Newsletter #138
On Most Recommended Books for Pastors
Take Your Pick
I both love and hate when people ask me about my favorite books. I love it because I’m a “list guy,” and I love to read.
But I hate it because there is so much intellectual ambiguity and mixed feelings associated with selecting books for special attention.
First, what are we actually seeking? Do we want to know the “best books?” Or, do we want to know what someone’s “favorite books” are? Those lists certainly will overlap (They should!), but they are by no means the same thing.
I’ll never forget a talk that Walter Hooper gave many years ago. Hooper, you may recall, was C. S. Lewis’s longtime editor. He is responsible for most of what was published posthumously. He recalls a conversation or letter—I cannot remember—in which Lewis himself distinguished between his favorite book and his best book. Similarly, I have learned to distinguish between books I enjoyed and books I think are important and/or excellent.
Second, I have mixed feelings about being asked about books because I realize that what I’ve read thus far in my life is a mere drop in the bucket. Truly, who am I to be recommending books? How many classics—theological and otherwise—have I yet to read? Too many.
I’m also conflicted because I know that a person could interpret my list in many different ways. To cite the aforementioned problem, I could hear someone looking at my list and saying, “Man, Jackson picked that book over x. X is a MUCH better treatment of that topic!” My list cannot talk back and say, “But Jackson hasn’t read x yet, so he cannot rightly comment on it’s claim to being superior!” (Then again, maybe I have read x and thought it was inferior!)
Lists lend themselves to conversations, but typically ones the list-creator doesn’t get to participate in.
Nevertheless, I recently received this request from a reader:
I'd like to get your top ten books every pastor should have/read in their library (excluding commentaries, dictionaries, and other “tool” type books). I’ve asked/asking several pastors that I have a lot of respect for to do this for me. I’m compiling a list. Do it, of course, at your convenience!
After weeks of stewing on this question/request, I am prepared to offer my list. I should note that this reader and I exchanged multiple emails to be very clear about what he was seeking. Here are some additional qualifiers which emerged from our emails/texts:
-We are thinking particularly about Free Will Baptist pastors. This qualification matters because context and tradition are quite important for knowing what one needs and would benefit most from. The resources within one’s tradition or denomination factor in, and determine what one likely has or hasn’t been exposed to already.
-We are assuming lifelong books, those that would stand the test of time, ones we’d be best served by returning to again and again.
My List and Brief Reasons
Some books a man is bound to come across without me having to recommend them, whereas some more obscure titles might be included precisely because they're important and helpful. Nevertheless, they might not have the same 'historic/classical recognition' within the canon of great pastoral ministry/Christian doctrine books.
Additionally, I am thinking of both breadth of subject and depth of content. In other words, it would be easy to pick 10 "ministry books" or "10 theology/doctrine books." But to try to think about the whole gamut of what a man leading a family and a congregation will face, I'm thinking about everything from virtue to skill to culture to family and more.
I've produced two other lists in the last eight years for different settings. (By now those lists probably need updating.) But those compare favorably with what I have below.
So, assuming a Free Will Baptist pastor is already grounded in what we believe about fundamental doctrinal questions, I'd then recommend (in no particular order):
John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. I can think of perhaps no better place to appreciate the riches of God and His Word. Don’t be surprised, Free Will Baptist readers. Arminius regarded Calvin to be his favorite Biblical commentator. It’s very hard to place a percentage on it, but we probably agree with 90% of his most important work.
John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ. This is still a helpful treatment of the scope and depth of who Jesus is and what he accomplished.
Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine. This is a wonderful, fresh statement about the fundamentals of Christian ministry, especially as it concerns the work of discipleship, multiplication, and Word ministry. It’s one of the two best books on this list that you can give to a layman.
Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. Good luck making it through life without cultivating an ongoing, rich, devotional life. Whitney’s book touches all the key bases biblically and accessibly. It’s one of the two or three books I could recommend to any believer.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure. Depression is a far broader and deeper notion than we understand. Since we will inevitably hurt and help others who hurt, this is a wonderful Scriptural treatment.
Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love. I know, I know. It seems too recent to include. However, if ever we needed a recovery of Baptist ecclesiology, it’s now. Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman have played a huge role in this, but I think this lengthier treatment may be the most important of Leeman’s works. If you don’t know what a church is and what it is for, then you’re dead in the water.
Richard John Neuhaus, Freedom for Ministry. This is perhaps the best book on Christian ministry and the nature of the church that hardly anyone seems to know about or read today. I know Neuhaus was a Lutheran-turned-Catholic, and that comes through in spots. However, the overall contribution of the book is too momentous to exclude. Plus, if I don’t put it on a list like this, people will continue to not know about it!
Russell Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family. I can’t think of a better book to address the messiness and struggles of family life with a courageous, piercing, biblical voice. Russell Moore critics, get over it. He’s an incredibly helpful writer.
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor. This is a classical treatment of pastoral work. It’s a book that causes you to slow down and meditate in the best of ways. It’s both instructional and devotional, and deserves a wider reading today.
Francis James Grimke, Meditations on Preaching. I’m grateful for the attention Grimke is starting to get in some circles today, but I’d still label this as a “little-known primer on preaching.” You could read it in one sitting, but you shouldn’t. Take your time and pour over a paragraph or page each week. It will feed your soul and keep you on track in the pulpit.
Almost Made the Cut:
John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
Dan Allender, Leading with a Limp
Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Robert Picirilli, Grace, Faith, and Free Will, and Discipleship.
Follow Up:
In Newsletter #135 I wrote at length about some of the notable developments and voices in the gender confusion conversation since I first started researching and writing on the topic in 2016. Well, this past week we saw a humdinger of a development. The partner of Jamie Reed—Reed being the key whistleblower from the St. Louis gender clinic, went on the record about her detransition.
Honestly, it’s so raw and important, I won’t even comment further. I’ll just provide the link.
“I Spent 13 Years Living as a Man. But After My Spouse’s Exposé, I’m Detransitioning.”
Quotes of the Week:
There is ample room, and a great need, for an authentically Christian feminism. This is the ‘new feminism’ John Paul II called for, a feminism that reclaims women’s dignity and does not simply replicate masculine modes of domination. I do have to warn you: being a Christian feminist means being a heretic, one way or another. You have to make a choice. Embracing Christian orthodoxy means rejecting certain feminist dogmas. Accepting those dogmas entails betraying some Christian beliefs. I’ve been a feminist heretic in both senses at different points in my life. Now, I’m doing my best to be a faithful daughter of the Church. If I am a feminist, I’m choosing to be a heretical one.
Abigail Favale, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.
But Truman Capote always knew famous people—and often long before they were famous. I’ll go further, and claim that nobody in the twentieth century had more direct experience of the human condition than Truman Capote. Does that sound like an extreme claim? But just consider—Capote knew everybody at The New Yorker, but he also knew more than 400 people who had committed multiple murders.
He knew John F. Kennedy, but also knew Lee Harvey Oswald. (Only two people in the world could make that claim.) He knew Robert Kennedy, and also knew Sirhan Sirhan. He knew Charles Manson, but also four of Manson’s murder victims.
Ted Gioia, “How Do You Celebrate Truman Capote’s 100th Birthday?”
Books I’m Reading Now/Still/Again:
Joel Biermann, Day 7: For Work, Rest, or Play.
Joshua Chatraw and Mark Allen, Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witness.
Paul Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World.
Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery.
Ronald Nash, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith.
Parting Shot:
I wasn’t sure where best to work this in, so I’ll conclude with it here. Doug Wilson throws a number of unnecessary grenades, and reasons poorly on some important issues. On the other hand, he is so incredibly right and challenging on many others. So, despite my frustration with the former, I cannot deny the latter.
While I am not a hardline, Christian-school-only type of person, I am more sympathetic to it than ever before. This short post by Wilson is helpful at responding to some common objections to that approach.
“Objections to Leaving Government Schools.”
I’ll excerpt my favorite parts:
I don’t see the problem with my kids attending public school. I went through public school and I turned out all right.
A cute answer here might be “what makes you think you turned out all right?” But a more serious answer is that the government schools are not the same as when you attended them, or when your parents attended them. Our culture is in free fall, and a lot of it has been driven by the schools, and then circles back into the schools. When you were in school, none of the girls in the class would disappear for a week and then come back with her breasts cut off, and with her claiming to be a boy. The assumption that the schools are not deteriorating rapidly is a deadly assumption.
There are two different realms—the realm of creation, and the realm of redemption. The government schools can teach in the former and church and home instruct kids in the latter realm.
This response represents a theological error. The assumption is that there is an area of human knowledge and endeavor that is somehow neutral. But neutrality is a myth. Even if the teachers in the government school refrain from attacking your child’s faith, there is an implicit lesson contained in every class. Say it is a math class. “We are not saying whether or not your God is real. But we are saying, by implication, that if He exists, His existence is irrelevant to what we are doing in this classroom.” And that is radically false.
My children are my responsibility. I don’t appreciate your legalistic interference.
In our church, whenever a child is baptized, the whole congregation takes a vow that they will assist these parents in the Christian nurture of the child. So it is quite correct that the parents have the primary responsibility. But there is a line where other believers can say something without it being legalistic.