Considering the Best Reads of 2013

It is that time of year to consider all the “best of lists.”

While it has been a great year for Boston sports (the Patriots nearly made the Super Bowl again to gain revenge on the 49ers, and the Bruins lost in the Stanley Cup Finals, but the Red Sox won their 3rd World Series championship of this young century) I’m thinking of the best books I’ve read this year. This is not necessarily books that came out in 2013, but what I read this year.

I’ll take them in the order in which I read them. What you will notice is that I’ve probably read less this year, and clearly blogged less. Having 4 kids will do that. As will being pastor of a church that has grown enough to have to expand it facilities to expand ministry capacity. I also read some enormous books, and that takes time.

Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry by Paul Tripp. I couldn’t identify with all the problems he talks about, and that is a good thing. Some issues are connected to how we “do” seminary and preparation for pastoral ministry. Others have to do with the manifestations of pride and sloth.

Resurrection and Redemption: A Study of Paul’s Soteriology by Richard Gaffin. This is not an easy book to read, but it is a significant book to read. As I noted in the review, for Gaffin soteriology is eschatology. This book explores the significance of the resurrection for our redemption which is a neglected area of thought.

Bloodlines: Race, Cross and Christian by John Piper. John Piper looks at his own history with questions of race and brings the gospel to bear on the question. I wish he would have co-authored it with a person of color to balance the perspective. But much of what he says is excellent

The Book of Revelation by G.K. Beale. This is a humongous commentary on Revelation but is well worth the time needed to read it. This is the one to read to understand its connection with the Old Testament. While I don’t agree with all he says (like I prefer an early date) this is excellent.

Freedom & Boundaries: A Pastoral Primer on the Role of Women in the Church by Kevin DeYoung. He is correct, it is a primer. He concisely addresses the most important texts and questions that arise. He presents a complementarian position but not an extreme one. I highly recommend it.

Mistakes Leaders Make by Dave Kraft. This little book was an excellent treatment of common mistakes church leaders make. Some I’ve made and I don’t want to make the others.

Sex & Money by Paul Tripp. He talks about the 2 things that occupy most of our time, energy and thoughts. He focuses on the tendency toward idolatry and the healing power of the gospel. Great stuff.

The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul. Typical Sproul. He explains sound theology so the average person can understand. Here he’s explaining the atonement, which every Christian should understand.

Delighting in the Trinity by Tim Chester. Books on the Trinity are pretty rare these days. Helpful, interesting and accessible books on the subject are even more rare. This is a book that is all three. It isn’t very big, but it is worth reading.

Gospel Centered Leadership by Steve Timmis. This is a very helpful little book that helps us understand how the gospel should shape our leadership in the church. I gave this one to my elders and we’ll study it soon.

Modest: Men & Women Clothed in the Gospel by Tim Challies & R.W. Glenn. I haven’t read any books on the subject before. What was good about this one is that it is about both men & women, and it is about how the gospel changes the equation. It is not about rules and a moralistic spirit.

Love into Light: The Gospel, the Homosexual and the Church by Peter Hubbard. This was an excellent and challenging book. He tries to balance truth and love (I think Paul said something like that) when we speak to homosexuals. We should not back off biblical teaching, which he explains by looking at key texts. We should not treat people as lepers either and he talks about how we can love them as we communicate the gospel to them as sinners, not just homosexuals.

The Doctrine of the Christian Life by John Frame. This is another enormous book. I have not quite finished the appendices since I’ve been focusing on other projects. This book examines ethical systems and then moves into understanding and applying the ten commandments before briefly discussing sanctification. This is an excellent book even if you agree with his particular end points.

The Pastor’s Justification: Applying the Work of Christ in Your Life and Ministry by Jared Wilson. This is another very good book on ministry. His focus is the importance of the doctrine of justification on who we are and how we go about ministry. Theology applied!

Crazy Busy: A Mercifully Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem by Kevin DeYoung. It is very short. I read this during a crazy busy time that mercifully should be coming to an end. I gave this to my elders and those who have gotten to it have appreciated its message. It is not just about techniques but the heart.

Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith by Michael Reeves. I’m not quite done with this book yet so it might end up on next year’s list too! As I preach thru the prologue of John’s Gospel this has been a great help. He really pushes the point of “God is love” as we think about the Trinity and Christianity. This is definitely a must read in that rare category of books on the Trinity. Like Chester’s of the same name this is relatively short.

Interesting-

• 2 books by Paul Tripp and Kevin DeYoung
• 2 books on the Trinity
• 5 books on ministry
• 2 books on salvation
• 2 books of over 1,000 pages

Not one book by Tim Keller (I left off the Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness). Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be at least 1 next year.

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Considering Sex & Money: Mostly Sex

Our world is insane about many things. Sin will do that, produce a form of insanity. But when it comes to Sex & Money, our world is really crazy. Paul Tripp’s newest book is about these “pleasures that leave you empty and the grace that satisfies.”

He confesses that this was a very difficult book for him to write, precisely because of what it revealed about his own heart. Really, that is what most of this book is about: the heart. The manifestations of a heart gone astray he’s focused on are sex and money. This is not an easy book to read for the very same reasons- the waywardness of your own heart will be revealed.

“I am sad to think that when it comes to sex and money, we still buy into the legalism that says if we can organize people’s lives, give them the right set of rules, and attach them to efficient systems of accountability, we can deliver people from their sex-and-money insanity. … Few areas of the human struggle reveal more powerfully the sad sinfulness of sin than the sex-and-money evils that are done thousands of times every day.”

He begins the book with a series of scenarios that illustrate our insanity when it comes to sex and money.

• A fifteen year-old self-appointed expert on oral sex.
• An 8 year-old boy who is addicted to internet pornography.
• A married man who masturbates daily.
• Teachers having sex with under age students (nearly nightly on the news these days).
• Unemployed high school students bombarded with offers for credit cards.
• The average amount of consumer debt people carry creating an “anxiety-producing dance debt.”
• Governments worldwide are deep in debt, near bankruptcy. And their citizens are rioting because they don’t get enough benefits.

And we could go on. You could go on. I know of pastors arrested in “massage parlors”. I know people arrested in the sting operations designed to get men trying to have sex with minors. And these are only what comes out in public. What of the sex and money sins that are still hidden?

“Both offer you an inner sense of well-being while having no capacity whatsoever to satisfy your heart.”

But there is a deeper theological orientation that Tripp wants us to consider: both creation and redemption. He made us sexual beings. He placed us in a world where sex and money issues are unavoidable and significant part of our ordinary experience. You should get the feeling that you are living in your own version of Deuteronomy 8: test, humbled and too often found wanting. Yet…

“The gospel graces us with everything we need to celebrate and participate in both areas of life in a way that honors God and fully enjoys the good things he’s given us to enjoy.”

Tripp moves into the dangerous dichotomy, expanding on the fact that God is Creator. One of the teachings that has done us much harm is that some of life is sacred and some is secular. The fact of creation shows, as Paul says in Colossians 1, that everything was made by God and for God. It is all intended to bring Him glory, and us good. it is all under His rule. A gospel-centered approach starts here because sex and money aren’t the real problem. We are.

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Considering Frugality and Faith

I realized that I missed a few of the common Mistakes Leaders Make. Time to flip back and address this mistake of my own.

He tells the story of the church treasurer to discuss how financial frugality, instead of fearless faith, can cripple a church.

 Balance is a tricky thing. I’ve seen churches, on the basis of faith, make horrendous financial decisions. They take on debt which ends up crippling future ministry because the church doesn’t grow like they hoped it would.

I know of a church that did a large addition that was essentially a visitor center with a huge waterfall. The pastor pushed it through without the support of the people (it was a Baptist church). Soon giving was down and staff members were having to leave. The last one to leave was the pastor who created the mess.

He tells the story of a church that started an ambitious building project. The shell of that building stood for years. It was never completed, and it killed the church.

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Considering Sexual Chaos, Part 1

There has been lots of sex talk by pastors lately, and a lot of push back from other pastors and lay people. This whole thing has produced lots of heat, and not nearly as much light. Some of it simply reeks of sensationalism, like Ed Young’s bed on a roof stunt. Some of it has been pastors trying to pastor their people.

The push back is that pastors shouldn’t talk about sex, or write about sex. And I’ve seen quite a few people say Mark Driscoll is obsessed with sex. I don’t remember any push back to Lauren Winners’ book about sex, Real Sex. Any any number of Christian therapists’ books about sex. Perhaps it is that people just expect pastors to say “don’t do it”. They are uncomfortable with pastors, who speak to mixed audiences, talking about it positively beyond “it’s okay if you are married”. But there is no reason that pastors need to surrender this topic to counselors. But, let’s slow down.

In my advanced years, I’m less reactionary. So I’ve been pondering this. I want to explore a few things. First, why pastors need to talk about sex. Second, how should pastors talk about sex. And lastly, how pastors should help their people think thru sex. I’m anticipating three posts on this. I’m sure to offend someone. That is not my intention. I’m going to try to bring my experience as a pastor who does some counseling (yes, I have an MA in Counseling) to bear on this.

Why Pastors Need to Talk About Sex

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Considering Comprehensive Attraction

Yes, I’ve already reviewed The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller. I thought I would go back to something that I think is important. It is something that we tend not to learn easily. People tell us about, but the cultural pull can be so difficult to escape.

The quest for marriage, or the search for a marriage partner, must include developing your own relationship with Christ. Since our hearts are factories of idols (Calvin), we quickly make idols of marriage itself, or particular people.

We make an idol of marriage when we think we MUST be married. We sound like Rachel, who said she must have children or die (Gen. 30). We get angry with God because he hasn’t provided a spouse. Marriage won’t fix all your problems or address all your felt needs.

We can also fixate on particular people. We end up like all the men in There’s Something About Mary. We pursue a relationship in an unhealthy manner, rule out other relationships and harm other people who stand in our way. But that is extreme. Think of Jacob, who made an idol out of Rachel. He had to have her, and nobody else but her. Or John Newton whose journals reflect his constant temptation to make an idol out of his wife, Polly.

Without a deeply fulfilling relationship with Christ now, and hope in a perfect love relationship with him in the future, married Christians will put too much pressure on their marriage to fulfill them, and that will always create pathology in their lives.

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Considering Relationships

Since my current sermon series from Genesis includes the idea of relationships, I decided it would be a good time to read Relationships: A Mess Worth Making by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp. Of course, when you take a few months to read a book it is not as fresh in your mind when you come to review it.

The book is not long (under 200 pages), but it does cover quite a bit of territory. The chapters include ones on sin, agendas, worship, obstacles, mercy, time and money and more. They cover that ground, as usual, with lots of Scripture and many examples compiled from years of experience in ministry as well as their personal lives. Thankfully, it does have a Scripture Index (one of my pet peeves is to not have one).

The first chapter talks about their relationship with one another. There have been times when they haven’t got along well. They have struggled through many of these things.  So, they speak from personal experience, not as merely teaching theory.

They begin with the reasons why to invest in relationships. The most important, in my opinion, is that since we are made in God’s image we are made to be in relationship. God Himself has eternally existed in relationship with Himself. The Trinity is a community of love. He made us to bring us into that loving community. But since we rejected the spring of living water, we make our relationships into broken cisterns from which we expect to receive life. Sin, including idolatry, have messed things up.

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Considering A Proverbs Driven Life Part 3

You might be asking, “what happened to part 2?”  Part 1 was mistakenly saved as a draft instead of published, so Considering Proverbs and Work is actually part 2 of my review of A Proverbs Driven Life by Anthony Selvaggio.  Did you catch that?  Do you care?

The third part of the book addresses wealth.  His little summary statement is : A Proverbs-Driven life understands the place and purpose of material wealth.  This is much needed in our day and place.  American Christians’ perspective on material wealth is only slightly less skewed than the average non-Christians’. 

Selvaggio starts by addressing the heart.  This is where all our problems with money and wealth come from- our bent toward selfishness.

“… money is not the basic problem at all, but rather our love for it. … The moral issues regarding wealth arise entirely from how we acquire it, relate to it, and use it.  In other words, the problem is us.”

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Considering Money and Missions

As part of his chapter on Worldliness in Respectable Sins, Jerry Bridges talks about money and how Christians use it.  First, let’s see his definition of worldliness.

“Worldliness means accepting the values, mores, and practices of the nice, but unbelieving, society around us without discerning whether or not thos values, mores, and practices are biblical.”

Pretty good definition.  It is when we are shaped by the world instead of being conformed to Christ in how we approach seemingly trivial matters.  He points to how Christians use money as a place where we are often quite worldly.  We often don’t examine how we spend our money- only if we have enough to get what we want.  We tend to get caught in that self-centered approach to living when it comes to “our” money.

Evangelicals are giving far less money to their churches than they did in years past.  He notes that in 8 evangelical denominations (not mainline ones) people give only 4.4% of their income.  They are spending more money on themselves by keeping up with technological toys, collecting music or movies, big boy toys (boats, snowmobiles..), eating out often, etc.  But here was what disturbed me even more.

“Not only are we giving less to our churches, but it seems that more of what we do give is spent on ourselves.  In 1920, the percentage of giving to missions from total offerings was just over 10 percent.  But by 2003, that figure had declined to just under 3 percent.  That means we spent 97 cents of every dollar on our own local programs and ministries while sending 3 cents overseas.”

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Considering Teixeira Hold ‘Em

Mark Teixeira is like the anti-Manny.  Money Ramirez just wants to hit, be adored on the field and ignored off the field.  He forfeited 2 one-year team options for $20 million a piece in the hopes for one last big contract.  He’s not known for his fielding, nor his community involvement.

Teixeira is a 2-time Gold Glove winner who is known for his community involvement.  He is the ideal team player.  The Sox, who couldn’t get rid of Money fast enough, really want Mark.  They see this off season as the chance to undo the mistake the previous ownership made in not treating him well after drafting him out of high school.  He ended up at Georgia Tech, like their Captain who also switch-hits, before being drafted by the Rangers.

But there is something they have in common beside being hitting cage rats- Scott Boras.  Scott is the bane of most GM’s existence.  He has a reputation for not negotiating above board, often creating phantom offers.  He often gets what he wants for a player (see J.D. Drew & Johnny Damon for example).

He’s up to his old tricks again.  The Red Sox had made the highest offer for Teixeira’s services for the next 8 years.  During a meeting in Texas, in this lousy economy, the Red Sox were informed their offer was about $25 million short.  Ah … so who is going to sign him to that contract at $24 million per year?

Boras must think he’s dealing with the Yankees, whose $161 million dollar offer was about $60 million more than any one else’s offer.  The Red Sox have made the biggest offer thus far, but not by much.

The other teams have pretty much maxed out their offers.  And, so it seems, have the Red Sox.  This is not being cheap- we’re talking nearly $200 million here!  But Scott Borat, I mean Bora$, like many a guy on a used car lot, has a figure in his mind and no one has met it.

So what happens?  It should be interesting as Teixeira’s personal deadline draws near.  Will someone up their offer?  Very doubtful at this point unless the Yankees decide to nearly double their contract signings so far.  Will Teixeira realize it isn’t going to happen and do what everyone expected him to do and sign with the Sox?  Will he persist and wait teams out, possibly until Spring Training?  That would hold up a number of other free agents, and he could see the number of teams pursuing him dwindle until THEY have all the leverage and Mark and Bora$ have to save face.

Why should Teixeira sign with the Red Sox?

• They have made the best offer so far- a generous one, mind you.
• They are successful now, and should be for years to come.  The Yankees’ window, if the big signings work for them, will be small since their stars are aging and there aren’t enough young stars rising thru the ranks.  The Red Sox have vets like Papi, Drew and Lowell, guys entering their prime (Beckett, Youkilis, Dice-K, Bay) and young studs who are the foundation for the next decade (Pedroia, Lester, Ellsbury), and some exciting prospects to boot.  They have pitching & hitting.
• They are on the east coast, where he wants to be.
• They have a hitting philosophy just like his.  With those hitters around him, he’ll see more good pitches which will lead to some All-Star numbers, possibly Hall of Fame numbers, and lots of victories.  He has a chance to become legendary.
• The Angels made it to the playoffs, losing to the Red Sox, and have promptly lost their record-setting closer, and most likely their DH (Anderson).  They have the pitching, but not the offense unless they suddenly reload.  They may get to the playoffs, but they won’t be favorites to win it all unless other teams are hobbled by injury.

It all makes sense to everyone by Mark and $cott.  Or maybe it does, and they are just trying to milk a few million more out of the Red Sox.  But doesn’t that reduce their ability to field a winning team around you?  Bora$ isn’t concerned about that, just his percentage off a bigger contract.  Mark, only you and the Red Sox care about winning championships.  Time to change your play.

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Considering Our Pharisaical Hearts

I’m struggling with my sermon for Sunday.  I’m struggling because I know the sinful, legalistic tendencies of our hearts.  I’m struggling with communicating the truth in such a way as to reveal our idols/substitutes in a more concrete way without establishing “man-made” rules which we use to attack others or exalt ourselves.

In Nehemiah 13, Nehemiah returns from Susa to discover that Israel has broken all the promises and oaths they had made to God.  They were once again becoming like the nations, being assimilated, instead of honoring God with their money, time and relationships.  They were not providing tithes & offerings for the worship of God, they were breaking the Sabbath, and they were taking foreign wives.  They had lost their saltiness.

And so have we.  The Church in America struggles with assimilation- being squeezed into the world’s box, conformed to their values rather than conformed to Christ and His values.  We start to worship self and success.  Here’s a chart I put together to summarize it:

	Love God	Love of Self
Money	Joy in Christ => simplicity + generosity	Covetousness => status symbols + luxuries
Time	Boundaries + balance	Excess to fulfill my agenda
Marriage/Family	Kingdom building + character	Focus on beauty or economic advantage
Church Leadership	Biblical (gospel) principles	Business models (control)

We have a tendency to want to make this clearer so we can better know (we think) if we are being obedient.  This way we can establish our righteousness over our less obedient brothers and sisters.  This permits us to criticize them.  Sometimes they need to be confronted by their own worldliness- but I can’t be the standard by which they are measured.

We also do this so we can play the martyr.  I think of this primarily financially.  We can point to our simplicity- “see what a junky car I drive because I love Jesus”- to show how much more we love Jesus than our brothers.  We aren’t content to say “don’t covet, be generous and keep your treasure in heaven.”  We want to know what that looks like, and we start this Pharisaical process to gain credit instead of relying on Jesus, His work for us, and to work in and thru us.  Or am I the only one whose heart is so twisted by indwelling sin?

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Pensee for the Day- Iain Duguid

“Persecution and difficulty will inevitably tell the truth about our motivations. … As long as we can have both God and the world, it is going to be hard to tell for sure.  But when we have to choose between God and the world, between serving God and progressing in our careers, between following God and getting married, between being rich to God and laying up large amounts of money, between obedience to God and life itself, then we find out in a hurry the true nature of our commitment.”  Iain Duguid in Hero of Heroes: Seeing Christ in the Beatitudes

btw: This is yet another great book in a great series.  Well, technically this does not fall into the same series as The Gospel in the Old Testament, but it does follow the same pattern, including questions for discussion after each chapter.

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