Lewis Allen, The Preacher’s Catechism.
Though Preacher is in the title, this is a book on pastoral ministry designed to encourage weekly preachers. Allen encouraged me in three ways.
First, he encouraged me to pray for contentment. Ministry circumstances and location are not the source of my joy. Christ is.
Second, he encouraged me to pray for humility. Allen rightly observes that many pastors today seem caught up in personal brand-building and appear to use their local churches as a springboard to do something other than serve as pastors. In contrast to this approach, humble pastors seek to serve quietly, out of the spotlight, persevering in the hidden work of love and prayer.
Third, he encouraged me to pray. Pastors must discipline themselves to pray, true enough. But Lewis also reminds us that prayer is ultimately about maintaining an open heart before God. More than anything, pastors must learn to live in the presence of God and enjoy their communion with him.
Coleman M. Ford & Shawn J. Wilhite, Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers.
Ford and Whilhite provide overviews of, and lessons from, ten of the church fathers: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Origen, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory the Great, and John Chrysostom. My personal favorites were the chapters on Basil of Caesarea and his insights related to humility, as well as on Augustine and the wisdom he provided on how to read Scripture Trinitarianly. This was one of my favorite books of the year.
François Fénelon, The Complete Fénelon.
As a skilled physician of the soul, Fénelon furnishes readers with well-timed counsel for a host of spiritual maladies—unrighteous anger, irritability, pride, shame, and discontentment.
Two points have been particularly meaningful to me. The first were these words of counsel: “You must learn to act calmly and in continual dependence on the Spirit of grace, mortifying all the hidden works of self-love” (29).
The second was a prayer that I’ve added to my prayer cards: “Dear God, give me the grace to be faithful in all my actions, but indifferent to success. The only thing I ought to be concerned with is your will and to quietly meditate on you—even in the midst of busy times. It is up to you to crown my feeble actions with such fruit as is pleasing to you—and none at all, if that is what you find best for me” (175). Mind you, this is just a very small sample of his gems.
St. Gregory the Great, The Book of Pastoral Rule.
As the most thorough and widely used treatise on pastoral ministry from the patristic era, this book deserves a slow and careful reading from pastors, counselors, and spiritual directors.
A key takeaway for me is that human nature has not changed. Whether in Gregory’s day or our day, ministry is challenging; it remains a “mental tempest” (42). Whether in Gregory’s day or our day, marriage is hard: “Earthly anxieties are born of marriage” (173). Whether in Gregory’s day or our day, the allure of power corrupts (33, 63). And on and on it goes.
Samuel D. James, Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age.
James’s overall thesis is straightforward: The internet/social media is a liturgical environment and spiritual habitat that forms and shapes its users. Consequently, our incessant scrolling is an addiction to entertainment, which has spiritual repercussions. “We expect frivolity and resist sobriety,” he writes (96). This explains why people (especially our children) find church boring. When you’ve ingested triviality and banality all week, it’s no surprise that carefully crafted songs and sentences rest upon you lightly when you’re in church—assuming you actually show up.
And James explains why you should show up: “The church is not simply an exhibition of spiritual events for public spectacle, but a living institution where the Holy Spirit meets with his people” (176). Meaning: Downloading a sermon that you listen to at your convenience isn’t church. The church is a body, not a lone individual having a spiritual experience. In other words, get to church, and consider bowing out of social media. It’s affecting you more than you think—and not for the better.
R. B. Jamieson and Tyler R. Wittman, Biblical Reasoning: Christological and Trinitarian Rules for Exegesis.
As my favorite book of the year, there’s a lot I could say, but I’ll limit my comments to this: If you struggle to see the exegetical basis for Nicene Trinitarianism, then read this book.
Jamieson and Wittman do a stellar job of providing readers with the interpretive rules that guided the mothers and fathers of our faith to arrive at and formulate the Trinitarian grammar that we know as the doctrine of the Trinity. This book will show you that they didn’t impose their views on the biblical text but drew them out of the biblical text. That said, I can assure you of this: Reading this monograph will not solve the mystery of the Trinity or the two natures of Christ for you. And it’s not supposed to. Christian orthodoxy is not about explaining the mystery away; it’s about maintaining it.
Kristin Hannah, Summer Island: A Novel.
Raunchy photos of a mother’s long-ago fling come to light, ending her career and shattering her relationship with her daughters. The question readers have is: How will this end? Will reconciliation follow or will unforgiveness linger, resulting in permanent estrangement? You’ll have to read the book to find out.
What I can say is this: The character development and their interaction with one another is superb. I took away many gems from this book. One example is these words from Eric to Ruby: “Time is short, don’t you understand that? We bump along, blindly assuming we have forever to do things, say things . . . but we don’t. You can feel perfectly fine, and go to your annual checkup on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, and discover that your time’s up. Game over.” You should read this novel.
Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone: A Novel.
A Vietnam veteran moves his wife and daughter to Alaska to start a new life, but his PTSD sabotages his efforts. Despite their fear, disappointment, and grief, mother and daughter showcase persistent resilience and unrelenting love for each other—and in the end, lives of seemingly interminable grayness, burst forth with color, as healed wounds enable Leni (the daughter) to fall in love, marry, and raise a family of her own. So far, this is my favorite Kristin Hannah novel.
T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers.
While largely negative in his assessment of contemporary preaching, Gordon’s three recommendations for how today’s preachers can improve are worth considering (even for non-preachers!).
First, preachers need to cultivate a sensibility for the significant. They can do this by minimizing their time on social media and reading more poetry.
Second, preachers can improve their preaching by practicing thoughtful composition. In everyday mundane activities, preachers can practice thinking before they write—whether in an email or journal entry.
Third, preachers can practice reading their Bible slowly and carefully. Preachers need to practice slowing down and calmly reflecting on what they are reading. In turn, this will help them feed the flock during their sermons, which Gordon defines as helping their people rest in Christ (74).
Julius J. Kim, Preaching the Whole Counsel of God: Design and Deliver Gospel-Centered Sermons.
Kim accomplished a significant feat with this book: He makes an original contribution to the field of homiletics, and he does so with prose that are simple and elegant. I’ll limit myself to three comments.
First, those committed to Christ-centered exposition will appreciate Kim’s method for finding the Christ-focused connection in a particular passage of Scripture. This is a welcome supplement to Bryan Chappell’s Fallen Condition Focus. While working through a particular passage, Kim urges preachers to prayerfully discern how it connects with and showcases Christ’s person and work—Christ the Penalty Payer, Christ the Probation Preserver, Christ the Power Provider, Christ the Passion Producer (65).
A second crucial insight that will help preachers is Kim’s section on eliminating nonessential elements from their sermons. In short, Kim supplies preachers with questions they can ask themselves to determine whether a subpoint is necessary: Is it crucial? Is it optional, or is it nonessential (258)? Preachers should only include material that directly amplifies the point under consideration. They must eliminate all extraneous material.
The final salient feature of Kim’s book is the groundbreaking insights he includes from the field of neuroscience (chapter 8). Three insights are especially noteworthy: 1) Previewing your sermon points pre-encodes the brain. Combining this with a handful of restatements of your main points aids in retention (183). 2) Involving intellect and emotion combine to make sermons more life-changing (187, 188). 3) Eye contact enhances sermon effectiveness (192, 206). Thus, Kim urges preachers to make eye contact during significant pastoral moments in their sermons, especially during the introduction, central proposition, and conclusion (199).
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