I love to read. By God’s grace I am a pretty fast reader; I usually read a couple books each week. I find it helpful to summarize my thoughts on each book and I offer those thoughts in the hope that you will be encouraged to either read or pass over the given title.

You Lift Me Up: Overcoming Ministry Challenges by Al Martin. For years I had heard of Martin’s peculiar power in preaching, but it was only last year that I actually listened to a few sermons and found myself saying, “Now that is unction!” Back in 1990 Martin preached a series of messages at a pastor’s conference on the topic of “Warnings Against Ministerial Backsliding and Burnout” that were received with “unusual benefit” (9).

So it was that 23 years later the addresses were published as You Lift Me Up. Martin offers seven warnings related to ministerial backsliding and burnout: Beware of 1) distractions from devotion, 2) neglecting generic Christian duties, 3) trading off a good conscience, 4) isolating yourself from the congregation, 5) having priorities shaped by others’ perceived needs, 6) hiding your real humanity, and 7) neglecting your physical body. Every pastor, young or old, would be wise to feast on the wisdom Martin provides. His wisdom offers a medicinal balm of correctives, restoratives, and preventatives.

The Lord’s Supper as a Means of Grace: More than a Memory by Richard Barcellos. Every useful book I’ve ever read on the Supper has been from a non-Baptist. So I was excited to see Barcellos, a Reformed Baptist, offer up a brief primer on the reality of the Supper being a means of grace. His “specific focus is to show how the Lord’s Supper is a means of grace.” To show how he turns to three texts: 1 Corinthians 10:16, Ephesians 1:3, and Ephesians 3:14-16. His argument from these texts essentially is, “In the Lord’s Supper Christian’s have real, present participation in the present benefits of the exalted Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.”

I appreciated his chapter on historical theology that showed how the argument is not only a centuries old in the Reformed and Presbyterian heritages, but also the Particular Baptist heritage. The argument is clouded by technical Greek discussion and a fair amount of redundancy, making it largely inaccessible to a church member. To be fair, Barcellos admits he is writing for pastors and theological students (16). So we are still waiting for a popular level, Baptist treatment of the Supper as a means of grace.

No Perfect People Allowed: Creating a Come as You Are Culture in the Church by John Burke. Burke says our postmodern and post-Christian culture brings five unique struggles into the church and they all need to be deconstructed. The struggles are those of trust, tolerance, truth, brokenness, and aloneness. To answer these struggles Burke says a local church should strive to create a culture of authenticity, vulnerability, understanding, and healing. To show how this can work he gives the reader lots – and I mean LOTS – of illustrations and stories from his church, Gateway Church in Austin. The proposed solutions are predictable, but nonetheless useful in helping a pastor evaluate how his church his church’s “welcoming” culture.

The Gray Man by Mark Greaney. I have often thought that if I could be one movie character for a day it would be Jason Bourne. So when I see a book series declared to be “Bourne for the new millenium” I am bound to read it. This title is the first of Greaney’s Gray Man series revolving around one Court Gentry, a veritable legend in the covert world. The Gray Man proved to be exactly what I was expecting, and that’s not a bad thing. Are the Gentry’s amazing and many escapes from death unrealistic? Probably. Are the fight scenes somewhat bombastic? Probably. Is the story strikingly similar to Bourne? Probably. But is it an enthralling read? Undoubtedly.