A few weeks ago at BookNotes I extolled books on rest, a sabbath way of life, evenhighlighting the new book A Theology of Play: Learning to Enjoy Life as God Intended (Kregel Academic), a careful Bible-based affirmation (by a central PA author from Lancaster Bible College!) of what another author, Jaco J. Hamman, calls A Play-Full Life: Slowing Down and Seeking Peace (Pilgrim Press.) If the first is a conservative evangelical scholar and long-time pastor, the second author was a professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Western Theological Seminary, writing on the UCC-related Pilgrim Press. Like we often say, we’ve got a wide wing-span here at Hearts & Minds and curate titles from across the theological and literary spectrum that we think you’ll find helpful. Anyway, that list invited us to An Unhurried Life as per Alan Fadling and, the day that BookNotes list went out, we received the brand new The Sacred Art of Slowing Down by A.C. Seiple, just published by Tyndale. If you want some “relief from rushed living” (as Seiple puts it) these books will be your allies.

That list was followed, then, by two posts on creativity and the arts, guides to leading an aesthetically rich life. I gave a nod to the late Calvin Seerveld (who I have written about often) and his extraordinary books. If you are a book lover, you have got to own a Seerveld or two. More on that soon — watch for our latest “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast which has a special guest on to talk about Cal’s important work. (You can find our bi-weekly podcast on YouTube (to watch) or to listen to at Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.)

After that last column about enjoying (and benefitting from) the arts and the lovely spiritual call to open up our own creative juices, I thought it seemed right to offer some books at a theme I revisit from time to time — finding God in the ordinary, in the great outdoors, learning to appreciating creation, and, indeed, practicing the presence of God in our own encounters in this sensual, material world. I love that line by C.S Lewis about how God sure must love matter — He made a lot of it!

To wit: this little list of some fun books to help you appreciate creation yet this summer. Read them with your rucksack or with your hiking boots on, or, just as good, read them vicariously. That’s a thing. A very good thing. Read on.

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The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of The Glories of God Seth Lewis (The Good Book Company) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This small book packs a wallop as I sometimes say. It is really interesting, captivating, even, and thoroughly Biblical. For those who like Biblical study (and that should be all of us, I might add) this hues right to the Biblical line. But — and this is part of what makes this so great — not all of us realize just how much nature writing and popular science and ecological stuff is in the Holy Book. Over and over, Lewis brings us into the great outdoors with incredible stories, down-to-Earth, from the fairly ordinary stuff of enjoying our backyards to some mighty powerful wilderness experiences. Lewis is a born storyteller, it seems, and this combo of great Bible eyes to see creation in light of Bible truths and how the Bible itself points to the creation, is fabulously enriched by his good examples.

Many of the reviewers note that he has the heart of a poet. Alistair Begg calls it “a work of poetic theology as beautiful as it is faithful.”

Lewis, we discover, hikes, works, and writes on the south coast of Ireland. His good words will help you slow down and “interpret the gift of God’s world through the gift of God’s word.”

Eyes to See: Recognizing God’s Common Grace in an Unsettled World Tim Muehlhoff (IVP) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I wanted to highlight this near the top of our little list because it is foundational. Several years ago I did a big list of books which help us find and celebrate the hand of God in the ordinariness of life. We have a whole section in our store called “the spirituality of the ordinary.” There are so many good ones and while it ought to be a no-brainer that we intuitively find God everywhere, for most of us, it takes some consideration, some spiritual attention, a shift of worldview, even. This book most likely wasn’t on that list (you can find it archived at BookNotes) as I don’t think it had come out yet. In any event, it’s a great one, wonderfully written, full of ideas on how to recognize God’s “common grace in an unsettled world.”

Muehlhoff is a professor of communications at Biola University and has written any number of books about communication, about relationships, about conflict and more. Because he is a specialist in that area I was a little surprised, at first, to see him in this gene, but, man, is it good. So good.

Whether we are in great pain crying out or in great joy (crying out) we wonder where is God in all this? While Eyes to See might be a good book for apologetics, even — trying to give an account of the astonishment and joy and pain and feelings of awe we all experience, it is not just an argument that our human experience points us to the majesty of God. Although Muehlhoff makes it clear that it does. It’s hard to live in this world of wonder and not get some glimpse of transcendence.

But this is more than a case for God’s presence. It is a handbook for encountering God, looking in all the unexpected places, seeing how God works in all manner of ways.

I love this insight — I really do think it will prove helpful for you — that God is around, showing up in ordinary ways (through ordinary jobs, for instance; he has a chapter about science and he has a chapter about art.) It opens up our sense of how we describe God’s presence and action (in other words, not just in answers to prayers or miraculous healings or breathtaking vistas.)

God cares for this troubled world and “give you the eyes to see.” Three cheers for this thoughtful, important book.

As Rich Mouw puts it:

“Muehlhoff not only adds significant insights to common grace theology but he also brings it into new territory, focusing on the reach of God’s healing power into communities of grieving, abused, and oppressed human beings.”

A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary Macrina Wiederkehr (HarperOne) $12.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

Sister Macrina Wiederkehr is a well known author and experienced spiritual director, a member of St. Scholastica Monastery (in Fort Smith, Arkansas.) She has written spiritual classics (like The Song of the Seed) and some lovely resources on the practice of lectio divina. If you are familiar with ecumenical circles of the contemplative movement embracing silence and deep spiritual formation, I bet you know her name. Maybe you’ve seen her books.

This is a simple classic, a modern Catholic title that literally “helps you see the sacred in everyday life” It is poetically rich, written with a grace and depth that is mature and profound.

And it is lovely, the perfect book to remind us all of the act of devotion and the habit of finding God in the seemingly secular. Listen as she writes…

“I see the first rays of sunlight shimmering through a silver maple tree. And then in a twinkling I’m certain. I am standing before a tree full of angels dazzling me with their glorious presence.”

Is this metaphor? Analogy? Poetic hyperbole? Did she really see real angels? You’ll have to read it to learn more, but this is, as one Abbot said,  a book where “she want us to gather up the crumbs, the little things in our lives, and realize they have the makings of a banquet.”

Rooted in Wonder: Nurturing Your Family’s Faith Through God’s Creation Eryn Lynum (Kregel) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Eryn Lynum lives in the Rocky Mountains and has been featured in a number of classic evangelical podcasts, radio shows, having worked with Proverbs 31 Ministries and MOPS International. Yet, here, she seems less attuned to conventional evangelical pieties and is a bit wilder, almost fierce, delighting in the great outdoors. She is a certified naturalist (besides a Bible instructor and mom of four.) She knows her flora and fauna, and she looks at land and sky through the lens of the Bible, showing connections between God and creation. This is awesome!

I like what ecologist Matthew Sleeth says when he notes her “joy and practical know-how.” And she has learned a lot, sharing here how she has surrounded her kids with nature, and in so doing invites us all to a similar journey.

Sy Garte PhD, who was at our Jubilee conference last winter, a United Methodist biologist who tells his story in The Works of His Hands: A Scientist’s Journey from Atheism to Faith and has a brand new book, Beyond Evolution: How New Discoveries in the Science of Life Point to God The Work of His Hands) writes of Rooted in Wonder saying this:

A beautifully written powerful treatment of the natural world as God’s revelation to His people. It weaves theological insights with practical advice on how to instill a love for the natural world in kids of all ages.

Adventuring Together: How to Create Connections and Make Lasting Memories with Your Kids Greta Eskridge (Thomas Nelson) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I like these kinds of recent books that combine a robust vision of the great outdoors with the classic parenting genre. The back cover here says “Create. Connect. Imagine. Adventure.” If you are a parent, I hope that excites you.

Okay, maybe you and your family aren’t going to take off for a globe-spanning adventure. Granted. Still, Greta Eskridge and this fun little book help us find ways to compete with the lure of technology and “inspiration for pushing yourself and your kids beyond your comfort zone to serve and enjoy each other well.” Not bad, eh?

Part of her plan is about cultivating relationships, fostering conversation, so that kids feel confident to have what we might call an adventurous spirit. (Which makes me think of the parents of the guys in Switchfoot, Mark and Jan Foreman, and their lively book, Never Say No: Raising Big-Picture Kids, but I digress.) While some kids are dangerously overdoing that bit, I know, most, I’m afraid, are seduced by their video games and smartphones, and need to learn how to play. And be engaged in the real big world.

Eskridge promises, “There will be joy. There will be wonder. There will be campfires, books, and beauty. Come on in!”

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World Robin Wall Kimmerer (Scribner) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This is a trim, small sized hardback, thin and lovely, full of the same sort of wisdom and insight that is jam packed into the dense, wonderful best-seller Braiding Sweetgrass. That book offered a broad vision of great detail, integrating Kimmerer’s indigenous intuition about the Creator’s world with her work as a botanist.

If that amazing volume captivated you as it has millions you will surely want to see this latest installment from Kimmerer and her latest realizations as an indigenous scientist, that the creation is replete with interconnectedness and that that might yield — ought to yield — gratitude and generosity on our part in response. These lessons from the natural world ask us, finally, what we most value. Do we have the eyes to see reciprocity and community? In things like this fascinating little plant?

If Sister Wiederkehr sees angels in the trees, Kimmerer similarly draws angelic lessons from her more focused botany-oriented vision. But they both are led to this great truth of God’s common grace: we are in this together and things are inter-connected. The handsome pen and ink drawings make this little book a treasure and a lovely little gift, too.

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays Barry Lopez (Random House) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I know I say this a bunch, but this really is one of the best books I’ve read all year. And I have to explain just a thing or two — I hope your still reading! — to be clear about what it is and why it is so very, very interesting.

First, it is not primarily a screed about climate change. It is not about forest fires and, even with the powerful introduction by Rebecca Solnit, it is not about the politics of our burning age. Lopez was a naturalist and travel writer and as a lover of the natural world he obviously cares about our foolhardy views of progress and our disconnect with the deepest sort of ecological stewardship, but it is not mostly about that. It’s about wolves and trips to Antarctica and encounters with beasts in Africa and friendships with the Native peoples (Navajos in Arizona and Yupic tribes in Alaska) and about his boldness in facing the elements, in Australia backcountry or under Northern Lights.

Secondly, calling these essays might dissuade some who feel like that is too intellectual or polemical a style for their tastes. Fear not! These journalistic accounts —- all published in various literary, travel, scientific, or other obscure periodicals or journals — are not dry essays but are loaded with story, with his love of places, with his respect for friends, with the color of plants and sky, the smell of the air, the feel of the land. Whether he is writing a tribute to a great researcher who hung out with Alaskan Natives as he studied wolves, learning from them, or extolling some of the most brave explorers around the Cabo de Hornos —or of the huge albatrosses he saw there —   his stories are more like memoir, his remembrances of that which he loves.

Lopez won the National Book Award years ago for Arctic Dreams. He was known for a groundbreaking work on wolves (in the late 1970s) and many other books of reportage from the front lines of ecological studies, animal science, and adventurous travel.

As booksellers we knew of his important work but I never picked up one of his volumes until Eugene Petersons suggested him. Lopez was mesmerizing, a good, even colorful writer, elegant and intelligent, willing to talk about hard stuff, funny stuff, and, on occasion, even prayer. This collection is superb.

The Traveler’s Path: Finding Spiritual Growth and Inspiration Through Travel Douglas J. Brouwer (Reformed Journal Books) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I gave a shout out to this before it came out, inviting folks to pre-order it. It’s on an indie press full of great writers, this book is itself an adventure, telling great tales of this PC(USA) pastor and his world-wide travels.

I don’t know exactly what drives folks to read travel literature but it is a rare bookstore that doesn’t have a travel section. From books about various places to the theology of travel, from taking spiritual pilgrimages to the joys of backcountry adventure, we’ve got plenty. This one is nearly archetypal: each chapter is a warm, lovely, report of a certain place Brouwer has visited. And it’s very nicely crafted; Brouwer is a very fine writer.

But he’s a preacher, remember, so there’s some theologizing and spiritual formation tips and insights about the reason for it all. Surely one of the big takeaways — besides the joy of learning about different places — is to have an open heart. We can, as one travel agent on the back cover put it, “walk in the footsteps of the divine, and see with open hearts wherever we are called.”

(And, by the way, Brouwer’s trips are not all just for leisure. There are dramatic mission trips and moves to new places due to job relocations, yes, even pilgrimages. Not all are the proverbial big vacation.The first time I highlighted this I noted that there is a moving chapter about the incarcerated — those who cannot travel.)

Might we grow a bit by moving out of our comfort zones? No doubt. For those of us too busy or broke to travel much, this book is a chase price of a global ticket abroad. Enjoy!

Every Step Is Home: A Spiritual geography from Appalachia to Alaska Lori Erickson (WJK) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I raved about this writer each time she did a new book — one was about genealogies and another was about tracing practices of death and dying around the world —and this one is equally captivating, enjoyable, inspiring.

The first chapter is about the Marching Bears geographical space in Iowa, her home state. I was hooked.

The chapter titles each start with one word title — dirt, air, stone, caves, trees, etc.

They are about places in the United States that might be considered natural wonders, from mysterious mounds along the Ancient Ohio Trail to the majestic Redwood National and State Parks in California to the Dunbar Cave in Tennessee. I loved the astronomy lesson of the Chaco Canyon in New Mexico  and the incredible Sandhill Crane Migration in Nebraska (made famous by the spectacular Tom Hank’s narrated show The Americas.)

For those of us who haven’t travelled that much in the US this is grand reporting, a nicely spiritual view of traveling this “spiritual geography.”

Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees Beth Norcross & Leah Ramey (Broadleaf Books) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

There have been a number of beloved books of late about the role of trees in our lives, how they grow and relate. (I trust you know the important work of Peter Wohlleben, such as his justly famous The Hidden Life of Trees.) We have a number of titles like this. This recent one is remarkable; I’m only part way through but it is captivating.

Norcross and Rampy run “The Center for Spirituality in Nature” and one of the big proponents of their work and this book is the great Presbyterian mystic, Belden Lane. (I hope you know his serious Oxford University Press titles, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes or his Backpacking with the Saints, or his curious one focused on his relationship with a tree, The Great Conversation: Nature and the Care of the Soul.) He says this book “speaks the language of trees.”

Maybe you know the lovely Quaker singer-songwriter (and author) Carrie Newcomer. She writes about Discovering the Spiritual Wisdom of Trees:

A beautiful meditation on the wisdom found in the natural world and the transformative power of being in relationship with trees. Norcross and Rampy are exceptional teachers and knowledgeable guides, graciously leading the reader down tree-lined wooded paths where they share scientific knowledge, insightful personal experience, compelling metaphors, and spiritual insights. — Carrie Newcomer, Emmy-winning performer, songwriter, and recording artist of the albums A Great Wild Mercy and The Beautiful Not Yet

This Is God’s Table: Finding Church Beyond the Walls Anna Woofenden (Herald Press) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This is one that I raved about when it first came out maybe five years ago, now. It’s a delight to read, a bit provocative, and a great story very well told. And maybe it might be just the right blend of entertaining story and serious missional theology and nature loving wisdom to capture your attention this summer.

Here’s the gist: Anna more or less (it’s frustrating to use overused words) creates a faith community experiencing some sort of fresher experience of the Body of Christ in the middle of an urban garden. With some foodie vibe, the urban passion of Sara Miles (who wrote a great forward) she finds God on the streets, among strangers who become friends, all around this loving endeavor of growing food.

This really is God’s table and if you are feeling like you might want to give up on church, read about this barren lot and see what happens when it is approached with something like sacramental care. See what sort of temptation comes out of this imaginative journey “embracing abundance” As Carol Howard Merritt wrote, it is “a beautiful glimpse into the hard and generous work of growing a church, a garden, and a community.”

By the way, Ann Woofenden, has been a leader in the faith and food movement (and had a podcast called Food and Faith.) Last year she and a former Pittsburgh guy, Derek Weston, worked together to release Just Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection and Celebration. Hooray.

When Anna Woofenden felt God’s prompting to plant a church, she didn’t necessarily expect actual planting to be involved. But down on her knees, with hands in the dirt, she faithfully tended both crops and congregation. This Is God’s Table shares the story not just of the Garden Church, but of a community strengthened together through its hunger. — Kendall Vanderclice, We Will Feast

Kitchens of Hope: Immigrants Share Stories of Resilience and Recipes from Home Linda S. Svitak and Christin Jane Eaton, with Lee Svitak Dean; Photography by Tom Wallace (University of Minnesota Press) $29.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

Speaking of foodies and urban gardeners (and enjoying the stuff of Earth) how about a new cookbook to celebrate the goodness of the Earth, the bounty of creation? (And, yes, that it is international in scope reminds us not only of the joyful tastes and textures of God’s diverse world and the real variety of food cultures there are, but also of the sorrows and crisis of the summer of 2025 with the daily inappropriate captures and scary disappearances, right here in America.) So, yes. This one is beautiful but I name it with an undercurrent of sadness.

The spices and leaves and nice pictures on the back cover invite us inside, where there are vivid photos and great stories of food from around the world.

As it says in the colorful inside flyleaf, “Immigrants carry more than hope as they cross oceans and traverse continents to come to the United States. They hold tightly to stories and recipes, remembrances of what they left behind. Kitchen of Hope brings together there memories from contributors who hail from more than thirty countries, offering a glimpse of their kitchen and insight into their lives.

They continue:

This book is a celebration of people and cuisines from around the world, infused with the aromas of epazote and cardamom, the tang of fish sauce, the heat of chile peppers, and the bite of mustard greens.

Some of the immigrants who tell their stories here come to the US fleeing war and violence while others seek education and opportunity. Some have called the US home for years, if not decades.

These recipes and food photos reflect the connections and values of characteristics of the contributors. There are over fifty recipes “from curry, mole, biryani, and borscht, to pita, pho, sabusas, pupas, and so much more.” Welcome to the Kitchens of Hope table.

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BookNotes

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I’ll bet you are like me and have recently gotten automatic “away messages” from someone who you were hoping to correspond with. I’ll admit I’m disappointed when I get a bunch of that reply from our BookNotes newsletters mailing. Of course, I’m glad our friends and customers are away for a bit — many getting much needed rest, some on fun vacations, others on urgent mission trips or service projects. In any case, hooray for that!

But I do hope folks swing back, circle back, come back, return, revisit, track down, or otherwise find those unread BookNotes. So many good books are described and I just know you need ‘em. Or at least need to know about ‘em. Some titles might be calling your name, so do check out those older missives, all archived at the BookNotes tab at our Hearts & Minds website.

The last two BookNotes were unintentionally of a theme, or so it seemed to some who wrote to us upon reading them.

Two weeks ago we did that BookNotes about rest and play, leisure and recreation, with books about sports and camping and more. It was supposed to be fun, even delightful, but there was some pathos around the edges of my writing: one book was about the idol of productivity. One about resistance to racism (by way of taking up naps!)  I commented on the subversive nature of rest, how we need to say “no” to the fast-paced, reductionistic worldview that squeezes out delight. Kate Rademacher’s book Reclaiming Rest: The Promise of Sabbath, Solitude, and Stillness in a Restless World is, indeed, a “refreshing invitation” but it also strikes me as urgent, even prophetic. Along with others I usually mention — Allender, Wirzba, Buechanan, Brueggemann, Heschel, Swoboda — I think it is really, really good.

This week I’ve been blown away — I don’t use that phrase very often — by the captivating, moving, deeply wise, and remarkable new The Sabbath Way: Making Room In Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight by Travis West. The forward by Winn Collier (of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination) is beautifully rendered and made me want to read it again. I thought we didn’t need yet another book on the sabbath, but, wow. I highlighted West’s book in that previous BookNotes, but it was so new I hadn’t touched it yet. Now I can say it was one of the best books on the list, capturing so much about the good of restfulness, of God-centered playfulness, of embracing an expansive view of sabbath-keeping, even in some serious health and family struggles.

I don’t know about you but I desperately need these invitations to restfulness, to play, to Sabbath. The books really help arouse my taste for the good life. You?

The post that followed that —circle back, swing back, etc. etc., if you missed it — was one on the arts. I sang the praises of a fabulous regional arts group named Poiema Visual Arts who invited us to sell books at their great biennial gathering. That inspired me to name a few favorite books on the arts — naturally I gave a shout out to my friend the late Calvin Seerveld — and  featured a sale on his sequel to Rainbows for the Fallen World, Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves.

And then two by the always inspiring Terry Glaspey (the fabulous Discovering God Through the Arts: How We Can Grow Closer to God by Appreciating Beauty & Creativity and the magnificent 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know: The Fascinating Stories Behind Great Works of Art, Literature, Music and Film.) I also told of three by one of the Poiema speakers, J. Scott McElroy. I hope you saw our feature of his three: Finding Divine Inspiration: Working with the Holy Spirit in Your Creativity, Creative Church Handbook: Releasing the Power of the Arts in Your Congregation, and his brand new How to Care: Crisis/Trauma/Mental Health Ministry with the Arts. In that one he shows how we can be Compassionate, Artistic, in our Response and Engagement. (C.A.R.E. — get it? What a great resource this is for anyone interested in the God’s gift of the arts but also in the current awareness — not a minute too soon — about mental health issues, trauma, and whole-person ministry in these troubled times. Spread the word about these, please.

(It was in that BookNotes that we celebrated two forthcoming books by Makoto Fujimura and invited you to pre-order them from us now. Check that out — it’s pretty impressive news.)

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So all that invitation to swing back and revisit and track down those good posts inspired me to add some more to this topic of creativity and the like. There are so many great books about this movement into goodness and beauty, fun titles that will bring delightful hours reading. And what a blessing to be reminded to find a sense of curiosity and savor joy in these dog days of summer. Some are old, some are new. Enjoy.

ALL BOOKS MENTIONED ARE 20% OFF.

As always, scroll to the bottom of this newsletter and click on the link to our secure order form at our Hearts & Minds website. Tell us what you want and how you’re going to pay — entering cc digits works, but we also invite you to just ask us to send a bill, and we can enclose an invoice in the package — and we’ll do the rest. Thanks for your support.

The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty Martin Schleske (Eerdmans) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I’ve mentioned this often, a very handsome hardback with solid paper and artful photography, and I never fail to enjoy recommending it. It is all a book should be. Translated from the German by classical strings performer Janet Gesme (and with a lovely forward by Makoto Fujimura) this book is about so much, but, to summarize, it is about the work of a luthier, who seeks out the natural beauty in just the right sort of wood from which to craft his world-class instruments. There is, Schleske reminds us, an unspeakable beauty at the heart of things

Marilyn McEntyre notes that she was reminded that “when people live into their callings deeply and faithfully, they become beacons.” So there is also that — Schleske’s violin making itself is a worthy study, as his knowledge of trees and music becomes, as Marilyn puts, “heart opening parables.”

Philip Yancey — quite the amazing reader and writer — says this “tapestry of beauty and spiritual wisdom” is notable. He says, “Rarely have I read such a fresh and stimulating work.”

He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair a Broken World Sho Baraka (Waterbrook) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Again, we have highlighted this before, often holding it up at events, sharing our good appreciation for hip hop artist and speaker and leader Sho Baraka. We are grateful for his inspiring call to take up callings as creatives, to help bring truth and beauty into the world.

As he puts it, “No matter your calling or vocation, you can help shape a better world around you through your own creativity.”

I said last time that the Poiema Visual Arts conference had a bit of a theme about how art can help bring solace and joy, and, in fact, the process of engaging with artful, creative processes, can bring real healing, even to those who have deep trauma’s embedded in their stories. As a self-aware black Christian leader, Sho knows this… he gets that Christian discipleship points us towards stewarding our gifts for the sake of both beauty and justice. He looks at art and history, at Scripture and the true narrative of God’s work in the world.

This offers a fresh reminder of the implications of the gospel and a fabulous invitation for all of us to reject “toxic stories and incomplete theology” and to forge new ways to honor God’s call to joy and creativity. What a great book.

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

When somebody emailed earlier today to ask if we’d heard of this one, I realized I really ought to highlight again. We are long fans of this fine writer of young adult stories (and, more recently, children’s picture books.) We were thrilled to realize her deep and enduring faith has guided her in her own vocation as writer (and we loved how she has inspired many adults to take seriously the art of children’s books, for instance, in her Broadleaf title called Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls and, again, in her contribution in the fabulous anthology called Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children, edited by the late Leslie Bustard, published by Square Halo Books.

Alongside her own generative prose, Mitali Perkins shares her interviews (in several wonderful sidebars) many other artists who strive to weave justice into their art work or craft. Some are activistic and outspoken, others wanting to remain artistic with their sense of allusive imaginativity. In any case, she ties these various stories of real artists or creative workers together exploring how the arts and our creative efforts can be done justly.

Is there a relationship between (as fellow-Newbery Award-winning YA novelist Gary Schmidt puts it on the back cover) “the making of art and the performance of justice”? Schmidt continues, “Mitali Perkins foregrounds questions that any serious creative has to grapple with.”

Yet, as she identifies the right questions to ask, and interviews others about these urgent issues, she clarifies for all of us not just the character of the creative life, but of any life well-lived. This is a book filled with joy and hope and goodness, written with ample humility and some good stories of her own. It’s a real companion for writers and artists and thinkers, and anyone who cares about beauty and goodness in this complicated world.

The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity Carey Wallace (Eerdmans) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

As I have said before, Carey Wallace is a splendidly thoughtful mainstream novelist whose work has garnered great acclaim in the niche of literary fiction. She has done some artful children’s books as well — one about saints and another retelling Psalms, each paired with exquisite illustrations. She is a fine writer and as the punk rock singer Pattie Smith exclaims on the front cover “This book articulates… the beautiful complexity of what drives us to create and what we encounter when we do.”

This is, indeed, about the “mysterious encounter” and, working out of an integrated Christian worldview, she naturally thinks it is God who is at the heart of the creative endeavor.

And yet, she writes this book trying to figure it all out, sharing her deep studies in thinkers from around the globe, across the span of centuries, naming various aspects of the creative process. She explores gratitude and devotion, craft and what we might call “everyday inspiration.”

Have you ever just felt moved to sing? Do you even add a new touch to an old recipe? Where does that impulse come from?  Without gushy piety or cheap Bible citations, she dives deep, graciously engaging all sorts of creatives across time and genre, trying to offer some glimpse of a taxonomy of beauty, and thereby help us all. From practices such as embracing silence and working in collaboration and even taking time to rest, she “helps readers of all walks of life welcome more inspiration into their art and into their lives.”

As Joe Hoover, the Jesuit poetry editor of America put it, Carey “offers surprising ways for contemporary art-makers to fashion their lives devoted to their craft…. Her prose is as inspired as her subject.” He is not alone in raving: Wayne Adams, a multimedia artist and former board chair of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) writes:

“As an artist and creator, I feel like I’ve been waiting for this book my whole life.”

An Axe for the Frozen Sea: Conversations with Poets About What Matters Most Ben Palpate (Rabbit Room Press) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I’ve been wanting to shout about this book for quite a while but it never seemed to fit the theme, and I didn’t want it to get lost in one of my routine omnibus collections of various new titles, as much as I love those random BookNotes lists. It sure fits here — the delight of creativity, the ways the arts matter, the way good conversation itself is a common grace and Godly gift. This is a book to savor by a sharp (and often witty) writer, a good thinker, and an honest man. He has written about writing and about his own interior life, his pain and struggle;  see, for instance, the moving Letters from the Mountain, also published by Rabbit Room. We love it.

An Axe… draws from that image by Kafka about what a good book can do. I’ve used that line; I’ve felt that line.

But yet, as intense as some of the poets he interviews here can be, the book is at times utterly charming. They are, as Li-Young Lee put it in her rave review, “stouthearted conversationalists.” She says that “Palpate brings out the best in them.” What a delight — whether you know anything about poetry or not. And certainly whether you know these poets or not. View this as eavesdropping on good folks chatting about life — from grief and illness to family life to the writing craft and the role of literature in faith formation.

The artists are diverse culturally and theologically, although all are, I gather, knowingly Christian. You will find one-on-one conversations with Scott Cairns and Maurice Manning and Luci Shaw. What fun that he has Malcolm Guite and Jane Murray Walker (you will feel like you know her if you read her lovely memoir from Slant Books, Leaping from the Burning Train: A Poet’s Journey of Faith.) Palpant tells of how and where he met them, writing nicely as if each is a stand alone piece in a great magazine. The writing is good, his take-aways are astute, and his description of the poetry of each is fabulously interesting.

The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R Tolkien John Hendrix (Abrams) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Do you recall us sharing about this, several times before? I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but this “graphic novel” illustrated study of the friendship of Lewis & Tolkien as they collaborated in art-making is not only fabulous for the splendid illustrations — I hope you know Hendrix from his others books, not least of which is the amazing one about Bonhoeffer (The Faithful Spy,) This one is as good as his others, detailed and playful, great for anyone interested in this fairly recent comic book style elevated to an art form. It is a visual blast, a joy, worth every penny.

And there is more. The Mythmakers is not just a charming youth-oriented look at these two Inklings, but it actually explores their aesthetic, their vision of the role of myth, their pressing back against the scientism and idols of modernity. It isn’t that heavy, but yet this really does show that their storytelling efforts was a strategy to redirect the increasingly stunted imagination of mid-20th century Western culture. What a fun way into a matter of life and death — not unlike their beloved epic adventures in Middle Earth and Narnia. Further up and further in? Get The Mythmakers.

Clay in the Potter’s Hands Diana Pavlac Glyer (Square Halo Books) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Speaking of the classic Oxford mythmakers, Diana Pavlac has written or edited several important books about their artful collaboration. Her Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings is highly regarded (and mentioned by Hendrix, in fact.) Besides being a tireless scholar of the Inklings, Ms Gyler is a potter and in this new book (a revision of a previous project) she offers the best theology of ceramics we’ve yet seen. Here is some of what I said about this inspiring book in a March BookNotes:

Of course she does the obvious— the Bible uses images of God being like a potter and we humans being like clay. But she does a bit more than the expected, and — along with very moving black and white pictures by expert photographer Quay San — offers insights from the studio. There’s a cool glossary in the back, even, explaining words unique to this artisan’s craft — wedging and warping and trimming and underglaze and vitrification. You’ll smile learning about clay and torque and you’ll be inspired to deepen your own appreciation for your own creativity; as with many other art-themed books, they are profound in recalling our own call to steward our own creative gifts.  What does it mean to be redemptive in our use of God’s good Earth? What can we learn from artists — and particularly, potters and their wheels— that might inspire our own lives in the world? Kudos to Square Halo Books for once again creating a wonderful book slightly oversized, with lovely touches and moving photos. Thanks to Diana Pavlac Glyer; this is a book many of us have longed for for years. Hooray.

Makers By Nature: Letters from a Master Painter on Faith, Hope, and Art Bruce Herman (IVP Academic) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

If I’m helping you review some of the best books I’ve highlighted at BookNotes this season, this is one that truly is one of the very best books I’ve read all year. I did not mention it in that last post about the arts event even though we did sell several at the Poiema gathering. I mentioned it from up front in a book announcement and told about it briefly in a workshop I did and so, here, again, I give this sincere shout-out: Makers By Nature is a truly lovely gift, a book to hold and to treasure, to behold. Herman’s art is scattered nicely throughout and the book is wonderfully designed. You’ll love owning it.

Here’s the gist: Herman shares in epistolary fashion wondrous lines of caring insights and tender encouragement (and sometimes exquisitely hard questions) to folks he knows. Whether these letters are real is beside the point: the format allows him to write as a friend, a colleague, a teacher,  an art critic, but mostly as one who cares. While not a novel, it really is engaging as one comes to care about the people Bruce cares about, and we track with his pleasant insights and personal side-notes. These letters are often profound and often just lovely. They are indeed about “faith, hope, and art.”

The foreword is by master wordsmith Malcolm Guite, the great UK poet and priest. It’s perfect.

Get Makers By Nature, read it and then, if you can, give it away to a loved one. Whether they are taken up in the “holy terror” of painting and making art or not, they will be inspired by his call to love, to care, to share.

Seeing the Gospel: An Interpretive Guide to Orthodox Icons Eve Tibbs (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Where to begin? I cannot now do a long review of the sort that this beautiful book deserves but I can say this: we have a dozen or more such books on iconography, some by Orthodox theologians, some by spiritual directors, some by those who write icons. (They are “written” not drawn or painted.) This is certainly one of the best we’ve seen, and certainly the best in years. We are excited, to say the least.

Also, we might note that since most of our readership (and customers here at the shop) are not Orthodox (although some are) many may need not only a guide to iconography and the spiritual use of these traditioned portraits but also of the Greek and Russian Orthodox theological and spiritual traditions that have inspired them. Eve Tibbs (with a PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary) has for many years been a “seasoned expositor of Orthodoxy for non-Orthodox Christians” (as James Payton, author of Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition puts it.)

I’ve not studied this brand new release very carefully — and, believe me, I’m no expert on these things — but I can tell that it is winsomely presented and wise and helpful and lovely. It is lavishly illustrated. Hans Boersma (of Nashotah House) compliments the publisher’s commitment to the beauty and truth that shapes us through the veneration of icons. He tells how this book “combines spiritual insight with academic knowledge and mediative prose.” Three cheers for that, eh?

Fr. John Chryssavgis (executive director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institutes) says, “Tibbs offers exceptional insight into the extraordinary world of icons.” I love what he says next: “The reader is invited to participate in a generous banquet of aesthetic beauty accompanied by a treasure house of spiritual commentary.”

“The reader is invited to participate in a generous banquet of aesthetic beauty accompanied by a treasure house of spiritual commentary.”

By the way (and this will be important for some readers, as it surely was to me) — there is a fabulous foreword by the ecumenically minded neo-Calvinist, Richard J. Mouw. He tells a story of Alexander Schmemann and that’s a great way to introduce this feast of a book. Thanks, Richard.

Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith Russ Ramsey (Zondervan Reflective) $29.99 //  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Although this book came out in 2022 many are still discovering it and we are delighted to have promoted it at the Poiema conference a week or so ago in York. Their leadership team has been leading online discussions about it, in fact, so they, too, would assure you that this does indeed help us learn to ”love art through the eyes of faith.” (Or, maybe, deepen our faith through the eyes of artists.) Each chapter tells an intriguing story about the faith (or lack of faith) surrounding a certain artists — from Edward Hopper to Lilias Trotter, from Michelangelo to Vermeer and Van Gogh. There are great chapters and each is loaded with intriguing detail and human color and spiritual wisdom. You can’t go wrong.

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive Russ Ramsey (Zondervan) $29.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

If Rembrandt Is In the Wind is intriguing, informative, inspiring, then Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart brings more of the same, but this time, with a bit of a focus the humanness of the painters; yes, their faith and doubt, but also their fears and quirks, their sadness and struggle. Art really can teach us about”the struggle of being alive” and lead us to glorious wonder even amidst the brokenness. I’ve tried not being proud in saying I have a blurb on this — so do others more qualified than me — but I really am a fan of this remarkable book. His insight about what we might learn about desire from the Mona Lisa and his piece on the Hudson River School are both brilliant. I loved the chapter on, surprisingly, Norman Rockwell.  Geesh, I loved how he linked pop artists Jimmy Abegg with Edgar Degas (“and learning to see as the world grows dim.”) His bit on Jeremiah is spot on.

And ya got to love an appendix called “I Don’t Like Donatello, and You Can Too.” So there.

Rembrandt is in the Wind and Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart — get them both! Kudos.

Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How To See Bianca Bosker (Penguin) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Okay, speaking of famous painters, or, more accurately, of reading about famous painters, I have to just shout out two books I’ve really liked lately. No time to review them in detail, but just a quick shout out. These aren’t what I’m most recommending as a bookseller, but what I have adored as I work though my own stack of late night reads. Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How To See by Bianca Bosker (which I did mention back around Christmas, I think) is one of my favorite books in recent years — I so enjoyed it. It’s a big hardback (which we still stock; $29.00 // $23.20) but is now also out in a less expensive paperback.

She is an investigative journalist type, without boundless curiosity and moxey, wanting to infiltrate the high-end art world of New York City and ends up working at a gallery, becoming an art buyer and seller in the scene, for a while serves as an assistant to an important painter, dabbles in admittedly weird somewhat-erotic performance art, and finds a home as a quiet docent at the Guggenheim. It is vulgar and funny and brilliant. What is art, she wants to know, and who better to ask than those in the insular world of seemingly pretentious modern art.

“Perhaps the most exuberantly brilliant book about art for decades . . . Sharp, shocking and very funny, Bosker’s account will alter the way you see the world.” — The Spectator

Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph Richard Lacayo (Simon & Schuster) $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

I was very deeply moved by the detailed study of the ways in which six important artists changed as they aged. I suppose I was interested in learning a bit about a handful of artists — I knew little to nothing about any of them, really — but, truth be told, now in my seventh decade, I am wondering about aging. My wife and I joke, often, about referring to those younger than we are as young, some of whom are not very young at all. So I thought this might be a way to explore my own vocation as an old guy.

The introductory chapter tells of the ways in which aging has been seen by art critics and philosophers who have studied the changing landscapes (uh, sometimes quite literally) of elderly artists. Last Light: How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph by Richard Lacayo is a very handsomely made book and the heft appealed to me. And, really, who knew? Lacayo looks in great depth at Titian, Goya, Monet, Matisse, Edward Hopper, and the sculptress Louise Nevelson (who died in 1988.) I learned so much and was impressed with the knowledge of the author and, more, was at least a little inspired to reconsider my own stage in my career.

As the publisher notes:

Ordinarily, we think of young artists as the bomb throwers. Monet and Renoir were still in their twenties when they embarked on what would soon be called Impressionism, as were Picasso and Braque when they ventured into Cubism. But your sixties and the decades that follow can be no less liberating if they too bring the confidence to attempt new things. Young artists may experiment because they have nothing to lose; older ones because they have nothing to fear. With their legacies secure, they’re free to reinvent themselves…sometimes with revolutionary results.

Thanks for reading our rambling reviews. We hope you enjoy them and hope you will support our efforts as unique booksellers.  Click below (or call) sending us an order today.

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Last week we did one of our off-site book displays among some new friends, and we are so grateful to have been so well-received by a hospitable group of… wait for it… artists! Christian artists!  (What joy and talent and allusive richness we saw.) Organized by our new friends at Poiema Visual Arts, the event was low-key and lovely, thoughtful without being overly academic, filled with times of contemporary worship and prayer and fun fellowship. Plus we sold a good number of books, so we were glad to be of service.  

The Poiema Visual Arts event (held here in York, PA) was both similar to and yet distinct from some other faith-based arts events we’ve served. The old CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) events were spectacular with makers and philosophers, world-class theologians and cultural analysts presenting conversations on aesthetics and art history and the like. Folks there would naturally know our friend Calvin Seerveld (Rainbows for the Fallen World and Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves are books we cherish and take most places we go) and Jeremy Begbie, (say, Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist World, or Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts: Bearing Witness to the Triune God, for instance.) We’re sad that that association has disbanded but we carry all the books in the seemingly related “Studies in Theology and the Arts” series by IVP Academic. We had them all at Poiema and they were noticed. I was maybe a little surprised by I even sold a copy of an expensive book we raved about at BookNotes a couple of. years ago, that had resonance with the CIVA audience: The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective edited by Roger Henderson & Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker. Three cheers for that!

                      All of these titles in the great IVP Academic arts series are stellar but I suppose if I had to highlight a few I’d note the newest, A Prophet in the Darkness: Exploring Theology in the Art of Georges Rouault by Wesley Vander Lugt, The Art of New Creation: Trajectories in Theology and the Arts edited by Jeremy Begbie, Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life by Jennifer Allen Craft (a personal favorite) and, of course, The Faithful Artist: A Vision for Evangelicalism and the Arts by Cameron Anderson, which should be read carefully by any Christian of any sort working in the arts.

Our pals at Square Halo run a very cool event in Lancaster each Spring (save the date for next year, March 6-7 2026) which has a more Rabbity Room vibe, maybe, with discussions about the aesthetics of Tolkien and Lewis and the role of liturgical prayer and the sorts of books published by our favorite small publisher, Square Halo Books. We had at the Poiema event It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God edited expertly and designed colorfully by Ned Bustard — one of my all-time favorite books! — and Why We Create, edited by the thoughtful folks at the Anselm Society, the lovely little volume Naming the Animals: An Invitation to Creativity by Stephen Roach and, naturally, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God by the exquisite poet Malcolm Guite. Folks at Poiema noticed. Hooray.

Back when the extraordinary modern artist Mako Fujimura was starting out we sold books at his remarkable Manhattan event, IAM (a nod to his International Arts Movement.) Naturally we had Mako’s main books at the Poiema gig and we sold several. That included the new edition hardback of Refractions and the must-read Culture Care and Silence and Beauty, his wonderful study of Endo’s famous Japanese historical novel Silence. Fujimura’s important Art and Faith: A Theology of Making from Yale University Press was displayed and it gave us the opportunity to invite pre-orders of two forthcoming books by Mako, one coming this fall from Yale University Press, the next, co-authored with his wife, due next Spring.

You, too, can PRE-ORDER now. (We won’t run your credit card, if you leave us digits, until we actually send the book. Let us know how we can help get these to you.)

Art Is: A Journey Into the Light Makoto Fujimura (Yale University Press) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE 20% OFF = $24.00 This will release October 21, 2025

As the publisher notes:

“Bringing together the author’s written reflections and his paintings, drawings, and photographs, Art Is invites us to see the world in prismatic and diverse lights, helping us navigate the fractured, divisive times we live in.”

Beauty and Justice: Creating a Life of Abundance and Courage Haejin Fujimura and Makoto Fujimura (Brazos Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 20% OFF = $19.99 I know it is pretty far out but wanted you to know about this extraordinary project of Mako and his wife (who is a practicing attorney) Haejin. This will release in early April 2026.

Brazos explains:

“In Beauty and Justice, justice advocate Haejin Fujimura and internationally renowned artist Makoto Fujimura explore how beauty and justice are two sides of the same gospel calling. Through stories from their global work in the arts, advocacy, and cultural renewal, they invite readers to discover how beauty sustains justice work and prevents burnout, understand why justice without beauty can become harsh and ineffective, and embrace practices for cultivating a “generative life” of courageous service.”

BOOKS SOLD AT POIEMA

We had well over 100 different books on creativity, the arts, the calling of artists, and such at Poiema and so appreciated their support of our work. Something at Poiema captured us unlike these other good events at the intersection of faith, creativity, aesthetics, and the visual arts. It was really sweet and everyone was exceedingly kind and happy. A lot of the participants were informal artists, not full time or terribly professional and the talent and joy and struggle was palpable. Everyone encouraged each other with a creative sort of blessedness. The snacks and gifts kept coming. They talked about Vincent Van Gogh and they talked about prophetic art and they talked about serving the homeless. The balance of experiences, collaborations in art-making, outdoors and indoors, along with more traditional teacherly workshops was tremendous. Kudos to all who made it happen.

The theme this year (they host the event bi-annually) mostly revolved around our deep brokenness as humans and how we can find healing in the arts and by engaging in what some call art therapy. They had workshops on trauma, several good presentations on art therapy, and there was an awareness of the need for God’s healing mercy for those who have been abused or hurt (sometimes by the institutional church or other people of faith.) There was one keynote talk about a woman who has done collaborative art projects all over the country (with vets facing PTSD, with homeless folks, among prisoners, and survivors of domestic violence.)

One of the keynotes and workshops was by our old pal Scott McElroy whose new book — years in the making — called How to Care, is chock-full of ideas for anyone (practicing artist or church or ministry leader) wanting to use the arts as an avenue of building empathy and care for the emotionally distressed. Call it “trauma-informed arts ministry.” We were so very impressed with Scott’s brand new book that we bought extra to share with you here, now. You won’t believe how much good content is in it. I highly recommend it. We have it at an extra discount, this week only.

We want to offer Scott’s three books (and three others) at 30% OFF for ONE WEEK ONLY.

After that the price reverts to our more typical BookNotes 20% off. Okay?

ORDER BY AUGUST 7th to get the extra discount.

30% OFF  – while supplies last.

How to Care: Compassionate Artistic Response & Engagement — Crisis/Trauma/Mental Health Ministry with the Arts J. Scott McElroy with Jen Alward (New Renaissance Resources) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 30% OFF = $17.49 one week only or while supplies last

I could go on and on about this new volume but I will be brief; it deserves a better treatment and I will write more later, I’m sure. For now you should know three simple things: Scott has been deeply involved in the movement of faith-based artistic work for decades. (See his two very useful titles below, also at 30% off this week.)

Besides being a guy who knows his way around the hefty conversations about aesthetics and inspiration, redemptive art and the hard work of craft and skill and output, he also knows his way around the language of trauma. He knows well the Biblical teaching about love of neighbor and has translated that call to serve the hurting into the post-Covid world of dis-ease, mental health issues, awareness of trauma, and the various ways humans have hurt each other in this fallen world. He knows our faith communities are to shine gospel-centered love on the world and yet we are often unaware about how to do this.

Besides not always being real good at creating safe spaces for the wounded, we are even more at a loss when it comes to treating (so to speak) these deep wounds by using artful modalities. In other words, we often don’t know how to help the hurting and we’re even less aware of how to use the arts to bring blessing to those with mental health challenges, living, as some do, on the edge of despair.

Those two things — that he knows a Christian approach to the arts and he understands the nature of trauma-informed care — should be enough to alert you to the immense value of this rare book. You should get it, and get another for your pastor or ministry leadership team. But thirdly, you should know this: How to Care is really built on that acronym in the title — it invites us to a compassionate, artistic, response and engagement. He unpacks each of these making the book not only a thrilling read but a literal handbook, a manual, a resource just loaded with ideas, suggestions, lesson plans, ideas, proposals, exercises. If you want something that is transferable, applicable, practical, you need this tool-kit of a book. Whether you are an artist or not, a counselor or not, this handbook for ministry with the arts will be exceedingly stimulating and useful. There is nothing like it in print.

Scott’s co-author, Jen Alway, by the way, has an LP, ATRL-BC from Notre Dame and is both an artist and art therapist practicing in Wisconsin. Very impressive.

Creative Church Handbook: Releasing the Power of the Arts in Your Congregation J. Scott McElroy (IVP) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 30% OFF = $19.59  one week only or while supplies last

Again, Scott’s great genius in his work and writing is his penchant for the practical. This is a high compliment given his advanced degrees in the arts and his decades-long work in enhancing the church by way of inviting a relationship with artists. Scott has encouraged artists — he fit right in among central PA’s Poem, which exists to encourage artists — even as he encourages church leaders to be ever-open to the Spirit’s leading to go deeper into arts ministry. This 2015 book is a veritable treasure trove of ideas and activities, a must-have handbook for any congregation with even the slightest interest in “releasing the power of the arts in your congregation.” Believe me, again, when I say there is nothing like it in print.

This wonderful resource reminds us that there are creatives in our midst who are longing to be of service to the church and while the church too often seems stuck in the past or unwilling to hear or look at work created by contemporary artists, many really are wanting to risk taking steps into this whole arena. I know personally of pastors who have said they just don’t know how to to start, what to do, how to minister to local artists or invite congregational artists to play a bigger role in local worship and ministry. This book can help.

There are lots of rave reviews stating how practical and useful this desk reference is. Manuel Luz (whose book Imagine That: Discovering Your Unique Role as a Christian Artist we had on display at the Poiema event) says:  it is “essential and compressive and inspiring. “If you are an artist of faith, or lead artists of faith, you absolutely need to get this book.” Or listen to Jason Leith (of SacredStreets.org, who was also at the Poiema event) when he says

“Whether you are a seasoned arts pastor or just investigating how the arts might benefit your church, this book’s gathered wisdom and curated advice will serve you greatly.”

Finding Divine Inspiration: Working with the Holy Spirit in Your Creativity J. Scott McElroy (Destiny Image) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 30% OFF = $13.99  one week only or while supplies last

We’ve highlighted this book in many of our best BookNotes lists about faith and the arts and, again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but Scott has both the visionary theology to undergird his thinking about a Christian perspective in the arts, but also he has tons of practical common sense, bringing his transferable concepts to the printed page with gusto. That is, this book is rooted in a fine aesthetic of Kingdom vision for the arts but also is down-to-Earth practical. It isn’t quite the handbook of ideas and a desk-reference like his other two, but, as his first one (2008) he offers his ideas about how creative types can “collaborate with God.”

I put it something like this: there are two extremes that too many fall into when talking about our creative endeavors. Some act like God is just an unhindered pipeline for any painting, song, poem, or dance they happen to come up with, regardless of their own talent, perspective, work, or actual openness to the things of God. That’s just dumb. On the other hand, there are many of us who talk about inspiration the way secularists do, as if it just means some vague sense of being excited about whatever we cook up.

Finding Divine Inspiration is a responsible, theologically sound, and creative invitation to really view inspiration in terms of what God through the active Holy Spirit might be doing in and among us as we create and make and design and work. Can we talk about inspiration in a way that is Holy Spirited and theologically sound without being goofy and irresponsible. Yes, yes indeed.

McElroy is a remarkable thinker and artist himself, and both attends a Vineyard Church (making him mildly charismatic and in tune with things of the Spirit) and well aware of the broader, more ecumenical tradition of a theology of the arts. I love that he cites rock critic and poet Steve Turner (Imagine and Popcultured) and the great writer Madeleine L’Engle (whose Walking on Water continues to inspire Christians in the creative arts.)

To help explore how to listen to the voice and prompting of the Spirit in our art work (and, by extension, actually any creative endeavor) Scott wisely interviewed a host of practicing Christian artists, from painter Thomas Blackshear to rock star Dan Haseltine to winsome, award-winning author Walter Wangerin and more.

If you haven’t read deeply in this genre and topic, this is a fine place to start. If you have read some of the classics, this is a good reminder of at least one major truth: we can be inspired by God. Yay.

Discovering God Through the Arts: How We Can Grow Closer to God By Appreciating Beauty & Creativity Terry Glaspey (Moody Press) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 30% OFF = $11.89 one week only or while supplies last

In a workshop I did at Poem, I read a portion of this where Terry writes movingly about encountering a painting that led him, rather unexpectedly, to pray. This is merely the intro but is in a very powerful introduction written not really for artists or workers in the creative fields of the Lord but rather for ordinary folks who want to be formed to deepen their discipleship and wonder how viewing paintings and engaging other art forms might help.

That is, Discovering God Through the Arts is not just another good book on a Christian perspective on the arts or on normative aspects of Christian art-making but is a guide to Christian growth.

To put it simply, Terry here shows how the arts can assist us in prayer and contemplation. Of course it can enhance our sense of wonder, deepening our awe, which is no small thing. In a fascinating chapter he shows how viewing good art can help us regulate our emotions and mature in what another author calls “emotionally healthy spirituality.” He has a great chapter on how the arts can deepen our compassion and empathy and a very good chapter on justice. Our faith can be enriched by art. This shows how.

He asks on the back cover:

“What if the arts were meant to play a more prominent role in the Christian life? What if God cares as much about art as he does about words? About the heart and the eye and the hand as much as the brain?”

75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know: The Fascinating Stories Behind Great Words of Art, Literature, Music, and Film Terry Glaspey (Moody Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 30% OFF = $17.49 one week only or while supplies last

Let me say humbly that this book could be twice the price and it would still be well worth it. That this hefty paperback with good paper and full color reproductions is as inexpensive as it is makes it one of the great bargains in the publishing world these days. And it is, indeed, worth every penny.

I have a blurb on the inside and raved about it since its first edition (with a different publisher) years ago. We agree with author A.J. Swoboda who says it is “simply magical.” It is a treasure chest full of inspiring information and art of the finest calibre, explained and highlighted.

There is a reason 75 Masterpieces won a Christianity Today Book Award and was the coveted Gold Medallion winner for the ECPA — it really is an amazing piece of work.

It’s easy to explain: Glaspey gives the background of his pick of the best art pieces ever — including novels, paintings, classical music, pop music, sculptures, architecture, and film. He knows much about literature and pop/rock music and he is a man of deep prayer and Bible study. (And in his time in the religious publishing world he introduced several pretty important new authors who owe him for seeing their talent early on.) Terry is an amazing person and this collection rings true, very true.

Many will appreciate learning about the backstories of these great pieces of art — especially if you’re fond of the two great books by Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt Is in the Wind and Van Gogh Had a Broken Heart — and will be thrilled to hear about the faith-orientation of some of the artists. Many were orthodox Christians, others maybe not, but who were, in one way or another, speaking into a world in search of meaning and beauty. His passion for art history and contemporary relevance is wonderful and his balance is wise and good. Agree or not about his particular 75, you will be blessed to see how, as one reviewer put it, “God’s goodness is woven throughout each unique story.”

Why not buy a few now while we have them on sale to give as gifts (Christmas maybe?) to art aficionados that you know. Or maybe those who are not yet art lovers?

Bearing Fresh Olive Leaves: Alternative Steps in Understanding Art Calvin Seerveld (Piquant) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE 30% OFF = $13.99 one week only or while supplies last

I’ve often mentioned Rainbows for the Fallen World, the true classic, cited often, by the great aesthetic theorist and Bible scholar Calvin Seerveld, of Toronto, Canada. This is one first published in the UK and we are thrilled to have a bunch. Featuring a cover by Cal’s friend Henk Krijger, this is a collection of lectures, talks, keynotes addresses, and seminal essays by Seerveld, making it, in some ways, an even better view of Seerveld’s theories about the arts than Rainbows. I adore this book, have cited it often in workshops I’ve done, and can’t believe the high price used copies go for in some places. In any case, we have it at a lower-than-usual price and our 30% off special and we couldn’t be happier.

This is made with glossy paper so there could be full-color art reproductions, mostly modern and somewhat unknown works, although you’ll find some classics in here, too

It will be a joy for you to own this rare volume and with Seerveld’s colorful (if a touch eccentric) prose, you’ll have a blast with it. Believe me, it is unforgettable.

There are lectures on whether art is a “necessity of luxury” And a good art historical piece on trends in postmodern art (and radically Christian alternatives.) The chapter “Redemptive Artistry in Contemporary Culture” is amazing, and “Redemptive Art and the Problem of Propaganda” is vintage Seerveld. I learned the phrase “God’s glossolalia” from the study of Psalm 19 in Rainbows but he resists it in an Appendix called “Creational Revelation.” With the notes and index it’s just over 200 pages.

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We try to put out our store newsletter, BookNotes, every week or so. I say “or so” because week-ish isn’t a word, but you get my drift. We like to keep reviewing important books for you, or at least announce them. And invite pre-orders. And make lists about a topic. Or celebrate brand new releases, fiction and non-fiction. I could do one almost every day if I didn’t have a store to run. And if I didn’t get the occasional writer’s block; it’s a thing.

We missed this past week entirely although folks are still ordering from that last list of novels and we’re grateful since the bills keep coming in. I bet some of those books might end up at the beach or mountainside, which makes us smile.

While out of town selling books last week with our friends in the CCO at their campus ministry training event in Western Pennsylvania, we heard one guest speaker tell of being fired from her job while on a work-related trip overseas; it was shocking and tacky and, frankly, stupid, as her position is badly needed and she is well-loved. She was angry, of course, but God seemed to speak to her, she said, in part through reading a book she had bought from us, the lovely Birds in the Sky, Fish in the Sea: Attending to Creation with Delight and Wonder by writer and outdoorsman Matthew Dickerson and woodcut artist extraordinary, Matthew Clark (Square Halo Books; $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79.) The Lord seemed to give her a few Biblical texts about being still. Maybe not exactly “don’t worry” but something better: wake up, pay attention, take delight in the wonder of God’s good world and trust the Creator’s sovereign care. Be still and know.

Another person (who had not heard the first talk) later said something similar: take delight, praise God in the ordinary, be aware of the glories around us. You can know God through delight. Oh my.

I thought of the mysterious, allusive 2003 song “Don’t Forget About Delight” by Bruce Cockburn.

On Sunday at my own church a former Presbyterian camp director gave a fabulous sermon about play, recreation, exploration, allowing the Holy Spirit to enliven our imaginations, especially in the great outdoors. I wondered if I was getting a Divine hint.

This is more than taking time for quietude and even something more than reclaiming rest, although I think that’s a good start. I write a lot about a Christian view of work, here, and invite us to think about Christian discipleship in ways that help create a better common good. In these harsh days where policies are hurting the poor and vulnerable, there is much good to be done. We simply must be active in serving our needy neighbors and showing up in ways that can help reform the direction of our culture. Faith without works, the brother of Jesus said, is dead. It’s urgent.

But yet, can’t we play in the Kingdom? Made in God’s image we at least can be (must be?) creative, no? Like God, we speak and make; we play and work and create and rest. With Walt Brueggemann (in Sabbath as Resistance) we recall that keeping sabbath means saying no to the ethos of the world’s economics and the idols of never-ending productivity.

So here’s a good summertime list, random items that just seemed about right — titles that are (mostly) fun reads to help us live into this aspect of life that includes rest, but more: playfulness, leisure, recreation.  Much more could be said, and other titles could be offered. We’ve got big sections on sports and art, for instance; we’ve got Christian studies of entertainment, even books about thinking well about video games. There are a number of books about joy, including books about awe and wonder. Here are a couple to get you going — resting, playing, delighting, enjoying. If the trees can clap their hands, as the Psalmist puts it, surely we can let loose a little, too, eh?

I feel a need to offer this disclaimer, if you will. Some of us have got to work extra hours just to make ends meet. It represents a certain privilege to talk about the difficulties and dysfunctions of a workaholic, ambitious culture, and while many BookNotes readers need to be reminded of the freedom to rest, the goodness of play, some of us battle terrible chronic pain or carry huge social worries; some of us do not have the economic means to take vacations or buy expensive recreational gear. We get that, believe me. Still, a good book about playfulness and a reminder of the Godly call to rest and joy can be helpful for all of us, no matter our life’s station. We really believe God offers rainbows for a fallen world. If this seems a bit bougie, we hear you.

Sabbath Dan Allender (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a great book, a key title for anyone reading about sabbath rest and I’ll tell you why I led off this list with this one. It is part of a tremendous series that we promoted when it first came out. Curated and edited by the late, great Phyllis Tickle, this “Ancient Practices” set of books offers each individual one about a particular spiritual practice shared by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. The series includes lovely books on tithing, going on pilgrimage, fixed hour prayer, keeping the liturgical calendar, and the like. The first in the series (which I very much liked) was by Brian McLaren and is called Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices.

Allender’s Sabbath is simple to explain. Here’s the thing: unlike any other book on sabbath practices (and there are many good ones) Allender links the practice less to strict and legalistic rules about rest and more to the notion of recreation. Re-creation. Although not exactly a full theology of play, it comes close and invites us to enjoy the goodness of creation, to be replenished in body and spirit in part through the healing power of recreation and celebration. As we weekly live into and embody some glimpse of the hope of heaven — which is to say, new creation! — we (with others) take time to delight. Sabbath can be rejuvenating because that’s the nature of real playfulness. This is a fabulous read, challenging for curmudgeons or workaholics or pietists. Enjoy!

The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight Travis West (Tyndale Refresh) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This book is so new we don’t even have it in yet — my bad; did I say I was away for a week working off-site? Still, we are on the edges of our seats for this one, eager to see it when it arrives later this week, we hope. Dr. West is an upbeat and beloved Old Testament prof (and the author of a texbook on Biblical Hebrew) at Western Seminary (with a degree from the world-famous Vrije University of Amsterdam.) His colleague Winn Collier, of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination (and author of the amazing authorized biography of Eugene, A Burning in My Bones that I hope you’ve read.) penned a splendid forward. Winn is a wonderful, imaginative spiritual leader, a good creative thinker and writer and his endorsement means a lot. It has only been out a couple of weeks and it’s already getting a lot of buzz. Hooray.

Here are just a few of the rave reviews that have poured in. Please, don’t miss these lovely blurbs — you’ll enjoy their wisdom:

I hardly have words for this stunning invitation to reimagine, to reorient, to redeem the time we view with such scarcity, and to be restored and refreshed to our depths. I’ll never again view Sabbath as something to do but see it now as an invitation to a new way of being in the world, a new way of inhabiting God’s vision for wholeness in all creation and people. — Chuck DeGroat, professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality; executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program at Western Theological Seminary; author of Healing What’s Within

Reading this book feels like having a dear friend gently lead us into God’s presence. Without downplaying our busyness or our pain, it welcomes us into God’s rest, into the goodness of his life and love. This is so different from what we normally see and experience in the world and the church. We all need this book– I certainly did! — Kelly M. Kapic, author of You’re Only Human and You Were Never Meant to Do It All

I need The Sabbath Way; you need The Sabbath Way. With cultural and economic forces that seem outside our control, we need to hear Travis West’s encouragement and wisdom to slow down, pause, breathe, and re-member our bodies, minds, and souls. This is not a call to enhance performance. It is a call to enhance our humanity. The Sabbath Way is a deeply spiritual and deeply humanizing project, and a timely gift to a culture desperately in pursuit of its next accomplishment.— Emerson B. Powery, PhD, Dean of the School of Arts, Culture, and Society; professor of biblical studies at Messiah University

Travis West’s years of study and practical thought on the subject of shalom come together in The Sabbath Way to create a readable, practical, and beautiful message that we all need now. Phrases in the book such as “Shalom is the wholeness found on the other side of justice” resonated with me, and I will repeat them often in the coming years. In short, your life will be better if you take The Sabbath Way to heart! — Randy Woodley, speaker, activist, and author of Shalom and the Community of Creation, Becoming Rooted, and Journey to Eloheh

An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus’ Rhythms of Work and Rest Alan Fadling (IVP) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I suppose I don’t need to overstate this important book but it was hugely significant when it first came out. It was pirated by Amazon (it was in the news) so they pulled it, reissued it hardcover (harder to be copied by the print pirates Amazon was colluding with) and it continued to be popular in the expanded and revised edition. It’s now out in paperback again, revised and splendid. Falling is an amazing person, admired by those who know him, and invites us to common sense but counter-cultural practices of something beyond balance. The “rhythms of work and rest” are explored and he advises us to live embrace a more unhurried life, a restful demeanor, formation that allows us to recover from what he calls being “a speed addict.”

Of course the great and dynamic John Mark Comer popularized the line by Dallas Willard in his rightfully popular book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry but that good book surely stands alongside this little classic.

Want to truly know others, to be in relationships that matter? To have time to focus on things that matter most? Do you want to slow down in a way that can pave the way for a life of attention to beauty and even play? This is an amazing, reasonable read.

The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap John Kessler (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Drawing a bit on the classic An Unhurried Life by Alan Fadling, John Koessler playfully goes after our jugular — the idol of productivity, efficiency, speed, finding our worth in what we do. The subtitle here is very important and this is radical stuff, even if playfully written. In keeping with our theme in this BookNotes, I’ll note that we can’t really give ourselves over to rest, let alone play, without surrendering our respected idols that align us with excessive productivity. Busyness and accomplishment and self-worth is central to the identities of most of us — Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters is a must-read study of what too often drives us —so this isn’t easy, I know. Believe me, I know.

But taking up this radical view — admitting our need for rest — and thereby “escaping the productive trap” is one of the answers.

Listen to this gorgeous paragraph from the talented and lovely writer Jen Pollock Michel, whose excellent first book is about ambition and is called Teach Us To Want. She, too, knows something profound about all this. Ms Michel writes:

Here is the extravagant promise of John Koessler’s wise, pastoral book: none of us needs to work harder at rest. Rather, rest is laid at the table of grace, which God himself has prepared. In this way, it is rescue for the weary and hope for the heavy-laden. When we realize that God hasn’t invited us to share his busyness but enter his rest, we reclaim the holy leisure of worship. That’s an invitation I can’t seem to resist, and I’m thankful Koessler has made it so clearly and compellingly.

Reclaiming Rest: The Promise of Sabbath, Solitude, and Stillness in a Restless World Kate H. Rademacher (Broadleaf) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

There are plenty of other books on rest and we’re happy to list a few here. This one is special, allusive, very well written, and surprisingly comprehensive — it looks at activism and silence, sabbath rejoicing and solitude. It is refreshing and upbeat, yet contemplative and invites us to sacred spaces to resist the motion and noise of our busy culture. This has lots of practical ideas about incorporating true rest into our daily routines as well as weekly sabbath stuff.

Listen to the ever-wise and always-eloquent Barbara Brown Taylor:

If you do not recognize yourself in the first few pages of this compelling, sage, and down-to-earth book, trust me: Rademacher is going to call your name before she is through. I cannot think of another book that makes a better case for wedding faithful activism to equally faithful rest. — Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark

Other thoughtful folks offer rave reviews, including the great Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Real Michael Curry, Patricia Raybon (My First White Friend) A.J. Swoboda, Brian McLaren, Kathy Izard, who wrote The Hundred Story Home.

Lauren Winner writes:

Here, we have prose that snaps, practical suggestions coupled with deep wisdom, spirituality connected to politics, and, finally, not just an invitation to a single practice called Sabbath-keeping, but rather an invitation to a more faithful way of life.

Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight Norman Wirzba (Brazos Press) $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

As we’ve often noted we have a lot of books on sabbath-keeping and restful practices. From lovely guidance like The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan to the classic by Marva Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly to the even older classic, Sabbath by Abraham Heschel (and don’t even get my started by the brilliant Sabbath As Resistance by the late Walter Brueggemann) as well as the aforementioned one by Dan Allender, there are plenty. (And, while we’re on it, don’t miss my favorite, Subversive Sabbath by A. J. Swaboda.) I wanted to list this one by agronomist and theologian Norman Wirzba for two reasons. It is less about taking one day a week off and more about embodying a lifestyle of sabbath principles. And he has an astute chapter on the loss of delight in our secularizing, modern culture and how to regain a Godly sense of wonder and delight. It seemed right to mention it here. (And how about that cover, eh?)

For what it’s worth, the second half gets serious in calling us to a lifestyle that shows forth these lively, delightful, restful, and counter-cultural principles in several areas of life. He has a chapter on education, another on home, another on economics. Of course he has an urgent chapter on environmentalism and a wise bit on “Sabbath Worship.” Okay it seems like a lot, challenging us to live with joy amidst pain and suffering and to recover from our lost ways. For many of us, I suspect, this might be transformative and energizing. Can we play our way into this visionary new creation realities? Come on! This could be fun. As Jamie Smith puts in on the back cover, “Living the Sabbath is a cup of cold water for thirsty souls — a cup of rest and delight offered to those of us exhausted and burdened by the frenetic pace of even our ‘Christian’ busy-ness.

In a way that is consistent with Biblical teaching, by the way, I think almost every personal self-help / personal growth book should have a broader, cultural and systemic aspect — we learn new ways of living within a social context, of course, the root of some of our craziness. And, similarly, any big-picture architectonic critique of the structures around us need to be taken up in our own real-world, daily lives. Living the Sabbath brings to this list a broad critique of our late, modern, capitalistic setting within the dominant culture. But, yet, again, it’s a book about living well, day by day, with Godly delight, in our own local places. Yay.

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto Tricia Hersey (Little Brown Spark) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Okay, maybe it is a tad incongruous to offer “a manifesto” along these lovely guides to a more restful life, but I’m telling you, lots of people I respect swear by this. She calls herself the “Nap Bishop” and says she has a “nap ministry.” I’m not sure the book is exactly oriented around a Christian worldview, but she is on to something. Hersey is serious about this call to undo some of the patterns of exploitation and racism that plague our society. Who knew that taking a nap could be a (counter-intuitive) form of nay-saying to the idols of the age? That our rest might disrupt white supremacy? (And if this really baffles you, check out one I highlighted a month ago — The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward by Malcolm Foley, a Black historian and pastor.)

Allow me to quote from the publisher’s pitch about Tricia Hersey’s manifesto:

“Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afro-futurism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey’s lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.”

The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction Justin Whitmel Earley (IVP) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

This has been a best-seller for us for five years now, and we can’t stop telling folks about how helpful it has been for so many — especially (but not only) younger folks, Gen Xers and Millennials, and Gen Z etc. It started on line when Earley came to realize he was exhausted and drinking way too much so he created an online graphic and set of tools to help himself take up better habits, especially around issues of the use of his screens, his busyness, matters of rest and quiet. He’s a fancy lawyer and admittedly a bit driven; he’s a self-aware speaker and writer — we’ve been with him on more than one occasion — and an energetic family man. He’s a good, good guy (whose latest book is about the joys of friendship as an antidote to chronic loneliness.) We respect him and highly recommend this major release.

The Common Rule has some good theology, some spiritual guidance, and lots of stories and practical tools, charts, guidelines. There are habits that can be formed by certain practices — stuff we should do daily, weekly, monthly. There are things to avoid, guidelines for accountability, and ways to find some sort of sanity in our frenetic culture. As spiritual writer (and former high-powered global businessman) Ken Shigematsu notes, it is a lifeline.

And it is beautiful and practical, inviting, even. Whether you are overwhelmed and and on the edge of burn out or whether you just want to move towards a deeper more reasonable sort of lifestyle, this guidebook is a must-read. Buy a couple — you’ll want to give some away to folks you know. The Common Rule is compelling and a delight, even if it may stretch you a bit, even if you have an allergy to rigid guidebooks and texts that are described as tools. Trust me, this one is worth reading.

A Spacious Life: Trading Hustle and Hurry for The Goodness of Limits Ashley Hales (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I know a number of the books on this list allude to the notions that in our creatureliness state — made in God’s image but finite, in a real-world of createdness — we have limits. We can’t do it all since we are “only human” as Kelly Kapic puts it in his major work on the subject called You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News (Brazos Press; $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19) or his new devotional You Were Never Meant to Do It All: A 40-Day Devotional on the Goodness of Being Human (Brazos Press; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.) Yep, Kelly’s theological work is excellent. But, man, Ashely Hales said it earlier and with such luscious graceful eloquence that one simply must read her 2021 book more than once.

I admire Ashley Hales for her writing skills, her style, her insight. I loved her Finding Holy in the Suburbs that explores a sense of place for those in the cul-de-sac. She has an amazing chapter in an anthology about racism and a new Bible study called A Fruitful Life. But this — A Spacious Life — is an extraordinary read. It is infused with cultural savvy and sociological wisdom, sure, but it is mostly a deeper spiritual read, a book that will draw you to God, to yourself, and to others, in the love that we so badly need. This is more about respite or solace but a reformation of our values and our attitudes about happiness and fulfillment. It will help us give up the endless desire to prefer more and harder and free us from being depleted and dissatisfied.

I’m not there yet, but I resonate with her diagnosis and her proclamation of this notion of a spacious life. I like the sound of it, don’t you? This is about flourishing and is, as Tish Harrison Warren says of it, “a theologically rich and pastoral invitation to slow down is a needed tonic in our culture of ambition and excess.” Breath deep. Be spacious.

The Well-Played Life: Why Pleasing God Doesn’t Have to Be Such Hard Work Leonard Sweet (Tyndale Momentum) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I’ve talked often about my friend Leonard Sweet, a vibrant and playful Christian leader. He reads more than almost anyone, can pray up a storm, and can preach a witty sermon that could bring an outbreak of genuine renewal. His grandmother was a Free Methodist revival preacher, after all… And he is a post-modern-ish semiotician.

Len is a blast to read, with wit and charm and insight galore. Some of his books are fairly big-picture cultural studies, futurist that he is. Others are just creative and interesting reminders of core Christian teaching. He is a man who follows Jesus and calls us all to whole-life, culturally-engaged serious but joyful discipleship.

The Well-Played Life is one of his less demanding books, at least intellectually. But it packs a prophetic wallop as he explores our fascination with earning our way (the opposite of grace, eh?) and an over-serious view of work. (I will never forget him saying we don’t “work” a violin, we “play” it, and similarly we might be advised to stop talking about “working” at our relationships.) Remember that famous line from Eric Liddell (popularized in the Academy Award-winning film, “Chariots of Fire”) about feeling God’s pleasure when he ran? That’s it! Anyway, The Well-Played Life is a winner. Check it out.

A Theology of Play: Learning to Enjoy Life as God Intended Kevin Gushiken (Kregel Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ll admit, this one slipped by me — working too hard or fooling around too much I can’t say — and I just discovered it. I’m thrilled by the plainspoken title and glad to have a fresh take on this subject; the best books on the subject are out of print or hard to get. (We still stock a re-printed edition of Robert K. Johnston’s classic The Christian at Play.) Gushiken’s got a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and I’m eager to know more about him. One of the rave blurbs on the back is from a pastor of a large church in Uganda, who notes that in some African cultures playfulness is considered to be un-serious, so therefore a playful leader would be disrespected. Sounds not terribly uncommon in some circles here, too, eh?

I like the books on leadership written by Angie Ward of Denver Seminary. Listen to her report on how this book, A Theology of Play, is helpful:

As a lifelong Christian and a perfectionist with a loud internal critic, this book is exactly the challenge and permission I needed to let myself learn how to play, and to play more. Play is not only for children, and it’s not a sign of immaturity; as Kevin Gushiken points out, it’s a mindset that is essential to our faith and growth as followers of Christ at any age. I especially needed the chapters on ‘Playing in My Identity’ and ‘Playing at Work’ to lighten up aspects of my life that I often take far too seriously. Thanks to Kevin for moving us toward the freedom and pleasure that God intended for our lives through this much-needed book! — Angie Ward, Director of the Doctor of Ministry, Denver Seminary, author of I Am a Leader, Uncharted Leadership, and Church and Parachurch.

The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality Brian Edgard (Cascade Publishing) $23.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.40

I admit I have not read this… the cover seems too dark (although I like it if you study it) and I don’t know much about the author. But here’s the thing: a good friend of mine who does workshops on this very topic and who reads widely in their field has given it a big thumbs up. He recommends it and it’s been on my stack…. Some of you might want it, I bet.

Here is what the publisher says about it; read this carefully to see if it is for you. It sounds enjoyable enough, but in its call to create an ethic of play, it engages everybody from Aquinas to Bonhoeffer. Allrightee then.

Many people would be surprised to hear that a playful attitude towards God and the world lies at the heart of Christian faith. Traditionally Christians have focused on the serious responsibilities of service, sacrifice, and commitment. But the prophets say that the future kingdom is full of people laughing and playing, which has implications for Christians who are called to live out the future kingdom in the present. Play is not trivial or secondary to work and service–only a playful way of living does justice to the seriousness of life! Play is the essential and ultimate form of relationship with God, which is why Jesus told people to learn from children. Indeed, a playful attitude is an important part of all significant relationships. This book explores grace, faith, love, worship, redemption, and the kingdom from the perspective of a playful attitude. It describes how to create a “play ethic” to match the “work ethic” and discusses play as a virtue, Aquinas’s warning against the sin of not playing enough, and Bonhoeffer’s claim that in a world of pain it is only the Christian who can truly play.

The late, great Christine Pohl of Asbury (and author of the best serious study of hospitality, Making Room: Removing Hospitality as a Christian Tradition and the best serious exploration of community, Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us) wrote this about The God Who Plays:

Who would expect a theologically robust and illuminating argument for play as central to Christian life and theology? Brian Edgar provides this and more — an original, nuanced, and engaging book that challenges our assumptions and invites us to delight in, and to take seriously, the playful dimensions of spirituality, discipleship, relationships, and God’s kingdom. — Christine D. Pohl, professor, Asbury Theological Seminary

Leisure and Spirituality: Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Perspectives Paul Heintzman (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I did a major review of this when it first came out in 2015 — you can search back through BookNotes if you’d like — but I’ll just give it another quick shout out here, now. And our price is ten bucks lower than the going price now, so this is a fun bargain!

It is weighty (325 pages counting the endnotes and bibliography.) It is thorough. And it is, for some of us, indispensable. A major release in the important “Engaging Culture” series from Baker Academic, it is the only book that seriously tackles from a thoughtful, nuanced, evangelical perspective, the whole area of leisure studies. Heintzman taught this subsection of sociology at the University of Ottawa and has had extensive experience as a recreational practitioner. His love for the outdoors and wilderness experiences is palpable but this big volume offers a theoretical foundation for not only outdoors education, camping and the like but the whole broader terrain of leisure and recreation.

Robert Banks — who has given his life to thinking well about faith in the marketplace and work-world — says to read it “in a leisurely way” which he suggests is a more spiritually-attentive way. Glenn Van Andel, a colleague and leader in this very movement (from Calvin University in Grand Rapids) says the book is “a wonderful gift that will transform our perspective on common elements of our daily lives: work, rest, and play.”

Leisure and Spirituality is “a wonderful gift that will transform our perspective on common elements of our daily lives: work, rest, and play.” — Glenn Van Andel

I said it is the only book of its kind. That’s not exactly accurate as Dr. Heintzman helped edit two other spectacular volumes that bring together some academic papers and other reflections on leisure studies, recreation, play, sports, and the like, both published by that rather rare Dordt College Press. They are Christianity and Leisure: Issues in a Pluralistic Society and Christianity & Leisure II: Issues for the Twenty-first Century (both in stock here, naturally.) I highly recommend those for those with serious interest however it has stuff as diverse as leisure theory, empirical research, studies about the theology of sports and coaching, philosophical studies of the aesthetics of play, explorations about faith-based perspectives on health and wellness, and testimony from those who are practitioners in the fields of recreational services.

Until the Streetlights Come on: How a Return to Play Brightens Our Present and Prepares Kids for an Uncertain Future Ginny Yurich (Baker) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

We’ve celebrated this before, glad to have an inspirational faith-based book about this increasingly discussed topic. And it is a good one — “rousing and replete with research” as one happy reader wrote. Everybody seems to know that kids need outdoor time and unstructured play. (Although not everyone is doing much about our lifestyles, our disconnection, our addiction to screens and the like.) This book can help.

Here is what the publisher writes:

The average American now spends just four to seven minutes outside each day, while we spend four to seven hours using devices with screens. Our physical, mental, emotional, and relational health has suffered–and so has that of our children.

But there is a solution: get outside!

A homeschooling mother of five and the founder of the global 1000 Hours Outside movement, Ginny Yurich explains how we got to this point — and how to get back to a healthier, more engaging relationship with the world outside. With a mom’s heart and an educator’s eye, Ginny shows you the importance of unstructured play for children, what boredom actually contributes to our brains, the value of sunlight and social play, the role of play in lifelong learning, how to make time outside more attractive than screen time to your child and much more.

If you want your kids to grow up curious, resilient, and with a sense of adventure and community, it’s essential to make outside play a priority. This book shows you why and how.

Overplayed: A Parent’s Guide to Sanity in the World of Youth Sports David King & Margot Starbuck (Herald Press) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Again, this is an older one that we raved about when it came out almost a decade ago. King is the director of athletics at Eastern Mennonite University (and has coached sports and the elementary, middle and high school levels.) Margot is everybody’s favorite (or ought to be) hippy-chick wild writer woman. Her consulting work with writers is stunningly useful and she’s a joyful, thoughtful, Christian leader. They combined here to explore some good news for parents who are overwhelmed by the demands of competitive youth sports.

As the back cover asks — do you remember pickup games in the backyard? Oh, how times have changed.

This wise book offers insights that will help guide parents towards practical ways to set boundaries and help kids gain fuller identities (as beloved children of God) both on and off the field, whether they win or lose games. Others have written about this and this is by far the best thing we’ve seen. Needed now more than ever.

There is Biblical insight here, yes, but also developmental stuff and ways to help regain a sane and life-giving schedule for kids and teens (and parents.) There are discussion questions for families and lots of stories — whether you are a parent or care-giver, coach, trophy winner or the kid who got cut from the team, there really is lots of good info here.

Rachel Gerber, who has been the national minister for youth and young adults for the Mennonite Church USA, says:

Practical and inspirational, Overplayed reminds and reorients us as parents and caregivers to what truly matters: not our children’s scholarships, trophies, or records but the fact that they are God’s beloved children.

A Year of Playing Catch: What a Simple Daily Experiment Taught Me about Life Ethan D. Bryan (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have written about this often — even though I admit I’ve never had a catch with Ethan — and find the book to be one of the most memorable, enjoyable, insightful, playful, books I’ve read. I mean that — in its own way, in this rather unique genre, it is a true stand-out. Ethan wrote an earlier book about going to his beloved KC Royals stadium every day for a whole season (they were not doing well in those years) with some sort of spiritual lesson or lively insight gleaned from each game. Eventually he took his playful energy and writerly observations into his own personal life and started playing catch every single day and wrote this charming book about that.

It has become a bit of a movement — there are stories galore (google him) and stories from ESPN and other such sources that tell about playing catch to raise money for good causes or playing catch in honor of a deceased sports fan, or playing catch to heal broken relationships. I’m glad some have read the book and are doing the work. Or should I say playing the play.

A Year of Playing Catch follows Ethan all over where he plays with ordinary folks (and a few stars, on and off the field.) The scene when he has a catch at the famous “Field of Dreams” site is unforgettable. The drama builds as he might play with super-star celebrities and maybe the White House. Or not. It doesn’t matter— he’s a lovely servant of God touching the lives of common folks all over. This book is a testament of the power of play, the joy of following your dreams (or at least following your nose as you figure what shape your dreams will take) and caring well for others as you re-create. What fun. Highly recommended for baseball fans, of course, but, really, for every and anyone.

Speaking of having fun, by the way, Ethan D. Bryan of Missouri is the author of the self-published novel I wrote about in the last BookNotes, The Life-Saving Adventure of Gracelyn Gordon and Her Dog. There’s a little baseball in that fictional travelogue, too. What a great time I had reading that. You will, too.

Walk Ride Paddle: A Life Outside Tim Kaine (Harper Horizon) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Okay admittedly, this is not just a book about the author’s 1,228-mile journey hiking, cycling and canoeing across Virginia’s natural landscape. It is, indeed, an outdoorsy journal — in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s review she says “Move over, Thoreau, and make way for Walk, Ride, Paddle. In fact, great contemporary mystery writer David Baldacci says Kaine is “channeling his inner Bill Bryson” which is just about right. Another review notes how Kaine takes us along as he “hikes the Appalachian Trail, cycles through the Blue Ridge Mountains, and canoes Virginia’s lightly James River.” What fun.

But it is more. I suppose you know that Kaine is a Democratic office holder who obviously loves his state and sets out here not only to find recreational solace but to meet people across the political divides. It isn’t mostly about civil society and public conversations, but it is “a love letter to the commonwealth” he has served for over twenty-five years. Written as he was turning 60, Cain is taking account of his own life. As Hillary put it, it is “filled with reflections on everything from his strong religious faith to his dislike of wolf spiders to Covid’s impact on his health to our nation’s dysfunctional politics.

There are lots of enjoyable outdoor memoirs and travelogues, many that help us see the beauty of the terrain. This one is a really enjoyable one, exploring our bonds as people, making it what Adriana Triginai (The Good Left Undone) calls “a field guide for the soul.” Nice — a perfect summer read.

Every Step Is Home: A Spiritual Geography fro Appalachia to Alaska Lori Erickson (WJK) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This is an author I enjoy — I liked her faith-based exploration of genealogy called The Soul of the Family Tree and couldn’t put down her Near the Exit, an award-winning study and travelogue through the customs and ritual surrounding death the world over. What fascinating reads. This recent one is equally ambitious, but a tad less dramatic, making it, well, also captivating in its own fun way. During COVID, the globetrotting Erickson and her husband took off in their small camper. I love a good road trip and for those of us who don’t have the time or money to travel, it’s fun to ride along. Especially when the author is so curious, mindful, even.

As the publisher puts it, “Whether you are exploring national parks or visiting holy sites, this book makes for the perfect spiritual companion and guide.” There are additional resources for group conversations — it would make a great book club selection — including videos from the author (and even a Spotify playlist.) Every Step Is Home is a lovely, fun read whether you are a nomad or pilgrim or stay at home reader.

Sacred Playgrounds: Christian Summer Camp in Theological Perspective Jacob Sorenson (Cascade Books) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

I mentioned in my intro that a guest pastor friend preached about “sacred playgrounds” in our church last week. No doubt she was drawing on this one-of-a-kind theologian, storyteller, researcher, and upbeat writer about the ways in which summer camping can be a venue for not only religious formation and spiritual dedication but actually theological exploration. Perhaps without naming it as such campers, counselors, and staff engage in theological playfulness, exploring with creativity and imagination the interface of spirituality and the great outdoors. Sorenson is not unaware of the myriad philosophical and theological questions at play here — centering experiential education and embodied spiritual formation is increasingly being studied — but the book is a good read. I’m guessing it was a dissertation at some point and we can rejoice. There is nothing like it that I know of in print.

The Art of Being a Creature: Meditations on Humus and Humility Ragan Sutterfield (Cascade) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I’ve reviewed this before so won’t go on and on, but I could. I love this book! Sutterfield is an Episcopalian farmer and has written wisely on Earth and limits and his own body images and caring for creation (and has the best intro to the life and work of Wendell Berry out there – Wendell Berry and the Given Life, a great, great read.) I raved about this because, well, it is about the truth of things: we are creatures, Earthlings, made of humus, after all. This is profoundly Biblical and it is so, as she says, that “from AI to the Anthropocene, technological power has pushed human life to the limits.” Can caring for soil — gardening, farming, eating well — make a difference?

If you liked Jeff Chu’s Good Soil, you’d like the stuff Sutterfield writes about a theology of compost. His style is lively essay, filled with serious reflections (about kenosis) and playful ruminations. There’s some natural history and science and some lovely stuff about being fully human.

Bible scholar Sylvia Keesmaat and farmer writes that Sutterfield “has created an allusive and poetic symphony of gratitude, awe, and solidarity with and for the soil.” She continues, “the book invites us to join the dance of all of creation… so we might become more deeply rooted in the life of the Creator.”

It seems a fine title to end our little list about rest, recreation, play — a book about mud and beauty. About God and us beloved creatures. Yes, yes, yes. Enjoy and be transformed.

A FINAL QUICK NOTE ABOUT PRE-ORDERING THIS FORTHCOMING FABULOUS TITLE:

A final quick note: for some of us — I hardly need to say it — reading is a pastime not only for spiritual formation and life-long learning but for relatively inexpensive, lasting, entertainment. We thank God for the rest and rejuvenation we can find while lost in a good book. So I wanted to just remind you that I invited you (in a BookNotes a few weeks ago) to PRE-ORDER one of my favorite books on the topic of reading and the glad practices of reading widely. It’s coming early, next month, so don’t forget to order World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading by Jeff Crosby (Paraclete Press; $18.99 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $15.19.) What a delight this book will be. I’ve read an early manuscript and I am thrilled to get to sell it soon. Hooray.

Scroll to the tab marked “ORDER” below and tell us what you want. We’ll take it from there.

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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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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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Welcome to the latest BookNotes newsletter. If somebody sent this to you we are happy to have you on board. Three cheers for our friends who try to amplify our little, human-scale voice against the sonic booms from that big website that happens to hawk books. You can sign up for our free bookstore newsletter by viewing this in its original version at our website. Click on the BookNotes tab and you’ll see a little box where you can enter your email to subscribe.

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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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.

+++

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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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.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

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

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

BookNotes

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DISCOUNT

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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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• 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.

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