Going a Step Further | Books Worth Reading

Hey, friends, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast as we finish our series today on books
that we like, books that have been important to Michael and myself,
both from a personal
standpoint and a professional standpoint.
I think today we probably,
as we’ve tried to kind of
graduate up the scale,
in some ways, Michael, at least from my perspective of the book I’m looking at today,
they seem the narrowest,
maybe the most intense,
and in some ways the most
involved.
So I think on the front we probably need to be honest and say these books will likely
appeal to a fairly select group of readers,
people who are comfortable with some theology,
people who are deeply interested in church,
to some extent the broader context of Christian life,
but certainly in this book that I’m looking at today really focuses in on the congregation,
the community of Jesus,
and I think probably a general comfort with some deeper and in some
ways maybe some more academic writing.
Is that fair on your side?
I think that’s fair.
I wouldn’t say that this is classical Christian theology in that it’s from
people I think of as pretty contemporary.
It is not shallow.
This is the deep,
deep end of the pool.
In fact,
Clint,
as I sort of kick us off,
I was going to just simply have this book,
Christ the Center by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
It’s not the first book of his that we’ve had in this series,
but I started going through it so I could put together some thoughts to share with you,
and it struck me anew like,
oh my goodness, yeah, this is much deeper than what I remember,
and I think I would even want to go through this again to read it.
It is full of a contemporary
Christian theologian reflecting on some of the history of the ancient church as well as the Reformed church,
and then doing some work as that relates to our contemporary society.
So I’m going to talk a little bit about this,
but it’s just to say I read it and thought,
oh yeah, that’s deep, and not everybody might want to jump into that deep end of the pool.
So I’m also going to throw
on here sort of as a postscript,
Mere Christianity by C.S.
Lewis.
I’ll offer very few thoughts on
that.
I’m sure a lot of you have already heard of this,
but these are the two books I’m bringing.
Clint, you know,
Christ the Center for me,
the reason I selected this,
and I know we did this
series on Bonhoeffer and life together on community,
certainly want to recommend that
series to you if you’d be interested in going through that book with us and our thoughts on it.
This book, though, was the one that I think
had the most depth in my own theological journey,
because what Bonhoeffer did was he wrote a book that from his vantage put Jesus Christ at the center of theology.
And Bonhoeffer is well known now in scholarship for being somewhat unique in
transcending what was in his own day that line between liberal and conservative.
We still have those terms today.
They meant something different when he was alive.
But Bonhoeffer was deeply
committed to this idea that Jesus Christ is always simultaneously the Son of God and spiritually
true, but also incarnate in the life of his people,
that we should take scripture seriously when it
talks about the church being the handsome feet of Christ.
And he blends them in an intellectually honest,
nuanced,
a very deep kind of way in what is a very tiny book.
I mean, this here works out to
113 pages in my book,
a really, really fascinating read.
But if I’m going to be honest with you,
this is not the kind of book that you’re going to sit down and read on the beach.
This is not a
quick read.
This is a book that you read with a pencil.
You’re probably going to be doing some
Google searching to learn some of the terminologies.
I mean, this is a theologian doing a theologian’s work.
And I think it’s incredibly generative if you give it the time.
Yeah.
If Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote anything shallow,
I’m not aware of it.
Fair.
He is the kind of author with both his intellect and his spirituality.
He is the kind of author that you will find yourself.
I think if you try
to read Bonhoeffer seriously,
you will find yourself stopping sometimes mid sentence,
sometimes after a paragraph with just the weight of it
settling in.
And it’s not that he’s
verbose.
It’s not
complicated to read for the most part.
It’s just that he has a way
of mining out the deepest stuff of the faith in a way that most of us have to stop and think about
on a pretty regular basis as we work through his books.
And well worth reading.
Please don’t hear that as criticism.
He is an amazing author because he was an amazing pastor and amazing person,
but
you should not be fooled by the size of a book like that.
Because if you give it
your ear and do it justice,
you may be with that for a month.
I mean, you may find yourself
slogging through that and it probably wouldn’t feel like slogging,
but it’s not fast reading by any stretch.
No, this is one of my most marked up books in my library because of the amount of
time.
I mean, in some cases it’s every paragraph has a thing that’s been underlined.
I think what he does, and this will give you a sense for it here a little bit,
is he breaks the book into
what turns out to in the end be three parts.
Part one,
he talks about the present Christ,
and he works out in that section what the church has theologically believed about how Jesus Christ
is the center of our fellowship and community,
what that means for the world,
what it means for
our practice of the sacraments,
which is the thing that we may not talk a lot about in our
church settings necessarily, but it is one of the foundational elements of the Reformation,
and he really works that out in a meaningful way.
And then in the second part,
which I think is
maybe the part that might be the least accessible because it requires some of the most vocabulary,
he talks about how the ancient Christological heresies have lived on into the modern church.
And just saying that,
I recognize that some people are going to be getting off the train
at that point, but I really want to maybe make the pitch or to try to convince you
that if you’re willing to lean into some of those terms and just do a little bit of dictionary work,
what you’re going to discover is that there’s nothing new under the sun.
You’re going to discover the church has
been wrestling with some of our malformed understandings of Jesus Christ since the very beginning.
And so when we are willing to really sit under Bonhoeffer’s tutelage in that section,
what you’re going to discover is our own temptations for things like the health and wealth gospel,
our own temptations to make faith simple or transactional,
or for everything to,
for us to believe that everything is metaphor in scripture or that everything is literal,
like all of these have precedence in Christian history.
And what you’ll discover as you work
with Bonhoeffer and you see what he’s doing is he really dismantles that theologically to say, no,
we have to take seriously that Jesus Christ stands apart from our experience.
And yet, mystically and spiritually and miraculously,
he also works from within our experience,
that these things are always simultaneously true.
It’s the core gospel of the incarnation,
fully God, fully human.
And it is deeply, deeply theological.
But if you followed the line of my conversation here,
you’ve already begun to see how practical that is.
It has a way of shaping our
imagination so that we as Christians can disconnect from some of the societal polarities
that we’ve been told it’s either this or this Bonhoeffer stands as a third way.
Now, you could disagree with him, though I think one would want to do that with some humility.
But what he offers
is a deeply Christian understanding of the world in a world which is so divided in very secular kinds of ways.
And that may not make a lot of sense unless you actually come to read the book,
but Clint, I definitely highly recommend this.
Yeah, good.
Yeah.
Postscript,
really, really short.
If this Christ the Sire seems like that’s a little bit much,
I would say C.S.
Lewis’s Mere Christianity, he wrote this as a radio,
it’s not drama, but it was a radio segment that got played.
It was intended for those who were not necessarily people of faith who didn’t necessarily have a faith vocabulary.
It is a very accessible treatment of the Christian faith.
My only caution in Mere
Christianity is I’ve often had conversations with folks and the thing that they say about Mere
Christianity is it’s some kind of apologetic for the faith.
Like if you read this book,
it’s a proof text for why Christianity is true.
I don’t find that a helpful way to read this.
I find this an expression of a very thoughtful,
very well-written Christian on their faith,
on why they believe it, on why they believe that it’s historically reliable,
why it is deeply connected
to our own experience of the world.
And if you’re interested in exploring someone else’s faith,
and especially if that becomes for you an opportunity to explore your own faith,
I recommend Mere Christianity.
Yeah, Michael, I think I’d go so far as to say that if you’re
a Christian who reads books about Christianity,
Mere Christianity ought to be on that list.
It really is
one of the seminal works of
20th century faith publications.
I mean, it’s just, it’s a classic.
It’s probably a little dated in one sense,
the language, maybe some of the
illustrations, but in other senses, it’s timeless.
I think that it hits all of the high points.
If you are interested in surveys of what it means to be Christian,
that is one that you shouldn’t
pass up.
If you haven’t read it yet,
you probably would want to do that.
I think you’ll find it helpful.
I think it’s enjoyable.
It’s just one of those books that most Christians
should probably encounter at some point in their own faith’s journey.
Yeah, I want to be clear.
I don’t think either of these books is better than the other.
I don’t think that one is necessarily deeper than the other.
The Christ the center by Dietrich von
Hofer has more vocabulary,
specific theological vocabulary that you might need to do a little
work on if you have not experienced it before.
C.S.
Lewis’s Mere Christianity is not going to
have that barrier of entry.
That’s why we’re putting together this series,
quite frankly, is to say, “Hey, here’s some books that we found helpful.
I found both of these books helpful.”
And if either of those seems to you to be a better fit,
then great.
I hope it’s helpful.
So then we turn to what I brought today,
which is a book written by two professors,
both at the time at Duke University,
the Theological School.
Stanley Halrowas, Will Willeman.
This book is called Resident Aliens.
I was trying to remember,
Michael, this came out here in 1989.
So this was kind of during my formative part of education,
the transition.
I probably encountered it first in seminary and then again in my early days pastoring.
This was a pretty big deal.
It was well-read.
What’s interesting about this book,
it’s a somewhat critical assessment of the church and the church’s leadership.
It’s probably one of the narrower books that I’ve reviewed in this series in that
it’s not exclusively for pastors,
but there’s a lot about pastors,
both encouragement and criticism
of pastors and of congregations.
Both Halrowas and Willeman write with an eye toward leadership.
It is not academic,
though they’re both professors and you will encounter some academic
things, but not a lot.
For professors, I would say they’re pretty readable.
There’s some funny stuff in here.
The tagline on this is,
“A provocative Christian assessment
of culture and ministry for people who know something is wrong.” Both
Halrowas and Willeman have a kind of,
I think they’ve enjoyed a little bit of a curmudgeon
reputation,
the idea that occasionally they’re a little bit sour on some things.
There’s some political stuff in here,
largely dated now, but not entirely.
I try to think who would enjoy this book.
I think if you read it,
there would be parts of it that you would feel challenged by.
I think parts of it would be thought-provoking.
There are probably other parts you might skim and say,
“I didn’t really apply to me.
I don’t know how helpful that is.” Particularly,
sections on pastoring toward the end of the book may not
be – they may not have traction for everybody.
What I found helpful about this book was it was
just formational for me in how I came to understand that the church and the world
are different from one another,
and that the church is to be a
different entity than the
world around us.
As Christians
come to faith and live out that faith in a community,
that community should look,
act,
think,
function,
and be different from the world around us.
We have our own set of rules.
We have our own set of authorities.
We have our own
ways of doing things.
We have this calling to be outside of the world but in the world,
“in but not of,” as Jesus puts it.
I think this book may be better than any other book for me, Michael,
gave that flesh and kind of reinforced the idea for me that
resident aliens, we live among a place that we do not belong.
We’re not citizens of the world.
We’re citizens of the
kingdom, though we live in the world,
and that creates both tension and opportunity.
For me,
this book sort of put skin on that in a way that I can’t remember any other.
I think this is the
book that set me the furthest down that path of understanding those ideas.
If you read the New Testament,
you encounter over and over again this language about the church
being a kind of island in the midst of a world.
And of course,
we know that the New Testament
church didn’t enjoy any of the privileges that we enjoy as a modern church.
There was really no access
to political power.
That was done from the top down.
It was done through the force of Roman might.
There was no access to building or to substantial resources.
Of course, in the modern era, there was no access to communication and those technologies that we rely upon.
I think what
Howard Ross and Willamond do,
and by the way,
it should be noted both of these professors
stand with significant experience and reputations individually.
So the fact that they come together
to write this book,
“Resident Aliens,” is unto itself somewhat of a special facet of the book
that you have two experts,
both well thought of,
even sort of different aspects of the life of the
church, one more practical, one more academic in the sort of seminary sense.
And what you see them
working out, Clint, is a really transformational understanding of in a world in which the church
has had a lot of access to privilege and power.
They give us a lens to look at the church and
see that sometimes that is just as much a danger as it is a strength,
and we need to be aware of
that as we’re seeking to live out our faith.
And I’ll piggyback on that,
Michael.
I think one of
the things that makes this book interesting,
looking back on it,
is they’re both Methodists,
and so this is one of the few books I can think of in the last 50 years,
40 years, that come from a mainline perspective.
There are books like this from the Baptist or Catholic,
but there aren’t many because the mainline church has been struggling for many decades.
We have not really had a kind of publicized or published voice in regard to someone.
I mean, this book was odd
in that a couple of Methodist professors write a book that ends up being very popular,
very well used.
It’s in seminaries, but it was sort of written for everybody.
And I
would say, Michael,
I like some of this, there’s a certain,
maybe sarcasm is too strong a word.
There are parts of
this book that are a little snarky,
and I think this book is,
I think it’s fair to say this book
is really written through a critical lens.
The church being critical of society,
the gospel being critical of the church,
and leaders being critical of other leaders who fail to lead in the right directions.
There
are parts of this that will probably seem negative as you read it,
but I think it comes from a place,
I think their criticism does come from a place of love
and concern for the church and Christian people,
though you do sometimes think you’re listening to
an older relative point his finger and rant a little bit,
but that gives it a fun flavor in a lot of ways.
I don’t know that this book is for everybody.
I think, again, it might be a pretty narrow band
of people who would really enjoy it,
but there’s a lot of good stuff in here,
and I can imagine
that anyone who would read this would find something in it worthwhile.
They may not enjoy
the entire book, but they would certainly encounter something that was thought-provoking
and helpful, I would guess.
Tell me if you disagree with this,
Clint.
I would think it
would be a very strange encounter with resident aliens.
If you weren’t uncomfortable at a few
points, there’s going to be some critiques that are going to make you certainly aware,
and then there’s going to be other moments that I think maybe are surprisingly hopeful in reminding the
church that we don’t need access to privilege and to power and to the highest echelons of culture
to be the church.
There’s a kind of blessing that comes in the critique,
and I think if you sit with
it long enough, that blessing only grows.
So I don’t want to give the impression that it’s an
easy read, but I think if you’re willing to live in it,
it has a lot of good news implications.
Yeah, I hadn’t really thought of it that way,
Michael, but one of the interesting things about
this book is that it was written before we have seen kind of the massive shift of conservative
Christians involved in politics, and I
can’t imagine that that is something particularly
celebrated through the lens of this book,
though I don’t want to make assumptions that may not be
accurate, but I think both Hauerwas and Willimon are inherently suspicious of the church monkeying
in political power,
and I think they would both express or have expressed concerns
in those regards, but that was less true when they wrote this,
and yet that concern is still
in this book.
I can only imagine that if they were to revisit this and write it again today,
that critique might even be stronger.
So I think that is what we have for you today,
three books,
Christ the Sinner by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Mere Christianity by C.S.
Lewis.
Resident Aliens,
Hauerwas and Willimon in print,
still around.
Yeah, stuff that I think,
again, if you stayed with us in this series to the point that you are a person who likes reading
challenging books about the faith,
today’s kind of your day.
I would say these are the ones
that you may have finally gotten to,
and if you do end up reading them,
if anybody takes the challenge,
please do let us know what you thought.
Yeah, absolutely.
Tell us in the comments a link
to a form where you can contact us directly.
It’d be really interesting to hear if you have other books.
To your point, if you’ve made it to this point,
the series is likely you’ve had another
book that’s been formative for you.
I think we’d both be interested in hearing what that is.
So share that with us.
We just want to let you know we’re going to be on a short break here.
As we record this, we’re in the middle of the summer of 2022.
We’re going to be taking a short break here
as some of the mission trips and summer kind of programming of the church happens.
We will be coming back with some exciting new series in the fall,
so stay tuned for information about that.
Until then,
I hope that this gives you some good books to read,
and we look forward to seeing you on the other side.
Thanks for listening.