I posted a list of ‘recommended reading’ for summer for church and figured I’d done the work of putting it together so I might as well paste it here. This is broken down into books I have read/am reading that I think are good, useful, or important (that I particularly want people in our church family to read), and books I’m going to read over summer (or try to) so that people can read with me.
I try to use summer to both refresh myself with some good stories and ‘practical’ stuff, but also to do a bit of deeper thinking to start the year well. (Disclosure: there’s an Amazon affiliate link in some of these and if you buy them after clicking I get a small commission) .
Have read/am reading
1. The Plausibility Problem — a really helpful book we recommended during the Love My Church series but that has driven lots of what I’ve said in talks in This Is Love too. Ed Shaw is a same sex attracted bloke writing passionately about how the church makes his chosen life of singleness plausible or implausible based on how well we love. It’s chockers full of practical advice and stories (not convinced, check out the review I wrote with my brother-in-law).
2. Paradoxology — a great littlish book about some of the ways we don’t grapple with tensions in what we believe but try to resolve them; Krish Kandiah does a great job of tackling big questions that people have about Christianity (suffering, evil, the Bible, the nature of God etc) in a way that refuses ‘pat’ answers.
3. Resident Aliens — Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon write about being the church and that being a call to be joyfully different to the world and to be on an adventure together; it’s a bracing little book (I wouldn’t totally buy into his picture of what it looks like to be resident aliens, which looks a little like living in an enclave, but it’s overwhelmingly helpful).
4. Zeal Without Burnout — this isn’t just for paid ministers but is a useful book I just read in one sitting about self care; and I’d love out church to buck the current trend I’m seeing in lots of churches where people burn out.
5. Made For More — this book by Hannah Anderson is a great book on being made in the image of God; it’s unapologetically useful for women, but her insights are beneficial for all sorts of people.
6. Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian — Michelle Lee Barnwell wrote this thing that’s a little more academic than the others, but I’m aware lots of people are talking about gender roles in church and gender more generally, and this is one I dipped into ahead of and event on Christianity and feminism Robyn and I spoke at last Sunday.
7. Public Faith In Action — Miroslav Volf, this is a goody on what it looks like to approach politics from a position of believing Jesus is king and we’re called to live as people in his kingdom in a world that doesn’t believe or live this way. It’s an application (and thus more accessible) of his A Public Faith, which is also stimulating.
8. You Are What You Love — James K.A Smith — another one we’ve dipped into in talks a bit this year; Smith is great on what it means to be human and how we change; but his solutions are geared towards particular personality types (and we need to take lots of that on board as we figure out how our shared practices and habits cultivate our love for Jesus and each other), but there’s some stuff that won’t necessarily resonate with everyone.
9. To Change The World: James Davison Hunter is writing, in part, a response to Resident Aliens… where some have read Hauerwas as suggesting we should withdraw from public life as it becomes hostile, Hunter says we should pursue ‘faithful presence’ even if we lose and are treated with scorn. His stuff on why the world is the way it is and why we tend to try to solve issues politically rather than by creating groups or projects in society that tackle them is pretty great stuff and explains a little bit of the ‘Christian Right’ in the US.
10. The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss — David Bentley Hart. This one is hard brain work even if you’ve got a Bible College degree but his stuff on who/what God is and how it differs from how modern people understand God is brilliant and has changed the way I talk about God.
11. How (Not) To Be Secular — James K. A Smith, this’ll be helpful for term 1, it’s a summary of Charles Taylor’s massive A Secular Age and is about how we modern western types see the world as completely flat and material, when we should see it as infused with life and supernatural (divine) meaning.
12. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace, the first novel on the list and interesting because it is very much a ‘secular age’ novel but sort of haunted by the loss of supernatural meaning.
To read/finish this summer
13. Becoming the Gospel — Michael Gorman wrote the best and most influential book (apart from the Bible) that I read at college; Cruciformity (a short review here). This is part of a trilogy of works that includes Cruciformity.
14. The Road To Character — David Brooks writes great stuff in the New Yorker, and this along with finally finishing Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue and Stanley Hauerwas’ A Community of Character, is part of my reading around virtue ethics
15. Le Morte D’Arthur — Thomas Malory wrote the book on King Arthur before most other people. In term 1 we’re doing a series on Matthew’s Gospel comparing it to other epic stories of heroism, so I’m trying to read some others.
16. The Blood of the Fold — Terry Goodkind wrote a series of high fantasy, The Sword of Truth series, that is finished so I don’t have to wait for Martin or Rothfuss. I’m on book 3, I imagine I’ll get to 5 by the end of summer.
17. After Virtue— Alisdair MacIntyre (see 14).
18. Laurus — Eugene Vodolazkin wrote a Russian epic that gets rave reviews for the way it holds the natural and supernatural together as a sort of normal way of looking at the world.
19. The Book of Strange New Things — Michael Faber wrote about a missionary who took a ‘book of strange new things’ (the Bible) to a new world. This is a bit of prep for our Matthew series too.
20. The Course of Love — Philosopher Alain De Botton wrote a novel about what real nitty-gritty committed love looks like.
21. Modern Romance — Comedian Aziz Ansari wrote this about the experience of looking for love in a Tinder world; I’m thinking it’ll be an interesting companion to De Botton’s
22. Bringing It To The Table — Wendell Berry is a poet/novelist/philosopher who’s really helpfully critiquing our blindness when it comes to how food gets to our tables and calling us to a better doctrine of creation where we’re much more closely linked to, and involved in, the way our food is produced in a way that makes it an act of connection to God as the creator of the things we enjoy and that sustain us where we’re as much as possible co-creating (and sharing). This is the book of his that I’ve chosen to dip into having read quotes from him in lots of other stuff lately.
23. Honest Evangelism — Our local City Bible Forum peeps are highly recommending this book by Rico Tice as a great way to think about evangelism in our post-Christian world.
24. Alloy of Law — Brandon Sanderson writes good fantasy stuff that I get lost in, this is the latest set around his Mistborn series, which I enjoyed, and all his books are apparently set in the same universe. Which is fun in that it’s a sort of grand scale version of the mythopeia Tolkien says is how our imaginations most closely reflect the world-creating imagination of God.
If I have time and inclination I’ll try to dip into Augustine’s City of God some of Cicero’s De Re Publica, and Andy Crouch’s Culture Making because one of the things I’m wanting to keep thinking about in the new year is what a Christian ‘political theology’ looks like.
