James K. A. Smith

Practicing the King's Economy

Church Leadership & Ministry

“Here is economic wisdom for humans with habits and desires, immersed in patterns and practices. Here is a model of economic discipleship that doesn’t just tell you what to think but how to practically live in an economy of the kingdom. Here is a book that refuses idealism but is fueled by resurrection hope. But you can’t pull this off on your own, so buy copies for your family, friends, and congregation.”

Prayer in the Night

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“To be creatures is to face many nights: the darkness of the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen. God, in his grace, does not promise to expel the dark; he promises to be with us in the night. In prose that is both powerful and vulnerable, Tish Harrison Warren invites us to receive Compline as a gift to help us face the dark. Prayer is how we press our hands into the invisible and find the hand of Christ reaching back.”

Re-enchanting the Text

Theology

“This book amounts to a bold Pentecostal intervention in current discussions about the theological interpretation of Scripture. With verve, rigor, and creativity, Cheryl Bridges Johns demonstrates how the Spirit’s ongoing presence in the Bible-reading community makes the text come alive as a means of ongoing grace. Her vision for a Pentecostal ontology of Scripture is not just for Pentecostals—it is a gift to the church catholic, born at Pentecost.”

Recovering Theological Hermeneutics

Theology

“This book is a careful, historical demonstration of the way in which hermeneutics was secularized yet continues to borrow on the capital of Christian theology. By exposing the problems inherent in secular hermeneutics and correcting the histories of philosophical hermeneutics on record, Zimmerman points a way forward beyond secular hermeneutics. This is a bold project that should be read not only by theologians but, more especially, by those philosophers working in the wake of Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida, and Levinas. This book is an excellent addition to any course in philosophical hermeneutics.”

Remembrance, Communion, and Hope

Preaching & Worship

“We are creatures who hunger and thirst for God, which is why Jesus gives us bread and wine. In this audacious book, Todd Billings shows us why the renewal of the church begins around the table—how our union with Christ is deepened by communion. I hope this becomes the go-to textbook on the Lord’s Supper in Protestant seminaries. Our spiritual lives and our witness will be richer for it.”

Shaping a Digital World

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“The little machines we now hold in our hands are not neutral. We make them, but they mold us. This book is an invitation to first recognize this and then think through its implications. Neither reactionary dismissal nor uncritical embrace, Schuurman roots technology in a biblical theology of culture, demonstrating that the Reformational tradition has gifts to offer the wider church. A fresh resource for Christian reflection on both computer science and our everyday digital lives.”

Telling God's Story

Preaching & Worship

“The church should be worried about this book. It comes as an invitation to rethink the task of preaching, but three pages into it you'll realize that Wright is not giving us another 'how-to' book for adding to the plethora of 'messages' delivered every Sunday. No, this little book is packed with minor-prophet-like punch, arguing that preaching is the practice by which the North American church has fallen, but also gives us a glimpse of how preaching could help it stand. Providing a brilliant historical and theological diagnosis of the problem with so-called biblically based, need-centered preaching (whether liberal or conservative), Telling God's Story winsomely sketches what authentic 'biblical' preaching looks like: not conscripting the Bible to legitimate the cultural narratives of consumerist individualism or triumphant nationalism, but rather finding ourselves in the biblical story as an alternative to both. If the church is properly said to be a polis, then this book unpacks the 'politics' of homiletics. It should be required reading in seminaries across North America. And we could hope that pastors already immersed in ministry would be willing to risk reading this book. But be forewarned: it will radically change your understanding of your charge to 'preach the gospel.'”

The Character of Virtue

Christian Living

“Hauerwas’s marvelous letters in The Character of Virtue are not only wisdom for those growing in the faith; they are also a model for how all of us can come alongside parents in the hard but good work of raising children in the faith.”

The Dialogical Spirit II

Theology

“I have been learning from my friend Amos Yong for almost thirty years. This marvelous collection of his essays embodies his spirit and brilliance. I love the audacity and ambition of Yong’s project, perhaps especially because he pursues it without self-regard. Here is a mind of ranging curiosity and irenic charity. Yong shows how deep conviction can be wed to faithful innovation in theology.”

The Disappearance of Ethics

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“I read this book as a hopeful elegy for ethics as a discipline: a lament for the ways the university has let ethics die, but with the hope it might not be too late. This is vintage O’Donovan: erudite, careful, a veritable master class in how to respectfully engage the history of thought and the university as we experience it. But there is also something new here in his articulation of the relationship between theology and ethics. A very fitting consummation of a lifetime of work.”

The Essential City of God

Theology

““Augustine’s City of God is at once perennial and puzzling. It wrestles with fundamental questions that face every generation but was written from and for a context that is now deeply foreign. Gregory W. Lee has created an incredible resource to help readers today and in the future encounter this classic. He has curated the best anthology of City of God that exists, surrounded the primary readings with incredibly helpful notes and commentary, and left room for readers to wrestle with Augustine for themselves.”

The Fullness of Time in a Flat World

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“We usually think of globalization as a matter of space--a shrinking globe, porous boundaries, flows of capital. In an insight that is jarring and brilliant, Scott Waalkes argues that globalization is also a matter of time. Diagnosing the corrosive construals of time and space in globalized consumer capitalism, Waalkes shows how ancient Christian practices of time-keeping can remake our world and our economic habits, apprenticing us to the One born 'in the fullness of time.' A stellar book that deserves wide attention.”

The Good Life

Christian Living

“How can we resist the empire's demand for our allegiance? This remains a fundamental question for Christian discipleship, and in 'The Good Life', McCarthy poses it afresh. But now the empire is not Rome but the market, and the arena of challenge is not the coliseum but Wal-Mart. He offers challenging wisdom to those of us in minivans who are trying to discern what God's disruptive grace means for our friendships, our neighborhoods, and our consumer habits.”

The Gravity of Joy

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“The Gravity of Joy is a unique exercise in vulnerable theology. Weaving memoir and journalism, theology and testimony, Gorrell invites us into the unthinkable to discover the possibility of a joy that surpasses understanding. Written with eyes wide open, this book is a reminder that the cracks in a broken heart can be openings for grace.”

The Mother Artist

Arts & Literature

“This marvelous book is, all at once, a work of curation, creativity, criticism, and care. Ricketts writes evocatively, as a witness, at the intersection of two creative vocations: motherhood and artmaking. Her vulnerability as a memoirist is deepened by her generous insight as a critic, opening up the work of others. The result is a strong but subtle apologia for why the world needs 'maternal humanism' today more than ever. Read this if you're a mother and an artist, to be sure; but read this, too, if you're human and hope for a different world.”

The Pastor’s Bookshelf

Church Leadership & Ministry

“Reading is crucial for ministry, not as a mine for anecdotes and illustrations, but as an apprenticeship of the imagination. In this warm and wise book, Austin Carty invites pastors to develop capacious reading habits, as wide and curious and wonderful as the world in which they serve. I hope this book is an occasion for many pastors to build new shelves of poetry and fiction, biography and memoir, all of them adventures in understanding humanity.”

The Poet and the Fly

Arts & Literature

“In this marvelous series of meditations, Robert Hudson draws us into the felicity of attending to the fleeting that nonetheless teems with glory. Like its subject, Hudson playfully alights from poets to nature, from creation to creators, from art to science and back. But the flight pattern of this book takes us to the depths of what matters: meaning, mortality, and our hope in the divine.”

The Politics of Yahweh

Theology

“Making up for the paucity of attention to the Old Testament in ecclesiology, Nugent shows that Yoder's unique 'Israel-like view of the Church' substantially draws on the Old Testament as an essential part of the narrative arc in understanding God's work in forming a 'royal priesthood'--a mission that culminates in Christ and his body, the ecclesia. This is an important corrective to some recent rereadings of Yoder, which have no room to account for history--and particularly the history of Israel--in Yoder's missional ecclesiology. This is an important contribution to current debates.”

The Priority of Christ

Theology

“Barron's wonderful book The Priority of Christ brings postliberalism back to its Catholic home. . . . A downright lovely book, written with a kind of winsome literary flair that exhibits the inviting clarity of a master teacher. Highly recommended.”

The Sacred Pulse

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“I felt seen by this book, in a way that was uncomfortable at first. The unsettling insight into my frenetic performance for God was the opening I needed to hear April Fiet's invitation: to learn to dance with God again, finding rhythms that are, paradoxically, like rest in motion.”