Recommended Books (Autumn 2024)

This autumn we would like to share some good reads we discovered over the past few months. These selections represent a wide array of topics that we think will interest you. Some selections will be great for personal reading, others for family time. 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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Phylicia Masonheimer, A Thing Worth Living In (Phylicia Masonheimer, 2022), 39 pages.

Phylicia Masonheimer, of Every Woman a Theologian, has released this book of poems. Sadly, poetry is not a form of literature with which many people spend much time in the contemporary West, but this state of affairs is to our loss. We discover truths in the form of poetry that simply remain inexplicable in other forms. Not without reason did God Himself use poetry to communicate aspects of His holy, inerrant Word. However, reading poetry, if you are unaccustomed to it, can be difficult. You cannot read it quickly but must read it slowly and meditatively. However, Masonheimer provides a good, accessible collection of poems she has written relating to issues ranging from anger to chores to covenant to parenthood to Sabbath.

Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey

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Alfred Poirier, The Peacemaking Pastor: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Church Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 320 pages.

Interpersonal conflicts are an unavoidable reality in our fallen world. That fact is just as true inside of the church as it is outside of the church—disciples of Jesus are all works in progress. However, God has gifted His church with leaders to help people work through different types of conflict. Take, for instance, the Apostle Paul. When two women at the Philippian church were engaged in a disagreement, he urged them to “agree in the Lord” (Philippians 4:3). You can almost hear the pastoral heartbeat in that verse.

Yet Alfred Poirier observes that many pastors “enter the pastoral office unaware of and ill-equipped to respond to the conflicts they will inevitably face in their churches” (9). Peacemaking Pastor is written to address that problem by giving pastors “an overview of biblical peacemaking” (15). Throughout the book, he lays the biblical-theological foundations for peacemaking and provides ample practical application. Pastors would do well to read this book, think about the nature of forgiveness, and help those under their care be reconciled to one another in Christ. It is one to read and read again.

Recommended by Joshua R. Colson

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Aleksandr Pushkin, The Golden Cockerel and Other Fairy Tales, illus. Boris Zvorykin, trans. Jessie Wood (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 111 pages.

This captivatingly illustrated collection contains four fairy tales written by Russian poet, Aleksandr Pushkin. Although immortalized in this form by Pushkin, the tales originate in Russian folklore and are drawn from the tales Pushkin was told as a child. Although the tales and illustrations introduce the reader to aspects of Russian culture, the tales themselves are universal; they simply add a new hue to the themes regularly found in European fairy tales. In fact, “The Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes” is a Russian Snow White tale, and one that I prefer in many respects—except that the stepmother does not have to dance in red-hot shoes until she dies, which is very disappointing. I recommend these stories as read-alouds for children of all ages; with illustrations as exotic and enthralling as these, you are sure to have your listener’s attention.

Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga

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Cindy Rollins, Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel’s Messiah (Blue Sky Daisies, 2020), 139 pages.

Since the HSF’s winter book recommendations usually post after the Christmas season, I wanted to take the opportunity now (at risk of rushing through autumn) to recommend Hallelujah, Cindy Rollins’s Advent companion. Rollins has divided up the entirety of Handel’s “Messiah” into daily portions for listening throughout the month of December. For each week leading up to Christmas, Rollins provides essays from colleagues about how their families have celebrated Advent, along with suggested hymns, Scripture memory, poetry, and fun traditions to guide your own family in anticipatory celebration of the birth of Christ. Her inclusion of weekly listening guides by Greg Wilbur (to help listeners notice the musical elements Handel uses in “Messiah”) and appendices of books, songs, and recipes in the back make this little book invaluable in planning a rich Advent season that will continually point your family to the King in the manger.

Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga

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Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges and Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (New York: Little Brown, 1984), 32 pages.

From time-to-time, a few of us in the HSF recommend children’s picture books. Usually, we have come across these gems as we have piled through stacks of horrible children’s books filled with drivel and simplistic art. Few things can make you appreciate a chunk of gold as much as sifting through piles of rubble. Margaret Hodges’s retelling of the classic English tale of Saint George and the Dragon as depicted in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590) is long for a picture book, and so not ideal for bedtime, but it is rich and none of the text is wasted filler. For someone who did not grow up hearing the tale of Saint George, the story was new for me and called me to be a better, more heroic man in the face of horrible, bloodcurdling monsters. Saint George’s tale speaks to our duty to stand against those monsters in the present before we can enjoy the riches of the heavenly palace filled with angels in the future. The heroic feminine is also portrayed beautifully in this story by Princess Una who has scoured the land looking for a knight who can save her kingdom and prays for his soul and strength during the fiercest moments of his three-day battle against the dragon. This 1985 Caldecott Medal winner is a great read for children and adults alike.

Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan

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Francis A. Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian, 2nd ed., IVP Classics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006). 63 pages.

People may be most aware of Francis Schaeffer’s “trilogy”: The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Beyond that, some have read books like How Shall We Then Live? or A Christian Manifesto. However, one of Schaeffer’s best (and I would argue most fundamental) books is the brief but very convicting The Mark of the Christian. Schaeffer, who grew up in a more separatist denominational background, writes about the need for Christians to exhibit demonstrable love towards one another. Specifically, pulling from the Gospel of John, Schaeffer says the Christian’s love for other Christians serves as the means by which the world judges whether or not we truly believe. To me, this book hits at the heart of Schaeffer’s concern for compassion and truth. He wants to demonstrate the existence of the infinite-personal God in the life of Christians, but he realizes that witness requires us to love other Christians.

Recommended by Christopher Talbot

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Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 288 pages.

Most of my time and research over the past few years have been committed almost exclusively to the person and life of Francis Schaeffer. Consequently, I have had multiple people ask me the question: “If I have never read Schaeffer, where is a good place to start?” The question used to stump me, but now I tend to recommend True Spirituality. Although the book was published late in Schaeffer’s work, I believe that True Spirituality holds the seedling of much of Schaeffer’s thinking on the Christian life and Christ’s lordship that then is extended into every other area that he writes about. Those that read this book will realize that Schaeffer cares not only about philosophy, culture, and every area of life but also the moment-by-moment dependence that the faithful Christian should place in God.

Recommended by Christopher Talbot

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Patrick Schreiner, The Transfiguration of Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Reading (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024), 183 pages.

What do we make of the transfiguration of Christ in the synoptics? Why is it there? What is the purpose? Those are difficult questions to answer. Patrick Schreiner notes: “If I were to ask you what difference it would make if Jesus had not died on the cross or been raised from the dead, the answer would come quite quickly. But what if Jesus had not been transfigured? An answer to that question is not so forthcoming” (2). I suspect he is right. Schreiner argues that the transfiguration is a scene of glory—the glory of the Son. But that glory is both forward looking and backward looking. The transfiguration is a revelation of the glory of the Son as the eternal Son of God who shares in the divine glory. Yet the transfiguration also points us forward to the glory of the incarnate Son as the Messiah who is crucified, risen, and exalted. By extension, the transfiguration also points to the glorification of the believer who is being (and will finally be) conformed to the image of the glorious Son when we “see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2).

Schreiner’s work draws on the entirety of the Biblical canon to consider how the elements and themes present in the transfiguration accounts inform our understanding of the event. But Schreiner also makes careful use of the rich interpretive tradition of this text to consider how Christians throughout the centuries have understood its meaning and implications. Rarely have I read a work that so carefully exegetes, reflects on the Christian tradition’s interpretation of, takes into account the canonical situatedness of, and explores the theological implications of the biblical text. Schreiner’s work is deeply informative and serves as a model of faithful, theological biblical interpretation. I highly recommend this immensely practical work written by someone who knows the subject well.

Recommended by Jesse Owens

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Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 208 pages.

I do not agree with everything in Roger Scruton’s introduction to beauty (I certainly differ with aspects of his presentation of “art and erōs”), but it is nevertheless a good introduction to the subject. While his method is inductive, he is not a subjectivist who believes that beauty is determined by the individual; rather, he is an objectivist who believes that beauty is a quality of the object, whether subjects recognize it as such or not. Among the types of beauty he analyzes are human beauty, natural beauty, everyday beauty, and artistic beauty. Many of the passages appearing in this book are deeply moving. For example, he avoids the cheap, shallow rhetoric that typical conversations about human beauty often contain. He criticizes the “temptation to detach one’s interest from the person and attach it to the body, to give up on the morally demanding attempt to possess the other as a free individual and instead to treat him or her as a mere instrument for one’s own localized pleasure.” He continues, explaining, “There is a distinction, familiar to all of us, between an interest in a person’s body and an interest in a person as embodied” (39–40). People are souls; beauty, therefore, is more than skin deep. For anyone interested in the arts and in the world, I commend this book to you.

Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey

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Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 204 pages.

Perhaps the defining historical question of the first quarter of the twenty-first century centers on the transformation of Western culture regarding sexuality. In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020), Carl R. Trueman produced a masterful attempt at explaining how our society has come to celebrate sexual license. He persuasively argues that expressive individualism has filled the absence of meaning that followed in the wake of Enlightenment rationalism, with numerous intellectuals contending that unfettered sexuality was the only path to happiness. Technological innovation produced contraceptives and transformational surgery possibilities that opened opportunities to put these ideas into practice. However, as Trueman admits, Rise and Triumph is too scholarly for the average reader. But, Trueman explained, his research and writing for Rise and Triumph was necessary for him to be able to produce a more popular level treatment of the topic, which is what he has done with Strange New World.

In this 2022 publication, Trueman boils down to its essence his wide-ranging and complex argument in Rise and Triumph. The historical analysis is easier to follow, and he briefly summarizes his more attenuated explorations of nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophy and art. For those who have read Rise and Triumph, this book serves as a good and clear summary, making his argument easier to follow. For those who would find the scholarly Rise and Triumph intimidating, this book is an excellent alternative.

Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan

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Karl Vaters, Small Church Essentials: Field-Tested Principles for Leading a Healthy Congregation of Under 250 (Chicago: Moody, 2018), 255 pages.

I trust that most evangelical pastors will find this book as helpful and encouraging as I did. The fact is that most of us pastor small churches, yet much of the material that is published for church health and growth is written by pastors of large churches and designed for use in large churches. But Karl Vaters’s book is different. He is, himself, the pastor of a small church who writes to small church pastors, encouraging us, “You don’t need to wait until your church is big to start doing great ministry. Every single church is called to worship, disciple, fellowship, minister, and evangelize . . . No matter what size your church is, you can do these things, all of them, and you can do them well” (250–51). Vaters’s principles and strategies will help pastors of small churches lead their people with excellence unto the glory of God—they certainly have done that for me.

Recommended by Joshua R. Colson

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Thomas Watson, The Ten Commandments (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2021), 245 pages.

Few (if any) Puritan writers have been more helpful to me than Thomas Watson (c. 1620–1686). His writings have enriched my study of the Bible and in turn my personal devotion to the Lord. For preaching, I was greatly helped by his commentary on the Beatitudes five or so years ago. More recently, I was preparing to preach a couple of sermons on the first commandment, and I turned to this book, which is drawn from his larger work A Body of Practical Divinity (1692). In his exposition of the Ten Commandments, Watson demonstrates a balanced understanding of the role of commandments in the life of the believer, namely, the perpetual nature of the commands as well as how their interpretation and application are transformed by the work of Christ. At their core, the commandments are about obedience and love. We must obey God’s commands, and we must obey them willingly from a heart of love. The sum of the commandments is that we love both God and neighbor (Mt. 22:37). But Watson rightly notes that God is not interested in external obedience where willingness is wanting. He writes, “Hypocrites obey God grudgingly, and against their will. . . . Cain brought his sacrifice, but not his heart. It is a true rule; what the heart does not do, is not done. Willingness is the soul of obedience” (2). Watson’s work is filled with keen insights into the Ten Commandments. If you are considering a Bible study through or preaching through the Ten Commandments, be sure to consult Watson’s excellent work.

Recommended by Jesse Owens

Author: The Helwys Society

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