calling brings to the table conversations about these topics is her unique contributions about the “transcendentals” — namely, the classic virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty. With succinct but lovely chapters on each, consider this your primer (or refresh course) on the need for character formation, for Christ-likeness described in this particular way. (I am aware, as is she, that not all Christians use the lingo of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and some might even resist the pagan, Greek paternity of those ways of putting things.) Still, I adored this second half of the book and will re-read it soon, I am sure. It is so nicely done, so clarifying, and so challenging, really — living our our callings in ways that our vocations bear witness to these Kingdom attributes or values, creating an ethos of such wholeness and goodness in the world. You Have a Calling is a handsome little book that is wise beyond measure, helpful more than you may know, and a great, enjoyable read.

We love that Karen is a research fellow at our beloved Comment magazine. And we’re so grateful she contributes as a Fellow at the Trinity Forum. That she and I got to be on a panel together at Jubilee Professional last winter make my heart sing, not to mention being in front of a crowd (with Anne Bogel) at a special session at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. What an honor! But this book — this is what makes me really smile. You too, I bet! Order it now and we’ll send it as soon as it arrives.

Karen Swallow Prior has gifted us a masterful exploration of what it truly means to be called. In You Have a Calling, she expertly weaves together theology, literature, and cultural wisdom, illuminating how our life’s purpose is found not merely in what we do but profoundly in who we are becoming. Prior invites readers to embrace callings that transcend occupation, anchoring life’s meaning firmly in the pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Richly nuanced, deeply reflective, and eloquently written, this book challenges contemporary misconceptions of vocation and reminds us that the highest calling is to live authentically before God, wherever we find ourselves. A profoundly refreshing read that every Christian– and especially young adults navigating life’s big questions — ought to pick up and savor. — Anthony B. Bradley, distinguished research fellow, The Acton Institute; research professor, Kuyper College, author of Black Scholars in White Space: New Vistas in African American Studies from the Christian Academy

Making It Plain: Why We Need Anabaptism and the Black Church Drew G.I. Hart (Herald Press) $21.99 // PREORDER OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59  RELEASE DATE September 2, 2025

I wish I had been able to acquire an early version of this — I’ve got all the others on this list — but for whatever reason, I’ve not yet seen this. But I want to announce it here to invite you to pre-order it for a handful of reasons. I’m really excited about this one and I think all of our thoughtful BookNotes readers will want to know about it. If you have followed us here, you know that I will say that, regardless of your own theological tradition or convictions, there are some things going on in this book that will be edifying for all of us. It’s a little on the rare side and will be (how do I say this nicely) a bit of an outlier on the big bestseller lists. Anabaptists and the Black church?

I know many of us feel somewhat estranged from the word evangelical these days, the word handled by so many grimy hands these days, co-opted by those who care little about Jesus or a Biblical worldview. Be that as it may, it is clear that even for those of us who still appreciate the phrase, the broader Christian stream (to borrow Richard Foster’s image from the wonderful Streams of Living Water) has included important, diverse tributaries from medieval mystics and contemplatives to high church liturgical folks, from Kuyperian neo-Calvinists to old-school holiness folks, to Azusa Street Pentecostals and 20th century charismatics. This big Body of Christ needs the best of many tributaries. Two that are often missed in these ecumenical lists are — yep, you know — the Black church tradition (itself pretty diverse) and the historic movement of Anabaptists (known to most as the Mennonite and Brethren traditions, although we might mention Hutterites and Quakers and others in the radical reformation tradition.)

And so here we have a major scholar — his PhD from a Lutheran Seminary — professor at an evangelical university, and church-based social activist who is both Black and Brethren. Rev. Dr. Drew Hart, an old friend, is a man I’ve admire since I first met him and whose two previous books we’ve raved about often. We take his two important paperbacks The Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism and Who Will Be A Witness? Igniting Activism for God’s Justice, Love, and Deliverance  almost every where we go, not only because know and trust the author, but because, as we’ve often said, he gets so much about what needs to be said these days. He’s Biblically solid and fiesty and helpful. I am sure here in this forthcoming one he will position the Anabaptist and Black church traditions as counter to the mainstream Constantinian view of civil religion.

(For what it’s worth, we’re looking forward to another September release which can tell you about later — it’s a collection of essays from various Fellows from the Timothy Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and is to be called The Gospel After Christendom edited by Collin Hansen and others, published by Zondervan. It will be a fine supplement to Hart’s important, radical, Anabaptist manifesto.

So many astute thinkers (and most of us, if we pause to think about it) realize Christendom has been a big mix-up and whether you’ve read Hauerwas or not, or resonate with the Keller Center (above), you know that the church dare not be co-opted by the culture, as it in so many ways has been. We have much to learn about this resistance from young black activists, and Drew Hart is one of our best.That he has this Anabaptist posture is just fabulous, maybe the eccentric, plain, but countercultural mix we need the most these days.

This book is slated for a late summer release but we hope it will arrive early. We can’t wait. We hope many will pre-order it and give it a read alongside your own tradition and church style.

The title really is something, isn’t it? Many know the Anabaptist as those committed to a non-materialistic simple lifestyle (and, when talking about the Old Order Mennonites or the Amish, are actually called The Plain People, although their gorgeous quilts are anything but plain.) Hart’s allusion there is fascinating, as if our simple convictions about love and service might be a clue to how to counter the razzle-dazzle prosperity teaching and MAGA idolatry of the nation-state. What does it mean to be plainly committed to Jesus, loyal to His simple (if not easy) ways?

And yet, Hart is mostly know as an anti-racist and shalom activist, a speaker and trainer of those involved in multi-ethnic and multi-denominational solidarity with the poor and oppressed. His anti-colonial Kingdom values and strategies for allowing beloved community to break into real history draw from the dramatic civil rights struggle (just think of King and the Birmingham Bus Boycott, say) and more recent Black scholars from James Cone to Katie Cannon to Kelly Brown Douglas. He’s a lovely guy and a great communicator. I’m eager for this book.

I love that Otis Moss — a vibrant UCC pastor in Chicago, and author of Blue Note Preaching and the wonderful 2023 release, Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times wrote the foreword to this forthcoming volume.  Let’s go.

The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (Orbis Press) $26.00 // PREORDER OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80 RELEASE DATE September 24, 2025

This is another book written by a long friend and a man I admire very, very much. As I’ve explained before, I began to follow Wes in the mid-1970s when he was on staff with the respected Republican Senator Mark Hatfield. Hatfield meant the world to me — a thoughtful elected official who desired to allow the ways of Jesus to shape his understanding of life, his policy views, as well his character and temperament as he served in the halls of Congress. As a proud and storied Senator for the GOP he was an early opponent of the Viet Nam war. He voted to serve the poor and had a profound understanding of how we were, in the words he used then, stewards of creation and how we needed a wise and restrained energy policy. For Hatfield the economy was not god and the god of Mars ought not lead our foreign policy. There hasn’t been anybody like him since (although maybe the ordained Presbyterian elder, Chris Coons, comes close. He talks about his faith as easily as he talks about public justice.)

Did Hatfield teach young Wes Michaelson, son of conservative evangelicals, about the integration of faith and justice work, about faithful public policy? Maybe. Wes would say so, I’m sure. On the other hand, it may be that the passionate young evangelical may have rubbed off on the elder Senator. In any case, Wes ended up meeting Jim Wallis and the edgy rag, The Post America, moved to DC and became the important prophetic voice, Sojourners. Wes and his wife were editors there and leaders in thei- emerging community houses in a rough part of urban DC. Their earliest books were about creation care and social holiness; they were very good.

Wes’s story is one that follows a long and winding road and he has written several very good books about it all; his insights about the multi-ethnic, global church, vision casting and problem-solving in the local congregation, one about the trends facing the Western church and how to step up faithfully to the issues of the day. After retiring from his work with the World Council of Churches and as the General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America and letting go of some of his leadership in global trans-denominational alliances (does anybody have more friends in more denominations and church groups around the globe than Wes?) he wrote one of beautiful books of recent spirituality — Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage (released by Broadleaf.) It’s a great read and is arranged around the story of pilgrimage (the Camino, for instance) and the ways in which a faith less tethered to certitude and stable truths might be nurtured by visions of pilgrimage, of setting out like the ancient monks of Ireland. Growth, change, deepening faith, risk-taking, gently evolving theology, knowing in the heart (not only the mind)  and being known (by God and others) — all of these themes are beautifully explored in this 2020 release, Without Oars.  Diana Butler Bass wrote a beautiful forward to that one and it captured very much for many of us in these perplexing days.

And now, we are proud to announce the forthcoming one, his masterpiece, The Soulwork of Justice. Can you see how his full life led to this very moment, the release of a book that is both about spirituality and public justice? It is, as his pal Richard Rohr might say, about the journey inward and the journey outward. It is suitable that it is being published by the legendary Catholic publisher known for publishing the classics of early liberation theology. Wes remains Reformed (and he and his wife are serving a small Lutheran church at the moment) but there is something right about being on the storied publisher who brought us Gustavo Gutierrez and Oscar Romero and James Cone and Alan Boesak.

From his friendships with some of the best faith-based social activist and leaders public renewal, and his keen observations and discernment, Wes had drawn four key “movements” that shape a life of sustainable faith and flourishing for the common good. The book is build around these four features.

I am sure I’ll write more about it as the release date draws nearer — I’m working on my advanced manuscript this week! — but for now, here is what the publisher tells us about this anticipated Fall release:

Former politico, long-time activist, and faith leader Wes Granberg-Michaelson looks at a life in activism. advocacy, and ministry to reveal four key discernible movements of a lifelong soul journey to God’s justice. He’s also witnessed these elements consistently in the lives of others devoted to both soul-care and justice. Now he offers these four key movements for anyone at any age wanting to step into the entwined lineage of justice and soul work. While all experience it, few justice leaders talk about in the often exhausting effort of their work, and how critical soulwork — spiritual formation — is for sustaining a life of outward social witness.

Culled from the wisdom of decades of leadership experience in global ecumenical initiatives, religious organizations, and social justice movements, this book combines tenacity of vision with the groundedness of soul that has sustained Granberg-Michaelson even as it offers support to others engaged in the work for a lifetime and beyond.

With shades of Thomas Merton, I’d say, Wes writes:

“Your inner life will require an ongoing exploration as rigorous as your excavation of the external, global structures of oppression and social sin. If your inward and outward journey becomes interwoven, your life and witness will have opportunity to flourish. If they are alienated from one another, and your inward journey is neglected, your outward journey, regardless of the intensity of your commitment, eventually will start to disintegrate, with self-inflicted wounds likely to injure others and undermine the causes to which you committed your life.”

 

World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading Jeff Crosby (Paraclete Press) $18.99 // PREORDER OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19 RELEASE DATE  October 21, 2025

You are going to love this. This — I hope you trust me on this — is a book you need. It will inspire and bless you and you will smile each time you open a page. You will sigh as I did, I’m sure, as you finish the book. This is a book you are going to want to share with other book worms and a book to give to those who maybe don’t read as much as they might. Of all the many great books on the reading life, this one is the best I’ve ever read.

Let me say that again, please: Of all the many great books on the reading life, this one is the best I’ve ever read.

World of Wonders is, simply put, a wonder.

Jeff has worked in nearly every capacity in the book and publisher world. He came to Christian faith, in fact, through a friendship with some indie Christian bookstore owners and he learned to read widely as a youth and yong adult.  He has run stores, run distributors, been the head of one of my favorite publishers, been an informal editor and agent, and now is the director of the ECPA (the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) where he is working to help faith-based publishers mature and promote good books to a needy world, a world longing for beauty and goodness and truth. I could say much about how Jeff has inspired us here (and been specifically helpful in many ways.)

His first book was with Broadleaf, the wonderful, wonderful Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts. I’ve mentioned it often and want to press it into the hands of anyone who likes lovely stories and challenging insights and pages full of inspiration about learning the quiet language of the God.

I read this forthcoming volume in manuscript form months ago and we are soon to see the release (finally!) of this book that I’ve been itching to tell you about. This “spirituality of reading” means so much to me that I will do another review once it does out, describing more of it good chapters and its many wonders  Let me just tease you now, inviting you to pre-order now. It will release early, I’m sure, and you are going to want to get this as soon as you are able.

Karen Marsh is so right that this book actually invites us into the deeper (and enjoyable) reading life. She puts it exactly right — and I bet she speaks for some reading this now:

Jeff Crosby invites me to step away from my fragmented life of screens, information, images and opinion, and he returns me to earlier days when I dwelled in books, when I lost track of time, when the now-rare experience of “presence” was as natural as reading.  Where researchers fail to spark a change in my habits (despite their evidence of my changing brain and shrinking capacity for attention), World of Wonders speaks to my soul through literary quotes, intriguing books lists, practical strategies, and stories of people who call me back to what I once knew – that to read deeply is to inhabit the world more fully and to encounter the God who is there. — Karen Wright Marsh, author of Wake Up To Wonder and Vintage Saints and Sinners, and executive director of Theological Horizons.

One of the lovely things about Jeff is how he so graciously and generously supports others and reaches out in friendship to authors, musicians, artists, and others he appreciates. He loves the good writing of Chris de Vinck — am essayist, storyteller, memoirist, columnist known in the mainstream world of secular letters, even as he is a devout Catholic Christian. de Vinck was good friends with Henri Nouwen and he is friends with Jeff.

The wondrous de Vinck writes a blurb about World of Wonders and it is combines sane practical — educators need this! — but is ablaze with an lovely phrase that is as good as it gets. De Vinck says the book si about “the mesmerizing holiness of reading.”

Having been an English teacher and language arts administrator on both high school and college levels during my 40-year career in education, it is easy for me to say that our national education community would greatly benefit from Jeff Crosby’s refined celebration about the mesmerizing holiness of reading. I highly recommend World of Wonders! — Christopher de Vinck, columnist for The Dallas Morning News, author of Things That Matter Most

One of the great booksellers (and readers!) in America is Warren Farhar of Eighth Day Books in Wichita, Kansas. It is perfect that Warren weighs in with these splendid words about this splendid book.

Jeff Crosby appropriately begins his exploration of reading with a quotation from C. S. Lewis’s brilliant Experiment in Criticism, which, with the perceptive precision typical of Lewis, perfectly describes why we read: “We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own.” World of Wonders is intended to help us do just that. Despite his immersion in every aspect of book reading and publishing, Jeff is an unintimidating, disarmingly gentle and humble guide for readers of every level of proficiency and every type of reading intention, whether it’s for sheer entertainment or deepest spiritual discipline. And don’t miss the dozen reading lists, reflecting decades of experience of a veteran reader and publisher. Pure gold. — Warren Farha, founder and owner, Eighth Day Books, Wichita, Kansas

Warren is right about this — World of Wonders  (yes, Jeff knows the Bruce Cockburn song and album by that names!)  — is not intimidating or too heady. I love Deep Reading and Alan Jacobs and Karen Swallow Prior’s guidance about reading for virtue and the visionary Reading for the Common Good by Christopher Smith, but all of these favs have, more than others, a certain tone or demeanor that might be off-putting to young readers or those who struggle with the printed page.  Jeff understands ordinary people and is humble, gracious, fun. His book lists are his own and you’ll enjoy them. I’ll say more later, but, for now, here’s what I’m told might appear on the back cover:

Most book lovers love that genre of writing — books about books. They are beloved and often influential. World of Wonders is one that is unlike any other in this field, a truly lovely, easy-to-read, utterly delightful, deeply spiritual book that indeed makes you want to read more. It helps you realize God’s presence as you turn the pages, and guides you to encounter the world of wonder that is discovered in an open-hearted reading life. No stuffy tome for only the erudite experts, this is a book for you, me, your neighbors, friends, and even those who may not (yet) love to read. This book is a gift. Read and share.  — Byron Borger, Hearts & Minds, Dallastown, Pennsylvania

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And thanks to those who supported our evening with Jeff Chu last week. What a delight he is —I wished we had been able to record it. You view on the web some of the other interviews he’s done about Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand in this tireless book tour he has undertaken. We have a few autographed copies left, too, if anyone is interested, read our previous review and send us an order. They are 20% off. It’s a great summer read.

10 NEW BOOKS — ALL 20% OFF (scroll to the bottom to order.)

Here are ten new books that look really good. I’ve finished a few already — Bear Witness was stunning! — and started a few others in earnest. You know what they say: it’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it. I am very confident that these are each well worth your time and hard-earned greenbacks.

Click on the order link below. All books mentioned are 20% OFF.

Dim Sum and Faith: How Our Stories Form Our Souls Jenn Suen Chen (IVP formatio) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This book came in a few hours before our big event with Jeff Chu and as I pondered how to introduce him — an Asian American storyteller, a memoirist who vulnerably invites us into his life, reading over his shoulder, who writes about cooking and food — I started this, Oh my, oh my, it’s so good. Dim sum (which I had been researching as we were thinking about Chinese food for our reception) is splendid, we’re told, in Hong Kong, especially, and Jenn Suen Chen’s parents are, like Chu’s, from there. A lovely and esteemed culinary tradition in China, dim sum literally means “to touch the heart.” And that is what stories do.

On the back cover of Dim Sum and Faith: How Our Stories Form Our Souls… this brand new exploration of the value of reflecting upon and knowing how to tell our stories, Chen’s publishing team writes:

You are invited to the dim sum table — a lively gathering for family to share stories and enjoy sweet and savory dishes together. Our stories — our memories of love and grief, our ancestors’s experiences that affect our personal history, all our hurts and joys — require attention and reflection. Together we can discover how these stories have shaped us.

Great, eh? Sim Sum and Faith, while rooted in Chen’s Asian-American experience with lots of her own well-told stories, is an invitation to explore our own “culturally embedded stories with God.”

As a spiritual director she knows how to offer wise spiritual practices and thought-provoking, lovely meditations (on Psalms 139, actually — hooray!) Can we look at our stories and integrate them more fully into our lives? Might we look on our memories as God actually does — with love and hope? Can we be becoming?

DJ Chuang (author of MultiAsian.Church and cohost of the Erasing Shame podcast) notes that this book reminds us that it is helpful to see how God cares about our family history, cultural background, and big emotions — “and loves us through it all.” He says to Jenn Chen, “Thanks for showing us how God takes every aspect of our lives to handcraft us into the likeness of Jesus Christ”

Jenn Chen is co-director of Summit Clear, a mentoring organization for those in cross-cultural work. We’re excited to have this and hope you’d give it your consideration.

Experiencing Scriptures as a Disciple of Jesus: Reading the Bible like Dallas Willard Dave Ripper (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

I know that not all of our customers and BookNotes readers know who the late Dallas Willard was but please know he was truly one of the influential and esteemed evangelical writers of the last 50 years. He got Richard Foster to write the very important Celebration of Discipline and was an older, wiser (although not fully approving) voice of a decade of conferencing and writing in what became known as the emergent church conversation and clearly and movingly wrote about how the Christian faith is to be embodied where our interior lives — our walk with Christ as we are transformed into the likeness of Christ — spills out to shape our very lifestyle. We are apprentices, walking the way of Jesus. You see his influences in the writings of John Ortberg and John Mark Comer and Ruth Haley Barton; he was friends with Eugene Peterson. Willard wrote substantive books about apologetics and whole-life discipleship (and in his day job he was a philosophy professor and published in that field as well, about the authority of moral insight and epistemology.) Anyway, from prayerful books of spirituality (Spirit of the Disciplines or Hearing God, for instance) to reflections on how spiritual transformation actually works (see the excellent Renovation of the Heart) to his important, hefty works on the Kingdom of God (Divine Conspiracy volumes one and two) he was a prolific writer and important leader, bearing witness to a sort of evangelical faith that was lovely and good.

This is a study that can be read profitably without knowing a thing about Willard, but it is sort of an exploration of how Willard handled the Bible. The author is the lead pastor of a big Christian Church in New Hampshire; he has studied at a variety of good places including the Dallas Willard Research Center at Westmont College. It is a wonderfully written book, which offers, in the phrase of Lacy Finn Borgo, “story and scholarship.” In a nutshell it is how to read the Bible to meet God, the spirituality of reading Scripture, how to encounter the God of the Bible.

The title of this book, Experiencing Scripture as a Disciple, really says it well. It is for anyone who loves the Bible or anybody who wishes they did. It is not the final or only book about Scripture we should read but it really is refreshing, thoughtful, and will bear fruit in your life as you take up the task of reading in such a way that you can come to know the Author. And then follow that same holy Author. 

It might be too simple to say this is a book about contemplative engagement with the text since Ripper explains how this living encounter with God through the text is transformational. And as we are transformed into Christ-likeness we live out His ways in the world. Some people use to run a program called “Bible and Life.” That’s sort of it, too.

Hint: Ripper explores what he calls the “Ignatius-Willard” connection. Just think of the great NavPress book by South African Methodist Trevor Hudson, Seeking God: Finding Another Kind of Life with St. Ignatius and Dallas Willard which Ripper obviously cites.

I found fascinating a section for leaders which inspired a blurb by E. Trey Clark, the dean of the chapel at Fuller Theological Seminary, who wrote:

Includes a must-read chapter for ministry leaders interested in a way of preaching and teaching that deepens their own and others’ spiritual formation.

Somebody said that Willard read the Bible “with the reverence of a Southern Baptist, the intellect of a philosopher, and the heart of a mystic.” Nice eh?

The Core of the Christian Faith: Living the Gospel for the Sake of the World Michael W. Goheen (Brazos Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

My goodness, what can I say about this fantastic book?

You might be surprised from the title that it is not about systematic theology or core doctrines; it is not obviously arranged about the things you are supposed to believe.  Goheen, you should know, was shaped by his extraordinary work on the missional thinking of Leslie Newbigin; he wrote a chapter for the second edition of the influential little book on worldview, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview; he joined with Craig Bartholomew to write The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story and its wise follow up, Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview. On and on he has worked, writing along the way these books that show the embodied, communal, missional vision of people of faith living into and out of the narrative arc of the Biblical story. Shades of N.T Wright, perhaps — I say that as a marker for those who might connect some dots by linking Goheen to Wright — much of this came together in what is one of my favorite books about the contours of Christian discipleship, The Symphony of Mission: Playing Your Part in God’s Work in the World, co-written by the extraordinary pastor/leader of Redeemer Tempe, Jim Mullins. So taken was Mullins with this metaphor of finding  your place in the symphony to play God’s music and the Newbegin-esque / Al Wolter’s worldviewish, Biblically-astute Goheen that he got him to leave his native Canada and move to Arizona where they started the Missional Training Center in Phoenix. This book — The Core of the Christian Faith — is the core of the teaching done to equip pastors in the “Redemption” network, what one church planter calls “a rare and essential work.”

Goheen’s sweet pastoral heart, his deep cultural awareness, his radical missional insights all combine to create this brilliant book about God’s redemptive mission in the world, the whole story God making “all things new.” I still especially love and recommend the somewhat more practical The Symphony of Mission, the one Goheen and Mullins did together. But this backs it up and provides a solid and compelling framework for the vision, the wholistic vision of why the Christian faith should be construed, taught, and lived in this particular sort of way.

Goheen starts with a lament about the cultural captivity of so much of the church. Written mostly to eager evangelicals, but certainly applicable for anyone, it is true that many are nearly mimicking secularized visions of public life that come from either the far left or far right. We’ve had a “massive catechesis failure” in that we’ve allowed Fox News or other ideological platforms to shape our attitudes and behaviors. Only a deeply storied, Biblical worldview with a missional dynamic can counter this and Goheen is clear: it must begin with Jesus’ own favorite teaching: the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.

And to understand at least the beginnings of the vas implications of the Kingdom, we have to back ups and get a bigger picture of the whole unfolding drama of Scripture. We must become missional people captured by the trajectory of the Biblical story.  And that, my friends, leads to what he calls a “missional encounter with culture.”

This is the core way to think about faith — not mere systematic theology — and “the kind of instruction or process of formation, in what it means to be part of the new humanity of God’s calling” that is needed today.

We must return to the good news as a comprehensive and powerful message of God’s Kingdom centered in Jesus the Messiah. As he put it in another book (by swiping a line from Newbigin’s famous encounter with a Hindu) we must learn to see the Scriptures as “the true story of the whole world.”  And that true truth shapes our imaginations not only to understand the Kingdom of God and the coherent Biblical narrative, but helps become a missional people ready for a wise cultural encounter. Goheen ends the books with some great chapters about what that looks like as we caringly come to understand and critique the story of the modern West, the shift towards postmodernity, the ever-present spirit of economic progress and consumerism.

What a closing appeal this is, to “take every thought captive” and live out, together, the core story of our faith. What an approach! This book is very highly recommended and I hope churches and campus ministries and small groups and Bible classes and social reform movements all over use it well.

First Nations Version – Psalms and Proverbs: An Indigenous Bible Translation Terry Wildman and the First Nations Translation Council (IVP) $18.99 (paperback) OR $24.99 (hardcover) // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19 (paperback) OR $19.99 (hardcover)

Here is the eagerly awaited latest release in this Indigenous Bible translation; the New Testament came out a few years ago to much acclaim and they have just released the Psalms and Proverbs. Slated to be released later in the summer, we are delighted to have it here, now. I’ve dipped in already, taking in the fresh translation and new cadences!

It really is unique, not just a mild tweaking of a couple of words, but a large-scale culturally-astute, dynamic equivalence translation using words like Father Sky and the One Above Us All. These sacred songs and wise sayings of the Hebrew Scriptures “speak to us anew through the vivid, poetic imagery of the First Nation Version, informed by the structures of Native American storytelling.

Our friends at IVP put it this way:

Whether you’re seeking solace, strength, or spiritual insight, the First Nations Version Psalms and Proverbs will guide you with its profound expressions of praise and trust in the Creator. Step into the harmonious blend of ancient wisdom and indigenous tradition to discover a spiritual experience that speaks directly to your heart.

Bear Witness: The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land Ross Halperin (Liveright Publishing) $31.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.59

I believe in the power of books. I believe the “pen is mightier than the sword.” I believe some authors are used by God to transform our lives, change our beliefs and behaviors in ways that can have lasting endurance. I am not being sentimental or sloganeering when I say I believe books can change the world.

And so, every now and then I am overcome by the heavy joy, the privilege, the obligation, even, to play a role in helping a book make its mark on the world. I think of our little role in promoting the stunning expose (and David vs Goliath legal battle) against industrial hog farms and how they had Carolina legislatures in their pockets, described so vividly in the page-turner that even John Grisham said he wished he’d have written — Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial by Corban Addison. We played only a tiny part but we were one of the early and hopefully significant voices supporting another book that is one of these nearly once-in-a-lifetime reads, the now widely admired Just Mercy: A True Story of Justice and Redemption, by a true hero of our times, Bryan Stevenson. For what it’s worth, this new book, Bear Witness, seems to me to be just such an important title, one that will inspire many (people of faith, surely, and others.) My hands shook as I opened the pages. I literally had to stop and whisper a prayer of gratitude that we get to be some sort of conduit for such an important story.

If Bryan Stevenson became a mainstream publishing phenomenon from his evangelical roots at an institution of Christian higher education (at Eastern College where he was noticed by Tony Campolo) so the main figure in this book, Kurt Ver Beek, came from another Christian college, Calvin College in Grand Rapids; the NGO he and his wife started in Honduras eventually had Calvin students coming to do some fairly dramatic service learning and Reformed leaders like the Calvin alum, political philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, joined his board. Indeed, Kurt Ver Beek’s own Call for Justice: From Practice to Theory and Back, is a book we’ve touted here before, a fabulous back-and-forth set of letters between the on-the-ground reformer Ver Beek and the Grand Rapids philosopher Wolterstorff.

Kurt is not the only key character in Halperin’s telling of the Bear Witness story, but he and his wife, Jo Ann Van Engen, are the founders of the multi-faceted Christian charity, the Association for a More Just Society (AJS) which the book covers as it grew and faced unbelievable challenges. The Ver Beeks live with their children and work in one of the most dangerous barrios in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Certainly, if anybody cares about Central America at all — if your entry point is evangelical missionary work that you support or attention you’ve paid to the US-backed murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero or maybe you’ve watched the exceptionally violent “Narcos” series on Netflix, or maybe you care about immigrants pouring in to the US from their settings in Guatemala or El Salvador or Honduras — you will find this to be a must-read. If you aren’t particularly interested in the lives of the poor and oppressed in these hard places, but care more generally about how people of faith can enter the arenas of public policy and make incremental differences in reforming institutions (of criminal justice and the police or the judiciary, or transforming schools and school systems, of taking on unjust corporations and the like) this story will show how it can happen. It’s about hard, long efforts towards social change. I can hardly say enough about it.

I first heard of Jo Anne and Kurt decades ago — like nearly 50 years ago, maybe — when they published an article about the less than helpful and sometimes inappropriate role of short term missionary teams. Spending so much money to bring kids to a third world country to build a simple building for a health center, say, is not only costly and largely inefficient, but that, then, puts local builders out of business and creates social strain among the hosts. It’s complicated in a dozen ways, but they were cutting edge missionaries thinking well for years before the deepened their efforts to bring healing to various sectors of society. That simple article showed that they were thinking well and speaking out about the long-haul of true social renewal in poor neighborhoods.

As they did their Godly, charitable work through ASJ including some small development projects, helping victims of domestic violence, obtaining legal land rights to illiterate campesinos, they realized that the Biblical call and the facts on the ground demanded more systemic reform and the implementation of public justice. They needed better laws and better enforcement of laws to keep local folks from being terrorized by gangs and drug runners, pimps and bullies. Some cops were on the take — this becomes a major, blood-curdling matter in the middle of the book — and some judges are fearful of reprisals if they rule against punk murderers or narcos. These stories kept me turning the pages late into the night,  on the edge of my seat, yet ashamed that I hadn’t known more of this friend of some good friends!  Honduras, we learn, in those years had literally one of the highest murder rates in the world; the bravery of Kurt and his team and their deep persistence offering proposals for reform of broken, corrupt institutions, literally changed those numbers dramatically. His work is known and honored all over the world.

It is hard enough even in a land of justice and good order to adjudicate crimes when judges don’t have printer ink (or even toilet paper.) In a sense, the Ver Beeks realized they needed to reform not only the judicial culture and police corruption, but the very worldview of the culture, their views of crime and justice; in a word, they needed to take on a culture of impunity. One of Kurt’s best allies is Carlos Hernández, a deeply spiritual servant of the people, a gospel-changed school teacher and co-conspirator with the Ver Beeks. Carlos, ever Kurts friend and neighbor, became increasingly involved and eventually went to work for ASJ. And, as you’ll discover, he soon needed security guards to protect him (as did the Ver Beeks) due to the death squads and sicarios who were out to assassinate him.

In this shift to reformational engagement with the powers that be and the Christianly conceived work for public justice they were in a parallel manner, doing what the wonderful (and popular) anti-trafficking and anti-slavery group, IJM (the International Justice Mission) was doing. Indeed, out of IJM’s thinking came a very important book about the need for good laws and law enforcement if we are ever going to see social justice talk hold in unjust places. (See, for instance, the Oxford University Press study, The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence by Gary Haugen & Victor Boutros.) With IJM’s help they started a branch of their AJS ministry (at first it was nearly clandestine) called Peace and Justice  Their small but growing team of spunky investigators and lawyers and activists and reporters learned about the law and procedural stuff like the Articles of the Penal Procedure Code. They developed baselines reports — some well over 200 pages — on improvements needed in the Honduran Public Services Ministry.

As this Christian NGO increasingly became involved resisting “the locust effect” (in Haugen’s phrase) by helping fight bad guys, and trying to persuade the police toward social righteousness, they hired investigators. This is stunning to think about, like something from a TV show. They hired guys who became pals with the police — sometimes charismatic locals who nearly crossed (okay, they did cross) lines of decorum and maybe ethics working undercover to expose misdeeds. Their team of activists trailed narco-traffickers and studied gang culture and tried to get rapists and kidnappers jailed, even as they insisted on due process and protested police brutality against the very dangerous criminals they (behind the scenes) helped capture and adjudicate. What bravery (and bravado) they needed to stand against extrajudicial executions in a culture of impunity! Which, soon enough, tragically turns on their them as beloved employees are gunned down, one by one.

They had hoped early on to find a Christian lawyer but couldn’t find anyone willing to face down these terrifying criminals so they hired a flamboyant leftist known for bravely investigating human rights abuses. Now he is trying to help (some of) the trusted police and government forces, even as they facilitated a huge purging of corrupt police. It’s a messy situation, the ways of the barrios complex, the impunity culture deeply rooted. They needed to form cooperation relations with truly corrupt politicians and some accused them of being part of the corruption. The held exceptional, Biblically-informed principles which informed their practices, day by day, but they had little time or energy to be punctilious. We learn all this in the first few high-octane chapters and the Niebuhrian complexity of dealing with an immoral system only gets deeper and more trying.

We learn all kinds of other interesting stuff, too — the United Nations recommends, for instance, that an adequate justice system would have 1 judge for every 4000 citizens. In Honduras they’ve got maybe 1 for every 55 thousand. Most human rights organizations do not approve of shrouding witnesses to prevent unfair guilty verdicts, but balaclavas are used in some cases in Honduras since bearing witness against a criminal makes you an immediate target. (This is in contrast to our “jury of your peers” principle of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.) So some witnesses were cloaked and camouflaged.

There is danger and complexity and compromise to their work as they strive for what Steve Garber (in the often-mentioned chapter in his Visions of Vocation) called proximate justice. They are not idealists who want to accomplish everything. There will be, we can tell, collateral damage. But they won’t give up just because some things are really messy. One rave reviewer noted the “nauseating moral quandaries they faced…”  Nicholas Wolterstorff calls this gut-wrenching tale “a story of undaunted patience…”

I do not want to share spoilers. But what a page-turner it is. Bear Witness will appeal to those who like true crime investigations, who like muck-racking reporting about great injustices, who like David vs Goliath type stories of those righting wrongs. As with any book about poverty and injustice in Central America there are some ugly portions; some even gruesome. There’s anger and fear and doubt; mistakes are made and friendships (and budgets) strained. It might work for those who like missionary stories. (The faith and Reformed worldview of the Peace and Justice team are described by this seemingly secular author and it is fascinating to see books like Richard Mouw’s lovely Calvinism at the Los Vegas Airport and Gary Haugen’s Good News About Injustice mentioned. He describes their faith often with apparent wonderment. Although the leaders of ASJ and Peace and Justice are obviously Christian, this is a book written about them on a major, secular publisher without an overtly religious intent.) It has been called “poignant and chilling” and a compelling example of the best of “gripping, investigative journalism.”

The New York Times review said author Ross Halperin has an “immersive narrative voice reminiscent of Tracy Kidder.” It isn’t exactly tedious, but, man, he puts you right in the investigative details, with stats about poverty and health care and education reforms and this judge and that ruling, the formation of commissions and the follow through of political hardball as hard-won victories are undone and fought for again.

You will read about their tough decisions about facing down armed assassins and worry if certain plans will play out. You learn about the plight of mistreated workers and the lengths corrupt business leaders or paramilitary enforcers will go to stop their exposes and reforms. You will learn where they went when they needed to escape — once to Costa Rica and occasionally finding safe haven in Grand Rapids, Michigan. What an unfolding drama this book is and how much we have to learn by this organization that over decades of persistent  endurance, has made lasting change. It is a book for our times.

A compelling tale and the perfect doorway into the complex inner workings of the poorest country in Latin America, where people struggle for power and the rule of law is weak. Halperin’s reporting is prodigious; Nueva Suyapa and its residents appear on the book’s pages not as some faceless mass but mothers and fathers and sons and assassins and students and extortionists and sometimes several of those things all at the same time, always just trying to get by. — Carl Hoffman, Liar’s Circus

Kurt Ver Beek and Carlos Hernández are possibly the bravest people in the world and  among the few who truly understand how homicide works. Ross Halperin… has gone deep and found the insights that matter. Bear Witness will be required reading. — Jill Levy, Ghettoside

Just Making: A Guide for Compassionate Creatives Mitali Perkins (Broadleaf Books) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

This easy-to-read and deeply engaging book from award-winning YA author Matali Perkins offers such a lovely, good thesis, and has such great stories from her own life (as an immigration from India and professional creative writer) that I want to recommend it to everyone. This is a great little book!

Certainly everyone who follows BookNotes desires good writing, and, most likely, more beauty in the world as well. Some of us — most of us in one way or the other — are makers, creating stuff daily, even if we don’t see ourselves as artists, as such. So we’re all called to express our creativity whether it is through cooking or gardening, gift wrapping birthday presents or arranging knick-knacks or curios in the living room, cropping a picture on Facebook or dabbling in your own creative writing in a private journal.  And — again — who among us doesn’t care about the world at large; who doesn’t cry out through tears these hard, dark days?

And so, this book is for almost everyone; for you and for me.

Just Making asks a fairly specialized question, a question that we’ve been hoping to see covered in a book-length treatment, but it’s focus should appeal to us all. A few others hav written about the relationship between justice and art but few have been so charming and practical about it. This is more specifically about, as the title puts it in language that is so spot on: justice and making. This really is a guide for “compassionate creatives.” What a phrase!

The first grand portion is a rumination on “Creativity and the Just Life” and Perkins asks about justice for the maker, for the receiver, and for the community.  Nice!

In Part Two she asks why some stop making things. She explores the “brutal, excessive market” and wonders about “destructive interior forces.” Anyone who contributes to the broader culture will ind these words very helpful, I am sure.

Part Three Perkins is comprised of five good chapters which offer guidance on how to keep on keeping on, being creative, making things, doing good work. From “restoring agency in the vocation” to finding mentors (“in the margins” she suggests) and within third places (which might be virtual) she is often specific and wise. In some nice but heavier challenges she calls us to not only “lean into ancient practices” (you might be surprised by this chapter even as it is generative food for thought for any artist) and to — as the final chapter puts it — “Cross Borders and Liberate the Work.”

In each chapter she has, set apart in italics, testimonials of others. This is a great asset to the project. Mitali invited various artists, craftspeople, designers, writers, and others to reflect on the question of the chapter, or describe how justice-work informs their creative output. From an expressionistic modern painter to a textile artist, from an opera singer to a needlework stitcher, each share what sort of just principles, values, or concerns deep into their work. One brave graphic designer and printmaker pushed back a little bit, wondering if expecting art-making to have any particular societal outcome might be reductionistic and limiting. Even though he has done overt justice-themed projects he wonders if just making art that is good and which adds beauty to the world is enough. “And in doing so,” he continues, “making something that can be morally good and useful. And hopefully,… even just.”

There is at the end of Just Making, a thorough study guide for book clubs or discussion groups as well. Well done, Mitali Perkins, well done.

You Were Never Meant to Do It All: A 40-Day Devotional on the Goodness of Being Human Kelly M. Kapic (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Perhaps you recall us exclaiming about the excellent and useful themes in the hefty, but really readable, You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News by Covenant College prof, Kelly Kapic — just now out in paperback, btw. Or, maybe you will remember that we celebrated the good sales of the book after Kelly spoke at the CCO Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh last February. (That is our biggest off-site gig all year and we always write about it after the event — go back to the end of February in our BookNotes archives and see the big piece I wrote about the many authors and books we promoted there.) Anyway, we are fans of the many books Kelly Kapic has done — on Jonathan Edwards, on suffering, on hope.

You’re Only Human is very good in a rare way. He honors our creatureliness and invites us to embody wholistic faith without shame or fear because, after all, God made us this way: being dependent on God is, as they say, a feature not a flaw. That big book and this new spin-off from it shares gospel-based stuff by a grace-based theologian. It is rooted in the revelation of God in Genesis 1 and 2 about the world and humankind — It. Is. Good. In fact, It. Is. Very. Good.

Flawed as we are, we still must recall that our Maker made us as finite humans and that this is a great, great gift of the Christian worldview. The upshot: you don’t have to do it all.

This devotional, You Were Never Meant to Do It All, is fabulous with 3 or four devotional readings to go along with each of the 10 chapters in You’re Only Human. He does, of course, encourage people to go back and read those fuller chapters for deeper exploration, but you wouldn’t have to. You Were Never Meant… does stand alone nicely as a set of seriously Biblical and spiritual reflections on “the goodness of being human” but it also stands alone as a fine daily study.

By the way, Kapic has offset in a pull quote box for each devotional, a quote from somebody and these sidebar quotes alone are nearly worth the price of the book. A few may be from authors you know; I bet there are some quotes worth pondering from writers, thinkers, mystics, even, that you don’t. From the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony to writer and contemplative Kathleen Norris, from Christian counselor Chuck DeGroat to the eloquent Lutheran Dorothy Bass (from her lovely book Receiving the Day) this book is a great resource to have and I’m sure an edifying devotional classic to prayerfully go through, alone or with someone. There are really interesting discussion questions, too, to help you process the content that much more intentionally. Have fun!

Mid-Faith Crisis: Finding a Path Through Doubt, Disillusionment, and Dead ends Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague (IVP) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I have really, really liked the writing of Catherine McNiel — her year-long memoir called All Shall Be Well: Awakening to God’s Presence in His Messy, Abundant World was so very well written and so clear about God’s presence in our good but weary world. Fearing Bravely was a bit more feisty, insisting that we learn to love others, “neighbors, strangers, and enemies” even at great risk to ourselves.  The blurbs are stunning with high recommendations from women and men from across the cultural and theological spectrum. Her first book won a number of awards, a very well written reflection on her life as a new mother, Long Days of Small Things.

And yet, attentive to the brokenness of the church and sad about so much restrictive and harsh theology, she wonders. From the start of her spiritual journey “full of earnest faith and hope” she now realizes that without some awareness that some of us go through what some (drawing on James Fowler, perhaps) call “stages of faith”, one can really be set on a tale-spin when one experiences a crisis faith or new senses of things evolve. When some religious leaders or movements have turned us off, when some have even hurt us, when we grow lackluster or confused, maybe, when God even seems to have vanished, what are we to do?

This is not a book merely celebrating deconstruction, or even documenting the journey away from faith, even though Catherine and her co-author, Jason Hague, have lots of stories to tell of painful doubts and struggles  (Hague, by the way, also is an accomplished writer and the author of Aching Joy: Following God Through the Land of Unanswered Prayers which is excellent.) Mid-Faith Crisis is an assurance that you are not alone in this experience and offers insight about how faith goes through stages of development and reconsideration. I’ve got a few intellectual bones to pick with the seminal James Fowler but he documented that decades ago. They obviously cite the very important underground classic, The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet O. Hagberg, which we have stocked for years. Yes!

The opening bit explains their thesis by mentioning a popular on-line meme called “How It Started vs How It’s Going.” Both, then, cleverly, tell of their young faith lives (and both are wonderfully told — Jason was on the 700 Club as an 8-year old) and then how it’s working out for them now. Hague has had unimaginable sorrow in his life, Catherine saw some  serious unpleasantness early on as a pastor’s daughter. Both could work that meme and it’s helpful, I think, to see how very earnest and even dynamic faith blooms, changes, adapts, and, well, there’s that honest matter, now: how it’s going.

Whether your ambivalence to your previous faith is from heroes falling or toxic systems uncovered, whether you’ve got intellectual questions about the coherence of faith or new feelings about the world’s suffering and sorrow, whether you’ve been wounded by the church or just are facing a mid-life crisis, this book shows that the disillusionment that goes with these sorts of questions and doubts, is not the end of the story.  It’s broken up into different sorts of “how it’s going” realities — those who have doubts, lives where suffering overwhelms, those hurting from unanswered prayers, etc. This is honest and wise and helpful.

There’s some hard stuff in this book but great beauty, too. The ending epilogue by Jason will, I guarantee you, have you in tears of wonder and joy. It’s very moving and good.

The great writer Aubrey Sampson says these authors have “unromanticized vulnerability” while another says they are “refreshingly honest.” At the end of each chapter they suggest something to read and something (musical) to listen to. Big kudos.

Instrument of Peace: Meditations on the Prayer of Saint Francis Alan Paton (Whitaker House) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Alan Patan was a mid-20th century international literary rock star, having published his debut novel, Cry the Beloved Country in 1948. (And, yes, we still stock it.) Even then, it nuancefully and artfully told a story exposing the horrors of South African apartheid. He was a playwright and novelist, a poet and churchman.  He was among the founders of an alternative political party in South Africa to counter apartheid.

And here, now, newly re-printed from more than half a century ago, is his mature and refreshing take on the classic “Prayer of Saint Francis.”  He notes that he drew on the power of this lovely prayer as his wife of many years lay dying of emphysema. Paton’s take is about prayer and trust, about God’s presence and about social service, God’s grace spilling out in to the world.

Paton wrote that he has an “unrepeatable debt to Francis of Assisi, for when I pray his prayer, or even remember it, my melancholy is dispelled, my self-pity comes to an end, my faith is restored.” He writes about this “majestic conception” of what the work of a disciple of Jesus must be.

We are grateful for Whitaker House for getting this book in circulation once more.

The re-publication of these meditations on the prayer attributed to St. Francis could not have come at a more apt time in the world. As well as being a world-famous author, Alan Paton was a respected member of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa who represented us at important meetings of the Anglican Communion and the World Council of Churches. This collection reflects both the eloquence of a great writer and the deep spirituality of a committed Christian whose faith led him to reject apartheid unequivocally. I recommend it highly for those seeking spiritual depth in their quest to become bridge-builders in our polarized world. — The Most Reverend Thabo Makgoba, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town

They can make a difference as God’s instruments of peace and be given the wisdom to do so–just what this book does.— Bishop Todd Hunter, Founder, Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others, author of What Jesus Intended: Finding True Faith in the Rubble of Bad Religion

Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood Angela Denker (Broadleaf Books) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I have mentioned this recent release about a month ago but I felt like I should highlight it again.

After the assassination of an elected official in Minnesota last week (and the shooting of another couple, and a targeted list of others — all Democrats) by a person steeped in the teachings of a certain sort of MAGA Christianity, we who are church people stand with our mouths agape. What sort of faith even hints that their parishioners should kill political opponents? What weird worldview leads to killing in the name of God? This faith-based blood lust has been seen in recent years among other religions but there is the dark undercurrent in some corners of the evangelical world that seems to create such monsters.

(To be precise, the movement that seemed to have influenced the alleged assassin is known as the “New Apostolic Reformation” and we have books that study it theologically, apart from how it has recently aligned itself to Trumpian politics, and current affairs journalists have written about its recent political manifestation. Please order from us the brilliant The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy. We have it as previously announced at 20% off.)

When the stories of the murders broke last week many on the political and cultural right insisted on the misinformation that it was a “leftist” or “Marxist” who did the shooting. That some of the supposedly legit talking heads on Fox News wouldn’t retract this despicable error is part of the tragic context where even a cold-blooded murder can be politicized by MAGA ideologues. Sigh.

How have we gotten into this mess?

Well, speaking of this weighty matter in our cultural moment, even as we cry out wondering why this religious man tragically turned killer, I wanted to share some of what I previously said in an earlier BookNotes about this very, very relevant title.

Angela Denker, I explained, is a former non-denominational evangelical turned progressive Lutheran pastor, and she wrote a splendid travelogue report of visiting Trump supporters and white Christian nationalists and asked them why they felt and believed and voted as they did. It’s a great, generous read called Red State Christians: A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves and her kindness is evident throughout. (In this regard it reminds me a bit of another travelogue of gracious reporting, Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America by the aforementioned Jeff Chu.) In any case, Denker is a good writer and astute observer of the conservative religious landscape and her new book, in a similar accessible style, is particularly about how all of this shapes the raising of boys. It is a matter she, again, knows something about. She is a religious mom of boys.

Her latest report from the hinterlands, Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood deserves a bigger, more careful review but know that it is candid and direct — “unflinching” one reviewer called it. Historian and Christian critic of the religious right, Randall Balmer, notes that “readers should not be fooled by Angela Denker’s storytelling ease and graceful prose into thinking this is simply another anodyne book about child-rearing. Her arguments about the sources and the persistence of racism, misogyny, and what she calls “brutish masculinity” are powerful and, sadly, all too relevant.

Pastor Denker makes a powerful case against the toxic aspects of this fundamentalist sub-culture of religious extremism and authoritarianism. She has been called “an expert on influencers” and she is the mother of two boys. There is a radicalization happening around us and she exposes much of it as it influences many young white men, in some exceptionally conservative faith communities. As she documents these dangers (with the sharp eye of a journalist and the prophetic insight of a cultural critic) she offers real hope and the grace of a good pastor. It makes for a good and sadly, much needed resource.

For what it is worth there are lots of thoughtful books about the nature of masculinity and what is often called “toxic masculinity.” It will make you ponder much, but I did a long, mostly favorable review of Nancy Pearcey’s unique, serious book from a year ago, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes; Pearcey is herself both a critic of shallow, pop, evangelical conventions and yet a strong critic of progressive and liberal assumptions. It would be a good book to put into conversation with Denker’s look at the rise in radicalization among young white men these days.

Jemar Tisby calls Disciples of White Jesus “essential” and Kristen Du Mez, of course, has been touting it.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

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

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

BookNotes

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I hope you read our last BookNotes, the weekly missive from Hearts & Minds. As I sometimes do, I name-checked a handful of books in a couple of related themes as I moved towards the main title I was discussing — Jeff Chu’s lovely memoir Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand — and the big news that we are bringing Jeff in for an author event here in our area. We are joining together with First Presbyterian Church in York and their little Racial Justice task force to co-sponsor an event I rather impulsively called “An Evening with Jeff Chu: Author, Farmhand, Foodie, Pastor.” It is this coming Tuesday night (June 17th) at 7:00 PM in the sanctuary of our historic downtown church in York (225 E. Market Street) not far from our Dallastown shop. All are warmly invited. There will be snacks and books for sale.

Want an autographed one? Let us know — we’ll get Jeff to ascribe it and we’ll send it out promptly. Fun, eh?

If you’d like to hear me share an enthusiastic invitation to join us, check this out. Can you tell I’m excited? Ha! If you know anybody in central Pennsylvania who might enjoy this, will you share this with them?

So, there’s a lot going on in this marvelous new book. One of the rave reviewers said it was finally a book about love, and that is beautifully true. But there’s a lot of fun, hard, poignant curious, meditative, and adventuresome chapters and a lot of moving stories to get us there.

I often like to put books in tandem with other books, similar titles (or sometimes very different ones) that might underscore or highlight features of the one in question. Reading is often a conversation in our mind, and, often, with others. Why not expand the discussion?

Here we go, then, sort of stream of conscience style, some other titles to think about from us here at Hearts & Minds as we celebrate Chu and his work.  All books mentioned are 20% off, too. Click the “order” link at the end and we’ll take it from there.

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Although I wouldn’t characterize Good Soil as a book about Chinese Americans, in general (it is a memoir, after all, not general at all!) there are stories about the experience of discrimination and ill-will and the dread of awkwardness, as there usually are for those who are ethnic or racial minorities.

From big, ugly stuff like the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the prison camps for Japanese Americans during World War II to the horrible stuff that exploded during Covid, some of us are only now coming to terms with this aspect of American racism. And there are the almost cliched tensions in some places between those of Asian descent and the black community. There’s a lot to learn, even if Jeff only tells it a bit and a bit slant, as the poet put it.

Here on the heels of Pentecost, who doesn’t feel compelled to explore multi-ethnic faith? (I’ll tell you who: those who didn’t explore Pentecost yesterday, or read the text in Acts, or those who think the coming of the Holy Spirit is somehow merely personal, but I digress.)

I’ve read a handful of books by Asian-American writers lately, wanting to broaden my understanding of the Asian American experience. More than one Asian-American friend recommends certain novels; another recommended a scholarly treatise. You may have heard about the brilliant, thick, brand new volume trangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America by Michael Luo — we have it!  Wow.

For my memoir-loving palette, though, I was blown away by Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America by Julia Lee. I loved (and wrote about) Nicole Chung’s bestselling and striking All You Can Ever Know, followed up by her “groundbreaking narrative” A Living Remedy.  I really appreciated the fairly brief Tell Me The Dream Again: Reflections on Family, Ethnicity & the Sacred Work of Belonging by Korean-American writer Tasha Jun, published by Tyndale, with a forward by Alia Joy. Kudos to this evangelical publisher for doing such a fine work.

Like other mainstream writing these days, some people of faith may not be used to the spicy language, but Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City was a hoot and deeply sad, in some ways, and politically agitated. Elissa Washuta called it “perfect and glimmering” and Victoria Chang said she “expanded the possibilities of Asian American stories.” There’s some serious stuff about race and class and gender and all the expected sore spots. Yet, Meet Me… has been called “an incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey Shore.” Yep.  And, man, don’t miss Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by former central Pennsylvanian Phuc Tran. He grew up in 1980s Carlisle, PA. Does anybody recall my review a couple years ago? Wow.

We stock but I have not yet read The Souls of Yellow Folk / Essays by Wesley Yang; it was a New York Times 100 Notable Books a year or two ago and the impressive Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post called these essays “fierce and refreshing.” How curious — it gets rave reviews as gonzo and beautiful and perceptive and stylish from O, The Oprah Magazine and The National Review. Often about sex and race, one review said he is our modern Balzac.

Among the many overtly Christian, theologically- informed ones that that we stock along these lines we want to highlight these two excellent ones:

Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationship, and Vocation compiled by Sabrina S. Chan, Linson Daniel, E. David de Leon & La Thao (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This is a must read book of popular-level theology, memoir, spirituality, and insights about multi-ethnic friendships and community.I suggest it for anyone, but it is written for Asian American Christians, inviting readers to ponder “What’s your name?” and, of course, who are you called to be in this messed-up /beautiful world. As it says on the back, “In an era when Asians face ongoing marginalization, Asian American Christians need to hear and own our diverse stories beyond the cultural expectations of the model minority or perpetual foreigner.

This team is from East Asia and Southeast Asia, hale from Hong Kong or Wisconsin as a Hmong American. As one writer exclaimed, “This is a book many of us have needed for so long!”  Another reviewer (Russel Jeung) mentions its “transformative hope.” Yes!

Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice Daniel D. Lee (IVP Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

What can I say about this? Perhaps this might help: for those interested in academic theology you know that, very generally speaking, there are a few streams of thinking, from the most ecumenical, mainline sort of sometimes even eccentric reflections to the more Biblically-intentional works shaped by classic, historic truths of the faith. Asian thinkers, contextualized with their own unique insights and baggage, have struggled, like everyone, to be both faithful and contextualized. It is my sense that this volume does all of this exceptionally well, open-minded and broad-thinking yet clearly within the framework of classic, historic Protestant orthodoxy. My friend Paul Louis Metzger (who has a lively book on what he’s learned from Zen) and who is a very reliable guide, says it really “points the way forward in doing Asian American theology.” He calls this recent book a “clarion call and road map.” Soong-Chan Rah notes that Dr. Lee is able to “give honor and value to the larger redemptive narrative of Jesus while also honoring the story of the Asian American community.” To see an intellectually robust and prophetic voice that finally calls us all to greater holiness is a pleasure. Amos Yong, his colleague at Fuller, invites non-Asians to read it, saying it testifies to the “dissonant accents”  in which God speaks.

As I explained last week, Chu does talk about his Chinese-American family a lot, a fascinating story, tenderly told, with lots about food and trips back to China and Hong Kong, which would be fabulous to read even if there wasn’t the extra freighted struggle for Jeff’s conservative Christian parents to accept that their son is gay, and not afraid to write about it. His captivating travelogue report Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper; $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79) works on several levels and is very highly recommended as a great glimpse into some of the most contentious questions in the American religious landscape. I can’t say enough about that, but readers who are struck by his generosity (and courage, trained well by his journalistic work) in interviewing so many different sorts of people and grappling with the exclusion many in the LGBTQ community have felt from religious people (sometimes even their own families and loved ones, as Jeff explores) may want to check out two other titles that I think would be helpful for those who aren’t sure about theological reflections of this sort.

Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church by Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter (Brazos Press) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

First, I have often promoted a marvelous book that came out several years back but remains the most thoughtful, weighty, compelling book on how to have compassionate and gracious conversations across differences on sexual ethics. Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church by Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter tells of several people in Canada and the US who have come to think differently than they once did about the Biblical faithfulness of embracing same sex relations for Christians. Significantly, it tells some of the story of the downfall of Exodus, a once respected [in traditional evangelical circles, at least] ministry of “reparative” therapy to convert to heterosexual avowed gay and lesbians; as Generous Spaciousness was being written, Exodus imploded as they admitted that they were knowingly dishonest about their results, that nobody was able to “pray the gay away” and they dissolved. Some of their leaders and practitioners had what might be called a worldview breakdown, questioning much of what they previously thought about identity, sexuality, conversion, prayer, holiness, transformation, community.

In any case, Generous Spaciousness invites us to be honest about our differences, to probe the meaning of the body of Christ as a place that can host honest conversations, showing how nurturing a generous sort of room of space and grace, can be inclusive and perhaps healing, despite some hard stuff in working through serious disagreements. It is such a good book, both demanding and compelling. In a way, Jeff Chu’s Does Jesus Really Love Me models this high ground of hopeful spaciousness in conflicted relationships. I wanted to mention it for our BookNotes fans who are not sure about us hosting a gay pastor.

My friend Brian Walsh, author most recently of Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination and co-author, with his wife Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat, of the very important Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire/Demanding Justice) writes this about Generous Spaciousness: 

I can’t imagine a more timely book. Modeling the very ‘generous spaciousness’ that she advocates, VanderWal-Gritter’s heart is on every page. The church is at a crucial moment of transition in relation to gay sisters and brothers, and this wonderfully written book will prove to be one of the most helpful guides in the midst of change. Profoundly and deeply biblical, theologically rich, and rooted in years of humble, respectful, and vulnerable listening, VanderWal-Gritter’s wisdom is precisely what we so desperately need.

Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christian Experience Harm in the Church  Bridget Eileen Rivera (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It seems to me that even among those who cannot accept same-sex marriages — in Jeff Chu’s Good Soil we learn about the heartbreak that his parents would not attend his wedding — more and more are these days at least admitting that the church has often been harsh and sometimes hateful to LGTBQ individuals; I hope it is not “too little too late” for many evangelicals to show Godly care and grace to others they have disdained, but there are signs of hope for some sort of generosity. For instance, although this author maintains fairly conventional evangelical ethics, she wrote this extraordinary book explaining how and why LGTBQ folk have been made to carry “heavy burdens.” It is obviously an allusion to Jesus’s warning in Matthew 23: 3-4 about religious leaders not imparting such burdens. Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christian Experience Harm in the Church by Bridget Eileen Rivera is a very good read, highly recommended by many who are hosting conversations about these things. Kirstyn Komarnicki (director of the Oriented to Love dialogue program of Christians for Social Action) says it is “essential” and could be a game-changer for the church. We certainly suggest it.

Listen to the wise Wesley Hill, professor at Western Theological Seminary and author of Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality

In spite of — or just as often because of — my position as a ‘conservative’ on marriage and sexuality, I have seen firsthand the ways the evangelical movement has devastated the faith of many of its LGBTQ members. Not everyone will agree with every argument in this account of that devastation (I don’t), but every Christian who reads this book will no longer be able to ignore the real harm that has been done in the name of the gospel — or to avoid grappling with the repentance and justice-seeking that the gospel continues to ask of us all.

WholeHearted Faith Rachel Held Evans with Jeff Chu (HarperOne) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

To be honest, in the last BookNotes review of the two main books by Jeff Chu I didn’t want to say much about Wholehearted Faith. It’s a good read and Jeff deserves a lot of credit; through tears over the unexpected death of his good friend and collaborator, Rachel, Jeff finished up this book that she was working on at the time of her death. Rachel’s husband, I gather, asked Jeff to finish her final book. It says that it was written “with” Jeff Chu to indicate that it wasn’t intended as a co-authored project, but the tragedy brought him in to finalize the manuscript.

For those who admired Rachel — I had only met her once, I think, and we had a pleasant time with some fiesty disagreements, as I recall — and for those who read her books or social media posts, her death was a painful shock. It does come up, briefly, in a powerful part of Jeff’s narrative. It dawns on me now that I should have highlighted this one (which came out late in 2022) since Jeff did work on it. I’m sure he doesn’t want to capitalize on it and I would suspect it is still painful for him and his husband, Tristen, who loved her dearly.

For those deconstructing conventional faith, for those evolving out of strict fundamentalism, who live often outside of the evangelical church circles of their youth but who just can’t shake their attraction to Jesus, Rachel and Jeff here do offer a way to embrace a sincere, robust, embodied sort of discipleship. Whole-hearted? Oh yes!

I think this comes from the publisher but it rings very true:

This book is for the doubter and the dreamer, the seeker and the sojourner, those who long for a sense of spiritual wholeness as well as those who have been hurt by the Church but can’t seem to let go of the story of Jesus. Through theological reflection and personal recollection, Rachel wrestles with God’s grace and love, looks unsparingly at what the Church is and does, and explores universal human questions about becoming and belonging. An unforgettable, moving, and intimate book.

A voice like Rachel’s endures in the time machine of her writing. All who love the sound of it owe Jeff Chu a deep bow. A vision like hers outlives a single lifetime. What she discovered, she made available to us; now it’s our turn to carry on.” — Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark

In last week’s BookNotes as I was explaining that the central plot of Jeff’s book is about his own slow learning at Princeton’s Farminary about soil and dirt, composting and regeneration, I mentioned that we have a number of books about faithful farming, about caring for gardens and learning to love caring for the Earth. Naturally, we have lots of books about creation-care and we have highlighted many in recent years. Ahh, our last author visit event, was with two other folks from Grand Rapids (where Jeff now lives), Gail Heffner and David Warner, who came to tell us about watershed theology and creation care by way of “reconciliation ecology” as learned in their work cleaning up a very polluted West Michigan stream with the Plaster Creek Stewards that they founded out of Calvin University there. I hope you recall our reviews of the exceptional Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha. I hope that some of you that came out to hear Dave and Gail last month will join us at FPC in York this Tuesday to once again share some central Pennsylvania hospitality to Michiganders. Hooray.

If you have already read Jeff’s recent book about Princeton’s Farminary — as I know some have — you know how much he learned to love the soil, the almost incongruous and “accidental” nature of his becoming a farmhand. (And the theological education that can happen when a group reflects on the spirituality of compost and harvesting fresh grown produce.) I want to highlight another title that is another curious favorite of mine this season about a reluctant gardener. The author herself died shortly after writing the book — yes, cancer is part of this story so it is especially poignant for some of us — and her husband has ordered from us a time or two. I’m embarrassed that we missed her memoir back when it first came out. It got great reviews from BookList and USA Today and AARP and the review in People called it “profoundly moving.”

It is called Mister Owita’s Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart by Carol Wall (Berkeley; $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20) and I really, really enjoyed it. The short version is this (from the Booklist review): “She knew nothing about gardening. He knew everything. She was a well-to-do white woman. He was an impoverished immigrant from Kenya. And yet, in the garden he transformed for her from a patch of weeks into a flowering paradise.. they found common ground.” It is heartwarming (to say the least) and is a lovely example of cross-cultural friendship. It is, finally, an “elegiac tribute” to a truly extraordinary man and his care for her suburban landscape. Good Housekeeping described Walls as a “cancer survivor with a bad attitude and a sad yard.” I can’t wait to ask Jeff if he knows this gentle memoir.

Mostly to evoke a chuckle, I mentioned in my review of Good Soil in the last BookNotes, that Jeff Chu is no Wendell Berry. It wasn’t a criticism, of course. But perhaps that got you

thinking, as it got me thinking, about which Wendell Berry books might pair with Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand. There are so many key essays scattered in his many diverse nonfiction collections. The classic The Unsettling of America (which I owned in the late 1970s) might be a bit much for some; the anthologies Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community: Eight Essays and Home Economics are great places to start. Some think The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry is a definitive collection of his prophetic nonfiction. Indeed!

Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $16.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

In thinking of Chu and my off-handed remark and our upcoming time together, I think I’d suggest Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food. Complete with a forward by Michael Pollen, this pulls together some of the best essays or excerpts on farming and growing food and eating. In fact, there are a few excerpts of his many novels and short stories that describe working in the fields or eating together. (And let’s face it, Berry’s fiction and poetry are every bit as important as his nonfiction polemics.) Mules and meals — it’s all there. What a fun collection and a way to dip into Berry on this exact theme.

AND, don’t forget: we are taking pre-orders already for his long-awaited forthcoming novel, releasing early October 2025: Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry (Counterpoint; $26.00 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $20.80.)

I don’t know Marce’s story, set in Port Williams, but you may know he is the farmer grandfather to Andy Catlett. We’ll have to wait and see what we learn about him and his determination. For now, I’m grateful for all kinds of good tales and those authors that cross our paths to share their stories, their gift of writing, their work, their art, their vulnerability.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

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

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

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

For many years now, I have respected the talented writing abilities (and the honesty and vibrancy and gracefulness) of a writer named Jeff Chu. We are thrilled that on his recent book tour he’s joining us here. We’ve asked our church to host the event for us since we’re hoping for a crowd a bit larger than might fit in our cluttered shop here at Hearts & Minds in Dallastown.

Instead of doing it here at the bookstore, Jeff will be speaking at First Presbyterian Church ( 225 East Market Street ) in downtown York, PA, at 7:00 PM on Tuesday evening, June 17th. As we like to say we are on the corner of Queen & Market and there is parking in the rear, across the ally.

It will be informal — he’s invited me to lead a casual conversation, as he has already done at spectacular events with the likes of author Barbara Brown Taylor, philosopher James K.A. Smith, professional interviewer Krista Tippett, and nature writer Margaret Renkl, so you can imagine how I’m already shaking in my scuffed-up shoes. Small town bookseller that I am, I’m nervous, but thrilled, to be stepping up to talk with Jeff about his recent book, a book I adored, called Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand (Convergent; $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) I hope you can join us.

There’s a lot going on in this new memoir but — even though Jeff has been a prestigious journalist working for the likes of Travel + Leisure, Fast Company, and Time — I’m going to violate the only rule I’ve heard of about journalism: don’t bury the lede. Because I want to frame this great evening of book talk with just a few other quickie comments (and other titles, natch) so it may seem like I’m drifting from my enthusiasm for Good Soil and our upcoming free event. Not at all.

Good Soil is the story of Jeff going to the Farminary, an agricultural sort of experiential theological education program at Princeton Theological Seminary founded about a decade ago by Nathan Stuckey and, hence, the near-perfect sub-title about becoming an ‘accidental farmhand.’ Chu has a substack column called “Notes from a Make-Believe Farmer.” As a gay New York writer and now a newly ordained Reformed Church in America pastor in urban Grand Rapids, he’s no Wendell Berry, if you catch my drift. Which makes his reflections on learning about dirt, about composting, about long beans, invasive species, slaughtering chickens, watersheds, planting corn, rowdy goats, (and did I mention composting?) all the more fun. He tells how he bought a new outfit for the first day on the farm, which, uh, says a bit about the unlikely nature of this story. The dude has a degree from the London School of Economics and now he’s writing about axes and horseradish.

He stands alongside several different sorts of writers in a few different fields — his writing is about his own faith, about his strict Chinese-American parents reluctance to accept his being gay, it is about farming and eco-theology, it is about the joys and hardships of community, it is about new styles of learning and radical theological education. It is about the tragic loss of a dear friend and hard, hard grief. It’s about racism in America. It is about labor-intensive, sustainable agriculture on a small scale. But it is very much about eating, about cooking and savoring real food, especially Chinese food.

You should know that if you appreciate the renaissance of faith-based foodie books in the last decade or so — all citing Supper of the Lamb by Father Robert Capon — you will love Good Soil. Just think of books like 2012’s Bread & Wine: A Love letter to Life Around the Table by Shauna Niequist or the recent By Bread Alone: A Baker’s Reflections on Hunger, Longing, and the Goodness of God by Kendall Vanderslice or the ruminations of The Living Diet: A Christian Journey to Joyful Easting by Martha Tatarnic. For years we’ve promoted Faith and Food: Justice, Joy and Daily Bread edited by Michael Shut. We’ve justly celebrated The Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection, and Celebration by Derrick Weston and Anna Woofenden. My favorite collection — one of my all time favorite books, ever, I think — is The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Towards God edited by Leslie Leyland Fields.

So, too, Jeff writes nicely — clear, engaging, artful, but not fastidious — about brisket, about garlic, about fried rice. His description of daikon radish (“not the most aesthetically pleasing of vegetables”) and its place in lo bak go, is captivating. His chapter called “Salt-Baked Chicken” is beautiful, and the near-climax of the book where he has to cook an entire meal with ingredients from the Farminary plot (titled “Feast”) is reminiscent of that last scene in Babette’s Feast. If you appreciate Supper of the Lamb you will love this lovely and moving bit of (cross-cultural) food writing. You should order it today.

It may be because Ted Lasso cited Walt Whitman in the third season but many of us know that we “contain multitudes.” As does this book. As much as Good Soil is a delight for foodies or aficionados of (real, middle-class) Asian cuisine, it is even more a book about spiritual growth by way of working the land. From the aforementioned descriptions of composting to a great chapter on trees, from a lovely bit of prose about herons to the occasional reflection on land use, both ancient and industrial, the insights about theology and faith, about spirituality and stewardship are right there as his cohort of seminarian/farmers — as Job suggests, as Jesus himself suggests — listen to the land for God’s Word. Jesus’s own parables about seeds and weeds and wine all come alive when one is standing in the muck, sensing the potential. This is a tremendous book if you love gardening. Oh, how I wanted to actually go see that well-described barn. And I know some would certainly agree with his sense that weeding could be a calming, ritual-like practice.

And so, Chu — perhaps without knowing all of this himself — stands on the sturdy shoulders of many who have written about faith and farming. From the lovely and important Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation by Fred Bahnson & Norman Wirzba (both who have done fabulous other books along these lines) to A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt by Kyle Kramer to Jesus for Farmers and Fishers: Justice for All Those Marginalized by Our Food System by Gary Paul Nabhan to Everyone Must East: Food Sustainability and Ministry by Mark Yackel-Juleen and on and on, we have an abundance of books on this topic. Last year I named Soil: The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy as one of the Best Books of 2024. Set in Fort Collins Colorado, it is a tremendous read. We take special delight in the great writing and artful photos in the full-color gift book by Christie Purifoy, Seedtime and Harvest: How Gardens Grow Roots, Connection, Wholeness, and Hope. I just started the gorgeously done Milkweed edition of Soil and Spirit: Cultivation and Kinship in the Web of Life by the agrarian poet and farmer Scott Chalky. If you know of any of these great reads, you will love Good Soil.

The great Southern nature writer, Margaret Renkl is exactly right about the book:

By turns wrenching and funny, heartbreaking and hope-filled, Jeff Chu’s Good Soil teaches us how to keep going despite our own gravest doubts, and how to keep loving when love has already failed us too many times. By whatever name you may call it — God, family, partnership, community, the whole living world — love is what this book is about. At its true heart, this is a book about love. — Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows

And so Good Soil: The Education of… is somewhat about the emotionally-complicated relationship Jeff (like most men) has with his mother. And father. That he came out years ago and that his parents are pretty typical fundamentalist Asian evangelicals — he grew up singing Jesus Loves Me and a whole host of revivalists hymns — makes this relationship that much more vexing. His mother’s love language, it seems, is cooking for others and while I don’t want to spoil too much, it is beautiful to learn how his mother (who refused to attend his wedding) would nonetheless cook for them. The stories of his parents and their parents and Jeff’s boyhood travels to Hong Kong and mainland China are well crafted and deeply moving, even poignant, at times.

This is one of the reasons we read memoirs, it seems to me, to hear how people narrate their lives, to understand the beauty and brokenness in human families, and see how others cope. To excavate memories. To be invited in.

Barbara Brown Taylor has lots of “shiny things” to say about the book, but she writes, “the truest thing I can say is how befriended I felt from the very first page.”

I suppose that all who attend our event on June 17th will experience a glimpse of this same embrace, but I was especially struck by Jeff’s friend Barbara Brown Taylor’s assessment of his character:

“Jeff Chu has a gift for loving people he has never met (and may not even like), having decided ahead of time that the best thing any of us can do is pay attention to what gives us life and tell one another about it.”

Taylor continues, saying that “Good Soil won’t let go until it has made you want to do that at your very next opportunity.”

That is almost exactly how I felt as I read his previous book (first published in 2013) called Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christians Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper Perennial; $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.)

In this travelogue of a book he visits folks all over the country, trying to “get at the heart of a question that had been haunting him for years. Does Jesus really love me?” His mother cried for weeks because of his sexual coming out and yet he loved her. He wasn’t convinced by his friends who told him to cut ties with his parents, that they were repressing him, causing him trauma, that their toxic faith was hurtful and should be abandoned. While deconstructing that strict fundamentalism of his youth (and coming to friendship with post-evangelical writer Rachel Held Evans and her husband, who make a brief but important appearance in Good Soil) Jeff grew to want to tell the stories of those having these kinds of conversations.

And honest face-to-face conversations about faith and being gay are hard to find, making this work a treasure.

I have read this book twice and appreciate so much about his storytelling insight about the religious landscape, his snapshots of characters and the ethos of their institutions. He goes to Nashville to meet Southern Baptists and big time evangelicals; he visits inclusive (but still evangelical) congregations like Highland outside of Denver. He spends time with the Westboro Baptist cultists and he meets mainline clergy and tells vivid stories that are (as the back cover puts it) “funny and heartbreaking, perplexing and wise.” It is a gracious survey of what many thought all over the country just a few years ago. I suspect that many are dug in even deeper in their respective positions as our cultural polarization widens. Man, we need this book where respective stories are told well. I really do recommend Does Jesus Really Love Me? regardless of your own convictions about sexual and cultural ethics.

Which brings us back to our time at FPC in York with Jeff on the 17th at 7:00.

We hope many will come. It’s going to be fun. I have no idea what I’m going to ask him, but I bet he’ll make us laugh. Maybe he’ll tell some of the episodes of the new Good Soil book — I’ve got some favorites, although maybe we’ll skip the chicken strangling. Maybe we’ll talk about the chapter entitled “Telos” in which he ruminates on Jesus’ words at the beginning of the Last Supper narrative in John, eis telos. I know I want to talk about the appendix which explains how his grandma cooked her fried rice. As Jeff notes, “Grace abounds.”

Writer R. Eric Thomas is right when he says, “This book is so chock-full of small miraculous moments, in word, in story, in revelation. And the cumulative effect is exactly what I crave when I pick up a book — I feel more connected, a sense of possibility, glad to be alive.”

I don’t know what you are looking for when you pick up a book, but I’m sure that for many of us, some of Jeff’s story is going to resonate deeply — whether you’ve been an “accidental farmhand” or not. Whether you’ve had estranged relationships in your family (or church community) or not. Whether you’ve felt the sting of rejection because of your ethnicity or race. Whether you are stable in your solid faith, or not. We contain multitudes.

We enjoy bringing in authors and writers and have had lovely times with good folks over the years. We are truly honored to host Jeff Chu and hope you can join us at First Presbyterian Church, York, PA. We’ll start about 7:00 PM and have a book signing (and some tea and light goodies) afterwards. Thanks to our Racial Justice Task Force at FPC for co-sponsoring.

If you can’t come — most BookNotes readers are farther away, we know — but would like an autographed copy, order one now (at our 20% off price) and we’ll get him to inscribe one for you. If you want a name on it, be sure to tell us. We’ll do our best to mail signed copies to you the day or so after the York event.

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BookNotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Many of you have heard (often, even) some of our origin story, at least some of what motivated us to open Hearts & Minds in the early 1980s. There were a lot of independent bookstores in those days — many were called “Christian bookstores” even if they didn’t carry many books. There are a whole lot fewer bookstores in North America these days but we’re still here, glad to be sending books all over the country, which keeps us afloat. So, a heartfelt thanks — more than you may realize, every customer is part of our (slim) endurance and we are grateful.

It’s kinda fun being a part of an epic David vs Goliath story, isn’t it? To change metaphors, we’ve been with Bilbo ‘there and back again’ more than once and we thank you for joining us.

Part of the story which shaped us was — to sort of tell it in shorthand code — the story also told by the CCO, a campus ministry formed in Pittsburgh more than 50 years ago that  partnered with churches near campuses to fund young adults doing ministry on college campus. Evangelism, disciple-making, worldview formation, vocational discernment, social action, nurturing the Christian mind — we CCO staff were trained in doing all of this and more, inviting students into a wholistic kind of discipleship and missional living.

Some of our influences there in Western PA in the 1970s were visionary neo-Calvinists (that is, the Dutch Reformed tradition in the line of Abraham Kuyper) that insisted that all of life was being redeemed as salvation was, really, “creation regained”, to cite our friend Al Wolter’s book of that name. The ICS in Toronto was a big inspiration for many of us who tasted their distinctively Christian philosophy that called forth a serious critique of the idols of the age. The story and imagination of the CCO when Beth and I were working for them led them to create (with just a tiny bit of help from Beth and me) the legendary Pittsburgh Jubilee Conference, holding its 50th anniversary gathering this February. That event, as you surely know if you follow my rambles and our book curating here, is dedicated to helping young adults (and anybody else who may show up) see their calling as learners and their eventual vocations in the work-world, as central to their spirituality and the meaning of their lives. We walk with God, in the power of the Spirit, together, in such a way as to bear witness to what NT Wright would call “God’s new creation project.” A few years ago they started doing a pre-conference for adults, too, called Jubilee Professional. You should get yourself to Pittsburgh next February. Anyway, it was all of that that inspired us to start Hearts & Minds in the way that we did.

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I’ve been teaching a small adult ed class at First Presbyterian Church in York about the implications of the resurrection. For weeks I’ve been citing N.T. Wright, affirming the reality of God’s Kingdom breaking into our lives with the resurrected Jesus as the pioneer, the first fruits, the One whose very risen body vindicates his upside-down ways of bringing in the Kingdom. (I’m looking at the second chapter of Ron Sider’s Christ and Violence next week, by the way, that also dwells on the cross and bodily resurrection as we live as Easter people.)  Jesus’s post-resurrection meals are nice reminders of the ordinariness of Easter spirituality, aren’t they? We affirm this life and the next, celebrating now how they are overlapping, in Christ, the New Man, inviting us to get on board His radical gospel train.

Again, this “all of life redeemed” Kingdom vision and the ethics of living as Easter living is what motivated us to create Hearts & Minds in Dallastown so many years ago. They were breathy days, agitating around MLK Day and trying to stop the nuclear arms race and encouraging Christian artists to make a difference with redemptive aesthetics.

I love that the year-long devotional collection of short pieces from Wright’s many books (Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope, The Day the Revolution Began, etc.) starts with Easter! [See On Earth As In Heaven: Daily Wisdom for Twenty-First Century Christians by N.T. Wright (Harper) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.] In one excerpt Wright draws some distinctions between Lent and Eastertide; if Lent is for pulling up some weeds and cleaning up the garden, Easter is surely the time for planting, bearing fruit, making something of the goodness God has given. We should be taking up new creation projects, wherever we find ourselves.

Which is a long way of saying that we stock books on business and law, art and politics, science and psychology, agriculture and medicine, recreation and ecology. We carry Christian (or at least wise) books on urban planning and human sexuality and architecture and criminal justice, economics and sports, police work and education. We’ve got so much to help public school teachers and health care workers and business people and artists not to mention parents, citizens, and shoppers.

We explain this breadth of our inventory of relevant Christian books by saying that Christ is Lord and Redeemer of every zone of life so we need to offer helpful resources for Christians living out their faith in the complicated social settings where they find ourselves. But we also use terms of what Andy Crouch calls “culture-making.” Indeed, he wrote one of the foundational books for our whole book ministry, Culture-Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP; $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) Most of the best books on a Christian view of work start with this essential orientation, as well, reflecting on our human calling, to be humans made in the image of God and to be responsible, in our spheres of influence, for helping develop —  or to “tend and keep” in the language of Genesis 2 — the worlds of creation and cultures.

All of this, I must say, is how I understand the Kingdom of God, the very heart of the gospel, the meaning of our faith as agents of God’s new creation project.

None of it sounds very churchy, does it?

And yet, the local church is, in many ways, the very hub of Christian action in the world. As a gospel-centered, Kingdom-preaching faith is proclaimed and nurtured among the gathered, worshipping, people of God, we are transformed and sent out. It is simplistic, I suppose, but I like the lingo many congregations use — we are gathered and scattered. The local church is the central hub of the Kingdom of God. Yes we all need a very tender and intimate gospel that frees us from guilt and shame. And, yes, we all need a vision for our lives, a sense that we matter, that our work matters, that God will “confirm the works of our hands: (Psalm 90:17.) And church is where we get that deep down in our bones.

But, truly, desperately, even, we all need the church. And while the Kingdom of God that Jesus inaugurated is not only about forming a worshipping body — it’s a bigger story than that, the trajectory towards the renewal of all things — but it is certainly nothing less. In our day and age, the local church is more important than ever. Regardless of your denomination, you congregation’s size, or style of worship, your congregation needs to — urgently needs to —be vibrant and good, beautiful, healthy.

Maybe you need some books to inspire you towards congregational health, refreshing you about this essential aspect of Christian life.

ALL BOOKS ARE 20% OFF. Please scroll to the end for the links to our secure order form page. Just tell us what you want, where to send it, how your going to pay and we’ll take it from there.

10 NEW BOOKS ON THE CHURCH

The Church: A Guide for the People of God Brad East (LexhamPress) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is another small, handsomely crafted and nicely printed hardback in the “”Christian Essentials” series that include little books such as The Apostles Creed, The Lord’s Prayer, and more. The black pages between chapters with distinctive graphics make this a very cool book to hold and study. It is not a practical study about congregational health or revitalization but a foundational exploration of God, God’s people, and how the entire scope of the Bible’s redemptive story points us not only to Christ (of course) but finally to His church. Naturally, it is not a building but a body. As it says on the back cover, the church “is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God’s story where our needs and hopes are found.”

“…the church is not peripheral or optional in the life of faith. Rather, it is the very beating heart of God’s story where our needs and hopes are found.”

The important Catholic Biblical scholar Matthew Levering says that “this book is pure delight!” He calls it “inspiring, instructive, enriching, beautifully-written.” He is not the first to have said that “this book makes one want to be a Christian.” Stanley Hauerwas says “the theology in this book is at once scriptural and creative.”

By the way, Brad East is the author of the recent book for youth by Eerdmans called Letters to a Future Saint which I really liked and which you may recall us promoting here. He’s ecumenical, and a young, vibrant prof teaching theology at Abilene Christian University in West Texas.

Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact Missy Wallace & Lauren Gill (Redeemer City-to-City) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I’ve mentioned this before but have to list it here. These two authors are acquaintances and fans of Hearts & Minds and they really get what I’ve said in my preamble to this column. I noted that many of the books we curate for your consideration here at BookNotes are about Christian cultural engagement, personal discipleship for the life of the world, books about the spirituality of human flourishing and artful studies of beauty and goodness. Of course we need a Biblically-guided Kingdom vision for all of that, placing our human endeavors for social renewal and cultural reformation within a full gospel context. Which is to say, we need the church, we need preaching and sacraments, hymns and Sunday school classes, pot-lucks and fellowship hours. We need pastors to disciple us and spiritual directors to walk with us. We need worship. We need Christian community. We need the church.

If we are going to live out this full-orbed vision of cultural relevance and savvy discipleship, harmless as doves and sneaky as snakes, we will need to hear the history of redemption preached faithfully from the Scriptures in a way that applies the Bible to life. Forgive the old, dying categories, but it seems fair to say that neither old, liberal churches that want social reform without gospel clarity nor conservative churches that want evangelical revival without any social transformation have cultivated a movement of Christian people serving God gently in all of life, seeing the redemptive links between good worship and graceful work, between liturgy and labor. Somehow most congregations — mainline denomination and evangelical, megachurches and wee kirks — have promulgated a sort of congregational life that doesn’t robustly equip people for thinking Christianly about life and times, culture and work, callings and vocations. For many, such intregal connections are incidental and haphazard, at best.

No more! Redeemer’s Global Faith & Work Initiative has been at it for a while, now, helping congregations all over the world create spaces for professionals and other work-a-day Christians to develop — as this book promises to offer — “theological foundations of faith and work”, “practical frameworks for understanding and addressing brokenness in individuals and systems” and seeing “roadmaps for implementing the principles of faith and work within their own church and city.” Do you want to offer your congregation a bigger picture of who God is and how GOd’s redemptive work in the world night impact their daily grind? Can you help your congregants flourish as they serve as citizens, workers, volunteers, artists, philanthropists? Here are “tools and resources to build faith and work into your church.”

Listen to  Abe Cho, pastor and vice-president of “Thought Leadership” at Redeemer City to City in New York. He applauds his friends and this book:

Every sentence, every framework, every tool and case study are the hard-won fruit of decades of ministry tests, cross-cultural, cross-sector work, reflection, and distillation.

Or, listen to Michaela O’Donnell of the esteemed Max DePress Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological seminary (and co-author of Life in Flux, which she wrote with our Pittsburgh friend, Lisa Slayton) who says,

This book should be required reading for eery church leader who believes the people of God are called to live out their faith in eery sphere of life — including their work.

In Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact you will find 13 fabulously thoughtful and yet “on-the-ground useful chapters followed by 17 different helpful appendices. Holy smokes, this book should be really well known and widely used.

The back cover asks about the opportunity the people of your church have to serve God “right where they are” and what it would look like if their church saw their work as an opportunity. “What if the call to love their neighbors started with the place they spend forty hours a week?” This book will help you answer that question.

The Reason for Church: Why the Body of Christ Still Matters in an Age of Anxiety, Division, and Radical Individualism Brad Edwards (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Remember last week I suggested some books that were both culturally savvy and quite practical for daily discipleship, books that combine a bit of social analysis with the call to faithful Christian living? This could have been on that list, but I was holding it for this week’s list. As you can tell from the subtitle, it explores why the church “still matters” in this particular age. He mentions the growing crisis of anxiety, our cultural and social and racial divisions, and the radical individualism that haunts us more than ever. Can we “rediscover the goodness and beauty of the body of Chris” in a time when so many folks are unchurched and de-churched? You know it — if you care at al about the local faith community of which you are apart (assume you are a part of such a community you know you’ve lost members.

This pastor — founder of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado and host of the lively podcast PostEverything — is convinced that much of our distrust and dysfunction in the the church is rooted in a debilitating individualism. He, of course, is not the first to say this, and it has been discussed by cultural and social and theological commentators for decades. This has been explored by social scientists and astute pastors and leaders have followed this — from “Shiela-ism” (the name of the religion that a woman named Shiela told Robert Bellah that she practices as described in the 1980s Habits of the Heart) to “bowling alone” (the phenomenon described by Robert Putnam about how even while the sport of bowling is on the rise, participation in bowling leagues is down, pointing to the individualism that hinders all kinds of voluntary associations, including churches and ministries. The subtitle of the 2000 Bowling Alone is “The Collapse and Revival of American Community.)

In any case, this book shows how church must rethink the nature of church and it’s point for people. Lonely and skeptical exiles — some who have been hurt by the church, some who have not been, but have an existential dread about it all — must be re-connected to friends in the family of faith. With radical individualism tearing us apart, we have to offer a better story about what the church is all about.

The first half of this book (five good chapters) is called “Babel’s Brick and Mortar” which is a very clever way of getting at the cultural context and social setting of the un and de-churched. The second great half is called “The Body and Bride of Christ” which has five chapters.

There are thoughtful reflection questions that will be good for anyone to process this material but ideal for thoughtful study groups or book clubs.

The forward to this book is by Presbytery pastor Michael Keller, a sophisticated New York pastor like his late father. Keller notes,

Brad’s book is a love letter to the church and a call to recognize how, in a world of commodification and dehumanization, the covenant community found in Christ offers a way forward.

Invisible Jesus: A Book About Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ Scot McKnight & Tommy Person Phillips (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

The above-mentioned book mentions the cultural motives and trends and that huge American trouble-spot, individualism and how all that mitigates against folks being happily involved in a healthy local church. It’s important to understand. But if we are wanting to learn about those who have left the church in part to find a better, deeper way to live then we need narratives that give voice to those sorts of real people and we need to hear them well. There really are quite a lot of thoughtful folks who have left church not because they’d just rather golf or go out to brunch on Sunday, or because they are superficially hurt and turned off to church.  No, there are people with real intellectual questions and significant hurts and who recoil from bad stuff in church. This book tells some of those kinds of stories, firstly with the two authors themselves. Wow.

This is a book about the church and we stock in in our room full of books about congregational life and church stuff. But it is more about what some these days call deconstruction (so we keep it with those books as well.) It asks a vital question — it is on the back cover in colored print that fades, so it is hard to read: “Is deconstruction a problem or a prophetic voice?” Maybe this look is cleverly intentional since even the question is sometimes “invisible.”

There has been an increase in recent years of Christians who are critical of the faith they were raised in and as they’ve deconstructed their simplistic cliches or toxic beliefs to uncover more healthy ways of thinking about faith and practicing faithfulness, they’ve uncovered lots of bad stuff in the church (among other things, at least, a “renewed fundamentalism, toxic leadership, and legalistic thinking.”

Invisible Thinking shares the results of some of the most recent studies on this topic (it’s nicely written but there are some graphs and charts.) It’s a look at those who are deconstructing and how their new attitudes effects your local congregation.

The book doesn’t validate every complaint that every person makes but it doesn’t dismiss these critiques, either. And it doesn’t just try to give solutions to reverse deconstruction and the great dechurching. Rather the authors offer a posture of listening and fair evaluation as if — get this! — todays movement of deconstruction isn’t a problem to be solved but an important voice to listen to. Could it be, as they say, a “prophetic voice resisting a distorted gospel?”

Chapter by chapter these astute evangelical writers — McKnight is, of course, one of the most prolific and intersting NT guys working today and Philips is a pastor in Tampa — share stories of those who have walked the path of deconstruction without losing their faith. Each chapter has a different theme. It provides a major challenge to local churches to be self-aware and honest about what they believe (and how it gets said), what they teach, how they practice their life together, and how their spirituality shapes their community on the ground.

Ryan Burge (one of the best researchers out there on this topic) affirms the book saying it is a “balm… for those who are worried by the number of people who seem to be leaving the church behind.”

And, of course, the point of this is Jesus. Can our churches stand with Jesus and invite those who are following Him back to their communities. In other words, it may be that we value our congregational traditions, our theological legacies, our doctrines, our practices, all more than we value Jesus. Can it be? This book names some very important stuff. Whew.

In their sympathetic and insightful book, Scot McKnight and Tommy Phillips helpfully point out that when a sensitive Christian soul realizes that a consumerist, politicized, fundamentalist, scandal-ridden Christianity looks nothing like the enduring beauty of Christ, deconstruction is conversion. — Brian Zahnd, author of When Everything’s on Fire

The Hope in Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in The Underground of Disillusionment Aimee Byrd (Zondervan) $22.99 // // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Here is another of the many books o deconstruction and the experience of disillusionment with faith, with discipleship, or with the church. Aimee Byrd is an author we’ve admired, having started on conservative Reformed publishing houses, writing for women, inviting them to read widely and think deeply about theology. As she experienced ugly feedback from nasty online voices and lost speaking engagements and faced real discrimination from those who didn’t want to have such a woman speaking, she wrote a push back against culturally defined ideologies of what a man or a woman who is Biblical might look like; Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was a critique of patriarchy and other ugly nonsense and it was moderate, thoughtful, exquisitely evangelical in conventional theological where it matters most. I couldn’t believe she had so many haters.

Now she offers hope after the experience of harm in the church and while this isn’t a tell-all expose, she doesn’t know what she is talking about. It invites the questions that hurting people are asking and —as Kristin Kobes Du Mez has written about it, it is “a book for the bruised ones, for the smoldering wicks, for the disillusioned.”

“A book for the bruised ones, for the smoldering wicks, for the disillusioned.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Byrd helps us “cultivate healthier forms of trust” by understanding how power structures work. She invites folks to understand the “limits of authority and free ourselves from tribe and celebrity culture.” Can we rediscover (or maybe discover for the first time) that our hurts matter to God and can we “take appropriate risks by speaking up when we are uncomfortable?”

The Hope in Our Scars, not unlike the Invisible Jesus one listed above (that she endorses, by the way), points us firstly to Jesus. She knows something about what the theologians call “our covenantal union with Christ” and she helps us work through hurts and frustrations by focusing on what is true and beautiful about Jesus.

But, as you can see, the subtitle mentions “the bride of Christ” which we all know is lingo for the church. Aimee Byrd may be discouraged but she has not given up on the church. This book is written gentle for those who have be wounded by toxic faith or egotistical church leaders or dumb practices that have alienated them. But she hasn’t given up on the Church.

This passionate and beautifully written book is divided into three parts, with a couple chapters under each heading. The first part is “Partners in Affliction” and the second is “Partners in Kingdom” and the third is “Partners in Endurance.”

I bet some of our BookNotes readers know somebody who needs this book, who may be, as the book puts it, “fighting to love Christ’s Bride.” Who could you give it to? Or maybe you need it yourself…

Remissioning Church: A Field Guide to Bringing a Congregation Back to Life Josh Hayden (IVP) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

We have many books like this but this rand new one seems as thorough and practical and up-to-date as any I’ve seen in quite a while. I’ve not worked through it all but I can assure you that in its 235 pages there are more ideas, plans, suggestions, guidelines, advice and theological discernment than in many similar resources. I am very, very excited to promote this among most ordinary churches I know.

I like the promotional blurb about this — “If your church feels like it’s dying, take heart — God can raise the dead.” Indeed. Many established churches really are facing decline and they struggle to minister to their communities today. But we can have hope.

So as I skim this it seems like there are at least three things boing on. One is the theology of hope, the upbeat faith that things can turn around. In this sense it is about revitalization and renewal  It isn’t the first book to suggest this, but it shows that remissioning is a gift and it happens “through descent.” This is more than “creative destruction” but that may be one way of saying it, even though the Biblical/theological point is “from death to life” As we shift from “ownership to stewardship” we can develop fresh eyes, and “prune for growth” as we “practice resurrection” This is edgy, vital stuff and older churches may not be up for it, but many of us will need to shake things up, and this is as good of a guide as I think I’ve seen.

The next portion is wisely called “Traditional Innovation.” Wow. This invites us to thing of the goal, to remember and — well, I don’t know what they mean, but I’m ager to read “Everything Is Liturgical (So Remission on Purpose!)” I think I’ll love the chapter about “The Four Spaces of Belonging in a Remissioning Context” and appreciate their guidance towards creating shared experiments (!) for “remissioning imagination.”

There is a lot going on here — including an astute chapter on race and class in the Kingdom of God. The missional task of naming the story we are a part of. Stuff on “new metrics.” A chapter on “burying preferences” for the sake of our mission. Good leaders will be needed for this audacious renewal work and they’ve got  five or six chapters on the sorts of leaders the task of remissioning will require. Wow. Spread the word…

The Shape of Our Lives: A Field Guide for Congregational Formation Philip Kenneson, Debra Dean Murphy, Stephen Fowl & James Lewis (Englewood Press) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

The Virtue of Dialogue: Becoming a Thriving Church Through Conversation C. Christopher Smith (Englewood Press) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I list these together and recommend both (but you can order either one separately.) They are both really small books, a cool size, actually, very well doe, and ideal for small groups or adult education classes or church leadership teams. I’m a big fan of these thoughtful resources and hope you’ll consider them.

Here’s just a tiny bit of backstory. C. Christopher Smith is one of the leaders at the Englewood Review of Books — big kudos to their online work! — and the “Cultivating Communities” initiative (funded in part by a “Thriving Congregations” grant from Lily) of which Chris and his pastor (from Englewood Christian Church) are a part. They do a newsletter called “A Deeper Life” and they serve cohorts of congregational leaders who want help focusing on being a community shaped by the ways of Jesus. They partner with Misso Alliance and do really substantial formational work.

Anyway, these two books emerged from their years of conversations and experience in helping a variety of missional faith communities learn to be healthier as a congregation and more faithful in their presence in the neighborhood.

The best introduction to their vision of congregational formation is in the first volume, The Shape of Our Lives. This really is a roadmap (as Lisa Rodriguez-Watson, National Director of Missio Alliance puts it) “for engaging with the complexities of our time, urging us to embrace a vision of intentional formation, rooted in a deep understanding of who we are and what we are called to be as the body of Christ.”

There are seven short chapters with inviting and reflective questions to enhance dialogue and further the learning process in your church. I very highly recommend it.

The Virtue of Dialogue is a key little resource, new content, but drawn somewhat from the great book Chris wrote called How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church. That is a amazing book, rich and intersting, but maybe a bit much for some small groups or leadership teams. The Virtue of Dialogue is concise and succinct and really is, in the words of Scot McKnight, “revolutionary for your own faith community.” There are five chapters and good discussion questions. There is a fascinating little appendix which emerged from their own struggles at Englewood to be a “talking together” church focused on how they saw themselves in the story of God’s redemptive work in the world. Those few “Questions to Engage in Conversation” are really interesting, pointed and fun.

I trust my friend Mandy Smith so much. She is the author (most recently) of Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God. She nicely says:

For years I’ve been deeply encouraged by the story of Englewood Christian Church and their capacity for the mess and mystery of community life in this fractious culture. As I read this book, I’m anticipating a future where hard conversations can happen in positive ways, where we’re not so worried about that old bullying culture that we avoid the important conversations. Hear their story, learn their practices and receive their hope that ‘churches can still mature into the full stature of a body that bears a striking resemblance to Jesus. — Mandy Smith, Pastor and

I haven’t seen it yet but we’re taking PRE-ORDERS for the third in the little “Cultivating Communities Series” which is due in JUNE 2025. It will be called Form of the Word: Making Sense of Scripture in the Body of Christ (Englewood Press; $15.99 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE – $12.79.)

If this were a listing of older books on the nature of the church, you know I’d name one of my all times favorites, also co-authored by C. Christopher Smith, called Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus (IVP; $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19.) Yes, you saw what I did there. Yay.

Beyond the Church and Parachurch: From Competition to Missional Extension Angie Ward (IVP) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Do people use these terms — “church” and “parachurch” anymore? I guess so, since this book is brand new, good stuff from one of our favorite publishers. It sure was a hot debate when we were working for a parachurch mission and nobody had written much on this vexing matter. What is a para church organization, a non-church-related nonprofit ministry and what is its relationship to the local body? The author of this great-looking new study, Angie Ward, has her PhD and is the director of the Doctor of Ministry program (and professor of leadership studies) at Denver Seminary. (Her book I Am a Leader: When Women Discover the Joy of Their Calling is published by NavPress; $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79 is also published by IVP and is excellent.)

Dr. Ward is also the adept organizer and editor of three volumes of fabulous essays, creative writing, and messages called “Kingdom Conversations.” To hard to read and only a bit provocative, we’ve promoted all three: When the Universe Cracks: Living as God’s People in Times of Crisis, Kingdom and Country: Following Jesus in the Land that You Love, and The Least of These: Practicing a Faith without Margins.

If you or anybody you financially support is involved in an unconventional ministry, a mission agency, a church-planting network, a social service nonprofit, even a faith-based school or college, that perhaps is sometimes referred to as a para-church group, this book is for you. She gives a history and a theology of the church and of parachurch groups and “forges a new paradigm of missional extensions. Rather than focusing on structures and institution, Ward focuses on apostolic function, calling the church in all its forms to flow in networks that grow in missional witness.”

That is a mouthful but for those with ears to hear, it does place her in a particular stream of thinking about networks and church planting and Kingdom collaboration. And I’m very eager to read it as I think I will agree with her multi-faceted view of Kingdom institutions that may or may not be connected to a particular congregation but are nonetheless forging faith communities on mission for particular needs. This will help us re-think our ecclesiology, less in terms of denominational loyalties and more shaped by the big picture of God’s work in the world. Hooray for that.

Angie Ward might just have resolved the long debate about the divide between the church and the parachurch. She sees their differences not so much in terms of purpose, personnel, or geography but in terms of specialization. Angie says the church must be missional in its role as a community, servant, and messenger in the world, while parachurches are missional extensions into one or other of those areas. That kind of thinking just might break the logjam in this discussion. Angie Ward’s book is a winsome mix of solid ecclesiology, excellent missiology, and a deep love for God’s people. — Michael Frost, founder of the Tinsley Institute at Morling College in Sydney, Australia, and coauthor with Christiana Rice of To Alter Your World

 

Heather Karls Chaniott, CEO and president of Missions Development International says it is a “must read.” She exclaims that: “This book will challenge and inspire you to reclaim your ecclesiology, reframe your perspective on ministry, and revolutionize your understanding of God’s kingdom work. In a world shaped by siloed ministry models, it asks: What if the Lord is calling us to something better? Discover how God designed the body of Christ as a connected ecosystem and find your unique role within it. A must-read for ministry leaders seeking deeper kingdom impact!”  Man, I like that quote. This is good stuff, eh?

The Nine Asks: Creating Safer and More Courageous Spaces Kimberly Danielle (WJK) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This is not an overtly religious book, even if published by a denominational publishing house. It could be that for some congregations you might need to supplement each of its nine points with Biblical insight. I think that would be easy to do.

This book isn’t even about church or congregational life, but about creating spaces and organizations and places which are safe for a diversity of people. It asks us to practice nine specific things, “asks” as she calls them, to create an ethos of safety, honor and respect as people tell their stories.

(In a way, it reminds me of another secular book I recommend for church use, a book on literal (physical) space design, called The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker…)

Kimberly Danielle — who has worked in higher education with college students — is a born storyteller, it seems, a strong black woman with a certain cadence and power and whimsy and sternest in her writing voice. She also thinks others are storytellers and this book is premised on the notion that people want to be authentic, vulnerable, even, but can only really do so in a safe space. This is a book about creating trusting relationships by following certain vital habits.

The Nine Asks is not only about creating multi-ethnic spaces where people of color and other minorities feel welcomed and can rely on the group’s participants to be decent, although it is, it seems to me, at least useful for those wanting to nurture multi-racial faith communities. It is, however, larger in scope, and invites us to think about what kind of practices create welcoming demeanors and relationships for anyone is worried about sharing. You don’t have to think to hard about the many sorts of folks who might be timid or fearful to be honest about who they really are. Can we create spaces that are — in Kimberly Danielle’s colorful phrase — both safe and courageous?

Her nine asks are opened up with lots of social psychology and even a tiny bit of neuroscience. She tells stories and offers anecdotes alongside teachers and facilitators in the emerging science of group dynamics She’s done a few TED talks, if you want to check her out.

The “asks” are usually pretty clear-headed stuff, although some are surprising, and what she does to unpack them may strike you as provocative and thought-provoking. She looks at being honest, respecting boundaries (“and thresholds” which she explains), taking time to listen. One is “Grant Permission to Go Deeper or Decline” A few of these asks are allusive but she explains them well — “Come Back to Me” and “Stay in Your Seat.”

One that follows the Biblical teaching about refraining from gossip is nicely explained — “Honor Confidentiality.” Ms Danielle offers some great in-you-face reminders about sharing other people’s business (and why some personality types are likely to do that, even if inadvertently.)

Ask #6 is fascinating. It is “Respect the Process of Learning “Right” Language. Not everyone will agree with all of her insight here but you surely should consider this.

And don’t forget the big one about not judging others. My, my, I’ve jumped in to quickly to give an opinion (or even rebuke) and I’ve regretted it. Haven’t you? The Ask 3, “Practice No Judgement” is going to be tricky for some, I bet.

After the first couple chapters on the nature of stories and why they matter and creating a “container” as she calls it, and then the nine asks which help create a safer container which can nurture courage, she has six more chapters about “practicing the asks.” This is challenging stuff, good for any social setting, and it seems to me some church groups — at least those who have read and studied the Englewood book about the virtue of dialogue and who know well some basic principles about hospitality and welcome and generous postures of conversation — will want to explore this energetic volume.

Her bio says a lot: Kimberly Danielle is CEO of KiMISTRY, a consulting firm specializing in storytelling to address justice, generational healing, and trauma-informed wellness. She supports youth resilience initiatives and cofounded the ADAMH-funded Black Community Ambassadors Support Program, focusing on mental wellness for Black helpers.

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BookNotes

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I am going to start this BookNotes without much preamble, other than to say these are a handful of very good books — two a bit deeper than the others — that will help you understand your faith a bit better. We don’t all need Charles Taylor to help remind us (although I recommend Jamie Smith’s How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor for the best intro to that heady philosopher) that Christian faith just feels less compelling and in some cases may be distasteful to many here in the mid 2020s. For bunches of reasons — from the crosswinds of deep secularization documented so tediously by Taylor to the serious harm done by church corruption in covering up sexual abuse (in Catholic and conservative evangelical traditions, especially) and the obvious way God-talking MAGA ideologues have turned people away from Jesus in the religiously weird Trump years — here in North America, at least, many churches are in decline. To live out our discipleship well, we have to know something about the waters we’re swimming in.

There are tons of great books that make a case for the Christian faith. We have thousands! Some are whimsical and chatty, others offer no-nonsense Bible teaching. Some are wild and creative, some are nearly mystical. Some are newly in print and others are centuries old.

This week’s BookNotes offers ten books that are thoughtful and vibrant, solid studies offering robust faith in our secular age. I put these books together on this list in part because they almost all have a sense of cultural awareness and a couple or seriously laden with allusions from pop culture, film, and gave a very contemporary tone. I love books that are theologically rich and culturally savvy, books that weave together citations from old theologians and rock music, whose authors know how to connect with us by bringing in an illustration from Netflix or the Grammys. Preachers, take note: most of these authors are great communicators and bring us all upbeat, readable, relevant books full of vital insights about faith and discipleship in these times. Hooray.

Be sure to click through to read about each one. At the end there are links to order or to inquire if you have more questions about them. And a reminder that we are still closed for in-store shopping, but eager to visit with folks in the back yard.  ALL ARE 20% OFF.

The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn Out World David Zahl (Brazos) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I almost wanted to make this whole post be about this one book as I so thoroughly enjoyed it, for several important reasons. I hope you know Zahl — he’s the founder of the cool Mockingbird Ministries (including their podcast and blog, etc.) and author of the spectacular Low Anthropology and, before that, Secularity. You can tell from those titles that he’s a bit brainy. He loves writing about cultural trends, puts his finger on the pulse of much of what has been going down for the last decades and for that matter, centuries. He’s gets the big trends in the West and he follows pop culture and baseball and rock music enough to follow much the hottest bit of the current zeitgeist. Although those two previous books had lots of cultural criticism — citing everybody from Jaques Ellul to Francis Spufford to Hartmut Rosa to many social psychology researchers — they were also thrillingly Biblical and hugely beneficial for thoughtful Christian readers. This new one is no different, even if it seems even more lively, more readable, more tender

The Big Relief draws its name and pretty much it’s main thesis from this description of sensation we all long for — in the very moving introduction he notes terms like venting, refueling, caring out space, going off-grid, zoning out — we all do it in different way and what we’re looking for is relief. We could be seeking relief from the pressures of the “drumbeat of demand” of daily life or the “burden of a mortgage payment or the grip of a chronic illness.” Many of us want out of all the socio-political turmoil these days and some of us just carry an existential burden “like the pressure to justify our lives and demonstrate that we’re worthy of the air we breathe.” Who of us haven’t heard power sermons to remind us that we need not attend to that inner voice saying we’re not good enough. Zahl knows how to help us understand the pressure we feel to belong, to keep up to say the right thing. There’s a lot of pressure and he names it brilliantly. With great stories, quips, wit, and stories from his rock music loves as a child of the 1990s. Dig that!

This book, if you’ve not figured it out, is about God’s grace. He explains what grace is — existentially, as we experience it, and theologically (even playfully digging into Lutheran notions of imputation and such. I love that he cites Anne Lamott and Alister McGrath’s Iustitia Dei (almost back to back) and even though I’m not a grunge guy, he knows his Nirvana and Alice in Chains which is pretty darn great to learn in a book citing the likes of Melanchthon and Robert Farrar Capon.

This is, hands down, the best book on grace since the beloved two by Philip Yancey — What’s So Amazing About Grace and Vanishing Grace. We have a whole section here in the bookstore about grace and this will be there with the best of them.

He knows how to tell a story, too, weaving together confessions from his own life, tender scenes from the NBC series Parenthood or a classic shaming scene in Better Call Saul when the older brother won’t respect Jimmy as a colleague in his legal practice. This makes this theologically-informed invitation to experience relief “in a world that demands performance and perfection” both very, very helpful (who isn’t a times a weary soul who doesn’t needed reminded of the great truths of the gospel) and a real blast to read.

I love that there is an endorsing blurb on the back by the excellent, excellent writer — who is incredibly funny, too — Harrison Scott Key, author of Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, The World’s Largest Man, and the more recent, award-winning How To Stay Married.

Key writes:

The Big Relief reminds us that grace is a party, a piñata exploding with God’s best candy, a free and never-ending gift. This book just might help you fall back in love with the weirdest, wildest theological concept in all creation.

Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness Andrew Root (Baker Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

On the heel of the lovely and thoughtful The Big Relief there is this one — an author Zahl cites in his other books, whose work is somewhat on the same path. Root is committed to a different level of scholarship, here, and his book is longer and much heftier than Zahls, and less immediately reader-friendly, as they say, but a valuable companion volume. While this recent one doesn’t seem to be branded as part of the heady previous series — the last was The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms which is exceptionally important and not unrelated to this new one — Evangelism In An Age of Despair has that same approach, blending philosophical study, deep cultural assessments, and refreshing new ideas about how the church can be uniquely faithful despite these cultural temptations to align the gospel message with the methods of the current age.

I’m not wrong in intuiting that these two books go together, as I’ve noticed that Zahl, in fact, has a blurb on the back of Evangelism in an Age of Despair. He writes:

An astounding contribution. I greatly needed this book (and the consolation to which it points). So too, I’d expect, does the world–to say nothing of the church. Highly, highly recommended.”

This book, written with the detail and scholarship Root has become known for, starts with a lengthy story of a woman who is invited to church by a work colleague. It is intentionally detailed and her story comes up later in the book. The question, as it is framed from the start, is how joyous and how difficult and freighted this whole business of sharing God’s good news with others can be.

In an early chapter full of scholarly footnotes and intriguing social science data Root makes the case that while mainline denominational churches are, understandable, not comfortable with the pushy and often theologically shallow (if not arrogant) fundamentalist evangelism styles, they can’t give up the notion of what might be called “soft” evangelism. That is, even in this late-modern era, Root tries to contextualize and reimagine evangelism and outreach, given the consumeristic ways of our capitalist culture (and how some evangelism practices actually play into that non-christian way of life.) You can see the way he complicates, if not problematizes, the nature of our witness.

And yet, he asserts that the church is called not only to a life together in Christ — the crucified God, we must recall — but to live into the process of building signposts for the announcement of that good news. Can we recover notions of evangelism that are inherently consistent with the Biblical worldview and that share a message that is coherent and sensible to moderns?

Here’s part of what he gets at, a pretty new notion for those who read even the best book on sharing the gospel well: he believes that consolidation, walking with others in their suffering, sharing the news of a God who dies, living with pain and sorrow, is the key to late-modern evangelism.

I do not think that Root cites it at all but some of the best stuff I’ve read along these lines was in a seminal book, for me, especially the large second half of the brilliant Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age by Brian Walsh & Richard Middleton (IVP; $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39.) Written in the mid-1990s when many evangelicals were decrying postmodern philosophers, they were quick to affirm the cirque of postmodernity to the idols of the modern world, and ask how the church might join that conversation with Biblical fidelity. There is nothing like it, and their key, they suggest, is telling the story of the Scriptures in such a way as to show that the key character is the God who suffers. This is the key for Root, as well, and Evangelism in an Age of Despair could have easily found conversation partners in that remarkable work.

As Root explores “the architecture of our sad times” and wonders how the gospel might relate to that, he offers heady, but important insight. This is one of the most intellectually rich volumes I’ve picked up in months. As Mihee Kim-Kort (famous for Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith) puts it, “As always, Root’s work is rich and generative. I’m eager to ponder this more.” You should be, too. This is an important, demanding book and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse Miroslav Volf (Brazos Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I have celebrated Volf before in our BookNotes columns and it has been a delight to serve him by selling his books at events and conferences; he’s a good and gracious scholar and we admire him a lot. His most recent co-authored volume of theology is 2022’s The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything Brazos; $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39) which carried a foreword by N.T. Wright and picks up on important themes about home-making and home-coming, addressing this “aching sense that there is nowhere we truly belong” these days, but that God’s creation is, in fact, the home for humans with their God.

Volf’s Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School has been the setting for some very practical guides to living faith in our complicated world. (A certain Dallastown bookseller even has a blurb on the inside of A Public Faith) and his co-authored most recent volume is A Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most (Open Fields; $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40.) Anyway, Volf is an important theological voice, writing both exquisite heavy texts and more practical, down-to-Earth stuff as well.

This new one is a bit meatier than the average self-help sort of book (but not super scholarly.) There are many good paperbacks out nowadays about ambition and the dangers of greed, even as we wonder about our own deepest dreams and hopes. The Cost of Ambition, Volf tells us, had its genesis in thinking he did while preparing for a keynote talk at a conference in Grand Rapids about faith and sport. What is competition, after all, and in the context of play and sports, even, how do we align our athletics with the blunt New Testament mandate to put others before ourselves? In what ways do the virtue of humility play into our lives beyond sports? Is it helpful to compare ourselves to others (let alone to be better than then?) What if it is true that this is all quite toxic, that our drive for superiority “undermines the very things we value most”?

A serious study of this topic necessarily leads to huge philosophical and theological and spiritual questions. And so, in The Cost of Ambition, Volf invites (so to speak) three conversation partners to the table of his in-depth reflection. To get at this question  (what does it mean to show honor to others, to live in graceful ways in the world?) Volf looks at the teachings of three vital thinkers: Soren Kierkegaard, John Milton, and the Apostle Paul. And, yes, he has a chapter on Jesus, as well called, “From Jesus to Genesis.”

There is a hefty conclusion that may be worth the price of the book: he offers twenty-four thesis under the heading “Against Striving for Superiority.” Wow. Just wow.

“Scholarly but readable, and combining moral clarity with compassion, this book is essential on a defining temptation of our times.” — Elizabeth Oldfield, author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times

Platforms to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God’s Presence Mark Sayers (Moody Press) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Wow, this is my kind of book — easy to read, upbeat and inspiring, clear and yet informed by the very best contemporary cultural criticism and deep social thinking. I’ve admire eery one of Sayers growing list of good books from his study of French deconstruction and considering as he playful explored Paris Hilton The Trouble with Paris) on through is critique of Jack Kerouac to his recent short book on leadership, A Non-Anxious Presence. An Aussie, for a while he did a great podcast with John Mark Comer (“This Cultural Moment”) and I’m told he now hosts a lively one called the Rebuilders podcast. He’s sharp and has a unique ability to quickly sum up the basic themes of many social theorists and cultural critics. Let’s just say his good books are not as thick as, say, Andrew Root’s, even if they are nearly birds of a feather.

Sayer here looks at what he calls the “platform” society which emphasizes individualism and performance “It’s rooted in the belief that self and personal desires are preeminent.” As it says on the back, Sayers explores how platform mentality is misshaping our contemporary world and contrasts this to the biblical call of Christians to live as pillars.

He looks at the values and ethos of the Silicon Valley and I wasn’t surprised to see him cite Lewis Mumford (The Myth of the Machine, for instance.) I was glad to see him exploring the rise of capitalism and the myth of progress. He  looks at the ancient world quite a bit and weaves it together with some take-away bullet points and lots of keen and useful advice for contemporary Christian leaders. He invites us to steward well our influences as we point to the new creation. Platforms to Pillars is a gem of a little book.

Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life Beyond Productivity Maria Bowler (Baker Books) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Oh my, this artsy, even flamboyant, manifesto is to be read, the author tells us, as if we have received it like a message in a bottle. Dip in at will, reading it back to front — she doesn’t care. “Who am I to instruct you?” she muses, saying that this is not a guidebook or user’s manual. There will be no formulas. I’m hooked, digging this bohemian anti-guidebook.

And yet, there are some remarkable points here, stuff that can indeed serve as sort of a guide, if not formulaic. She says when she studied with Benedictine nuns much of their time was spent unlearning. So that’s the major middle chunk of this collection of relatively short pieces. Dip in there, at least and unlearn (or start to) one of the most harmful myths foisted on us all: you are what you do. You are worth what you make. That is, this Making Time book is in the same constellation as others in this week’s BookNotes theme as it is (finally) a book about grace, about gracefulness found amidst a culture with a harder, merit-based ethic. A book about discovering abundance in a world of scarcity, as they say.

The first third of the book explores “how productivity has shaped the way we see everything, for the worse.”  I think the last book I grappled with on this topic was the lovely IVP title, The Radical Pursuit of Rest by John Kessler which carried the radical subtitle: Escaping the Productivity Trap. That good book worried about our cultural weariness and posited a theory of rest which we can only embrace if we resist the “productivity trap” and resist thinking we must be productive. Maria Bowler’s book takes that a step further and deeper — with a lot of zeal and zest and pathos. She tells about her own struggle to keep up and the subsequent depression she faced keeping it all together.

In the center “Undoing” portion, the sub-title asks, “If I am not what I do, how will I know what to do?” This is remarkable stuff, naming and showing how we might undo everything for our inner knowledge (indeed, our very view of our very selves) to undoing fixing and pressure and false guilt. She has an excellent and important chapter undoing “sentimentality” which shows how deep all this goes. There is a chapter called Perhaps and another on Numbness.

The third big part asks “How to bring your inner world to the outer world” and those entries are under the rubric of “Making” This is abundant and delightful and invites us to explore “our burning spark” and “making with the fear of failure” in view. Can we begin?

I am not so sure this book is only for artists, creatives, makers. It does seem that is her particular setting and her allusive spirituality is certainly lovely for artists of all sorts. But much of this — alongside some pretty astute cultural analysis and the citations from the usual suspects (Max Weber, Frederick Taylor, Hannah Arendt) — is going to be nicely useful for anyone coping with regret and stress and pressure they are “crafting a life.” In the end, she yields to Robin Wall Kimmerer and Walt Whitman and Simon Weil. It has been a while since I was reminded of the contemplative classic, Primary Speech, by Ann and Barry Ulanov, and they are here, too. What a remarkable little book this is.

Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness Bobby Jamieson (Waterbrook) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

I wasn’t aware of this widely-respected Baptist pastor who was originally from San Francisco where he had a career as a jazz saxophonist. After changing his career he got a PhD from Cambridge, where he taught Greek and New Testament. Anyway, he’s now a pastor in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and I think this is his first book. And it is extraordinary.

Again — like the other books on this list — Jamieson is putting the Biblical texting into (as he promises) “dialogue with profoundly insightful critics of modernity to show that life in the modern West is a conveyor belt toward burnout.” (Like the other authors on this list, he, too, cites Hartmut Rosa and also the likes of Wendell Berry and Norma Wirzba.) He shows how the ancient Wisdom text can “help us dismantle our false hopes one by one, learning ground for true satisfaction.

It is well written and in many ways a delightful read. But it is substantive, philosophically informed, but not dry or overly academic. This is what a basic Christian living book can be, inviting us to develop and nurture a more eternal horizon for our lives.’’

Books about happiness are everywhere, and, these days, they are often informed by a new-age kind of positivity or a strict sort of Stoicism. This invites us to ponder the deeper questions in light of the God of the Bible as revealed in Qohelet’s poetry.

Jamieson has the book arranged in three “floors” as he calls the units. The Ground Floor is entitled “Absurd” and carries the epigram “A Memory of the World Unbroken.” The second part is the Middle Floor” which is called  “Gift” and it says, “The Present, at Last.”  The Top Floor is named “Beyond” and the subtitled phrase is, “Through the Darkest of Crisis.”   

This question of whether we should be happy looms throughout the book. He insists it is a driving force of most humans, including the writer of Ecclesiastes and that he learns that even “everything” is “not enough.”  The book, though, seems irreligious at times, and this sparks great curiosity for serious readers.

This isn’t a standard academic commentary although Jamieson has done his homework, citing Kruger (from the Hermeneia Critical Commentary series) to Leo Perdue to Michael V. Fox, and the must-read, remarkably insightful Craig Bartholomew.) Sadly, he missed the 2023 book from Dordt College Press, God Picks Up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices by Calvin Seerveld. It’s very creatively done, arranged a script of oral choral presentation. In any case, Everything is Never Enough is not a complicated read and it is not dour. “Resilient Happiness”? I could use me some of that! You too?

Do you feel thwarted and cramped by the ambient lameness of the modern world and suspect the problem goes deep? Fresh, direct, and enlivening… Jamieson helps us to see the gifts that God is “constantly flinging’ at us.”  — Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The World Beyond Your Head

Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age edited by Brett McCracken & Ivan Mesa (Crossway) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

One of the things I like about the evangelical movement called The Gospel Coalition is that they bring the rigors of historic evangelical faith to bear on the contemporary culture; I disagree with some of their vibe and some of their positions, but I like their savvy cultural engagement when it comes to film and literature, tech and digital culture, and a balanced sort of political theology for Christ-centered public witness. In any case, some of the TGC books are really worth reading, even if you find yourself in more mainline denominational circles or subscribe to a more progressive theological vision.

This one, for instance: I’ve been wishing, literally, for something like this for quite some time. I cite Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (and a few others of his) all the time; I can hardly do a Zoom workshop or conference breakout sentence or church sermon on reading and my vocation as a bookseller, without alluding to or actually reading out loud the preface of that grand book. You know the part where Postman compares and contrasts big brother taking away our books in 1984 and the other dystopian novel, Brave New World where Huxley suggests that it isn’t what we fear that will undo us, but what we (wrongly) love. In that novel, they don’t have to take our books because nobody wants them anyway: they are too busy feeling good to want to read deeply.

Postman is brilliant in his great historical assessment; he compares the deep theology and serious preaching of the Great Awakening with late 20th century televangelists and he explores the depth of political philosophy cited in the popular Lincoln-Douglas debates, contrasting that with sound bites and modern election ads.

His famous bit about how hard it is to pay attention and care deeply about the world when we have TV ads about hemorrhoids right next to news about massive death tolls in global floods or famines, is more urgent now than ever.

I don’t think he is fully right and I once chatted with him about his implicit assumption of a dualism between pop culture and so-called high culture, and that maybe it is understandable that some artists felt he was throwing them under the rolling bus.

In any case, I say all this, reminding you of the importance of Amusing Ourselves to Death (and many like it, fromThe Shallows by Nicholas Carr to the thick but important The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt) since this brand new book, co-published by TGC, brings together a handful of serious thinkers, scholars, culturally-aware pastors, and theologians to sort of update the Postman thesis and to riff on his work as it may related to 21st century digital culture. Yep, if you like Postman you’ve got to read this!

Of the many books inviting us to reconsider our relationship with screens (think of the immensely rewarding and lovely read, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch or the punchy, thoughtful, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age by Samuel James or the heavy but important Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age by sociologist Felicia Wu Song, just to name three) this new one — Scrolling Ourselves to Death really should be on your list. This matter of the digital landscape that almost all of us live in simply has to be evaluated and considered. Nobody (well, hardly anybody) wants to turn back the clock and, in any case, this is the world of digital devices we’ve got. What does it mean to be “in but not of” the culture? This book can help.

This collection of pieces assumes that “the onslaught” of social media and the ubiquity of screens are reshaping our world and “warping our minds.” Our smartphones have “brought an appetite for distraction” and the mental health challenges that have followed. How can these very modern struggles be an opportunity for the church? What does a gospel-centered approach to all of this look like? From sharp thinkers like Read Mercer Schuchardt to lovely writers like Jen Pollock Michel to the fabulous Jay Y. Kim (you have to read his Listen, Listen, Speak) this vital paperback brings good writing and conventional Christian wisdom to this very, very contemporary setting of media addictions and eroding virtues. The setting and grouping of the profound but readable chapters is well-arranged and the helpful pieces move from analysis to help, from understanding the times to pointing us towards life-giving reformation of our faith formation practices. Agree or not with the arguments and tone of every piece, Scrolling Ourselves to Death helps us “reclaim life.” It affirms embodiment and the delights of human flourishing and it is never far from the central teaching of God’s goodness and the beauty and relief of grace and graciousness.

The Journey of God: Christianity in Six Movements J.D. Lyonhart (IVP) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This is one heckuva book, a fun, fun, read, filled with jokes and wit and asides and nerdy, smarty-pants asides. I love it (and am still working through it, I’ll admit.) This witty philosopher and evangelical pastor is just the guy for a book like this, and it is a deeper, more polished book than his first. That one has the great title of Monothreeism: An Absurdly Arrogant Attempt to Answer All the Problems of the Last 2000 Years in One Night at a Pub. Absurdly Arrogant as it playfully is, we have it. It covers a lot of ground.

This new one shows him as a very thoughtful and widely read scholar. (I mean, the dude has a PhD from Cambridge) and remains a fellow at the Cambridge Center for the Study of Platonism. Take that if you don’t believe me he’s super smart! And he knows a bit about, well, everything from science to stand-up comedy.

I loved how the introduction of this book tells of his own wandering years, the big questions he asked (or didn’t) in his drifting teen years. He loves movies and rock songs — I’m guessing prog-rock, but I could be wrong — and tells at the outset (you’ve got to read it as I can’t paraphrase well enough) about getting into certain films. The first lines of the book tell us,

I remember the first time I saw the Lord of the Rings as a kid. I apparently sleepwalked into my parent’s room later that night, where I stood over their bed calmly informing them I was an elf and that doom was upon us all.

After a few other such episodes of, shall we say, over-identifying with characters in movies or shows Ghouls II and The Matrix (been there), for instance, he admits that he was not raised in a religious family “which might explain why I was always reaching for something in its place.” His telling of coming to faith but still not having an adequate story to live into, he says — brilliantly in my view — “God was getting out-told by beat poets, songwriters, comics, playwright, philosophers, scientists, and Quentin Tarantino.”

He continues,

“I’d just never heard the Christian story told well enough. In fact, I hadn’t really heard it told at all — Christianity only ever seemed to sputter out in fragmented pieces, cherry-picked to preach such and such a point, tied together more by appeals to faith than by any narrative logic, beauty, or moral power.”

He is not alone, I am sure.

Whether young folks are raised in mainline denominational circles or within hip evangelicalism, whether they are Catholic or Mennonite (although they might have more narrative mph and moral power than some), I’ll bet you ten bucks that they are experiencing the gospel in this sort of fragmented way, devoid of much obvious beauty or goodness.

J.D. says he wanted to call this Biblical overview, full of big tales told provocatively, A Sexy, Dramatic, Philosophical Introduction to Christianity but his publisher talked him out of it. They reminded him that philosophy was not sexy enough to sell books and that Christians would not buy a book with sexy in the title anyway. So, we get The Journey of God instead but he explains nicely how he’s come to warm to this title, and why the notion of a journey is essential to his narrative approach. And it still is, as he puts it, “less Sunday school, more Pulp Fiction.” I’m not sure it’s that wild and woolly, but ya gotta love a guy that writes a line like that. And, man, I like this guy a lot.

There are oodles of remarkable endnotes — as you might guess from a guy who named his twin boys Soren and Augustine — and he is widely read in science and cosmology, Biblical studies, ancient myths and up-to-date popular culture. The endnotes cites amazing stuff (which is why it takes me a while to wade through all 250 pages since that is part of the learning experience) but what clinches it for me — besides the witty prose and well told creation-fall-redemption sort of narrative arch of Holy Scripture — are the snide little footnotes, snarky asides and corn-ball plays on words and true confessions. There aren’t too many, but I’m glad for that playfulness that makes his philosophizing a blast. Who quotes Heidegger (noting that was a Nazi) and Ridley Scott and Francis Spufford and Dr. Seuss? Who is this guy?

The book invites people to hear the full, epic story of the Bible in these six movements — creation, fall, nation, redemption, church and end. As he says in the forward and the great concluding piece, again, he’s writing this for those who had no idea the Bible was a wild, messy, mostly coherent plot and that the Christian faith was intellectually credible and open to doubt and questions and rabbit hole debates. He’s that guy who stayed up half the night in the dorm, no doubt, asking yet another weird question about quantum physics or linguistics theories or conspiracy stories about some rock star. With or without illegal substances, this guy was funny then, I’m sure, and a gem-stone storyteller now. Thanks be to God.

Sure, he likes to invite us to say but on the other hand and he pushes readers to consider the legitimacy of the complicated questions their mostly secular or pagan neighbors are asking. (He was raised in Vancouver, which says a lot, I think.) But despite his eagerness for intellectual honesty and his delight in poking sacred cows, his answers are surprisingly, at the end of the day, robustly orthodox. He’s the evangelist and preacher man your ever-questioning skeptical college kid needs to meet.

One of the very nice features of The Journey of God is the book’s design. Kudos to IVP for having a black page in front every new chapter of the movement with that new chapter title added in white ink on that facing page. Section by section those marked-off black pages become filled with the plot line, adding the sections and subsections of the key movements in the unfolding Biblical story.

With an open mind — almost too gracious to readers to make up their own minds (“maybe not” he’ll concede) — he invites readers to embrace the coherence of this big sacred plot. He notes what happens when any part of this story is missed or misconstrued (which is a splendid benefit of this book.) And he reminds us, in the moving closing pages, that the story, finally, is about the main character, the One who not only pointed to truth, but said, “I am the truth.” And he nicely notes that this does not mean that all the other stories, myths, movies, and arguments that are not Christ-centered are necessarily fully wrong. They can point the way, so with a big vision of what some of us call common grace, he allows that the stories so many of us love, are pieces of the puzzle that find their best culmination in Jesus.

Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age Rod Dreher (Zondervan) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I won’t belavor this one as I gave it quite a bit push when it first came out a few months ago. I met Dreher once and had a blast staying up late laughing and telling stories. I came to disapprove of his increasingly hostile posture about the culture and his one-sided critique of the dangers of the secularized left. But I still read him, recalled how deeply moved I was by his two major memoirs (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life and How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem.) This new one is fabulous, a fun and provocative read and seems to me to not have that hand-wringing right-wing grievance thing going on. For those who might be reluctant to read him, I very highly recommend this. It was spectacular.

It fits nicely into the theme, such as it is, in this BookNotes. It is about standard Christian living, written by a convert to Greek/Russian Orthodoxy. Yet it is less about the glories of the Orthodox traditions and more about how our culture has gutted out meaning when we lost a sense of transcendence and what we might do to recovery a sense of the numinous. Where do we go to find mystery “in a secular age.” (Yeah, there’s Charles Taylor again.)

This does a good, breezy job diagnosing just a bit the malaise of our secularized era. But it also carries a nearly palpable sense that we long for something more, for awe and wonder, for mystery and deep joy, for meaning that is rooted in something big, deep, spiritual.

In Living in Wonder Dreher takes us on an energetic journey among those search for that more than meets the eye. That just over the horizon sense of meaning, rooted in some transcendent mystery. Although the quest is not unrelated, this is more than about listening to some old Van Morrison albums or digging into romantic poets (although that might not hurt. Ditto with Van the Man!)

This is a journey among seekers who have claimed they’ve sensed the ineffable. It includes folks who swear they’ve encountered UFOs. From Catholics with weeping icons to Pentecostals seeking wild healings, they are, unknowingly, joining a rag-tag movement of those wanting to re-enchant our disenchanted age. With Rod’s great storytelling and fine, fine writing, this holds up a deeply Christian worldview that does not discount the supernatural. He gets there by telling us about some pretty weird stuff, but that’s half the fun (although there is a chapter warning about “the dark enchantment of the occult.”) As novelist Andrew Klavan writes, “it’s thrilling to read an honest and courageous writer like Rod Dreher on the great subject of the age.” Check it out and tell me what you think.

Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel Matt Smethurst (Crossway) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

Not everyone cares for Keller’s conservative, evangelical atonement theology (finding him a bit too conventional) and not everyone cares for his culturally-savvy, philosophical tendencies (thinking he’s a bit too highbrow.) Still others, oddly, find his commitment to a cautious sort of moderate commitment to social justice to be too woke for their tastes.

For me, I think he gets it all just about right, even though I might take exception with certain things across the board. I am not PCA and I don’t buy some of his formulations.

Still, I have read almost all of his books, had wonderful conversations with him (or a few rare occasions) and had the privilege of selling books at his congregation as they would bring in speakers — from NT Wright to Bryan Stevens to Jamie Smith to Miroslov Volf. He was a great example of a thoughtful, gentle, compelling evangelical and I think more should know about his vision of social engagement rooted in a no-nonsense commitment to the first things of the gospel.

Before he died, my friend Ned Bustard of Square Halo Books, pulled together a host of friends who wrote essays about him, a tribute volume called The City for God: Essays Honoring the Work of Timothy Keller (Square Halo Books; $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99.) Tim had a chapter in the first big Square Halo release, It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, so it was fitting that the good folks at this classy, little Lancaster-based indie publisher did this excellent festschrift. It should be better known than it is.

I also have reviewed and extolled the first major work about Keller, published after his death just a few years ago. Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen (Zondervan; $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59) has been the standard intellectual biography of this important contemporary pastor and public thinker. It was authorized by the family and covers the important theological influences that shaped his unique life and ministry.

This new book, or so I have heard, has captured the heart of Tim’s wife and others who knew him best. The Square Halo Book notwithstanding, this is an extraordinary, tender, gospel-focused exploration of what most drove Tim Keller. Smethurst gets at something very close to the heart of things as the subtitle itself illustrates — it is about “the transforming power of the gospel.” This is bedrock stuff, that the very power of grace can transform us, from the inside out, so to speak, and transformed people can transform the world.

Robust and passionate endorsements have rolled in, some usual suspects when you think of those who write beautifully about this Reformed theology that centers the transforming (“sanctifying”) power of the cross of Christ and pushes it out towards the renewal of every one of life and future. We have rave reviews from Paul David Tripp and Joni Eareckson Tada, from Sinclair Ferguson (of RTS) to Sam Ferguson (Rector of Falls Church, Anglican.) But perhaps it is the blurb from Mrs. Kathy Keller herself that is most compelling where she says it is “the most thorough examination of the biblical themes that animated all of Tim’s ministry.” She writes:

Matt Smethurst has researched an impressive amount of content for this book: sermons, books, papers, courses, articles, and unpublished conversations. He found resources even I wasn’t familiar with, and he has produced a work of scholarship that will long stand as the most thorough examination of the biblical themes that animated all of Tim’s ministry.” — Kathy Keller

By the way, if anybody is wondering, the theme of this particular BookNotes seems to be books about Christian living and contemporary faithfulness that are aware of social trends and cultural concerns and that are in conversation with some of our best social critics. While Tim Keller on the Christian Life is primarily an exploration of his most basic theological points, it is always, always, explored in the context of 21st century cosmopolitan ministry. And there are two exceptional chapters, one called “When Faith Goes to Work: Serving God and Others in Your Job” and another called “Do Justice, Love Mercy: Embodying the Compassion of the King.” In many ways, this sets Keller off from even his most astute fellow pastors these days and Smethurts is good to show these aspects of his multifaceted vision of ministry.

And, of course, there is a whole chapter on grace — Tim often said how he was indebted to a mentor, Edmund Clowney, and a sermon he preached on the parable of the Prodigal Son, which shaped significantly an milestone sermon Tim preaching in New York shortly after 9-11. As he once put it, “Apart from Jesus Christ, flagrant lawbreaking and fastidious rule keeping are dead ends.” Smethurts cites Keller says, “Jesus’s purpose is not to warm our hearts but to shatter our categories.”

It almost sounds like something David Zahl would say, which brings us back to the need we all have for a great relief.

I hope these titles are helpful and we stand ready to mail out your order today. All are 20% off. Thanks for caring.

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Thank you, friends and customers (and customers becoming friends) for reading BookNotes and for your support of our bookstore. Whether your local or among our pod of customers in Alaska, we are grateful for you.

This first little batch of books that I mention are all 20% off.But the main attraction for the next few days will be this massive sale on Brian McLaren books. A whopping 40% off. 

Like many of you these days, I’ve been thinking a lot about what sustains hope. And of course that means looking at the most intransigent problems of our time, the matter of what drives our anxieties. Yes, its the maddening Trumpian nonsense each day — despicable and worthy of our civic resistance — but more, the malaise, the spirit of the times, the idols and ideologies, our withered imaginations and the inadequate worldviews which lead to all sorts of crises (from tragically-increasing suicide rates to terrifying climate change concerns, from hard family problems and so many global wars.) In a word, doom.

An array of books have shaped some of my thinking these days or at least have keep me somewhat sane. In case you’re wondering, there are the brilliant agrarian principles of hope found in Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis by Norman Wirzba (Yale University Press; $26.00) and, in considerable contrast, the audaciously optimistic new book by Ezra Klein, Abundance (Avid Reader Press; $30.00) which I’ve only just started. I was deeply moved and wonderfully charmed by the honest memoir by the wonderful New York Times journalist Frank Bruni, The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found (Avid Reader Press; $19.99) which he wrote after losing sight in one eye (and fearing he would go completely blind.) Its vulnerable storytelling about his own life and his upbeat conversations with others who have overcome (or at least coped well with) incredible difficulties, setbacks, and struggles, was downright inspiring.

I’ve revisited a book I raved about a year ago, Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding Healing and Hope in Sharing Our Sadness, Grief, Trauma, and Pain by my friend Jeffrey Monroe (Reformed Journal Books; $21.99) and is so, so worth reading, with hard stories told and gracefully evaluated and explored for deeper glimpses of hope. And I just finished a book that has been on my stack for years, Demon Camp: The Strange and Terrible Saga of a Soldier’s Return from War by Jen Percy (Simon & Schuster; $17.00) which is one of the weirder (and captivating) books I’ve read in years. (It is a creatively told bit of modern reportage about a haunted soldier back from Iraq and Afghanistan who helps facilitate wild exorcisms among deeply scared and often suicidal war vets. One reviewer called it “visceral and seductive” — that’s putting it mildly. It’s creepy. The Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Forever War, Dexter Wilkins, says it is “a tale so extraordinary that at time it seems conjured from a dream; as it unfolds it’s not just Caleb Daniels that comes into focus, but America, too.” Although the author has studied books like Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, she doesn’t cite the latest books (we have several) about faith-based efforts to psychologically help those with what some describe as moral injury, from having seen and done terrible things in battle. Percy seems to suggest that our culture is in very deep trouble, and unhinged (as the characters in this story truly are; none seem Biblically-rooted) Pentecostals and their spiritual conspiracy-theory mindset isn’t helping. Gasp!

Speaking of weighty assessment of our cultural moment, I previously reviewed and admired the gracious and empathetic travelogue by former conservative evangelical turned progressive Lutheran pastor, Angela Denker (Red State Christians: A Journey into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves) and her kindness remains in the even more haunting (new) report from the hinterlands, Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood (Broadleaf Books; $27.99.) It deserves a bigger, more careful review but know that it is candid and direct — “unflinching” one reviewer called it. Historian and Christian critic of the religious right, Randall Balmer, notes that “readers should not be fooled by Angela Denker’s storytelling ease and graceful prose into thinking this is simply another anodyne book about child-rearing. Her arguments about the sources and the persistence of racism, misogyny, and what she calls “brutish masculinity” are powerful and, sadly, all too relevant.” She makes a powerful case against the toxic aspects of this fundamentalist sub-culture of religious extremism and authoritarianism. There is a radicalization happening around us and she exposes much of it as it influences many young white men, in some exceptionally conservative faith communities. Jemar Tisby calls it “essential” and Kristen Du Mez, of course, has been touting it.

And yet another wise author with an extraordinary book that seems so very appropriate to mention in this short list: Steve Charleston, an Episcopalian Bishop and Native elder and author who offers Christian perspective on native spiritual and advocates for justice for indigenous peoples, has most recently written We Survived the End of the World: Lessons From Native American on Apocalypse and Hope (Broadleaf; $26.99.) What a book!

Some who are aware of the threatening cultural trends and pressures these days talk about apocalypse. The end of an era, if not an end of the civilization as we know it. Hence, new phrases in our vocabulary like “climate grief.” Hence, the aforementioned dread and doom. Charleston — in a graceful and brilliant move — says if we want insight about coping with such impending tragedy, we might learn from the indigenous people groups who, in fact, faced forced removal and cultural genocide; a very certain sort of end of their world. In what some have called “poignant and deeply moving” prose,  Reverend Charleston explains how Native America has already survived apocalypse — and has lessons of courage and hope to share. In a style that is profound, poetic, and yet urgently serious, he “insightfully weaves history and activism” and helps us imagine what the end of a world might be like, and what it means to live through it. It is a book that I suspect you will never forget.

So, yes, I’ve been pondering some ugly stuff, sad about how things are eroding the faith of people I know, and yet always looking at voices of deep hope and wise goodness. Reading is a necessary solace and adds grit to the texture of our discipleship. From books like Fire From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire by Sarah Jaffe (Bold Type Books; $32.50) to The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage by Richard Rohr (Convergent; $27.00) to the latest collection of Walter Brueggemann essays, Lament That Generates Covenant (Cascade; $23.00) there are eloquent and interesting voices to walk alongside us in these dark days… I’m not sure where you might hear about these sorts of books, but we are glad to get to share these that I’ve been pondering of late.

We commend these that I’ve mentioned above, — we’ll happily deduct 20% off any of those listed prices — but the heart of this BookNotes is to remind you of a particularly helpful author and friend. We have some of Brian McLaren’s books on sale, for five days only, at the extra discount of 40% off. Consider this a reader’s guide to most of his core work. After Saturday they will revert to our customary BookNotes 20% off.

10 Brian McLaren books, each 40% OFF — this 5-day sale expires May 10th.

(While supplies last.)

Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart Brian D. McLaren (St. Martin’s Press) $28.00 // OUR 40% OFF SALE = $16.80

Speaking of impending doom and coping well as people of faith with realism and hope, turning our understandable anxieties into what one might call sacred activism, the newest book by Brian McLaren is just that. I described it at BookNotes in some detail when it first came out but have, now, reason to unload some extras at this extra deep discount.

We were with McLaren a few weeks back at an event and it was really good to connect with him again. We’ve served him in some other book events, and, during the quarantine season of Covid we helped launch a book by having autographed plates. To say Brian has been kind and appreciative of us is nearly an understatement. And, despite some controversy among some traditionalist evangelicals concerned about his shift to a more mainline denominational / ecumenical orientation — what he early one called a “generous orthodoxy” —we have found him to be thoughtful and gracious and a very impressive writer. We would recommend any of his books. And this one is a powerhouse.

Naturally, there are few bits I might have worded a bit differently. No matter, there is no other book like this, none. This is an extraordinary project and we sincerely recommend it.

I’ll describe a few more that we have here, now, at an extra great sale price, but this one is his newest and just a fabulous study of how to understand our times and determine ways to live with resilience and hope. As podcaster and author Tripp Fuller  puts it, Life After Doom is “more than just a book! It’s a movement, a manifesto, and, most important, a road map to a brighter tomorrow.”

Not unlike the book I promoted last week — Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha by Gail Heffner & Dave Warners — Brian has been significantly influenced by friendships with indigenous leaders and authors He happily cites Kaitlin Curtice, Randy Woodley, Steve Charleston (who I mentioned above.) This is wise and good, this interaction with Native worldviews and faith practices that might influence those of us in the more dominant culture to find fresh ways to live out our faith with greater faithfulness and integrity.

Listen to these two friends, authors I so appreciate, as they say why you should buy this book now.

With his usual patience and clarity, Brian McLaren invites us to do necessary spiritual work… And we discover, after doom, the magnificent and beautiful task set before us. This book has convinced me that indeed, we must do this inner work now. ― Debra Rienstra, author of Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth

When I finished Life After Doom, I was overcome by a single unexpected response: gratitude. In these pages, Brian is pastor, teacher, therapist and prophet as he guides us through the multiple crises of our current situation. He challenges both debilitating despair and false hope to awaken our capacity to dream and act courageously for the future. You will thank him. ― Diana Butler Bass, author of Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution

A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith Brian D. McLaren (HarperOne) $16.99 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $10.19

Frederich Buechner reminded us that doubts are “the ants in the pants of faith” and while this book isn’t exactly about doubt, it is about new ways of framing old, often complicated doctrines, and fresh ways of asserting the gospel in ways that might be plausible and helpful to those who can no longer abide certain older orthodoxies.  Years ago we were disinvited to a thoughtful Christian event because they heard that we stocked — and would bring to their event — some of this book. I say, what is there to be afraid of? Read widely, take up a mature approach, think it through yourself and, with an open mind and an eager heart, enjoy the provocation of a master thinker .

Years ago (it came out in 2010) Brian invited us to reconfigure faith to be more Christ-like and responsible, offering new ways to read the Bible, to understand the violence in the tradition, to understand the essence of the gospel (in light of Jesus’s own declarations about the Kingdom of God) and other sorts of festering questions that have perplexed many. From the context of ecumenical and mainline believers, this book isn’t that radical and his answers — while fresh and interesting — were actually not that controversial. From the point of view of the conservative evangelical community in which he pastors and wrote for so many years, it was nearly traitorous.

Just the other day, listening to some solid and godly (Reformed) faith leaders, I heard their dismay about how many churches are failing to step up to this cultural moment, in fidelity to the prophetic tradition and the ways of Jesus, and one said we need “a new kind of Christian witness.” I don’t think she was alluding to this much-discussed book, but — agree or not with all of his conclusions — it certainly would be a good book to talk through for those yearning for a better face to lively, robust, Christian faith these days.

A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-Yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished Christian  Brian D. McLaren (Zondervan) $14.99 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $8.99

Do you remember this book and the huffy ridicule it received in some circles? Well, the most mean rebukes were from the fundamentalists and super strict Calvinists because they felt — and I think they were mostly right — that the chapter on them was the least successful (they would say unfair) chapter in the book. In most of the chapters, Brian — not being of that faith tradition (he was not a mainline Protestant, a Catholic, an Anabaptist or Anglican, after all) — was able to say what he liked about that tradition, what its strengths are, why it has good gifts to offer as a part of a balanced and creative theological identity. (This is not that far from what the great Richard Foster did in his lovely and solid Streams of Living Water.) Alas, because he came out of a harsh fundamentalism and didn’t have much good to say about that conservative sort of dogmatic Calvinism, he conflated those two and was more critical of them than he was the others. It wasn’t the best chapter in the book.

In any event this is his fabulously entertaining, visionary, broad-minded and (mostly) generous invitation to develop a hybrid sort of faith that draws on the best of every tradition. Or, at least, to know a bit about them.

Not a bad idea, eh? Read it and think what you may, and ponder how you might be shaped by the best of these various sorts of Christian traditions. Consider what he gets right and what he gets wrong — in any case, it’s a blast, and a good, good exercise.

I could be picky about every chapter since I have feelings about, well, about every single group he honors and critiques. And yet I love A Generous Orthodoxy. That last chapter says he is “depressed yet hopeful.” Me too, many days. You should buy it now while supplies last.

Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words Brian D. McLaren (HarperOne) $17.99 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $10.79

I don’t know if authors even realize these sorts of things — they have bigger issues to concern themselves with — but I’m sort of proud to have an endorsement on the back of this one. What an honor it is to be asked by a publisher to say a few words about a book or to have a commented cited. I really liked this — I wasn’t sure I would, and the title strikes some as unhelpful — so I was jazzed to see my blurb on the back of the paperback.  Here is what I said (or at least part of the part they posted on the book back cover, between the starred review at the Library Journal and the nice quip by Father Richard Rohr.

“I was absolutely hooked from the first page… I found it to be one of the most stimulating books on spiritual formation I have read in ages.”

Yep, it was true. I recall telling everybody about it, trying to convince folks it was a great read. Shane Claiborne says this “strips things down to the bare essentials… to unveil a simple love for God and neighbor that is worth devoting your life to.” Well, it isn’t that simple, as he explores all manner of quandaries about the spiritual life. Yet, these “12 essential words” are truly a brilliant framework to hang a lot on. I loved this book and I think you might too. Please give it a try.

By the way, the 12 words are arranged in four main parts or themes: Simplicity (“The Season of Spiritual Awakening” in which he has two chapters each on three words), Complexity (“The Season of Spiritual Strengthening” which has two chapters each on three more words), Perplexity (which he calls a “Season of Spiritual Surviving” following that same pattern, two chapters each on three words.) The fourth part also has six chapters, but two do not have titles or ‘words’ which is actually pretty awesome. I loved his reflection on what he called […]. This chapter is called “Harmony: The Season of Spiritual Deepening.”  So, two chapters each on 12 words, even if the last word isn’t a word but being “clothed in silence”

The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey Brian D. McLaren (Fortress) $16.99 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $10.19

This was the first volume in what was, I supposed, to be a series called “On Location” which invited authors to reflect on their own spiritual journey while doing a travelogue type memoir. Those that have followed Brian’s work know that in his second splendid novel — The Story We Find Ourselves in: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian — the main character (struggling with questions of faith and science, truth and evidence, story and the Bible and evolution) goes to the Galapagos Islands. It made me happy that Brian actually got to go there.

It also makes me happy that this little book is dedicated to his father, who “loved the outdoors and was always ready for an adventure.” McLaren was a college English professor before being a pastor, but his reading the Good Book was also (in faithful, classic ways) supplemented (or preceded?) By his reading the Book of Nature. In this spiritual travelogue he helps us see how it’s done, attending to place and landscape, animals and creatures, history and science and the joy of discovery. It ought to be better known — even the great Barbara Brown Taylor says it may be his most significant.

Of course Galapagos was the birthplace, so to speak, of Darwin’s theories about evolution. Brian isn’t afraid of that but he does move beyond a recounting of natural theology and uses his proximity to this famous place to ponder his own evolution. Has your faith changed over the years? Does “the beauty and fragility” of your landscape hint and anything? Does God’s creation awaken your soul? You might like this nice little book.  The footnotes are pretty great, too.  Who else brings together Leonard Boff and John Muir, Pope Francis and Howard Thurman, Gilligan’s Island and Charles Darwin?

Adventures in Missing the Point Brian D. McLaren & Tony Campolo (Zondervan) $26.99 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $16.19

Half Brian and half Tony — what a great idea for lively book!

I suppose you know (and I have written on occasion) that we were more than casual friends with Tony. We sold books with and for him several times, had him here to York to speak, and visited with him in Philly. I adored his Kingdom vision, appreciated how a just-advocate could do old-school baptist altar calls, and despite his hilarity, knew he was much smarter than his critics realized. And more sensitive. He was a bold, brave, and tender man, with a heart for God and a love for God’s world. Not unlike Brian.

In the early 2000s many in the evangelical world were talking about what some called the Emergent movement and there must have been twenty books (which we still have, believe it or not) from this emerging community (and a few that were critical — we have those too.) Tony and Brian were both speakers and pastoral leaders to these rising young bucks who were “brave enough to take an honest look at the issues facing the culture-controlled church.”

It may be an overstatement or a distinction without too much of a difference, but Brian was more deeply involved in mentoring and writing about the postmodern emergent crew. Campolo was too busy raising money for third world kids and speaking at major evangelical gigs — Jubilee, Creation, international organizations. But both had legitimate concerns about the ways in which church life (both mainline denominational churches and evangelical and non-denominational ones) were co-opted by the culture and didn’t have the energy or savvy to create passionate and effective missional vision.

But the two of them together and you’ll get quite a picture of how theology and church and spirituality was being considered by many at the turn of the third millennium. They tried to “uncover and name faulty conclusions, suppositions and assumptions.” They addressed some deep stuff and some hot button issues. They both are, in different ways and about somewhat different matters, both skeptical and sympathetic.

They invite all sorts – liberals and conservatives, old-fashioned church folks and edgy young street workers, evangelists and reformers, Catholics and Protestants, Pentecostals and Presbyterians, to stretch our thinking and discover fresh ways to live out faith in healthy and fruitful ways.

I loved this book. Glancing through the table of contents I realize it is needed now more than it was then. Both are good storytellers and good thinkers. It isn’t exactly a point-counterpoint, but in each section, one of them starts off and then the other sort of responds. Sometimes they agree deeply and other times, well… you can read it for yourself. It’s a blast.

The back and forth conversation is arranged in several chapters in three major arenas — God, World, and Soul.  You read their evaluations and proposals on everything from the nature of the Kiddo of God to how to think about the end times, from evangelism to prayer to worship, from the future of seminary education to the importance of women’s roles in leadership. There are discussion questions, too inviting readers to join the conversation.

We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation Brian D. McLaren (Jericho Books) $19.00 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $11.40

To say that this is a daily devotional sort of sells it short, I think, although it is almost exactly that. In typical McLaren style, he reimagines a bit about how a book following such a regular reading format could really be formative, could actually help.

I don’t know a thing about any of this but I can imagine a book editor or publishing PR person somewhere saying — hey, Brian, why not do a little daily reader, a devotional, a greatest-hits of your many books, arranged for those who only want to dip in a bit each day. And the wheels start spinning and he reads a bit about how learning happens and what really transforms people and what the world needs right now of religious folk. His pitching it as a “quest” is itself sort of cool, eh? That classic title, drawn from a famous book about a third world social experiment years ago  — “we build the road while walking” — says much.

And here’s the point: true spiritual formation leads to what he calls reorientation and activation. It’s not exactly a simple formula of steps one, two, and three — we pray, are changed, and live it out in application — since all of this folds back on itself and we cycle through being and doing, learning and living, living and praying.

But still, given his penchant for experimental education and true transformational faith formation and social movement to better the world, this really is a lively, well thought-out weekly devotional. Can we walk the path — the Jesus Path — together? There are fifty two (plus a few) readings which “offer everything you need to explore what a difference an honest, living, growing faith can make in our world today. It is organized, more or less, around the flow of the church calendar 9so much so that Phyllis Tickle said it was “as startling as it is beautiful.”)

There are excellent reflection questions under the heading of “engage” and there are things for those with children to do as well. Hooray. Get this — you’ll find it useful, I’m sure, and may return to it often…

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road: Christian Identity in a multi-faith World Brian D. McLaren (Jericho Books) $16.00 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $9.60

I have to admit this is the only Brian McLaren book that I have not read.  It’s not that I’ve not wanted to — I love the title — but just haven’t gotten to it. I’m generally interested in inter-faith conversations and I have a handful that I routinely recommend. This may be his most thorough book, actually. (Well, the new Doom one is very well-researched and deserves significant acclaim.) Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed, could be misunderstood so I’ll take a stab at a quick word about it.

Some are simply so woodenly Christ-centric that they dismiss any effort to find common ground or mutual admiration. This is not a healthy perspective, and we can surely hold to classic Christian doctrine (full of love and loyalty to Jesus) and still be generous to others, even with a capacious orientation to faith; I even know some conservative Reformed scholars who hint at this, not least Richard Mouw in his most recent, succinct work, Divine Generosity: The Scope of Salvation in Reformed Theology.  Anyway, I suspect that those that presume McLaren is on dangerous ground in this question are partially right but mostly are not. Give him a try and see. We can honor our most solid, Biblical convictions and still ask this question.

Others might think that this is sort of a joke, and are so assured of their generous open-mindedness that they hardly need to ask. I would think that those with such universalist tendencies would do well to allow Brian to tutor them into how to proceed. Even if one deeply wants to honor others and their own faith, it is wise to consider how that might work. Just a quick glance through this lively work assures me that this isn’t a cheesy “let’s all just get along” sort of idealism or a simplistic kind of “tolerance.”

So, he does seem to be moving into a profound sort of conversation, a struggle to know how to be at once deeply Christian and utterly gracious, to be true to our own Biblical identity and yet open-hearted and generous. Why did those guys cross the road, anyway? Surely to engage in one of the most important conversations anywhere, anytime. In a world where religious fanatics of all sorts have missiles aimed at each other, maybe this really is a very important book.  Join him, he suggests, and it will be humbling and holy in a sacred space as we seek an authentic encounter and possible missional collaboration. Wow.

Faith After Doubt: Why Your Belief Stopped Working and What to Do About It  Brian D. McLaren (St. Martin’s Essentials) $17.99  // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $10.79

I need not say much about this as it is one of his more recent, and I reviewed it at great length when it first came out in hardcover and then again when it released in this handsome paperback. I will say this: unlike many books about facing doubt — the best are generous and empathic and do not shame those with doubts — are written from a place of solid faith, inviting doubters or those with anguish about the loss of conventional faith to think it through figure it out, a come back to faith. It is reasonable and good and true, and you really don’t want to drift away.

McLaren, I gather, believes this: he remains an outspoken Christian and I am sure he longs for renewal within the church and among those who have left traditional faith communities. But he’s so incredibly honest and so in touch with those whose faith really is nearly gone, that he writes in a way that is less insistent, more open to wherever their conscious leads. He guides people through the steps to consider and reconfigure faith. He uses the same four overarching themes that he used in Naked Faith [see above] — Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony. Questions and doubts are part of this journey, “a portal to a more mature and fruitful kind of faith.”

It is reassuring and healthy, less apologetics and more spiritual direction. There is no other book quite like it.

Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, The Disappointed, and the Disillusioned Brian D. McLaren  (St Martin’s Essentials) $19.00 // OUR 40% OFF SALE PRICE = $11.40

If Brian’s Faith After Doubt is a gentle voice offering a friend to walk along the road towards legitimate questions and healthy doubts — that portal into better questions and halters faith, as he puts it — for those who have doubt, this is for those who for more principled reasons really wonder if they can possibility stay Christian at all. For those who are not just doubting but deconstructing, for those who have moved from doubt to disappointment and disillusionment.

One gentle reader I met thought he was just too candid and insistent in the first half about all the problems with the church and bad faith. It is an argument for why it may be reasonable (perhaps even necessary) to leave the Christian faith behind. I resonated with her painful critique but I reminded this lovely church lady that the book was not for her. It was for those — perhaps her grandchildren! — who know well that the church is screwed up and that many formulations of faith have been harmful, even toxic. They need a Christian leader to own up to it, to admit that it isn’t a bad thing to be so revolted with bad faith as to want to leave Christianity altogether. He is building a bridge and honestly reaching those who may have never imagined a Christian writer devoting 10 chapters (almost 100 pages) offering reasons why the faith may deserve a big, old, “No.”

The next 100 pages offer, in counterpoint, 10 reasons why Christianity is worthy and why it should be seriously considered, the “Yes” part of the book. He is not coy or insincere. He’s doing his best to offer 10 reasons to say no and 10 reasons to say yes to faith.  The third portion, 8 chapters, are under the heading of “How.” These are practical guidelines for those making this big choice, inviting them to wise, human, decent, habits of the heart. Maybe you’d advise other things, but this is a whole lot to chew on, good for somewhat you love, I am sure.

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BOOKS FOR COLLEGE GRADS

I cannot believe that it is that time of year. Spring (slowly) is emerging here in the South-Central part of Pennsylvania. While most high-school grads won’t be honored until next month, colleges and universities and trade schools everywhere are releasing their graduates into the world very soon.

We’ve got young friends working hard to finish up papers and are cramming for finals this very week. Just yesterday I spoke with a staff person at a Christian Study Center at a major university who opens their doors nearly around the clock as a place for students to visit — for study or prayer. Some of our friends at the CCO (the campus ministry in Pittsburgh that hosts our beloved Jubilee conference and whom we serve as official bookseller) are doing extraordinary things to support their student leaders in this stressful, exciting time. It’s an exciting couple of weeks.

I suppose you won’t mind me reminding you of the need for church folks — congregations, pastors, former youth leaders, mentors, friends, parents, aunts and uncles — to honor those who have gone off to college. We want those students to know God’s presence in this pivotal time in their lives. We want them to know their church cares. We want to encourage them with insight and wisdom. Better than a sentimental plaque or Christian tchotchke, a gift of a well-chosen book helps young academics continue to think and ponder about the deepest things in life and sends a message that resources are available for them as they take the next steps of their life’s journey.

We enjoy replying to emails or questions at our inquiry page at the website when people tell us something about a person to whom they want to send a book. Maybe we can suggest something that would be appreciated by a science major, a future teacher, a fine arts graduate, a young adult heading into engineering or the marketplace. (Or, if you’d rather, a rising Lutheran, Presbyterian, Catholic, evangelical, Mennonite or what have you… ) No matter who your young friends are or what identity they have or what their future plans might be, we think we can help you help them.

I’m going to list just a few books that we think are splendid to honor this time of transition; bread for their journey. I won’t review them thoroughly although each deserves more. We just want to put these before you now to see what your church or family might consider to give as gifts for college grads. Let’s do this.

TEN SUGGESTED BOOKS FOR NEW COLLEGE GRADUATES — ON SALE

After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationship and Faith EXPANDED EDITION Erica Young Reitz (IVP) $18.00 //  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

There is a new revised and expanded edition of this classic that we have celebrated for years now. There is nothing like it in print. You can read an earlier review here but I really invite you to listen to Erica as she was a recent special guest on our bo-weekly THREE BOOKS FROM HEARTS AND MINDS PODCAST (watch on Youtube, listen on Apple podcasts, or listen on Spotify). Erica is so articulate and charming and sharp and inspiring, you simply won’t want to miss this great half-hour conversation I had with her.

Here’s the thing: the anxiety of the transition out of college has only heightened in recent years and the unique situation of Gen Z (who did some of their high school during Covid) required new research and a new edition of this book about the transitions out of college. Nobody in North America has focused as much gracious time and energy with college seniors talking about their next steps and following through as Christian students leave their college fellowship groups and idealistic discipleship programs and move to new towns or cities to take up new jobs, nurture new friendships, find a church, and, often, pay off serious amounts of financial debt. Erica has heard it all, and studied the topic, has helped many.

Trust me — there is no better book to put into the hands of a typical college grad who may really, really need some assistance in this transitional time which is harder than many realize.

I invite you to read carefully these robust endorsements by people I trust. They have put into good words why this book is so fun and wise and good.  These are worth considering.

After College is like a conversation with a wiser, older friend ― someone who knows more and therefore loves more. Drawing on years of working with university students, Erica Reitz opens her heart to the next generation of those who will soon be entering into the marketplaces of the world. She offers uncanny wisdom about what the next years could and should mean for people who long to last ― people who hope that their undergraduate commitments and loves will deepen over the years, rather than be discarded because the realpolitik of life was more than was expected. I hope this book finds its way into the lives of many young men and women who are on their way into the rest of life.  — Steven Garber, The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation Culture, author of Visions of Vocation and A Seamless Life

For nearly forty years I have watched first hand as Christian students graduate from college with high hopes, only to have those hopes dashed by the challenge of translating their education into the categories of the real world. Furthermore, most of them assume that they are alone among their peers in having this painful experience. Naming this fairly typical post-college passage is the first step in helping graduates address this transition with courage and hope. In After College, Erica Reitz has done a masterful job in calling attention to the comprehensive and complex nature of this challenge. She has brought to the task a balance of sound theology, thoughtful reflection and practical advice. I will certainly be recommending this book. — Shirley A. Mullen, former President, Houghton College, Claiming the Courageous Middle

After College offers profound insights about grappling with post-collegiate life in today’s swiftly changing world. Beautifully written by Erica Young Reitz, it seamlessly interweaves real-life stories from recent college graduates with astute quotations from famous writers, biblical paradigms with sociological studies, and practical how-to advice with inspirational hopefulness. At once both personal and professional, Reitz shares the triumphs and trials of her own experience in order to help readers discern God’s calling in both church and society.  — Crystal L. Downing, author of Changing Signs of Truth and The Wages of Cinema

Big changes and transitions often force people to ask big questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? After College provides a helpful guide to wrestle with those questions in a way that is inspiring and hopeful. Erica is a keen listener: she listens well to God, recent research and student stories to offer a roadmap for success in today’s world.  — Derek Melleby, OneLife Institute, author, Make College Count

Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life edited by Byron Borger (Square Halo Books) $13.99  //  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

We also talk a bit about this one in the above-mentioned “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast, and while it is my baby, and I’ve written about it a lot, I still want to remind you of it here, now.

Several years back I was invited to do a commencement address at Geneva College, a Western Pennsylvania college — and I was awarded an honorary doctorate (a huge deal that I still can hardly believe.) I preached my heart out inviting these students to make a difference in their careers and callings, to live out the integrated Christian worldview they were exposed to at Geneva. Some folks wanted copies. I found some other similar graduation speeches that implore students to think Christianly, to serve their communities, to be salt and light in the world into which they are heading. It was a blast sorting through and editing some of the most inspiring talks I had heard and we put this book together designed for college graduates who want to be inspired to serve God as they transition into the post-college world.

We’ve got in here fabulous short addresses and we made reflection questions for readers to ponder. You’ll read words of inspiring guidance by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Amy Sherman, John Perkins, and more. Besides by own chapter, wrote a lengthy forward that some have said is very helpful — less breathy and idealistic than most of the big-picture commencement address, encouraging readers to live local, find some friends, dig in, even if the time after college isn’t as big and glitzy as one might wish. Lots of folks move home after college as they seek a job or whatever might come next, and that’s okay.

Also, the above-mentioned expert in the hardships and joys of the post-college years, Erica Young Reitz, wrote a lovely little afterword. She was working on After College and we invited her to sort of summarize her research and thinking to bring these dramatic talks to a practical close. I think it makes for a great little read.

I can autograph these, too, if that makes it special…just let us know.

Dream Big: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You’re Going to Do about It Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I’ve suggested this before as a great, upbeat college grad gift (although, to be honest, it is whimsical and captivating enough to be a good high school grad gift, too.) You know Bob Goff (author of Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World and Everybody Always: Becoming Love in a World Full of Setbacks and Difficult People) which are hard-to-put-down paperbacks about making a difference in the lives of others by, well, serving, loving, sharing, being there in creative and fun ways. I hope you know them.

Dream Big has the same incredible stories of his nearly unbelievable capers, the same outrageously gracious tone, the cheery encouragement but its focus is very much about helping readers identify their biggest dreams, helping them figure out what they want to do with their lives, and how to take steps to make that happen.

It is, without a doubt, the most fun self-help book you’ll ever read, and it is fabulous for anyone with any sort of anxiety about whether they really can pursue their dreams.

Undistracted: Capture Your Purpose. Rediscover Your Joy Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson; $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59)

By the way, the follow up title to the great Dream Big, is an equally fun read, sort of exploring how we can be more joyful when we focus on what we’re really after. Undistracted shows us — readers of any stage and age, but certainly recent grads transitioning into a world of possibility and change — just what we can do to identify the things that keep us from moving forward, “capturing our purpose” as he puts it. Some may need help overcoming those emotional and practical obstacles that distract us from being who we want to be and doing what we feel passionate about. Undistracted can help — and it’s a fabulous read. What good guidance in this age of distraction.

I’m not sure how generous you’re feeling for your loved one, but if your a Bob Goff fan and know they’d love this sort of thing, you could give them both — they are a nice pairing. And we could do a bit better of a discount that way, too! Just ask.

Catching Whimsy: 365 Days of Possibility Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

As you can see, I adore the hilarious, inspiring, love-fueled, faith-based, Jesus-following, positive thinking of Bob Goff. He has started schools in war-torn zones of the third world, has fought as a lawyer for imprisoned child soldiers in Africa, and has done stuff many would only shudder to even think about. And he does it with verve and joy. And without being a braggart, he loves telling the stories. And people love reading them.

This is a lovely, fabulously-enriching, upbeat daily devotional, each with a story from Goff’s life (or, sometimes, just wise counsel with a practical application) always connected to the Biblical text he reflects on. This would make a great gift for almost anybody — especially maybe those who aren’t used to reading religious devotions or don’t want their readings to be too heavy. We very highly recommend it.

44 Poems on Being With Each Other Pádraig Ó Tuama (W.W. Norton) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I hope you know the lively, gracious, remarkable Irish poet. peace activist, and spiritual writer Pádraig Ó Tuama. His public radio show Poetry Unbound (part of Krista Tippett’s On Being suite of podcasts) is very popular and those who care about the spoken word these days should know him. (We featured his fascinating Eerdmans book of poetic prayers in the form of collects, Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love and we have his new collection Kitchen Hymns.)

This 2024 hardback is a fabulously rich and thoughtful and lovely exploration of 44 poems about relationships and “being with” and for each other. His curation of these contemporary poems is interesting and would itself be a good gift, the poems themselves, but his reflections on the poems — what some might call an “immersive” experience — is the real gold. This is a handsomely designed and inspiration volume, a nice companion to the previous Poetry Unbound collection from 2022, 50 Poems to Open Your World. Again, the poems are offered and he discusses them, inviting us to an inspiring close reading and visionary application.

The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love & Learning, Worship & Work Steven Garber (IVP) $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

I will admit that I am biased, here, since Steve is a long-time friend, a dear friend, and I admire him very, very much. But this little book is such a wonder that I tell folks about it any time I can. If you’ve not picked it up from us, I do suggest it for almost anyone.

Garber is philosophically-minded, yet down to Earth. He tells here, in many short chapters, of his growing up out West — his grandfather worked in the cattle industry and his father, a researcher in botany, worked with farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. His interest — nurtured by these hard-working men of integrity that shaped his earliest dreams and faith —is what it means to live a “seamless” life, to inhabit this broken world with a sacramental worldview. That is, what are the connections between Sunday and Monday, between worship and work? Is there a way that we can develop the sort of lives that are coherent? Can we bear the sadnesses that come into this life and not give up?

I know of no other author who is so eloquent and literary and theologically informed yet immensely practical, at least in a manner that matters. His constant thesis — developed more fully in previous books like Fabric of Faithfulness and Visions of Vocation — is how the things we care about shape who we are. The deepest questions which all people, everywhere, ask about meaning and purpose and joy and responsibility animate these lively ruminations offered from all over the world as Steve travels speaking with folks who share these hopes and dreams. From conversations with business execs to artists to politicians, he reports on ways folks care well.

There are chapters about work. There are pieces about public service. There is stuff here about pop culture, about music, and good stuff about literature. He writes movingly about friendship. He tells some fun stories that will make readers smile and some poignant ones that might make you sigh. Each entry is short and is accompanied by a full-color photo of the places he’s been, landscapes he’s seen, or artifacts that point to the bigger lessons learned in each locale. A compact sized paperback with nice paper, it is a handsome little volume.

For those who want to dip in just a bit to one of our great public thinkers and writers, who wonder about making sense of our times and finding meaning in the stuff of life, The Seamless Life would make a fabulous little gift. Steven has a particular affinity for young adults and knows well the complexities of the post-college transition, so it’s an ideal gift. One reviewer — a CEO in the tech industry — called it “a feast.” Friend Charlie Peacock says it contains, swiping a line from Garber himself, “the truest truths.” Singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken says it “gently weaves coherence and grace from the far corners of vocation, friendship, and spirituality.” Some bookseller guy named Borger even has a little blurb on the inside calling Seamless Life “achingly beautiful.”

How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith Mariann Edgar Budde (Avery) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Much could be said about this book, what Steve Leder (author of For You When I Am Gone) called “the simple, important, dynamics of courageous living” but I will suggest that it would be a good gift from some of you, at least, for some of your idealistic young friends. You may recall that Mariann Budde is the Episopal Bishop of Washington and had the privilege of preaching at a service during President Trump’s inauguration. She made international history once he made a typically rude comment about her bad preaching, mostly because she implored him to show compassion to the needy. In any case, this author of two lovely previous books of spirituality became an international figure for what some saw as significant bravery (her sermon earned her death threats) but which she might say was only her doing her job; preaching gospel truth in a public setting.

Anyway, this is a book, as you can tell from the titles, about how to learn this art of being brave. Historian and journalist Jon Meacham raves, calling it a “searching account.” Rev. Budde’s Bishop (Michael Curry) says that in “sharing her story and that of others who have faced real challenges with ‘grit and grace’” we are reminded that “extraordinary courage is possible for ordinary people.”

We need faith and the tools to become the kind of people that have a deep moral compass and are willing to become leaders of integrity. Dr. Michael Hill (of the Chautauqua Institution) says it is about “humility, introspection, and selfless determination.” 

Maybe this call to virtue and courage would be helpful for others, too, no matter what age, eh?

Ordinary Saints: Living Every Day to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

One of the things we hear time and again from church folks or others looking for a good gift to honor a graduate is their fear that students are done reading books. They are, or so it is thought, burned out on academics and don’t want another book for a gift. Some are in the very processing of selling off their boring textbooks.

Granted. I get it. But you know what? It is my sense (and our experience!) that many young adults who are sincere people of faith, don’t have many thoughtful Christian books. Maybe somebody gave them a teen Bible five years ago or they were gifted with a cheesy devotional somewhere along the line. If they were lucky they might have Mere Christianity. Maybe they’ve heard of N. T. Wright or Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Desmond Tutu. I suspect they have learned that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist preacher, but I bet they’ve never read a single book of his. So it goes.

In any case, a good way to allow younger adults to join the movement of thoughtful contemporary (Christian) reading is to give them a book that is at once theologically informed but a lot of fun. Something that grapples with some of the biggest questions in life and yet has a mostly buoyant, practical, immediately engaging sort of tone. Something, I might suggest, for ordinary saints.

Ordinary Saints is one that I’ve celebrated before — and not only because I have a chapter in the ways in which one can serve God in retail business. I’ve pitched this before because it is just such a hoot— it is fun and funny, serious and vital, surprising and refreshing. After a three page fairly intense theological piece on what it means to give glory to God, the book offers tons of short pieces, most very well written, about, well, glorifying God in the ordinary stuff of daily life. There are pieces about making playlists and napping, about building community and doing karaoke, about enjoying comic books and raising chickens. There is a fabulous piece about roller skating and a nifty one on briefcases. Some have adored the chapter on dancing. All knowingly religious, showing that such mundane stuff somehow makes God smile.

There are heavier pieces, too. There is an important contribution on coping with chronic pain. There is an essay about going to therapy which is excellent. One is on mental illness. There are a few chapters offering wise, grief-related reflections.

Naturally, there is a good, basic chapter about glorifying God in ordinary work. (And there is mine on business life which I hear is interesting.) From a theological basis for going to movies to the spirituality of knitting to stuff about traffic and homemaking and storytelling, all Coram Deo, this book makes a great gift for almost anyone.

And, by the way, there are some extraordinary writers in Ordinary Saints, some who are not well known, but a few are, which indicates the calibre of this volume. Who wouldn’t want to give a gift knowing there are contributors like poet Luci Shaw, philosopher Calvin Seerveld, art prof Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, the global phenomenon Malcolm Guite, memoirist Margie Haack… Wow.

Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful: How Gratitude, Grief, and Grace Reflect the Christian Story Drew Hyun (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We announced this new book just a few weeks ago and it dawned on me that it would make a great gift for a college grad, whether they are strong in Christian thinking or not. I mean, whose life isn’t in some measure beautiful and disappointing and hopeful, right? This book written for seekers is ideal for anyone grappling with the big questions, who wants a coherent framework for thinking about their lives, for those who need to understand that God is with them — in our good, greater world, despite the hurt and paint we face, and can be wonderfully hopeful.

We need that kind of a story, that sort of frame, that sort of lingo to make sense of the various feelings we feel and encounters we have.  Drew Hyun is by all accounts and incredible friend to many in New York City where he lives and this book he’s explain some of what he’s learned about how practices of expressing gratefulness and lament — the gratitude and grief in the subtitle, of course — can help us deepen our awareness of the grace that is at the heart of the Christian worldview.

This is a lovely book, nicely written, captivating and wise. Any young adult who is intrigued by life at all will like it, I’m sure, and many will love it, truly. It’s a great book.

I love how the author Gerry Sittser of Whitworth University (and author of the unforgettable A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss) describes a great book and how this new book captures these very characteristics. Yes!

It is no easy task to write a book, to say nothing of a book for the larger reading public. Good books have a deep root system, which includes, of course, the Bible. They show evidence of being familiar with the long and great tradition of thinkers who have gone before us. They are sensitive to the needs and longings of ordinary people. They are a pleasure to read. They are accessible but never superficial. They are vulnerable but never maudlin. Drew Hyun has written such a book. It drew me in, touched my soul, and called forth faith in me. I kept thinking of people who would benefit from reading it. I trust you will, too.

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