10 Best Books I Read This Year (2013)
Read this year, not necessarily published this year.
10. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
This breathless episode following key players in the Tudor empire — King Henry, Anne Boleyn, Oliver Cromwell, Jane Seymour, et.al. — won the 2012 Man Booker Prize as well as a host of other awards, and for good reason. The thrill of the king’s court intrigue, with all its grandiose ambition, malicious grievances, and Machiavellian conspiracies, is matched by the thrill of Mantel’s writing. You don’t have to be a history buff to get engrossed in this book — I’m certainly not — but it probably doesn’t hurt to have some interest or familiarity with the period.
9. As You Go: Creating a Missional Culture of Gospel-Centered Students by Alvin Reid
Lots of people have promised to write the book on gospel-centered student ministry, but Alvin Reid actually did it. Reid, a professor of evangelism and student ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, lays out the inherited and persisting problems of modern approaches to youth ministry without belaboring them, then provides concise, compelling, and actionable solutions in converting student ministry to the centrality of the gospel message and the necessity of gospel mission. A must-read for every student minister and student ministry worker.
8. The Juvenilization of American Christianity by Thomas Bergler
While we’re on the subject of student ministry, how is it exactly that “big church” started resembling more and more a bigger budget youth rally? Bergler takes an historical and sociological approach to demonstrate the impact of the rise of “youth culture” in the 40′s and 50′s on the Christian culture of the 80′s, 90′s, and today. The critique is somewhat academic but never dry and certainly incisive and revealing. I found this book one of the more helpful sources as I prepare for my next book project, a take on the attractional church model.
7. The Lost City of Z by David Grann
I picked up this book in an airport bookstore while traveling and I could barely put it down afterward. I got lost in the thicket of explorer Perry Fawcett’s 1925 getting lost in the thicket of the Amazon jungle. Fawcett, a sort of larger-than-life British raconteur-scientist and man’s-man fantastist (think of Wes Anderson’s Steve Zissou maybe, eighty years removed) was determined to find the El Dorado-like “lost city of Z,” and venturing boldly into the jungle, never returned. Eighty years later, journalist David Grann went in after him. The story of what he discovered, interlaced with the story of Fawcett’s own mysterious expedition, is spellbinding.
6. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
I’m trying to figure out how I might recommend this book, and I’m not sure that I even should. It is certainly not for the faint of heart. I have not seen the infamous film adaptation, and I have no plans to, so I have no way of saying how it might compare. My hunch is that while the book contains it’s share of horrific scenes, some involving sexual references and profanity, the movie’s depictions were meant to shock and entertain. The book instead seems to . . . warn. Blatty, a devout Catholic himself, published this story of an agnostic priest dealing with the apparent demonic possession of a little girl — allegedly based on a real incident — right as the pseudo-spiritualities of the New Agey 60′s were giving way to the hedonistic and therapeutic 70′s, and it remains as countercultural a treatise now as I imagine it did then. In the midst of “I’m okay and you’re okay,” where wrongs of all kinds are pinned on past traumas and even past lives, Blatty has the audacity to say there is such a thing as perversity and blasphemy and that while many wring their hands for the cause of this and that injustice and atrocity, looking for convenient scapegoats within the smokescreen of “dysfunction,” we ought to be on the lookout for something more real and more dangerous: personal evil.
5. Kingdom Come by Sam Storms
Storms’s book, subtitled “The Amillennial Alternative,” is the first book on amillennialism that I’ve read as an already convinced amillennialist, so he didn’t have much convincing of me to do. What he did convince me of is that his book is now the go-to text for anyone interested in evaluating the amillennial position in their eschatological exploration. Storms covers all the relevant texts in detail — the book is big and therefore comprehensive — but with a helpfully pastoral voice belying his scholarly credentials. Storms evaluates the other positions on the relevant texts winsomely and with an irenic tone. He leaves virtually no stone unturned, and yet the book never bogs down. Imminently readable, this is the book I would recommend on amillennialism from here on out (Hoekema’s a close second).
4. Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and The Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright
This is the second expose of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard I have read in as many years. The first was Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology, which made my Ten Best list last year. Wright’s book covers lots of the same ground as Reitman’s, but he also covers a lot more and in a much more expansive way. Driven largely by Hollywood writer/director Paul Haggis’ much-heralded defection from the cult and his ensuing whistleblowing, Wright’s book is meticulous in research and astounding in details. There is certainly a tabloid-esque fascination to this inside story, but I’m not sure that’s what quite gets at the attraction. For me anyway, there’s something about the actualization of hucksterism, conspiracy theories, the lure of the “gnosis,” the promise of self-improvement, and the exploitation of the simultaneously ambitious and vulnerable that is profoundly instructive and heartbreaking. The story of Scientology is sort of the “what if?” mirror image of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness by Satan. What if he’d said “yes” to it all?
3. Rhythms of Grace by Mike Cosper
I don’t know if your pastor and worship leader will read this, but they should. The story of the gospel through the lens of worship and the story of your worship gathering through the lens of the gospel. If you want your church’s rock star to learn about liturgy without rolling his eyes, this is the book. And as it explores the centrality of the biblical narrative for church artistry, it is itself a very artful book. Mike Cosper has given us a gift. Let’s not squander it.
2. Supernatural Living for Natural People by Ray Ortlund
My favorite pastor (Ray Ortlund) with a short pastoral exposition of my favorite chapter (Romans 8). It doesn’t much better than this for a straight shot of doxological whisky. But I shan’t say more, because, assuming he’s reading this, praise makes Ray nervous. (Read this book!)
1. The Glory of Christ by John Owen
Well, the oldest is usually the best. Page after page of this classic from the Puritan pastor John Owen offers richness in the beauty of the risen Savior. Owen is operating from the 2 Corinthians 3:18 principle that beholding is becoming, writing, “Some talk much of imitating Christ and following his example. But no man will ever become ‘like him’ by trying to imitate his behaviour and life if they know nothing of the transforming power of beholding his glory” (p.21). So Owen sets about displaying the glory of Christ as found in God’s word. Some of my favorite moments in the past year involve just sitting outside with this book and a pen and drinking deeply of Owen’s preached gospel. This book helped me see Jesus more clearly and love Jesus more deeply, and that’s the best thing I could say about a book.
