Notable Books

Theological seriousness, with real-life illustrations and an anchor in Ecclesiastes, differentiates Greer and Lafferty’s book from common, pragmatic treatments for midlife crises. Clear writing conveys the essential message: “Jesus opened the eyes of the blind, and we long to gain a new perspective like they did. To have spiritual LASIK remove the midlife blur so we can see our way clear of trivial pursuits, selfish ambitions and destructive escapes. To live for what matters most.” By book’s end I was filling the margins with notes.

Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life

Thom Shea describes in intense detail his experience and thinking as a Navy SEAL who survived three wars and completed valiant missions. Shea’s descriptive passages are riveting, and his wife Stacy’s description of her experiences at home is valuable. But Shea’s life philosophy—master your internal dialogue, and you can if you think you can—lacks biblical underpinning. Warriors such as Gen. Robert E. Lee brought us a more biblically robust philosophy of war. For example: Lee, watching his soldiers triumph at Fredericksburg, said, “It is well that war is so terrible—otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

The High Definition Leader: Building Multiethnic Churches in a Multiethnic World

Gray’s perspective as a black pastor with an unchurched upbringing is helpful, eye-opening, and challenging in a good way—but be careful. It’s great that his passion is for evangelism and for “saved people longing to see unsaved people come to know Jesus.” It’s not so great that he says high-definition pastors must build multiethnic churches, and if they don’t they’re lacking. Multiethnicity is good, but it’s still biblical preaching and God’s blessing that grow churches, and Gray’s must-do list for ethnic diversity can push conscientious pastors toward guilt, not growth.

Eldership and the Mission of God: Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership

Briggs and Hyatt have written a compelling, practical, and helpful treatise on the role and function of elder teams, but their rationale for justifying women as elders places their thinking above the Bible. Briggs and Hyatt say female elders were a no-go in the first century and that God accommodated that culture. Then they argue culture has changed and not having women as elders now hinders the gospel’s advance, so if God today rewrote Titus and 1 Timothy He would OK female elders. That suggests God isn’t smart enough to have known that people would still be reading the Bible in 2016 and looking to it for guidance.

Spotlight

In The Givenness of Things (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), Marilynne Robinson brings an explicitly Calvinist worldview to subjects as diverse as science and guns. She calls out the “belligerent nationalism” of some on the Christian right: “First, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” But she also calls out some on the materialist left. Modern neuroscience, she writes, “does not know what the mind or the self is, and has made a project of talking them out of existence for the sake of its theories which exclude them.” There’s plenty here for thoughtful reflection.

Gordon Smith’s Consider Your Calling (IVP, 2016) starts with six questions that get at God’s purposes in the world, your unique gifts and talents, your stage in life, and whether you have challenges that come from your past or your family. This slight book contains wisdom and asks probing questions crucial to those thinking about calling. It also offers as an appendix a corporate prayer for those who work. —Susan Olasky