Top Books in 2012
A Message from the Helwys Society Forum
Over the course of a year, members of the Helwys Society peruse, read, or review many books. Some of these are part of research exclusively for Forum essays. Others grow out of personal-academic interests, or are for local church ministry. Still others are sent to us by publishers for the express-purpose of reviewing and evaluating them. As we conclude this calendar year, we’d like to share with out readers our “Top Books in 2012.”
In several cases, these are indeed recent publications, published in 2011 or 2012. However, our list also includes any book from any year that a contributor may have read in 2012 that they believe worth commending to readers. What follows are our selections, as well as several honorable mentions:
Matthew Bracey
Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. 304 pp. $16.08 (paperback).
All too often, we Christians think of mission merely in terms of the New Testament. In this book, Old Testament scholar Wright challenges readers to think broader as he explores a biblical theology of missions from the Old and the New Testaments. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, he explores key passages and motifs from Scripture and offers timely application of those themes for Christians today. As he puts it in the book’s preface,
In this volume, our prime concern is simply to ask the question, “What does the Bible as a whole in both testaments have to tell us about why the people of God exist and what it is they are supposed to be and do in the world?” What is the mission of God’s people?
Now, don’t think that this book is only for those whom God has called to professional-vocational missions work, though it is for them too. No, this book is for everyone, especially for those whom God has specifically not called to vocational missions work, and for individuals and groups alike. Especially as leaders of Sunday school classes and other small groups considering what to study next, you may consider The Mission of God’s People.
Jeremy Craft
Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. 624 pp. $13.59 (paperback).
Eric Metaxas, author of the New York Times bestselling book Amazing Grace, writes another biography about the pastor, scholar, and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his biography, Metaxas aims to reveal a side of Bonhoeffer that had not been told.
Drawing from letters, sermons, journal entries, and even firsthand personal accounts, Metaxas unveils for us the life of Bonhoeffer in a story-like fashion. Engaging, provocative, and thoughtful, yet readable, Metaxas provides a narrative of Bonhoeffer’s theological journey as an academic to a pastor, then from a pastor to a martyr.
Ultimately, Metaxas attempts to illustrate Bonhoeffer’s life as a compelling example for all Christians to follow. To quote Bonhoeffer, “Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.”
Phillip Morgan
Jerry Bridges. The Pursuit of Holiness. Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1978. 158 pp. $9.66.
Jerry Bridges’s book The Pursuit of Holiness is a work that is beginning to slip into the category of Christian classics. I read it for the first time this year and was completely taken aback by its depth, relevance, and poignancy.
Bridges begins by describing the immensity of God’s holiness. He then spends the rest of the book passionately and thoughtfully calling professing believers to personal holiness. For example, “We Christians greatly enjoy talking about the provision of God, how Christ defeated sin on the cross and gave us His Holy Spirit to empower us to victory over sin. But we do not as readily talk about our own responsibility to walk in holiness.”
Bridges is deeply influenced by the Puritans, but this connection only serves to ground the book historically and theologically. The Pursuit of Holiness helped revitalize my own desire for a holiness that reflected Christ, and I highly recommend it to anyone who will listen.
Jesse Owens
Carl Trueman. The Creedal Imperative. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012. 208 pp. $10.76.
“No creed but the Bible,” you say? In The Creedal Imperative, Carl Trueman argues that this well-intended statement is foreign to historic Christianity and is completely unsustainable in the life of a local church. As Trueman convincingly notes, every church has a creed of sorts. Unless a pastor simply stands up, reads Scripture, and sits down, he will teach some formulation of doctrine whether it be orthodox or unorthodox.
Consequently, Trueman believes that every church needs to subscribe to a particular Christian creed that is time-tested and has been thoroughly scrutinized by both the Church and (most importantly) Scripture. This allows a church to directly identify with the historic faith, kindles rich biblical worship, promotes Christian discipleship, and safeguards its teaching office. He writes,
The Lord has graciously provided us with a great cloud of witnesses throughout history who can help us understand the Bible and to apply it to our present day. To ignore such might not be so much a sign of biblical humility as of overbearing hubris and confidence in our own abilities and the uniqueness of our own age.
While Trueman is a Presbyterian, and his work should be read carefully, it deserves thoughtful consideration by all, Baptists in particular. And we may find that we’ve been more conditioned by our culture than by Scripture—even the most zealous biblicists among us. The Creedal Imperative is an important book for a message the Church needs.
Chris Talbot
Brian H. Cosby. Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing Company, 2012. 160 pp. $11.04
In Giving Up Gimmicks, Brian H. Cosby laments the state of the current youth ministry model and offers a God-glorifying alternative. Cosby explains, “The goal of this book is to give youth pastors, youth leaders, and parents a guide on how to lead a gospel-rich youth ministry that incorporates the means of grace—Word, prayer, sacraments [ordinances], service, and community—into the content of the ministry as well as its methodology.” Dependent on the scriptural means that God has ordained for us, Cosby builds a simple yet profound approach to youth ministry. This is not only in the content, but also in its form and methodology.
In one chapter, after sharing an anecdote of a teen eating a live goldfish, Cosby posits that we live in a youth culture of “how can we top that?” For those youth ministers, leaders and parents that are over-burdened with finding the next fad, developing a higher “shock factor”, or chasing the latest ministry model, I highly recommend you read Cosby’s book. It will encourage you to remove the gimmicks, the fads, the false allures, and to allow the sufficiency of Scripture to dictate your ministry.
What follows is a sample from Cosby’s timely work:
Why haven’t teens who were involved in youth group in high school stayed involved with a local church after graduating? There are many possible reasons, from wanting to experience the newfound freedom of being out of the house to being intimidated about meeting a host of new people. Whatever reasons may be offered, one thing is clear: post-high-school teens are leaving the church because they have not been nurtured and established in the faith through a Christ-centered, means-of-grace ministry. In other words, America’s youth not only need a ministry that seeks to communicate God’s grace through the teaching of the Word, administration of the [ordinances], a life of prayer, gospel-motivated ministry, and grace centered community—they actually want such a ministry.
Jackson Watts
Paul David Tripp. Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2012. 224 pp. $14.17.
Paul Tripp has become a go-to writer in the Reformed/evangelical world for rich, pastoral and theological insight on any range of subjects. His latest offering, Dangerous Calling, is designed to assess, critique, and challenge what he calls the unhealthy “pastoral culture” that is often birthed in seminaries and sustained in local churches. Discussing sin, for instance, he writes,
Sin is deceptive, and think with me about who it deceives first. I have no difficulty recognizing the sin of the people around me, but I can be quite unprepared when my sin is pointed out. Sin deceives ten out of ten people reading this book…It needs to be noted that spiritual blindness is not like physical blindness. When you are physically blind, you know that you are blind, and you do things to compensate for this significant physical deficit. But spiritually blind people are not only blind; they are blind to their own blindness. They are blind, but they think that they see well.
Tripp writes from the perspective of one who has seen the ugliness of such a culture firsthand. His book is indeed a helpful salvo in contending with the unique challenges of pastoral work. It is not only a must read for senior pastors, but church leaders of any stripe.
Honorable Mentions
Kevin DeYoung, The Hole In Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway, 2012).
Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (Dutton, 2011).
Tony Reinke, Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (Crossway, 2011).
Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010).
Warren Cole Smith, A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church (Authentic, 2009).
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