Recommended Books to Read

At the beginning of each year, I try and provide our church with a recommended reading list of what I consider to be some of the best books published in the previous year. The list includes a few books from various genres and covers a number of different categories.

To see this year's list, go here and click on the link at the bottom of the page.

Let Your Books Be Your Friends

A great quote passed on to me by a church member who is a fellow book-lover:

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate...peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are.  Let them be your friends; let them be your acquaintances.

--Winston Churchill 

Great Quote on Reading

I had a church member bring this quote to my attention, and it's just too good not to share here.

"A good book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading." --William Styron

Pastors - You Wrong Yourself Greatly By Not Reading

“What has exceedingly hurt you in time past, nay, and I fear, to this day, is lack of reading. I scarce ever knew a preacher who read so little. And perhaps, by neglecting it, you have lost the taste for it. Hence your talent in preaching does not increase. It is just the same as it was seven years ago. It is lively, but not deep; there is little variety; there is no compass of thought. Reading only can supply this, with meditation and daily prayer. You wrong yourself greatly by omitting this. You can never be a deep preacher without it, any more than a thorough Christian. Oh begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercise. You may acquire the taste which you have not; what is tedious at first will afterward be pleasant. Whether you like it or not, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days, and a petty, superficial preacher. Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. Take up your cross and be a Christian altogether. Then will all the children of God rejoice (not grieve) over you, and in particular yours.”

--John Wesley, writing to a younger minister, quoted in D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, Letters Along The Way

HT: Ray Ortlund

Mohler - "On Getting Boys to Read"

Al Mohler offers further reflections on Thomas Spence's article, "How To Raise Boys Who Read," in The Wall Street Journal. Here's a brief excerpt:

The most direct enemies of reading in the lives of today’s boys are video games and digital media. These devices crowd out time and attention at the expense of reading. Spence cites one set of parents who tried to bribe their 13-year-old son to read by offering video games as a reward. Spence is exactly right — don’t reward with video games. Instead, take the games away. If parents do not restrict time spent with digital devices, boys will never learn to read and to love reading.

Read the entire thing here.

What Constitutes a Sound Education for Children?

Regardless of the kind of education you prefer for children (public, private, homeschool), Mark Mitchell's call for cultivating moral imagination and emphasizing a logocentric view of reality in the most recent issue of Touchstone is one that should be heard. You may not agree with all his particulars, but the heart of his argument should be appreciated by all Christian parents.

Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite parts of the article:

But setting the content of the books aside (for only a moment), those whose minds are shaped by an ongoing encounter with language will develop mental habits that include patience, perseverance, the ability to think abstractly, and an imagination that does not require the constant stimulation of external images. The imagination of the reader (guided by the author) creates the images, whereas the child raised on television merely imbibes what has already been fully rendered by the camera.

Read the entire article here.

Dockery's Fall '09 Recommended Reading List

Ray Van Neste recently posted David Dockery's Fall '09 Recommended Reading List, which can be seen here.

The Value of Reading Old Books

Here is wise counsel that ministers should heed from Guy Waters in his interview with Martin Downes in Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church.

"...[T]he minister should resolve to study good books - the best books. I am amazed when I survey the Internet at both the wealth and poverty of information available there. The web is a dangerous place for someone who is not cultivating the biblical duty of discernment. It is not the 'go-to' place for most ministers to advance their theological education after Seminary. The minister should be devouring Calvin, Turretin, the British Puritans, the Dutch 'Second Reformation' Divines, the Scottish and American Presbyterians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and their modern heirs. The minister should read recent books, but read them with discernment. Most recent books are untested. Reading the older writers appreciatively allows us both to remain in the 'old paths' and to read recent literature without uncritical enthusiasm towards the contemporary."

-- Guy Waters