My Favorite Books of 2014
Below are the 10 most stimulating, edifying and/or inspiring books I read last year. Before I proceed, let me recommend Goodreads to you. It’s a fun way to keep track of your own reading progress in individual books; to maintain an ongoing list of books you’ve read, along with the dates when you finished them; and to connect with friends so you can share reviews and suggested titles. Check it out here.
Pastor Bob O'Bannon
Below are the 10 most stimulating, edifying and/or inspiring books I read last year. Before I proceed, let me recommend Goodreads to you. It’s a fun way to keep track of your own reading progress in individual books; to maintain an ongoing list of books you’ve read, along with the dates when you finished them; and to connect with friends so you can share reviews and suggested titles. Check it out here.
Goodreads even reminded me of all the books I read last year, which helped me prepare this list of top 10 titles:
Winston Churchill once said Harry Truman did more than any other man to save western civilization. That’s a grand statement for a man who didn’t even earn a college degree. I am so impressed by McCullough’s engaging writing style that I’m already planning to read another of his books in 2015.
Regarding those who struggle with same-sex attraction, Allberry asks, “Wouldn’t it be great if, of all people, it was their Christian friends they felt most able to approach” about the issue? This book could help make it so. It avoids both liberal permissiveness and conservative self-righteousness.
We live in a crazy busy culture, so it is helpful to be reminded that busy-ness does not equal holiness, and that not even Jesus did everything. Best of all, the book is short, so you shouldn’t be too busy to read it.
4. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
Reflective story of the pleasures and challenges of personal relationships — between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and enemies. There are skeletons in closets that only grace can heal.
Pastors in the reformed tradition love to talk about grace, and rightfully so, but a formulation of grace apart from a strong Christology can unwittingly allow some “unwelcome guests” into one’s theological home. This is an excellent corrective to any presentation of grace that does not involve a call to obedience to Christ and His Lordship.
6. Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything (Robert Reilly)
Reilly argues that the aggressive activism of gay rights supporters is motivated by a desire to rationalize their behavior. Gay activists want much more than a right to their private sexual practice; even more, they want public acceptance and community approval, as a rebuke to their own consciences.
7. Expositional Preaching (David Helm)
A compact treatment of just about everything you need to know in order to prepare a decent sermon. Great for beginners or for experienced pastors needing a refresher.
8. Delighting in the Trinity (Michael Reeves)
Presents the triune God of the Bible in contrast to the “single person” God of Islam and the distorted straw-man god that is regularly attacked by the new atheists. This would be a good starting point for someone seeking to understand more about this essential Christian doctrine.
9. Five Points (John Piper)
“I go to bed at night quietly confident that I will be a secure believer in the morning not because of my free will, but because of God’s free grace,” Piper writes. This book not only defends the five points of Calvinism, but shows why it matters.
This is not the book to read to work out your doctrine, but it is a good book to read if you’re cynical about religion and looking for a very frank and gritty defense of the Christian faith.
3 Reasons a Congregation Should Have Its Own Building
As a pastor of a church that is getting close to opening a new sanctuary, I’ve had to do some thinking about whether a congregation should even seek to have its own building. Maybe that sounds like a silly question, because you’ve assumed that it is the goal of all churches to own their own facility. But that would not be true. Many churches, especially new church plants, do not have their own buildings, and some have no intention of getting one.
Pastor Bob O'Bannon
As a pastor of a church that is getting close to opening a new sanctuary, I’ve had to do some thinking about whether a congregation should even seek to have its own building. Maybe that sounds like a silly question, because you’ve assumed that it is the goal of all churches to own their own facility. But that would not be true. Many churches, especially new church plants, do not have their own buildings, and some have no intention of getting one.
What are some of the arguments against having a building? Some point out that the word “church” technically refers to the body of believers, not to a building, and that the New Testament never commands that we construct our own buildings. Others note that the early church did not meet in large buildings, but mostly in private homes. Still others will mention that buildings cost a lot of money – both to purchase and to maintain – and that this money could better be spent in other Kingdom-oriented ways.
There is truth to all of these points, but they don’t persuade me against having a building. Below are three reasons that a congregation, assuming it has the necessary resources, should consider having its own building.
1. A building gives a church visibility in its community.
Very often I will meet new people, and they will ask me what I do. I tell them I am a pastor. They ask what church. I tell them New Life Presbyterian in Yorktown. On many occasions, the next comment out of their mouths is, “Oh yeah, that building that sits up on the hill!” Sometimes new people will come to visit our church, and I will often ask how they learned about us. Very often the response is something like, “I drive by it all the time on my way to work, and decided I would give it a try.” A building serves many purposes, of course, not the least of which is a 24/7 advertisement to the community that you exist.
2. A building eliminates obstacles to the flourishing of a congregation. It is true that buildings require lots of money, constant attention and careful maintenance, but congregations without buildings have their own burdens to deal with: weekly setting up and tearing down everything necessary to conduct a worship service; finding a place to meet for mid-week activities; facing the possibility of having to move to another location for whatever reason. While some point to the growing house church movement in China as an example of why buildings are unnecessary, Kevin DeYoung points out in his book, Why We Love the Church, that the Chinese house church movement is actually an “organizational nightmare” (p. 180) and that Christian leaders in China are praying “for the day of owning their own church building and moving toward a large church model.” (p. 182). This is not a criticism of the Chinese church – just an acknowledgment that church without a building might not be as glamorous as some think.
3. A building gives emphasis to the Biblical doctrine of place. When God created Adam and Eve, he put them in a specific place (the garden). When God delivered Israel from Egypt, he announced his intention to lead them to a place (land of Canaan). When Israel finally settled in their land, God wanted them to worship him in a specific place (the temple). And when Jesus returns, he’s coming back to establish his reign in a place (the new earth). The church is not a collection of ghostly souls that simply float through the air of our communities; instead, the church is a collection of redeemed, but fully embodied, creatures. And one thing true of the body is that it needs a place – to stand, sit, sleep, eat and yes, even to worship. In other words, “buildings matter because bodies matter.”
Certainly it’s possible for a congregation to overspend on a building, or to build at the wrong time. And by no means am I suggesting that a church without a building is less useful in God’s kingdom than a church with a building. But buildings are good, and we as a congregation can’t wait to enter into our new sacred space.