Beautiful autumn days beckon us to spend our afternoons and evenings out of doors. Amid all the hustle and bustle of daily life, especially if you have children in school or are in school yourself, it can be difficult to devote time to reading. But good books bring extra light into our lives and open new vistas of understanding about the world around us. So we recommend taking a book out to the porch swing or a favorite clearing in the woods. Bring the young’uns with you and read something aloud together.
Below, you will find reading suggestions from our group that come from a wide range of disciplines and topics. We think these selections will be great for personal and family reading. Most of all, we think they will broaden your understanding of God’s creation and His work in it because they have had that result in our lives. Please leave us your favorite reads in the comment section.
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Gary M. Burge, Mapping Your Academic Career: Charting the Course of a Professor’s Life (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 138 pages.
I hesitated to recommend this helpful little book because its subject matter is so specific. However, I think Burge’s Mapping Your Academic Career has insights for many professionals. Burge describes the landscape of a professional career in academia with simplicity, highlighting the joys and challenges that attend each stage. In the process, he offers encouragement for those struggling with, among other things, anxiety about their abilities, fit within the institutional culture, and worth amid old age. More broadly, he also provides good counsel for how to navigate the path from early adulthood to retirement in a spiritually, psychologically, and emotionally healthy way. Even if your career is not in academia, I think you will find something valuable in this short work.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908; repr., New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004), 157 pages.
Both of my book recommendations this quarter are the result of reading along with other listeners of the podcast, “The Literary Life.” If you have the luxurious blessing, like I did, of two visiting grandmothers during the few first weeks of post-partum with baby number three, I highly recommend hiding away with baby to read and nurse and read and nurse.
As a spy novel, The Man Who Was Thursday is a page turner as well as hilariously bizarre. But at a level deeper than the action is a fascinating quasi-allegory that communicates the terrible loneliness and “danger at every turn” of a fallen world and yet the providential care of God and His “Hound of Heaven” chase for His people. I was glad to have read C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength first. Written nearly forty years later than Chesterton’s work, and doubtlessly influenced by it, Lewis was a bit more accessible for me. By reading Lewis’s story, I was able to see more clearly the direction that Chesterton was attempting to send my attention. And as always, Chesterton is a master wordsmith; I imagine he alliterated even in his sleep. As a short, engaging, and surprising read, I highly recommend it to our readers.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga
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Jonathan Gibson, Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 345 Pages.
Evangelicals often stress the importance of personal and family devotions. However, as a pastor, I repeatedly find that individuals and families either do not know where to begin with private and family devotions, or they feel as though these important practices have grown stale. Thankfully, Jonathan Gibson, a Presbyterian minister, has developed a wonderful resource pastors can feel good about placing in church members’ hands to develop or enhance private and family devotions.
In Be Thou My Vision, Gibson provides thirty-one days of liturgies, or orders of service, that give structure to devotional life. Each day includes the following elements: Call to Worship; Adoration; Reading of the Law; Confession of Sin; Assurance of Pardon; Creed; Praise; Catechism; Prayer for Illumination; Scripture Reading; Prayer of Intercession; and the Lord’s Prayer. Gibson carefully selects prayers from important figures across church history that can be used to inform your own prayers. He also includes appendices with supplemental materials such as musical tunes, the Westminster and Heidelberg Catechism, a Scripture reading plan, and more.
Of course, a word of caution is in order for Free Will Baptists using this book, specifically about the catechisms. While both the Heidelberg and Westminster Catechisms are largely acceptable to all Christians in what they teach, both are from traditions that practice infant baptism, and the latter is well known for expressing hyper-Calvinism in some of its answers. Pastors need to understand the articles with which Free Will Baptists would disagree and help their members adjust accordingly. It may even be helpful to add Paul V. Harrison’s Free Will Baptist Catechism as a supplement.
—Recommended by Joshua R. Colson
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Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908; repr., New York: Aladdin Classics, 1999), 305 pages.
Reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday sent me to another classic written in the same year but of quite a different tone and speed. How I relished floating lazily down the river of this enduring children’s work once again. As I have discovered several times in the last few years re-reading children’s books, Kenneth Grahame’s story was still alive in my memory like a near-forgotten melody—tucked out of sight of my conscious self, but still operating its Deep Magic behind the scenes. Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad, along with their varied adventures—they are eternal and universal.
Grahame’s prose is perfect; it is fittingly generous of him as an author to respect children enough to lavish excellent word-craft on them. Toad is horrid and hilarious and even more so the second time around. The chapter “Wayfarers All” spoke presciently into my own current circumstances and gave interesting fodder to the imagination about the choices we make about homemaking and adventuring, and when each may be needed. Both my recommendations this quarter are in the public domain, meaning I was able to utilize free recordings from Librivox.org when my hands were busy cuddling a beloved baby instead of a beloved book.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga
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John S. Hammett and Katie J. McCoy, Humanity, Theology for the People of God, ed. David S. Dockery, Nathan A. Finn, and Christopher W. Morgan (Brentwood, TN: B&H Academic, 2023), 448 pages.
Few doctrines in our current culture are as necessary as anthropology for addressing the intersection between ethical questions and theological reflection. John S. Hammett and Katie J. McCoy’s work in Humanity helps guide readers through the various dimensions of theological anthropology. More than simply focusing on the imago Dei, as important as that is, this work explores maleness and femaleness, humanity’s call to work, our need for community, questions of human constitution, and more. The book is well researched and helpfully describes various competing theological viewpoints. I think this book will be a standard for theological anthropology going forward.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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Nathan Knight, Planting by Pastoring: A Vision for Starting a Healthy Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 154 pages.
In 2015, when I first began to consider planting a church, I was surprised by the number of books and blogs on the subject. But I was equally surprised that almost none of the authors I read seemed to share my approach to ecclesiology. I learned a great deal from those books and blogs (and I have detailed some of that on the HSF), but I was ultimately left with the feeling that most church planting strategies were at odds with my understanding of a New Testament church. It was as if a church plant was something other than an actual church. Sure, getting a new church off the ground has many unique challenges and requires some unique activities, but the end goal is the same, right? Surely, the goal is to plant and pastor a New Testament church.
Aware of the lack of resources on church planting that were ecclesiologically sound, I was delighted to see that 9Marks had published a short book on church planting entitled Planting by Pastoring. I immediately ordered the book and read it over the course of a couple of days. I felt as if I had discovered a kindred spirit in Nathan Knight as he described his love for people, the importance of evangelism, and a desire to plant a healthy church modeled after the New Testament.
Knight rightly claims that most modern church planting strategies are too beholden to size, speed, sufficiency, and spread. Knight explains that success and significance in church planting is determined by most as “Grow, grow, grow as fast as you can! Be financially self-sufficient sooner rather than later! Spread your impact by multiplying services or campuses or churches!” This mentality puts undue strain and stress on church planters, leading to burnout. The model seems unsustainable, and I am not convinced it produces healthy pastors or churches. This approach to church planting, in Knight’s words, is geared towards “entrepreneurs” and “salesmen” instead of “pastors” and “shepherds” (22). Church planting requires some level of entrepreneurialism, but if we are ultimately planting churches, then we need men who are first and foremost qualified, gifted pastors and shepherds. That is what Knight commends and what church planters desperately need to hear. (I would also add that the appendices consist of an outline for a church covenanting service, a statement of faith, and a sample church covenant—I have never seen those in a church planting book before!)
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 346 pages.
I first read this book in 2014 with Forum member Phillip Morgan. I am reading it again with Forum member Christopher Talbot and the life group we host. God in the Dock is a posthumously published collection of nearly fifty essays by C. S. Lewis. I believe that different people will enjoy different essays, depending on their interests. For my part, I am fond of “Myth Became Fact,” “Man or Rabbit,” “The Pains of Animals,” “On the Reading of Old Books,” “Meditation in a Toolshed,” “Modern Translations of the Bible,” “Xmas and Christmas,” and “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness.’” I could mention others, but these essays are delightful, engaging, and challenging.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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John Crowe Ransom, Land! The Case for an Agrarian Economy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017), 127 pages.
Though this book was published only a short time ago, it was originally written by John Crowe Ransom in the early 1930s. Ransom, at the time an English professor at Vanderbilt University, was a part of the Southern Agrarian movement, which criticized industrialism and argued for a return to agrarianism (e.g., small family farms, a closeness to the earth, anti-consumerism, etc.). Earlier writings from the movement focused on cultural rather than economic arguments for agrarianism, and Ransom intended Land! to fill the economic argument gap. Yet no publisher would take the book. All these years later, however, the University of Notre Dame Press did thanks to the historical work of Jason Peters and Jay T. Collier, both of whom contribute introductory material.
Ransom’s thinking is at once incisive and ambitious. At the height of the depression, Ransom carefully criticized the unfettered free market practices and unstable industrial policies that contributed to the stock market’s collapse. However, he also examined and eschewed the materialist, industrialist forms of Marxism that held so much sway in the early part of the twentieth century. Instead of industrialized economies from the right or the left, Ransom argues for a tertium quid, agrarianism, “the economy of self-sufficient men living on the land and taking subsistence directly from it; old-fashioned and slow but safe” (117). To my mind, Ransom’s dream of a predominantly agrarian economy is somewhat idealistic, although aspects of his sensibility have gained momentum with the rise of granola culture and homesteading. Yet he points us to a way of life that transcends the materialistic impulses of our age, and for that, he should be read and read again.
—Recommended by Joshua R. Colson
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Cynthia Ryland, illus. Diane Goode, When I Was Young in the Mountains (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1982), 27 pages.
Great children’s picture books are a joy to parents who often find themselves trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of repetition at reading time. Over the years, I have identified several of my favorite picture books to read to my children and recommended them for broader reading. Cynthia Ryland’s When I Was Young in the Mountains is another one of these great books for children and adults alike.
This delightful read provides a poetic reflection on the childhood experiences of visiting grandparents in mountains. I especially love how Ryland focuses in on the little things that children (and perceptive adults) notice and identify as characteristic of larger truths, such as the coal dust on her grandfather’s hands and face, the smell of sweet milk, and the joyful tears of her grandmother at a baptism. When I Was Young in the Mountains also includes beautiful illustrations. The simple but vivid vignettes of mountain life drawn by Diane Goode earned the book a Caldecott Honor Award in 1983. I am always excited when one of my children brings me Ryland’s book to read, and, sometimes, I go looking for it myself to read to them or to just read aloud to myself.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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Francis A. Schaeffer, Letters of Francis A. Schaeffer: Spiritual Reality in the Personal Christian Life, ed. Lane Dennis (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1985), 264 pages.
As I have noted often in my HSF posts, Francis Schaeffer is as interesting as he is divisive. Schaeffer seems to have equal parts admirers and critics, both of which seek to propagate a certain legacy. To be sure, I find myself on the side of the admirers and am deeply appreciative of Schaeffer’s work. Yet, if you were to read only the books found in his Complete Works,I am worried you might walk away with a slanted view of Schaeffer. Schaeffer’s writings are often more philosophical, cultural, and theological. Those who knew him, though, found him to be personal, caring, and compassionate. Of course, those are not mutually exclusive categories, but a fuller picture of the man can be gained by understanding his personality. Reading this collection of his letters may help in that regard.
A year after Schaeffer’s death, Lane Dennis culled through some of Schaeffer’s letters, redacting personal information, to demonstrate the more spiritual and personal perspective of the man. If you think of Schaeffer primarily as the propagator of “the line of despair,” reading his letters in this book will help you see his deep care for individuals. Moreover, while the rest of Schaeffer’s correspondence is housed at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and can be difficult to access, this sampling allows readers a unique view into Schaeffer’s life.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937; repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 317 pages.
I am itching to go through Middle Earth again. Once I finish my dissertation, I plan to reward myself by reading The Lord of the Rings, which I have not read since 2016. In the meantime, I have refreshed my memory with The Hobbit. Of course, The Hobbit, in its form, is quite distinct from Lord of the Rings and more like George MacDonald’s Princess series or C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series. Tolkien is masterful: from the settings to the characters to the plots to the themes, Tolkien does everything right. The Shire is a place I would like to live. Bilbo is a character I would love to meet. The motif of courage in the face of sure danger and possible death is a theme I need to hear. If you have never invested in Middle Earth, The Hobbit is a good place to start.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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Philip Yancey, Where the Light Fell: A Memoir (New York, NY: Convergent, 2021), 320 pages.
The first time I ever read a book by Philip Yancey was for a class with the late Dr. Garnett Reid. The book was Amazed by Grace. I remember Yancey’s writing being brutally honest but reverent at the same time. I had never read anything quite like it before. But I vividly remember being truly amazed by God’s grace. I am indebted to Dr. Reid for assigning Yancey in that class.
Just a few weeks ago, I began listening to Yancey’s newest book, Where the Light Fell. I do not regularly listen to audiobooks, but I wanted to hear Yancey read his memoir. I was immediately stunned by what I heard. I could not stop listening—even on several occasions when I could hardly bear to listen to accounts of Yancey’s interactions with his mother and brother. On a couple of occasions I thought, “Is he being too honest? Is he fairly describing his mother and his childhood?” I wanted to discuss the book with someone, but for anyone who had not yet read the book, I was not sure even how to describe it. The book is funny, spiritually moving, almost painfully unnerving, and thought-provoking.
In sum, and at the risk of oversimplification, Yancey recounts a lifelong, complicated relationship with his mother, his close but increasingly strained relationship with his brother, their poverty after the death of his father, his multiple encounters with fundamentalist Christianity, his conversion, and his growth in the faith. Each of these are discussed with vivid, and sometimes unsettling, detail.
Yancey does not try to tie a nice bow around the story of his life. But he also does not seek to deconstruct his faith after painful encounters with Christians. Somehow, he recounts the difficult details of his upbringing and adult life with a sort of brutal honesty combined with a deep awareness of God’s grace amid pain and suffering. I must warn readers that the book has some foul language, and, on a couple of occasions, discusses sexual matters related to Yancey’s brother in some detail. Nonetheless, the book is worth reading.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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