Well Done, Good and Faithful Dad: A Review of SEASONS OF SORROW by Tim Challies
A comforting, honest book for those in their own seasons of sorrow.
Many people remember November 3, 2020 as election day of a contentious United States presidential race. I remember the day, of course, but for two other reasons.
November 3, 2020 was the launch day of the book I coauthored with my friend John Beeson about blogging for God’s glory. Months and months before the book launched, we picked November 3 to release the book. And when we picked the date—as you might expect—we neglected to notice it coincided with the Trump-Biden showdown. Unfortunate timing, to say the least. We could have planned better.
The other event, however, we could have never seen coming.
My favorite blogger is Tim Challies. He’s so faithful in his theology, so consistent in his output, and so generous in promoting the work of others. When John and I thought about which author might write the foreword to our book about blogging, we, of course, asked Tim first. Thankfully, we didn’t have to ask anyone else.
But the day we launched our book was also the day Tim’s only son died.
Tim wrote on his blog the following day, “Yesterday the Lord called my son to himself—my dear son, my sweet son, my kind son, my godly son, my only son.” His son Nick had been playing a game with friends and his fiancée on his college campus when he suddenly collapsed and could not be revived. When Tim posted about the tragedy, he added, “And we ask that you remember us in your prayers as we mourn our loss together.”
I wrote my own prayer to God and posted it online, as did many others. I prayed to our Heavenly Father asking, among other requests, that “when a man who loves words—and spends his life using them for your glory and the good of your people—has nothing to say, whisper to his heart that you are still God and you love him and his wife.”
It’s been two years since that season. Joe Biden is still President, our book is still on Amazon, and Tim’s son is still gone.
But these years have not gone by without effort from Tim to capture the story of his loss and the ways God has remained faithful. Those reflections, many of which have never been shared in public before, became his latest book Seasons of Sorrow. The book chronicles his reflections over the first year of grief. When I finished reading the book, I emailed Tim to tell him that, for so many reasons, this book is the best writing I’ve ever read from him. Here are two main reasons I love the book.
Seasons of Sorrow puts the pain of loss on the page. I’m a sucker for stories about fathers and sons. Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road and Harry Chapin’s song “The Cat’s in the Cradle” make me melancholy like few other stories and songs can.
In Seasons of Sorrow, we see the picture of a father who loves his son. He loves the way I want to love my sons. He always made a point to wake before his family to pray for them so they would know that, before they woke, their father was praying for them. Tim would make his son coffee before his son went to work. Even now, he writes about occasionally bringing a cup to the gravesite.
All this love makes all the loss so hard and leads to excruciating moments of introspection. In one reflection, Tim asks a question that anyone of us might ask were we in his place, namely, whether the tragedy came from God as punishment for some sin in his life. “Could it be,” he asks, “that Nick’s death is God’s discipline toward me? Could it be that Nick was some kind of idol in my life, and to loose my grip on him, God took him away? Could this all be my fault?” Then he adds, “I’m haunted by these thoughts and questions” (33). As any good and godly father might be. In another passage, Tim wrestles with the emotions involved with emptying his son’s bedroom to prepare it for future use as a guest bedroom. “What right do we have,” he asks, “to barge in and sort through his possessions? Who are we to decide what will be kept and what will be discarded, what will be treasured and what will be thrown away? Yet it must be done” (102). Some nine months after Nick’s death, Tim wrote, “I miss my son today. That goes without saying, I suppose, since I miss him every day. But on this day, the pain is particularly sharp, the ache especially deep” (170). Here, Tim normalizes for readers what I’ve heard others say: there will be good days and bad days.
In all these ways, Tim does not shrink back from putting his pain on the page, telling readers his many frustrations with what William Cooper called God’s “frowning providences.” But that is not all he does.
Seasons of Sorrow points us to both the comfort of God’s promises and the comfort of God’s people. In a reflection he titled “My Manifesto,” Tim affirms his resolve to follow God and trust him despite the pain of loss. “By faith I will accept Nick’s death as God’s will, and by faith accept that God’s will is always good. . . . I will be forever thankful that God gave me a son and never resentful that he called him home. My joy in having him will be greater than my grief in having lost him” (36). Many such things he says. In the concluding paragraph of the chapter, Tim poetically strings together scriptural promise after promise after promise, affirming his belief in them with the concluding words, “This is my manifesto” (37).
In a chapter titled “I Fear God and I’m Afraid of God,” readers will notice overlap with themes from the book of Job. Tim writes of fearing God “in a new way” and of how “some kind of innocence has been shattered.” And still, he affirms his desire to continue praying, “Thy will be done,” while also noting, “even as I pray, I cringe just a little” (45). As Job came to learn, there is an unexpected comfort that comes to us when we remember that the God who is who he is, is who he is—he’s not a small, tribal deity, but sovereign and good, awesome and kind. There’s an unexpected comfort in having our innocence shattered and our foundation rebuilt.
In these ways and others, Seasons of Sorrow pastors and comforts those who grieve by sharing the ways God sent people to pastor and comfort him. In one section, Tim mentions to a friend he’s concerned his own eagerness to see his son one day in heaven has overshadowed the hope of seeing Jesus in heaven. To this, Tim’s friend tells him he does not sound like a pagan. “You sound like a grieving father” he says (122). That’s good pastoring.
Near the end of the book Tim notes the sadness that Nick “was the last male in the Challies line” and that now even the Challies “surname will in the course of time disappear” (183). But to this, Tim also encourages readers by sharing the truth he encourages himself with, writing that “Nick doesn’t need to be remembered by other people, because he will never be forgotten by God” (185). Amen and amen.
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In the opening pages, Tim writes, “Writing is how I reflect, how I meditate, how I chart life’s every journey. And so when the sorrow was still new in my heart, when the tears were still fresh in my eyes, when I barely knew up from down and here from there, I began to write” (xiv). He goes on to say that he had to write because writing teaches him what he actually believes and what he should seek to believe. “I had to know,” he says, “whether to rage or to worship, whether to run to bow down, whether to give up or to go on.” Painful as the prose was for him, I am thankful he went on, bowed down, and worshiped.
For all these reasons, the subtitle could not fit more perfectly: the pain of loss and the comfort of God. It seems to me that not only has Tim been a good and faithful dad (the hope he writes about in the final chapter), but Tim has been a good and faithful author. In the coming years I expect I’ll buy more copies to give to those in our church going through their own seasons of sorrow.
* Photo by Jonah Pettrich on Unsplash
Oh to Be an Unwavering Pastor: A Review of Jonathan K. Dodson’s Latest Book
A new book about pastoring that helped me stay afloat.
The last few years have felt, at least to most people, anything but stable. And if we feel the instability generally across society, we certainly also feel the turmoil inside churches and among pastors. Into this context, pastor and author Jonathan K. Dodson published The Unwavering Pastor: Leading the Church with Grace in Divisive Times (The Good Book Company, 2022).
But what Dodson means by “an unwavering pastor” might not be what you expect. He does not mean a pastor chiseled from a block of granite, strong and indomitable against the storm, a pastor with Nehemiah-like fortitude to execute his vision amid detractors. Dodson has a different kind of unwavering pastor in mind, the kind of unwavering pastor that Paul became. In his final letter to Timothy, he tells his young protégé, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12).
Dodson points out that Paul does not waver in his final imprisonment and as he nears his execution, not necessarily because of “what he believed but who he believed in. He knew the God he trusted” (13–14, emphasis original). Dodson continues, “An unwavering pastor’s confidence doesn’t come from his command of theology, his experience in counseling, or his faithful spiritual disciplines.” Instead, he writes, our confidence “is derived from God’s unwavering commitment to his own gospel, to preserve, protect, and promote the grace of God in Christ through the Spirit for sinners. . . . If you believe this, then you too can become an unwavering pastor” (14). Oh to be more of this kind of a pastor, an unwavering unmovable pastor “always abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58).
During the summer of 2020, however, I experienced a struggle we could classify as something more than a mere waver but something less than a complete breakdown. I think many people and pastors did, but mine had less to do with Covid itself and more to do with all that had happened in our church in the previous years. I’ve written about that elsewhere, so I’ll leave aside those details. But I will say that I can relate to the way Dodson describes the experience of wanting to quit even though you know God hasn’t called you away. He just felt, as I had felt, that “pain was pushing [him] out the door” (129). Indeed, Paul can relate to this, and so can most pastors who’ve done the job for more than a decade. To paraphrase the author of Ecclesiastes, nothing is new under the sun or inside a church.
The Unwavering Pastor has a short introduction and eight chapters that explore what this understanding of unwavering might mean for different areas of ministry. For example, what might it look like for an unwavering pastor to love those outside the church in an age of cynicism about Jesus and the church (Chapter 2: “Questioning Christianity”), and what might it look like for an unwavering pastor to preach God’s Word not only to others but his own heart (Chapter 6: “Preach the Word”). I read the book slowly over two weeks, reading a section or two each morning during my devotions.
Besides the biblical engagement and personal stories, Dodson sprinkles throughout the book lessons he’s learned along the way. After sharing that he’s been ambushed in too many meetings, he advises, “If a critical person asks for a meeting, don’t be afraid to ask them what they want to meet about” (76). Besides mitigating anxiety, knowing the nature of the meeting can guide your prayers in the meantime and help you know if you should bring someone along with you.
I agree with the comments Dane Ortlund, author of Gentle and Lowly, makes in the foreword: “We don’t need to be told what bizarre and perplexing times we live in. We know that. We need to be given guidance for how to negotiate these times as pastors” (9). Dr. Ortlund goes on to say the greatest threat to pastors and churches right now is not pastors formally resigning from their posts. Rather, he says, “the greatest challenge is more subtle. It is to continue collecting a paycheck from the church while shifting our hearts into neutral. It is to carry forward the ministry at the level of activity while quitting ministry in terms of our hearts and longings” (10). Or to put it the way a friend of mine puts it: the danger is to quit without actually quitting. He’s not wrong.
I work part-time for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, a Christian website and publishing company. The company takes its namesake from another book by Dodson, a book recently re-released by Crossway as an updated ten-year anniversary edition. So, you could say, I should promote his book since, after all, Jonathan K. Dodson is my boss’s boss.
But I’m confident I would like The Unwavering Pastor even if I had no context for Dodson or Gospel-Centered Discipleship. In fact, being closer to the organization might have given me a better window to appreciate the struggles he writes about.
I remember during the recent low point in Dodson’s ministry, the one he talks about so candidly throughout the book, and how I texted my boss at GCD a screenshot from Dodson’s Instagram feed and asked if he was going to be okay. From my perspective, it seemed like two things were true at once: Dodson was struggling under the weight of pastoral ministry, and simultaneously his church and elders had rallied to support him as best as they could. To use the word he uses in the book, even as Dodson’s heart had become uncoupled from his church, his church’s heart toward him grew more coupled. Having this context made reading The Unwavering Pastor more visceral. In an age where so many people will do whatever they need to do to sell books, it helped to know Jonathan hadn’t feigned pastoral fatigue just so that his book would come across as “more authentic.” When he says he was tired and hurt by the church, he really was tired and hurt.
I’ve liked all of Dodson’s other books too. I was blessed by Here in Spirit as he describes his openness to the dramatic work of the Spirit and yet also the biblical grounding. And I love the transparency and moral courage of Our Good Crisis, a book that explores the meaning of the beatitudes for our present day. As an aside, I typically find the genre of “book trailers” underwhelming, but the trailer for Our Good Crisis has one of the best book trailers I’ve ever watched (here), second only perhaps to my perennial favorite of Zack Eswine’s The Imperfect Pastor (here).
I’d recommend The Unwavering Pastor to any church leader, whether the waters around him feel calm, whether a storm sits on the horizon, or whether his boat already threatens to capsize. I’d also recommend this book for teams of elders to discuss. The book would even bless the Christian in the pew who wants to gain a better appreciation for the weight and joy of Christian ministry in our divisive times and how the Chief Shepherd who safeguards his church amid the storm neither slumbers nor sleeps.
* Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash
What Does “Vanity of Vanities” Mean? A Review of a New Book on Ecclesiastes
For as odd as some statements in the book of Ecclesiastes may seem at first, they are truths we need in our day.
The author of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes makes some pretty wild statements. He asks rhetorically, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” implying wisdom benefits nothing.
In another place, he says, “Man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.” Later in the book, he writes, “Be not overly righteous . . . . Be not overly wicked” (Eccles. 2:15; 3:19; 7:17–18). Wait—what?
When we consider the biblical story and the good news of God redeeming all of creation through the person of Jesus, perhaps the wildest statement of all could be the opening statement of the book: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Eccles. 1:2).
How could anything be vanity—or meaningless—if God is redeeming all things?
I don’t actually believe these statements from the book, when rightly understood in their context, are as wild as they seem at first blush. As there is a season for everything, so there is a context for everything—especially when interpreting passages from the Bible.
But what context helps us make sense of Ecclesiastes? How should a Christian benefit from a book that can seem so full of cynicism in one place (6:1–6) and hedonism in another (2:10)?
Back in April of this year, Russell Meek, a friend of mine, released a book to help Christians understand Ecclesiastes. Dr. Meek teaches Old Testament and specializes in Ecclesiastes. His new book is called Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World.
The big questions about the meaning of life and the many other questions addressed by Ecclesiastes have never been theoretical for Meek. He writes in the preface of his struggles with substance abuse and later in the book about his troubled childhood and lousy relationship with his father. “I started using drugs when I was around twelve years old, just after grandmother died,” he writes on the opening page, adding, “and that way of facing life stayed with me for a long, long time.”
Later in life, while getting a master’s degree, a mentor helped Meek see Ecclesiastes in a new light. “I started to study Ecclesiastes because I thought I had found in it a kindred spirit who, like me, had thrown up his hands and given up on faith and life and, who had accepted the meaninglessness of these on planet Earth.” Instead, Meek found in the book a “path through life that doesn’t involve the bottom of a pill bottle.”
Meek’s book is a short book, less than one hundred pages. In the first chapter, Meek explores the overlap of words used in Ecclesiastes with other books in the Bible, especially the overlap with the book of Genesis. In the second chapter, Meek argues that the author of Ecclesiastes wants readers to understand the Hebrew word for vanity (hebel) in the context of the Genesis story of Cain and Abel. The word hebel, by the way, being the same word for the name Abel (Hebel in Hebrew). In the third and final chapter, he explores the ending of Ecclesiastes and the emphasis on fearing God and enjoying his gifts.
To be fair, I think Meek’s book is a peculiar, even odd, mashup of a powerful, personal memoir and a technical commentary. He writes about losing his father, the sins of racism, and substance abuse; he also writes about Hebrew words most of us don’t know and essays in theological journals we’ve never read. I told Russ I felt this way when I read an early copy of the book a year and a half ago. However, I don’t really mind the genre blend. In fact, I like it. I was helped by both aspects of the book—his personal testimony and the technical commentary—to better understand what God has for his people in the book of Ecclesiastes. In some ways, Meek’s book has parity with the mashup of Ecclesiastes itself: personal reflections interspersed with philosophical reflections.
Our church is considering preaching through Ecclesiastes next year during Lent. Rereading Meek’s book this summer certainly got me more excited (not less) to preach Ecclesiastes to our people and apply God’s wisdom to our lives. Ecclesiastes exalts the words “given by one Shepherd,” meaning the words given by God, and warns readers to “beware of anything beyond these” (12:12–13). While we should prioritize God’s Word above all other words, I believe Russ’s book about Ecclesiastes will increase your desire to do just that, to “fear God and keep his commandments, for,” as Ecclesiastes concludes, “this is the whole duty of man” (12:13).
* Photo by Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash
Why the Promise that Jesus Will Build His Church Does Not Mean He Will Necessarily Build My Church
Jesus made a wonderful, encouraging promise. But what does his promise mean for individual churches?
I suspect that in our personal Bible readings through Exodus, with all the fireworks that come in the first half of the book, we often miss the beauty of the ending of Exodus. After all that God’s people went through, after all that was stacked against them—the sin of the Egyptian enslavers and the sin in the hearts of Israelites—God was faithful to his promise to lead his people out and to cause them to worship him (cf. Ex. 3:12 and 40:34–38). It’s a beautiful, encouraging ending to a truly epic book.
Our church recently finished preaching through the book of Exodus. In my final sermon, I connected this ending in Exodus with a passage more familiar to us, the promise that Jesus makes in Matthew 16:18 to build his church. “On this rock,” he tells Peter, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
I take the “upon this rock” statement not to be Peter in and of himself but rather the rock of Peter’s confession. Just before Jesus made the promise, he asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” and Simon Peter responded, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:15–16). Peter’s rock-solid confession is the rock upon which Jesus builds his church. As one popular worship song puts it, “This gospel truth of old, shall not kneel shall not faint.”
After the sermon, a member of our church asked what this promise might have to do with individual churches, particularly here in the West. Many churches have become so progressive that they might not be Christian churches anymore, and other churches have become so political that they might be more political than spiritual, more partisan than Christian.
Does it not seem in so many ways, we wonder, that the church of Christ is not being built but torn down?
I love this question because it aims to take seriously the promise of Jesus, which is how Christians should take the promises of Jesus. But I don’t think we should understand the promise that Jesus will build his church to mean that any individual church will increasingly thrive or even survive indefinitely. The same goes for churches in any particular region, such as churches in North America or the West more generally. Instead, I take the promise to mean that, upon the rock of the confession of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus will always be building his church somewhere.
I’ll give one scriptural reason for this view and a few reasons from church history.
Reasons from the Bible
In Revelation 2–3 we have letters from Jesus to individual churches in different regions. Each letter has encouragement and challenges. Some of the letters even have threats, or maybe we would call them warnings. For example, to the church in Ephesus, we read, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2:5). To the church in Pergamum, we read, “Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth” (2:16). Famously, to the church in Laodicea, we read, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (3:15–16).
It’s verses like these that help me understand what Jesus means and does not mean by building his church. The promise that Jesus will build his church cannot mean that every individual church will remain prosperous; otherwise, the verses that warn of punishment for unrepentant disobedience wouldn’t have teeth.
Reasons from Church History
Second, I think we’re helped by church history, even the church history within the book of Acts. While the church of Christ grows throughout the book, we do not necessarily see the continual, unbroken growth of the churches in Jerusalem. True, “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). When persecution comes, however, many Christians and church leaders scatter (Acts 8:1). But even in the scattering because of persecution, although it hurt the church in Jerusalem, scattering seems to be part of the very way Jesus was building his whole church.
When we leave the book of Acts to look at the rest of church history, we’re left with many questions about sometimes growing and sometimes shrinking and, inevitably, disappearing churches. Why, for example, has the church in France been cold, even hardened, to the gospel for hundreds of years, especially after a season of gospel fruitfulness? And why has the church in the global south been exploding in growth after being unreached for so long?
I’m speaking in generalities and acknowledge plenty of exceptions: there are good churches in France and bad ones in the global south. But this does seem to be how God is building the church in this day.
Again, why? What does all this mean for the church in America? What are we to make of the recent news regarding the Southern Baptist Convention? On Sunday this last week, during the sermon, I briefly mentioned the terrible news about the SBC and the abuse scandals and how sad they make me. How will Christ build his church on such shaky ground?
I don’t know any more about this question than anyone else. Yet, many people seem to think that the American church will keep getting better and better, but I don’t see any reason, at least not a scriptural one, why this would have to be true.
How Should We Then Live?
Behind the question about Jesus building his church, I suspect any thoughtful Christian would have much to be discouraged about. I, too, am confused and sad about aspects of the church in America.
Just last week I was talking to a pastor with deeply evangelical and orthodox convictions who belongs, for now anyway, to a very liberal denomination. I asked him how many pastors are like him, that is, how many pastors in his denomination believe the Bible and the historic tenets of Christianity, such as Jesus rising bodily from the dead. I won’t give this pastor’s answer. But it was a very low percentage. This is why, I think, a few years ago we saw a dozen or so churches in this denomination close in the city of Harrisburg. I’m sure some of these church buildings had a few genuine Christians who attended them each week, but I would say that it is hard enough to keep a church healthy when you actually preach the gospel. It would be even harder, indeed impossible, to build a church without the gospel. You can’t build upon a rock when the rock ain’t there.
Even as there are many things to be thankful for in the Western church, there are so, so many things to lament. And that’s probably all we can do. Lament and pray. And stay faithful in whatever church context God has called us, confessing our sin and confessing Jesus as the Christ . . . loving an imperfect local church, loving her members and her pastors . . . and loving our neighbors . . . and raising our kids . . . and planting our gardens . . . and exercising and enjoying our hobbies . . . and, of course, praying and lamenting some more. That’s about all we can do.
But that’s not nothing. It’s the sort of faithful living that God uses to build his church.
* Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash
Every Believer’s Biography Is Every Believer’s Biography
My foreword to a new 30-day devotional by Will Dobbie published by Christian Focus.
A few years ago I started to get to know Will Dobbie. At the time, he pastored a church plant in a suburb of London. He has since moved with his family to the US to work with another church plant.
Will is a guy who can do a lot of different things: lead an army into battle, pastor a church, and play classical piano music. He can also write. That’s actually part of what connected us in the first place—his writing and a common friendship with another pastor.
A few days ago, Christian Focus published Will’s first book, From Everlasting to Everlasting: Every Believer’s Biography. The book is a 30-day devotional exploring God’s plan of salvation for every believer. I thought Will had a winning book idea when he first told me about the concept a few years ago. And he did.
Will was kind to ask me to write the foreword for the book. I’m sharing it below. We’d love for you to buy his book on Amazon.
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We lost my younger brother at the beach—just a toddler and learning to walk, he snuck away in a sea of people. Although I was his older brother, I was still too young to be either culpable for losing him or much help in finding him. Our family had just moved to England, where we would spend the next three years, and my mother wanted to take her sons on an outing to make memories adventuring in a new country. A couple of hours later, we found him holding the hand of an elderly woman as she walked up and down the beach looking for what she rightly assumed would be a frantic mother. That day my mother certainly made memories.
A similar incident happened to my family one summer at a water park, except this time I was the parent with the lost child—a father old enough to be more than culpable, yet still struggling to be any help in finding my daughter. She was only lost a dozen minutes or so, but it felt much longer. We found her near the lazy river.
I suspect most parents have a similar version of the same story, whether the child wandered off at a beach or amusement park, a sporting event or concert. Thankfully, almost all lost-child stories have happy endings that, in hindsight, parents can laugh about with their grown-up children.
As I read the Bible, I learn that not only does God save His people from their sins, but He also intends for Christians to understand their salvation: to understand that they were lost but now are found. Our practiced belief in God’s eternal plan to save us, to make us more like Him, and to one day make every wrong right, provides so much of a Christian’s peace and joy in a world full of angst. This is not to say that when we are confused about aspects of our salvation we are necessarily any less saved, but it is to say that when we lack understanding of the riches of God’s redemption, we will lack joy and, probably also, obedience.
This is why I was excited when Will first told me about his idea for a book that would trace the story of a believer’s redemption from beginning to end. Now that Will has finished the book, I’m only more excited. The Christian world needs devotional material with both warm-hearted prose and theologically rich truth, not simply one or the other. Will’s book From Everlasting to Everlasting has both.
As a pastor of a local church, I have another reason to long for others to read this book. In our day so many issues conspire to divide local churches that Christians need constant reminders of the one story that binds us irrevocably together. Just as a group of parents could share a meal together and bond as they tell each other stories of the common experience of losing and finding a child—the panic, the relief, the thanksgiving—so also I believe a church will bond together when we understand that every believer’s biography is indeed every believer’s biography.
In other words, I can, and should, preach to my church about the need for Christians to pursue the unity we already have in Christ, but my pleas for unity will accomplish little if, deep down, those in my church believe that which makes us different carries more weight than that which makes us the same. Biblically speaking, the opposite is true of Christians: the deep story of our sin and salvation, of Christ’s cross and consummation, carries more weight than our lesser identities in gender, ethnicity, or any social status. “How can I relate to her?” I might be tempted to think. “We have nothing in common.” Except that when we have Christ in common, we have everything in common. As Paul writes in Galatians, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27–28). From Everlasting to Everlasting reminds us that Christians share common, gospel bedrock, a unity deeper and sturdier than mere affinities.
Your tour guide on this panorama of God’s salvation knows all this too. And he’s found a way to share it with you in thirty daily excursions through the vistas of our redemption. Some of the concepts Will writes about may be new to you, while you may have heard others many times before. Regardless, my prayer for you is that God would use these words to pour fresh peace and joy into your life—that you would know in your inmost being, as Paul writes in Ephesians, “what is the breadth and length and height and depth . . . [of] the love of Christ” (Eph. 3:18–19). I pray that this knowledge that we once were lost but now are found would bind us together, that we would unite over the common experience of the panic and the relief and the thanksgiving that comes when God washes our sins as white as snow.
Benjamin Vrbicek
Community Evangelical Free Church
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
* Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash
Finding Jesus at the Nub End of Jared C. Wilson’s Fraying Rope
I’m not gonna lie; I love this theme in Wilson’s writing.
The guys at the church often tease me about being a fanboy of Jared C. Wilson’s writing. Last year they even took a picture from Wilson’s Instagram page and photoshopped my head into the picture as though I were just hangin’ with my bud. You might even say my relationship with Jared is as his relationship is to actor Mark Ruffalo. I just let the office guys tease me. They know I’m right.
I could mention a few reasons why I appreciate Wilson’s writing. I’ve done that in other blog posts—hence my reputation. This afternoon, I’ll just share one reason. Wilson seems to understand what it means for faith to wear thin and to know what it means to need Jesus, not theoretically but experientially. To say it another way, Wilson knows a Christian’s salvation rests in the strength of Jesus, not in the strength of one’s faith in Jesus. Knowing this difference matters a lot, especially as you suffer. And knowing the difference matters as you commend Jesus to others.
Wilson writes in his book The Gospel According to Satan, “When you get to the end of your rope, there is Jesus” (84). In his writing he doubles back over and over again to this theme of finding hope in God when all around our soul gives way. His words remind me of Paul’s comments about finding hope in God when Paul wondered if he would even live or perhaps if he even wanted to live. “For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia,” Paul writes. “For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.” This is the nub end of Paul’s rope, and he attributes trials of such severity to God’s desire that his children find their strength in him, not in their own ability. “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8–9).
“Until God is your only hope,” Wilson writes in another book, “God will not be your only hope. Utter brokenness is key to gospel wakefulness, because we will not be all-satisfied in Christ until Christ is all we have” (Gospel Wakefulness, 127). This quote comes from a transparent section where Wilson describes a terrible season in life and marriage. I’ll say more about that season in a moment. Wilson continues, “I was groaning in prayer in our guest room, flat on my face, wetting the carpet with tears the moment the Spirit whispered the gospel into my ear. That moment changed everything for me.”
Referencing this same, depression-filled season in another book, he writes, “It’s my conviction that God will not become your only hope until he becomes your only hope” (The Prodigal Church, 212). Wilson writes something similar in his earlier book Gospel Deeps, my personal favorite in the Wilson corpus: “I realized that God would become my only hope when he had become my only hope” (Gospel Deeps, 116). Then, with the proverbial twinkle in his eye, Wilson adds, “Let the reader understand.”
I do understand. And the longer I walk with Christ and serve in pastoral ministry, I’m coming to understand better. This is the Christian life—knowing the goodness and grace and sovereignty of God and coming to know it deeper. I’m reminded of the line in the last chapter of Lewis’s The Last Battle, when the faun named Tumnus says to Lucy, “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”
“Christ will not become our only hope until Christ has become our only hope!”
Wilson repeats this theme in his latest book, Love Me Anyway: How God’s Perfect Love Fills Our Deepest Longing (Baker Books, 2021). After writing two books about gospel-centered ministry mainly for pastors and church leaders, Wilson returns to writing for a broader Christian audience. While maintaining his faithfulness to biblical, gospel truth, he also writes with an artful, maybe even playful, prose that so many seem to have appreciated in his book The Imperfect Disciple. Love Me Anyway explores the key phrases in the great chapter on love by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, as well as our cultural fascination with love songs.
“It is at the end of your rope that we find Christ is more than enough.” Good writing only infrequently uses exclamation points, reserving them for only those sentences truly deserving. Wilson’s next sentence has one. “And I have come to believe that for a great many of us—if not all of us—Christ will not become our only hope until Christ has become our only hope!” (Love Me Anyway, 129). Later in the book Wilson adds, “I had come to the end of my rope and found there the sufficiency of Christ” (164).
But more than using similar phraseology as in his other books to repeat the theme of finding the strength of Jesus when faith wears thin, in Love Me Anyway Wilson gives his most extended recounting of the season in life which precipitated his wakefulness to the glory of the grace of Jesus Christ. The season brought him to a place of wakefulness not merely to gospel propositions about Jesus but a gospel encounter with Jesus.
Many years ago, as he lived for a long and lonely season in the spare bedroom of his house because his marriage was so poor that his wife didn’t want him in their bedroom, God showed up and began to warm cold hearts. You’ll have to get the book to read it. The details of the story are similar to what he wrote near the end of The Prodigal God, but in Love Me Anyway the story comes with more transparency. Wilson expected the marriage would dissolve, though he prayed it wouldn’t. And with his face wetting the carpet many nights he prayed God could change him.
God did. Because God can. And does. Our God loves to make his power perfect in our weakness and be there for his children when our hands slip from the nub end of our rope.
* Photo by Rui Silvestre on Unsplash
Reflections on Shepherds and Sheep: An Unexpected Cost
A recent article for Christianity Today about the reasons people leave churches.
You often hear a writer tell you how many hours it took him to write his big article or how many years it took her to write her big book. I’ve written a few times about how much I love Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See, and it seems like in every interview I’ve heard with Doerr, he’s always asked about the ten years it took to write the novel. And I get it. Authors want readers to know how much effort we expended in writing the piece, how much heartache we endured and how much saltwater dripped on the keyboard. Sometimes readers like to know too.
Author Annie Dillard, however, questions whether authors should share the cost. “How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag?” she asks rhetorically. “Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer?” (Dillard, The Writing Life, 7). She’s probably right. We all take the price tag off birthday presents before we give them lest what might have otherwise been an expensive, generous gift be seen as cheap. And yet still, from time to time, I feel the impulse to leave the tag, not so much as a humble brag—“Look how long this took”—but as catharsis.
Recently I wrote something that I won’t tell you what it cost, at least in terms of hours or months, thus sparing myself the impertinence, to use Dillard’s word. I will say, though, that I didn’t anticipate the emotional cost required to look certain realities in the eyes. Even I was caught off guard by the process, and more than a few times, I had the wind knocked out of me. Yesterday, Christianity Today posted the article. It’s about people leaving church and how pastors can respond. I’ll just share the opening few paragraphs with you, although I’d love for you to read the whole thing, “Two Hundred People Left Our Small Church.”
* * *
About 200 people have left our small church. The number probably sits closer to 350 when counting their children. But they didn’t leave the way you might expect—no church split or splinter. They left slowly, with neither fanfare nor fireworks. Some, if not most, left without a goodbye. And they left not over seven weeks or seven months, but over the course of seven years.
I got to thinking about this when I came back from my summer sabbatical, because I was pleased to see that not only did our church still exist, but there were also a few dozen new people.
The new attendees shake my hand and introduce themselves. They smile at me as I preach. They participate in our membership class and ask about small groups and opportunities to serve. One couple invited my wife and me out for a date. Still, I struggle to open my heart to them the way a pastor should, fully and without reservation. And I wonder why.
Then it hit me. In seven years, our church—in terms of net attendance—has grown from around 150 to 350. But in the same amount of time, our church has lost as many as have stayed. The losses never occur rapidly, as though a levee burst, but more as a steady trickle or slow leak.
A few of our members died. One went to jail. One wrote me an eight-page letter of grievances I was instructed to share with the elders; another wrote a chapter-length blog post suggesting we’re not even a church. Some parishioners didn’t let the door hit them on the way out because they kicked it off the hinges and left us to pick up the shattered pieces.
These departures are by far the exceptions. Many of those who left told me neither why they left nor even that they had left. I often find out via back channels like social media and other impersonal means. And I don’t believe our church has an exceptionally large back door—I suspect we’re typical.
How does a pastor keep his heart from growing cynical when, over 350 weeks of pastoring the same church, I have lost an average of one person each week? And why are these congregants leaving our church anyway? What role might I play, even unintentionally, in sending sheep to what they perceive to be greener pastures?
I don’t know. But I recently spent a lot of time and effort to find out.
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You can read the rest at Christianity Today.
* Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash
12 Books You Should Read and 12 Sentences Why
My attempt to help jumpstart your year of reading.
A not-so-complementing trope associated with bloggers and self-proclaimed influencers goes like this: “A lot of people have been asking me about ‘such and such.’”
The question typically serves as the prelude to a humblebrag. A lot of people have been asking whether I consider myself more of a pastor or a male model. This sort of baloney makes readers wonder whether a single person has ever asked said influencer such a question.
There is one question, however, I want to bring up that I’ve been legitimately asked. I wouldn’t say a lot of people have asked, though. In fact, only one person has asked the question. It’s the same person who asked me the exact same question last year, a question that I believe came to me on at a “blog comment” from my fellow-Pennsylvania-pastor-friend Josh. Until now, I pretty much ignored Josh’s question, which I can explain why after I tell you what the question is. (But first: Sorry for doing that, Josh!)
In the first blog post of each year, I share the list of books I read the previous year, always including in the post a few quirky tidbits about my year of reading. Because the list is typically so long, and because, to paraphrase Twitter, “a book read doesn’t equal an endorsement,” it’s hard for those who skim my annual blog post to have any helpful takeaway other than Benjamin is probably as quirky and eclectic of a reader as the lists seem to indicate. And that’s not much of a takeaway.
This is why, I think, Josh has asked me each of the last two years to create a much reduced list of books that only includes the books I suggest people read and perhaps why I make each suggestion.
I didn’t ignore the question because I thought it was a dumb question. I just never answered because of the work involved.
But this week I’m going to give it a try. Below are the twelve books that I would encourage readers to read, a list pared down from the list of all the books I’ve read over the last four or five years, a list that includes several hundred books.
Before sharing the list, I’ll mention that I didn’t include the Bible on the list below. But I will say that the Bible is the only book I read every year and certainly the only book I try to open nearly every day. I think I’m on my twentieth time through the book cover to cover. Therefore, for me to not put the Bible on the list is not at all meant to be a disrespect to the Bible but rather a way to respect the Bible by saying it is beyond belonging to a list of “book suggestions.”
I’m sure I’m missing a few books worthy of reading. If you think so, let me know in the comments below what those books are and why, in your opinion, they are must-reads.
* * *
12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke
This book is a few years old, so it’s probably “15 ways” now.
The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home by Russell Moore
Our hearts and homes are far more broken than we might expect, and yet the grace of God is also far more lavish than we might expect.
Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament by Mark Vroegop
We don’t know how to lament well, and that is neither to our credit nor joy.
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane C. Ortlund
While Pharaoh says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you more burdens,” Jesus says, “I will give you rest . . . . for I am gentle and lowly in heart.”
Gospel-Driven Church: Uniting Church Growth Dreams with the Metrics of Grace by Jared C. Wilson
Look, I’m contractually obligated to pick at least one Jared Wilson book because I love his books so much—so I’m picking this one because it’s new-ish and it also includes a helpful story-like-fable that wraps all the gospely-warmth and wisdom into a compelling and instructive whole. (As an aside, my favorite Wilson books are still Gospel Deeps and The Pastor’s Justification, although his newest book, Love Me Anyway, is great too.)
The Imperfect Pastor: Discovering Joy in Our Limitations through a Daily Apprenticeship with Jesus by Zack Eswine
It’s the only ministry book I re-read every other year or so, which I do because I’m prone to wander, prone to leave the kind of pastoral ministry that God loves, and this book calls me back again and again.
Struck: One Christian’s Reflections on Encountering Death by Russ Ramsey
What an honest story of pain and loss and grappling with God and coming out the other side in hope and joy.
The Art of Rest by Adam Mabry
We ain’t very good at rest, and this book explains why that’s a problem and what we must do about it.
The Song of Solomon: An Invitation to Intimacy by Douglas Sean O’Donnell
So, this is a preaching commentary, but as I’ve studied and taught Song of Solomon several times, I found this whole book so wonderfully done that it should belong on this list because of its great combo of exegetical insights and devotional warmth.
The Ten Commandments of Progressive Christianity by Michael J. Kruger
We need to see progressive Christianity for what it is, or more accurately, for what it is not—and this very short book will help you do so.
When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat
The book opens with an extended quote from Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk who lived during the middle of the twentieth century who said that a Christian consumed with himself “is capable of destroying religion and making the name of God odious to men,” to which I say, “Indeed, Merton, indeed.”
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Read this fictional story from WWII for the reminder that books are more than a succession of words placed one after the other on pages placed one after another; instead, books are spectacles to see reality that cannot be seen were it not so beautifully described.
Honorable Mentions:
Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson
The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose by Helen Sword
Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi
On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser
A Few More (Sort of) Honorable Mentions:
Shepherd & Sheep: Essays on Loving & Leading in a Local Church by Benjamin Vrbicek
Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World by Benjamin Vrbicek
Don’t Just Send a Resume: How to Find the Right Job in a Local Church by Benjamin Vrbicek
Once for all Delivered: A Reformed, Amillennial Ordination Paper for the Evangelical Free Church of America by Benjamin Vrbicek
Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart by Benjamin Vrbicek
Can you blame me for trying?!
* Photo by Radu Marcusu on Unsplash
Reading List 2021
A list of every book I read last year.
My first post of each new year always contains the list of books I read the previous year (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020). I post the list for personal accountability, not to showboat. Knowing I have to confess my list helps me stay on track.
The total this year comes to 93 books. You can see from glancing at the graphs below how the tonnage relates to other years. I’d love to include a massive, annotated write-up about my discoveries, but this year I think I’ll let my “no comment” be the comment. It just takes too much time to write a post like that.
If I were to comment, I’d tell you I read every Fredrik Backman book and his darker books tended to be too dark for me but I simultaneously seemed to like them better than the lighter ones.
And I’d tell you that I read about four or five books in 2021 from author-friends that will be published by traditional publishers in 2022. It’s always fun to root for friends. I even wrote the forward for a book coming out in May with Christian Focus.
I’d also tell you that in these annual posts I often flag that I attempt to read the Bible cover to cover each year. I made it again this year and did it in The Message version. I know, I know—gasp. The reasons for this shift were several, but riding the cultural fad wasn’t one of them. I missed it by like fifteen years. The Message version of the Old Testament historical books and prophets sang melodies I’d never noticed before—in a good way—but places like the Psalms and other poetry had too many pop cliches, in my opinion. This year I’m going back to my ESV Study Bible, with the goal of reading the “book introductions” as I go along.
Okay, okay, I have to stop with all the comments. Just call me on the phone if you want to talk about them.
Here’s one update that might interest you and has little to do with reading lists. Now that I finished writing and submitting several articles this fall and winter to other websites, I’m returning to a book project I began last summer on my sabbatical. I’m calling the book Author as Abram: Writing to the Land He Will Show Us (A Memoirish Essay to Encourage Christian Authors). I probably have 40 pages of the 160 or so written.
Speaking of articles and books and sabbaticals, may I make a request? If you didn’t pick up a copy of my book that I compiled during my sabbatical called Shepherd and Sheep: Essays on Loving and Leading in a Local Church, I’d love for you to do so. The book has some of my best writing collected in one place. The feedback on the book has been—how shall I say this?—small but meaningful.
And if you had a favorite book from your recent reading lists, please let me know in the comments. I’m always on the hunt.
* * *
Books Read, 2013–2021
Pages Read, 2013–2021
* * *
In order of completion, this year I read . . .
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (384 pages)
Sabbaticals: “How-To” Take a Break from Ministry before Ministry Breaks You by Rusty McKie (122 pages)
Echo Island by Jared C. Wilson (272 pages)
Catching Fire (The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins (391 pages)
Five Masculine Instincts: A Guide to Becoming a Better Man by Chase Replogle (208 pages)
Blogging for God’s Glory in a Clickbait World by Benjamin Vrbicek and John Beeson (181 pages)
Mocking Jay (The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins (391 pages)
A Subversive Gospel: Flannery O’Connor and the Reimagining of Beauty, Goodness, and Truth by Michael Mears Bruner (260 pages)
The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing by Jonathan K. Dodson (240 pages)
Win the Day: 7 Daily Habits to Help You Stress Less & Accomplish More by Mark Batterson (256 pages)
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: A Hunger Games Novel by Suzanne Collins (528 pages)
Here in Spirit: Knowing the Spirit Who Creates, Sustains, and Transforms Everything by Jonathan K. Dodson (160 pages)
The Bible: Romans to Revelation, Part 6 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World by Russell L. Meek (80 pages)
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance (272 pages)
What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book by Peter Ginna (320 pages)
To Be Continued: The Unstoppable Mission of Jesus by Tony Merida, Christy Britton, and Amy Tyson (261 pages)
The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation by Rod Dreher (272 pages)
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher (256 pages)
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis (176 pages)
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl R. Trueman (432 pages)
Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure by J.R. Briggs (208 pages)
Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes by Jonathan K. Dodson (192 pages)
The Bible: Genesis to Deuteronomy, Part 1 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church by Ivan Mesa (139 pages)
Over The River: The Story of Joshua (Kaleidoscope Kids’ Bibles) by Chris Ammen (115 pages)
Gilead: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (247 pages)
The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims by Rebecca McLaughlin (125 pages)
Before the Lord, Before the Church: “How-To” Plan a Child Dedication by Jared Kennedy (108 pages)
How to Reach the West Again: Six Essential Elements of a Missionary Encounter by Timothy Keller (60 pages)
Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches by Russell Moore (256 pages)
The Mission of the Body of Christ (Retelling the Story Series) by Russ Ramsey (256 pages)
Hiroshima by John Hersey (160 pages)
Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (336 pages)
Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life by Douglas Wilson (124 pages)
With Those Who Weep: A Theology of Tears by S.A. Morrison (122 pages)
Lilia: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (272 pages)
Storycraft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction by Jack Hart (280 pages)
Copyediting and Proofreading for Dummies by Suzanne Gilad (384 pages)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (531 pages)
The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear without Losing Your Soul by Russell Moore (304 pages)
Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World by Anthony Doerr (224 pages)
Shepherd and Sheep: Essays on Loving and Leading in a Local Church by Benjamin Vrbicek (160 pages)
The Bible: Joshua to Esther, Part 2 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Talking Back to Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality by Rachel Joy Welcher (216 pages)
Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words by Richard Hughes Gibson, James Edward Beitler III (248 pages)
Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey (304 pages)
Housekeeping: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (352 pages)
Seven Questions about Heaven by Stephen R. Morefield (144 pages)
Gospel-Centered Discipleship by Jonathan K. Dodson (176 pages)
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcom Gladwell (256 pages)
Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul by Hannah Anderson (208 pages)
All That’s Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment by Hannah Anderson (224 pages)
The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose by Helen Sword (88 pages)
Men and Women in the Church by Kevin DeYoung (176 pages)
Jack: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson (320 pages)
#Blessed: Intentional Gratitude in a World that Celebrates Self Everything by Laura Pyne (152 pages)
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (397 pages)
The Bible: Psalms to Song of Solomon, Part 3 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Wordcraft: The Complete Guide to Clear, Powerful Writing by Jack Hart (282 pages)
Becoming by Michelle Obama (448 pages)
From Everlasting to Everlasting: Every Believer’s Biography by Will Dobbie (208 pages)
Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian by Bret Lott (192 pages)
Pastors and Their Critics: A Guide to Coping with Criticism in the Ministry by Joel R. Beeke (192 pages)
A Promised Land by Barack Obama (768 pages)
Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life by Bret Lott (224 pages)
Woke-Free Church: For the Deliverance of the Body of Christ from Social Justice Captivity by Jeff Kliewer (165 pages)
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (384 pages)
The Art of War: Complete Text of Sun Tzu’s Classics, Military Strategy History, Ancient Chinese Military Strategist by Sun Tzu (137 pages)
When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (224 pages)
The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe (120 pages) [I only read the long, historical background and not the anthology part]
Anxious People: A Novel by Fredrik Backman (352 pages)
Us Against You: A Novel (Beartown Series) by Fredrik Backman (448 pages)
Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing by Andy Crouch (192 pages)
The Bible: Isaiah to Malachi, Part 4 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Deacons by Ben Bechtel (150 pages)
Britt-Marie Was Here: A Novel by Fredrik Backman (336 pages)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery (Hercule Poirot Mysteries) by Agatha Christie (304 pages)
Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman (160 pages)
The Art of Pastoring: Ministry Without All the Answers by David Hansen (224 pages)
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Novel by Fredrik Backman (384 pages)
The Deal of a Lifetime: A Novella by Fredrik Backman (96 pages)
Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel by Anthony Doerr (640 pages)
Things My Son Needs to Know about the World by Fredrik Backman (208 pages)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (304 pages)
When Prayer Is a Struggle by Kevin Halloran (160 pages)
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer: A Novella by Fredrik Backman (96 pages)
Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness by Marvin Olasky (112 pages)
The Weary World Rejoices: Daily Devotions for Advent by Megan Hill (127 pages)
Ten Words to Live By: Delighting in and Doing What God Commands by Jen Wilkin (176 pages)
The Ten Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them by Kevin DeYoung (208 pages)
Art and the Bible by Francis A. Schaeffer (95 pages)
The Bible: Matthew to Acts, Part 5 of 6 by God (300 pages)