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.
The Lord’s Supper: Eternal Word in Broken Bread by Robert Letham. Next week I am scheduled to deliver a lecture on the Lord’s Supper to a group of pastors in my local county, so I’ve been working through some choice titles on the topic. And I think Letham’s work is the best introduction to one’s understanding of this means of grace. It is clear and convictional, while steering clear of the monotony I find in many works on the topic. If you want to wade into a classic Reformed understanding of the Supper, this is the place to start.
What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman. For years I’ve heard about this book and I was eager to see it finally come to publication. In full disclosure, I’ve rarely profited from productivity books. Why that’s so is a post for another day. As I read through What’s Best Next I found myself consistently saying, “Yeah! That’s how I do it.” Perman just explains the method much better than I ever would. He is spot on to say that productivity is something God deeply cares about and ought to be thought of as “effectiveness” not “efficiency.” Effectiveness is necessarily efficient, but the reverse is not always the case. A particular highlight for me was his discussion of the “ringing effect” and how it informs capacity in work. Any Christian worker would do well to read this book. Tolle lege!
Reaching and Teaching: A Call To Great Commission Obedience by David Sills. This is a marvelous book and one every pastor should read. Sills believes that much mission work neglects a crucial aspect of the Great Commission, namely that we are to teach everything Christ commanded. He convincingly argues that long-term patience in theological education is vital to taking the gospel all nations and planting healthy indigenous churches. I experienced Sills argument first hand while in Uganda last week. We performed all manner of service in the area where we worked: dental/medical clinics, kids programming, soccer camps, construction work, and ministry to orphans. And you know what sure seemed to be the most sought after ministry? Teaching the Bible. More than meeting physical needs, the people longed for and needed the meat of God’s word. I’d recommend every mission team read this book.
A Bundle of Baldacci. The trip to and from Uganda consisted of, literally, a few days worth of travel time. For me, bumpy plane rides and bus rides are not really conducive to heavy theological reading. So I loaded up the iPad with a lot of David Baldacci, the quintessence of easy and fun reading to make the time fly. We could call it “dessert” reading. Reading that you can’t survive on, but is good to partake of every now and then. The plot lines are always intriguing, character development finely paced, and twists inventive, if not predictable at times. Here are the individual titles I read: