Top 10 Missionally Helpful Books in 2014

There were a plethora of good books I worked through this year. The stack of books on my desk were a bit larger than normal because I was in the middle of research for my own project Subterranean. Outside of research, I often find myself reading from a missional-pastoral angle. So I picked 10 books this year that helped me coach, counsel or gently cajole others to enter deeply into community, for the mission of God.

1. A Thicker Jesus by Glen H. Stassen

Sadly, Glen Stassen passed away this year but he had a significant influence on me. Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr., were been able to practice truth against power at great personal cost, while others readily capitulated to injustice. In this magnum opus, Stassen spingboards of their work to argue that such a robust Christianity stems from believing in a "thicker" Jesus, who is Lord over all of life. Belief in this thicker Jesus results in "incarnational discipleship". We must break away from idealism, individualism and cynicism to engage in the flawed messiness of our world.

2. The New Parish by Paul Sparks, Tim Soerens and Dwight Friesen

I was able to hang with Paul Sparks in my own city this summer and his presence was a deep encouragement. I respect these guys because they are practitioners. This book is about when faith communities begin connecting together, for the neighborhood, they learn to depend on God for strength to love, forgive and show grace like never before. The gospel becomes tangible and compelling when the local church is actually a part of the community, connected to the struggles of the people, and even the land itself.

3. Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations edited by Kay Higuera Smith, 

Jayachitra Lalitha, L. Daniel Hawk.

In 2010, the Postcolonial Roundtable gathered at Gordon College to initiate a new conversation regarding the significance of post-colonial discourse for evangelicalism. Colonialism involves more than just territorial domination. It also silences and disenfranchises those who do not hold power. Post-colonialism seeks to disrupt forms of domination and empower the marginalized to be agents of transformation. This book offered me good challenges as a white pastor in an urban neighborhood.

4. Theology of Mission by John Howard Yoder

Decades later, these lectures read just as fresh and relevant as if they were written today. Yoder effortlessly weaves together biblical, theological, practical and interreligious reflections to think about mission beyond Christendom. Along the way he traces the developments of mission and argues for an understanding of the church that is not merely a corrective but a genuine alternative in society. My favorite chapter might be chpt 17 on the Medium, Message and Presence. He goes on multiple tirades about consumerism, conversion-pressure and the breakdown of community.

5. Sermon on the Mount Commentary by Scot McKnight

I've got a bit of an obsession with the Sermon on the Mount. I read it every year and find it refreshing and unsettling everytime. I'm always looking for commentaries on it. McKnight explains each passage in light of the Bible’s Grand Story. This is good narrative theology. Scot consistently ties the Sermon back to the countercultural life the People of God are to express; as the in-breaking Kingdom. While the writing is not highly technical, it is theologically and philosophically rich. This book is accessible to the layperson and equally challenging to the academic.

6. Living Into Community by Christine Pohl

This is my second time through this book. Many of us are idealistic and passionate about community but when we dive into it we experience deception, grumbling, envy, and exclusion. These experiences make life together painful and can cause us to bail on the project of community. When we are not faithful through the difficulty, it prevents us from developing the skills, virtues, and character we need to nurture sturdy and love-filled communities. Christine Pohl acutely looks at practices that can counteract these destructive forces and help sustain vibrant communities.

7. Facing Levianthan by Mark Sayers

I was able to have breakfast with Mark recently and was captivated by his quirky, unconventional, rapid fire wisdom; this book reflects that personality. On one side, the mechanical leader casts a vision of heroic action aided by pragmatism and technology. On the other side, the organic leader is aided by creativity, defying convention and relishing the margins. This book explores the godlikeness of the mechanical leader and the dark chaos of the organic leader. Sayers weaves the history of leadership through the Enlightenment, Romanticism and the 19th century pointing out the leadership dangers while calling us to a better way. 

8. Incarnate by Michael Frost

For real, this is Mike's best book as he is prophetic in his critique of disembodied ways we attempt to be the church. The story of Christianity is a story of incarnation—God taking on flesh and dwelling among the people he created. Yet Christianity is increasingly understood as something personal, sentimental, interior, private, neighborless. As a result of dualism, technology, and individualism, the vast majority of people are now living relationally disconnected lives. Frost defines the problem but then provides hope for the church to be the incarnational alternative in society today.

9. The Peep Diaries by Hal Niedzviecki

We have entered the age of "peep culture": a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, humanity and community. Peep culture is YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Blogs. In the age of peep, we live vicariously through others, form pseudo relationships with people we'll never observe in real life and erode our senses with constant stimulation. The Peep Diaries reflects the aspirations of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their lives for catharsis, attention, and notoriety.

10. Place Attachment edited by Lynne C. Manzo & Patrick Wright

Place attachments are emotional bonds that form between people and their physical surroundings. These connections are a powerful aspect of human life that inform our sense of identity, create meaning in our lives, facilitate community and influence action. Place attachments have bearing on such diverse issues as rootedness, belonging, placemaking, mobility and loneliness. This is a highly academic read, I think its a text book. I found it helpful in understanding the crisis before us; that we're encountering a generation that doesn't know how to stay but is caught in perpetual search for the next opportunity.


What books were helpful for you this year?

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn in Community

No one likes to grieve. So when Jesus tells an eager gathering of disciples “Blessed are those who mourn,” I’m not sure church growth gurus would see that as the strongest recruitment strategy.

Mourning in the Jewish imagination is not a foreign emotion. Mourning has deeply historical connotations for the Hebrew People of God.

The Drama of God’s People

The majority of the time mourning is spoken of in the Old Testament, it is intrinsically connected to the feeling that God is absent. There are passages like Lamentations 1 – “Zion’s roads mourn, for no one comes to her, all her gateways are desolate, her young women grieve, bitter anguish is her voice. Her children have gone into exile with no one to hear their cries. The Lord has left us in grief.” The writer of Psalm 22 says “My God, My God why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far from my cries of anguish? I cry out by day but you do not answer me?”

There are 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testament, in which we have no record of any prophetic utterances. This silence in between the Testaments, displays the overwhelming scope of grief that the People of God felt. A Jewish Rabbi says of this time that “God was a world away.” To be in a place of mourning is to grieve the perceived loss of God’s presence.

This statement might make us feel uncomfortable since we cling to sentiments like “God will never leave you nor forsake you.” Yet life does pummel us, injustice is levied upon us, stripping us of any sense that God is available- our prayers become dry, our circumstances are not remedied, and our crisis increases.

We are now entering into the season of Advent - a season of waiting. Waiting is an undetermined season where we long for change, for relief, for peace while we grieve. We must permit people to confess their complicated emotions that God seems to have let them down. To feel this should not drive us out of community but draw us deeper into the beloved community.

When God is a World Away

In the formation of our Faith-Communities we need safety to say “God is a world away.” This does not make us any less Christian. These words “Blessed are those who mourn…” are an invitation to participate in the deep groans of Kingdom-Come.

Jesus steps into the skin of his own teaching when he exclaims at the center of the passion, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is not play acting or putting on a theatrical show. Jesus is genuinely experiencing the depths of human suffering: the startling remoteness of God. This is a timeless cry of glaring into an empty abyss.

John Stott once said, “I could not believe in God, if it were not for his human struggle. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?” Jesus is calling us to come and follow. Together we will smack into this mystery as Jesus himself did. In his book, The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann eloquently said, “For whatever reason, God allows mankind to be limited and vulnerable to suffering, but he had the courage to take his own medicine in Jesus.” Jesus put himself at the center of the trial of human existence.

We do not live in the Holy City yet. In Revelation 21, John the Seer says, “I saw the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will live with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more mourning for the old order of things has passed away.’”

We are caught in the tension that King Jesus has triumphed but God is not fully here yet. We cannot wear plastic pretense or fashion cryptic theological systems to convince ourselves God has fixed everything that needs to be fixed.

Mourning is Maturity

I don’t think Christian culture is comfortable with this dim space. Much of our language about God is tangled up with unmitigated optimism, positive thinking, absolute confidence in progress and the obsession to control all aspects of life.

I spent some time in remote parts of Kenya investigating refugee children who were part of the LRA. Many times I was crushed with the inner question “God, why don’t you stop this?” as I took in the deformed faces of children butchered in the brutality of war. Mourning is intertwined in the desperate longing for God’s arrival.

I don’t believe that mourning the absence of God should be extrapolated to typify the whole of the Christian life, but I do think we need to understand that the Disciple’s life includes leaning into this portion of the Sermon on the Mount.

Mourning is not spiritual immaturity. Mourning is growing up in Jesus. Mourning is not a denial of Christ’s Resurrection victory, but it is an appropriate response to beholding the awfulness in the world.

Our comfort, our healing balm comes in our immersion with a community that is hospitable to mourning. We can discover God’s earthy, tangible grace as we dwell with each other in our hurt, anger and confusion.

We will not apprehend supernatural comfort alone in isolation, solo in private prayer, buried in Bible verses, raging out on social media. As we encounter pain, injustice and existential crisis in our neighborhoods we must cultivate faith-communities that offer soul-care when God is seemingly on the other side of the world.