Samuel Wells

A Long Letting Go

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“When we face our own death, or the death of someone dearer to us than life itself, we perceive as-yet formless truths and strive to articulate the fearful truths we apprehend. What we need is a companion who can abide amid our chaos, a sage who can choose the right moment to share a word, and a prophet who can say the thing we shrink from, yet need to hear. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is all of these things. Going gently with her into the prison of death will set you free.”

Addiction and Virtue

Philosophy

“Considerations of addiction as disease are helpful but inadequate. Kent Dunnington shows us that addiction is a habit, more akin to idolatry or wrongful worship. In doing so he deepens our notions of addiction, but also enriches our understandings of sin and redemption. I can't think of a more timely subject, or a more exemplary way to do theological ethics.”

Approaching the End

Theology

“Reading Hauerwas is like walking in on a family argument. You don’t always know when and how the fight started, but you can’t take your eyes off it, you’re galvanized by the energy in the room, you suddenly find the fight is about things you’ve always been troubled by -- and you sure as hell will stay rooted to the spot until you see how the argument comes out. Stanley Hauerwas writes unputdownable theology -- because he believes in a God who will never put us down until it’s clear how our story comes out.”

Church in Crisis

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“"Oliver O'Donovan sees the current crisis in the Anglican Communion for precisely what it is--an invitation into the heart of God. Anyone who wearily feels they have heard it all on these issues will come away from this book challenged, deepened, and refreshed.”

Common Prayer

Preaching & Worship

“If Anglicanism claims to be catholic and reformed, then this winsome volume has the best of both: catholic in liturgy, protestant in testimony. Open this volume and meanwhile open your heart to be strangely warmed by the quirky, the moving, the profound, and the playful.”

Crisis and Care

Work, Money & Leadership

“With admirable wisdom, the editors resist a broad-sweep PowerPoint-slide ‘ten lessons’ approach: instead they invite friends and colleagues to sketch the same themes from fifteen diverse perspectives. The result is something humbler, and more elegant; deft, yet profound. The whole project is an exercise in turning our imaginations from the default of scarcity to the glory of abundance. What emerges is the discovery that a crisis isn’t simply a time for adapting strategies: it’s a time for re-educating the soul.”

Exploring Christian Ethics

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“In this refreshing and at times exhilarating exploration, Craig Hovey portrays Christian ethics as the discovery of what is made possible because Christ was born, has died, is risen and will come again. In doing so, he dismantles the popular perception of Christianity as a catalogue of prohibitions and opens out a vista of promise, purpose, and potential.”

Faithful Exchange

Work, Money & Leadership

“David Opderbeck combines a teacher's eye for explanation with an outsider's appetite for theology, a lawyer's instinct for analysis and fine distinction, and a storyteller's gift for ordered and engaging sequence. The result is an argument lucid in exposition, generous in vision, and informative in scope. No Christian reader could fail to be enriched by its portrayal of God's economy, nor any economist come away from this text without an inspiring notion of the practical difference real Christianity makes. And as for a Christian economist: there are such people, and those who read this book will be moved to take their place among them.”

God's Beauty-in-Act

Theology

“Stephen Garrett has provided us with a deftly constructed and compellingly argued case for the centrality of beauty for a faithful doctrine of God, and indeed for the whole theological project.”

God’s Gift of Generosity

Church Leadership & Ministry

“Karl Travis sees with the eye of a perceptive pastor, writes with the verve of a joyous companion, and argues with the existential urgency of a dying man. This is a book bursting with faith, hope, and love, convincing us that God has given us everything we need; but it is also a manual of practical wisdom, contending that generosity is the best investment. Reading this book won’t just make you a more effective pastor; it will make you a more profound human being.”

Imitating Christ

Christian Living

“Luke Timothy Johnson offers a remarkable survey of what it has meant to follow Jesus, and how that intention has been characterized and altered over two thousand years. Equally comfortable in New Testament exegesis and historical summary, sharp in theological analysis and unafraid in offering judgment and pointing to a better path, Johnson offers a wise, wide-ranging, and absorbing account of the heart of being a Christian. Those of conservative and progressive strands alike will discover here the origins of their convictions and the weaknesses of their assumptions. Johnson’s impressive narrative is both a lament for what Christianity has lost and an inspiring call to what it perhaps has never had. This is a book to ponder, digest, and discuss, with an argument to appreciate, embody, and put to work.”

Incorporating Children in Worship

Preaching & Worship

“Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom and David Bjorlin have given us a book as full of challenge as it is shorn of sentimentality. They take us on a journey--from activity for children, to discovery with children, to pedagogy from children--that mimics the way Jesus calls us to enter the kingdom.”

Journey toward Justice

Theology

“Nicholas Wolterstorff has earned our respect and stirred our minds in his long career as a Christian philosopher. He has demanded our attention and struck our conscience in his more recent turn to the theory and practice of justice. Here he captures our imaginations and moves our souls as he tells the story of his journey toward justice—a journey that leads him from wisdom to witness.”

Leading Christian Communities

Church Leadership & Ministry

“Kavin Rowe approaches leadership with the convictions that there’s nothing inherently different about today from the challenges faced by the early church, that the Holy Spirit through Scripture and tradition has given us everything we need to thrive amid today’s predicaments, and that being the body of Christ is the most exciting and rewarding adventure any of us could wish for. These assurances make for compelling reading and healthy renewal.”

Life after Tragedy

History & Biography

“Michael Brierley and Georgina Byrne have judiciously gathered these measured essays on ministry, suffering, tragedy, and hope: they leave the reader more immersed in sadness, admiration, desolation, and ultimately faith. After all, if Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy’s life was a failure, so was that of Jesus.”

Liturgia Dei

Preaching & Worship

“In this absorbing and well-argued book, Adam Couchman relocates worship from something we do to something fundamentally going on beyond us, in the Son’s communion with the Father, in which we participate by the Spirit. In this he subtly critiques a widespread assumption that worship is an anthropological category and defines it squarely as a theological process. Furthermore, he shows the significant consequences of this apparently recondite argument, leaving the whole church greatly in his debt.”

Make a List

Christian Living

“A companion who can abide amid our chaos, a sage who can choose the right moment to share a word, and a prophet who can say the thing we shrink from yet need to hear.”

Means of Grace

Bible Studies & Devotionals

“Fleming Rutledge picks you up, dusts you down, gives you a good talking to—but in such a way that leaves you more alive, more excited to be a Christian, more thrilled with God. Her fearless writing communicates to the reader that if you leave the kid gloves aside, you’ll meet the real God—not the one lazy or complacent sermons have shown you before. Tolle lege as Augustine did—pick up and read—and you’ll be invigorated by these injections of grace.”

Ministry Matters

Church Leadership & Ministry

“I often say that ministry is about taking people more seriously than they take themselves. This is exactly what Michael Plekon does in this absorbing, profound, and heartwarming book, which will lead all engaged in ministry into more serious questions and more significant reflection than they would find alone. This is a wonderful book for those preparing for the diverse ministries of the church, but also a book to turn to for refreshment, light, and hope.”

Naming Neoliberalism

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Rodney Clapp has written a profoundly pastoral book that prophetically unmasks neoliberalism not only as a rival ethic to the church but as a rival theology. By telling the story of how neoliberalism came to seem not only plausible but necessary, Clapp empowers the reader to perceive where alternative community responses can be cultivated. Jesus's kingdom proclamation disarmed the powers and revealed a new, inbreaking reality. Rodney Clapp's book follows in that exalted tradition.”