W. David O. Taylor
Biography
W. David O. Taylor wrote Open and Unafraid.
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Theology
“Over against modernity’s reductionistic impulses—to view human life as ‘nothing more than,’ human work as ‘nothing but,’ and human relations as mere power struggles and ‘nothing besides’—Jeremy Begbie shows how Christ’s resurrection, as the uncontainable ‘moreness’ of God’s love-in-action par excellence, serves to rupture this pathologically miserly vision of life and how the arts can function as graced partners in the ongoing ‘opening up and out’ work of the triune God. This book is a must-read for theologians and church leaders.”
“Much like Mozart's music and Shakespeare's plays, the season of Advent satisfies at so many different levels—theologically, imaginatively, affectively, ethically, liturgically, and so on. In this beautifully compact book, Tish Harrison Warren invites readers to experience the multilevel richness of Advent and to discover thereby the full richness of the triune God. Tolle lege, friends; take up and read, and let Christ himself fill you to the fullest with a life that was and is and is yet to come.”
Theology
“If the test of a good story is the kind of person it shapes, then we can only hope that Marilynne Robinson continues to write her stories. Reading her stories makes one want to be more truly alive. They also, as it happens, make one curious to read her nonfiction. In reading both novels and essays, we are introduced to a theologically dynamic vision of the world. This marvelous collection of essays is a welcomed engagement by theologians with an author who demands careful—and repeated!—reading.”
Preaching & Worship
“Both generous-spirited and critically nuanced, Lemley’s interdisciplinary work is precisely the kind of scholarship that will help worship leaders to discern not just what kind of popular music we ought to be singing in our corporate worship but how popular music might uniquely form in us a cruciform identity—rather than, at its worst, pull us into musical and cultural inertias that fight against the demanding patterns of the gospel.”
Bible Studies & Devotionals
“amen to the worship of Christ Jesus, then it stands to reason that our most important task is to attune ourselves to his voice, his words, his worship. This is what Zac Hicks invites readers to do in this theologically rich, biblically alert, pastorally sensitive, and immensely practical book. I hope worship teams everywhere take advantage of it to become what they hope to invite others to be: a people of prayer ravished by the beauty of God’s presence and transfixed by the glory of his triune name.”
Preaching & Worship
“It’s almost criminal that a book like this only now sees the light of day. Von Allmen is, arguably, one of the best-kept secrets in the field of liturgical studies. But no more. Rienstra’s treatment of this pastor-theologian’s thoughts on worship deserve to be read by Christians across denominational lines. Pastor, teacher, worship leader: take up and read!”
Christian Living
“If this book helps readers to digitally detox and to unplug from all sources of media that threaten to drown us in noise and to rob us of the capacity to attend to the things that truly enable us to flourish as human beings, then it will only have begun to do its good work. Take the spectacles of God’s two books, Scripture and Creation, as John Calvin once called them, and learn to resee your life as God sees it. Take and read! Taste and see!”
Arts & Literature
“Watkins’s project questions many of our dearly held but often problematic ideas about artistic creativity. Eschewing the model of artist as genius or icon of God, Watkins offers us a ‘sacrificial’ model, christologically through and through, that frees the artist from small, self-absorbed, self-defeating aims for the sake of a larger, more costly but also more deeply enriching vocation. This is a book you must get your hands on.”
Christian Living
“In Hannah Miller King's fabulous book, Feasting on Hope, we are reminded of things that we all-too quickly forget but desperately need to remember. We are reminded that our Lord feeds the hungry with bread that exceeds their deepest hungers, along with their greatest sorrows; satisfies the thirsty with wine that lasts for days; sits the stranger at the head table, not the kid one; sets the penniless and powerless at feasting tables while enemies watch nearby; and makes the wasteland of our lives blossom with beauty that both pierces and gladdens our hearts. Above all, he nourishes our bodies and souls with living food and the blood that is true drink. He does so with his very own self. There's so much to feast on in this book. Isay: eat up and enjoy!”
Theology
“A multifaceted investigation of the disposition of wonder that not only constitutes a proper beginning, and end, for the study of theology, but also rightly orients us to all of created reality. This book is fantastic, and I say that very rarely about multiauthor books. What a gift to both scholars and students, and to pastors and artists as well.”
Arts & Literature
“If the God of the Bible is in the business of being found in the most unlikely places—a bush, a ladder, a donkey, a meal—then we shouldn't be surprised if he chooses to show up in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. This marvelous book takes us on a riveting tour of artworks, from Dalí to Rothko to Catlett, with expert guides who train our eyes to perceive signs of divine presence, alive and at large.”
Preaching & Worship
“If honest worship is a matter of remaining unhidden in the presence of God, living without pretenses before a watching world, and being ruthlessly committed to truthful self-examination, then that is the kind of worship the church sorely needs, even if it is awfully difficult to achieve. By God's grace it is achievable. Helps are needed though, and this book is precisely the kind of help that gets pastors and parishioners worshiping honestly before a gracious God, for whom such worship is deeply pleasing.”
Arts & Literature
“The writer Frederick Buechner once said that the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen. When we truly listen, he says, we discover that life is a vastly richer, more mysterious business than we might have initially suspected. Davidson's book helps us to do just that: to listen to what our neighbor is saying, through a movie, and to discover the mysterious business of God's voice there, too.”
How to Worship for All Its Worth
Preaching & Worship
“Both shrewd and charitable, Steven Félix-Jäger’s book succeeds where other worship books often fail. He seeks first to understand how other traditions, whether Reformed or Pentecostal or otherwise, praise God together in ways that remain both intelligible and meaningful to the tradition, and then, and only then, seeks to be understood. Just as we wouldn’t judge jazz a failure because it fails to be classical or folk, so Félix-Jäger argues, rightly, that we should not judge the musical practices of other liturgical traditions a failure simply because they fail to look and sound like ours. With the worship wars still being a scourge to the body of Christ today, Félix-Jäger’s book serves to change the rules of engagement by inviting and equipping readers to become agents of God’s ministry of reconciliation within the liturgical sphere and thus to find themselves not as fundamentally at war with one another but as fellow citizens in the everlasting praise of the one who sanctifies all of our worship.”
Arts & Literature
“With both wit and wisdom, Bruce Herman guides readers into a spacious place where the craft of artmaking is intelligently explained to the apprentice, humbly explored alongside fellow masters, and with warm-hearted encouragement, affirmed to those who journey in between. By way of a series of letters which explore topics such as vocation, failure, style, irony, and tradition, Herman complicates the craft for those who'd want it to be a simplistic affair, and he simplifies it for those who'd want to complicate it unnecessarily. All throughout, he shows artmaking to be an utter gift. This is a much-needed and altogether refreshing book in the field of art and faith.”
Arts & Literature
“Both beautiful and harrowing, Katy Bowser Hutson's book takes readers on a journey into 'the depths.' In Hutson's case, they're the hellish depths of cancer, where senseless things are made sense of through the language of poetry—even if only partially—in order to discover a God who has not abandoned her to the depths but rather, in love, abided with her in them. This book is a gift to all who suffer and to those who keep watch with the sufferers.”
Bible Studies & Devotionals
“With so many reasons today to feel discouraged about the state of the Christian witness in the public square, Lansing and Marotta draw our attention to a cloud of witnesses—of saints and sinners, priests and poets, Asian and African, Byzantine and Baptist—who persevered in their devotion to Christ in the face of manifold temptations to become a faithless, hopeless, loveless people. This is a wonderful book for those who need a little encouragement to remain faithful, hopeful, and love-full in the face of their own temptations to become otherwise.”
Arts & Literature
“In this marvelous book, Jennifer Craft shows us how God is in the business of making grace happen in our respective places on earth—this soil, this house, this street, this climate, this city, this people. What she offers the reader is not only a sorely needed theology of place but also a compelling vision for how the arts inspire us to create hospitable places that anticipate our life together in a fully emplaced kingdom economy.”
Prayer & Spiritual Formation
“I can’t imagine a more needful book for our time than this one by Rebekah Eklund. So much in our broken world demands to be lamented. Yet because so few of us grew up in families or churches that modeled healthy lament, we need to be trained. Eklund serves here as a theologically skilled, pastorally wise, and immensely helpful guide, training readers in the way of faithful lament—for God’s sake and our own!”
NOTE: Only includes books currently in our catalog; not necessarily a complete list.
Preaching & Worship
Prayer & Spiritual Formation
Theology
Christian Living
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