Whether your summer involves a trip to the beach, tiring your kids out at the neighborhood pool, or nights spent on your back porch enjoying the fireflies, chances are you will be cracking open a book or two in the next couple of months. Here is a list of books our pastors and staff recommend.

Mike Honeycutt

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

Although the second half of my life started some time ago, this book is great for “strivers” like me. It helps me understand that there are better ways to experience joy and purpose in life than constantly seeking to achieve. Although not a specifically Christian book, it certainly contains Christian principles.

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Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health

by Donald S. Whitney

This is a short but very, very helpful book to help you see how you are doing spiritually. Questions like, “do you thirst for God,” “are you more loving,” “do you delight in the bride of Christ” are each given a chapter helping you to diagnose your spiritual health and offering steps for growth in those areas.

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God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life

by Timothy and Kathy Keller

When I was a college student, a Bible teacher recommended that we read a chapter in the book of Proverbs a day because it helps us distinguish between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world that often saturates our lives. I have followed that recommendation for much of my Christian life. This book is the Keller’s daily devotional in the book of Proverbs, and it’s exceptional.

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Jonathan Garrett

Weakness is the Way. Life with Christ Our Strength

by J.I. Packer

Packer examines the situation described in 2 Corinthians leading to Paul's famous declaration “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.” In 112 short pages, he challenges the commonly held belief that our self-reliance defines us. I truly think every Christian in the Western world should have to read this book… Perhaps twice!

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How to Stay Married... The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

by Harrison Scott Key

**warning … some language and raw content
A humorous autobiographical account of a couple walking through an affair. Harrison Scott Key comically muses on how one church failed him and how he found an authentic faith and genuine community on the other side of this painful trial. Someone wanting to laugh out loud, and cringe with sadness while being challenged to grow in relational honesty would do well to read this one.

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The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

by Jared Wilson

As the title suggests, Wilson has written about discipleship for people who don't know all the right Sunday school answers. People who mess up, are weary, and are just trying to figure Jesus out. People who know that following Jesus is the only way to a full life, but often find it difficult to do. It is witty and full of humorous stories while pointing us to the heart of Jesus who meets us with his Grace over and over again. Highschoolers all the way up to 90-year-olds would benefit from reading this one.

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JT Hoover

The Anxious Generation

by Jonathan Haidt

Written by social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind) explores the effects of a "phone-based-childhood" which began to replace a "play-based-childhood" in the early 2010s. Throughout the book, Haidt argues that we have vastly overprotected our children in the “real world” and under-protected them in the “digital world”. This is a great read for parents regardless of if their children are little or in high school.

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Intentional Father

by Jon Tyson

Pastor Jon Tyson begins this book by asking the question- who you want your son to be when he turns 18? He then points out that it is not enough to just wish your child will turn out to be a good man. What is your plan for getting him there? Using his own journey with his son as a template, Tyson teaches you how to lead and be an intentional father for your son.

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Made for People

by Justin Earley

Is friendship really that necessary? In our modern society, isolation is the norm, but it is not what we were made for. Justin Earley unpacks how we are made for community and how to cultivate deep friendships with one another.

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Jonathan Taylor

Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson

Gifted to me by my son, Gilead is a fictional novel in the form of a letter from an older pastor who's heart is failing to his very young son. The author's prose accompanies the reader into a deep, full-bodied, and unhurried stroll through the pastor's heart and life, and through the love and message he has for his son. In this, the reader's heart is nudged and nurtured to a conclusion that leaves you profoundly affected and grateful.

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The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?

by Jim Davis and Michael Graham

Various studies indicate 30-40 million Americans, mostly from a younger demographic, have left the Christian church and become religiously unaffiliated during the past decade. The trend marks a sudden and sharp escalation in trends we've been seeing for several decades. Drawing insights from the largest and most comprehensive study of this phenomenon to date, this book offers insights and a plan that can lead to a renewal of life in our churches.

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Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time

by Greg Ogden

A model of discipleship that many churches in America have pursued over several generations relies on means that, while effective in attracting people in large numbers, often has failed to produce lives fundamentally transformed by the Gospel. The current alarming trend of de-churching in America calls the Church to take a bold, fearless look at itself. It should challenge us to look closely at the model, methods, and mandate of Jesus. The principles Ogden describes in this book, centered around recovering a biblical ministry of discipleship, are vitally essential for a congregation seeking to be faithful to its Gospel mission in any generation.

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Ryan Thomas

Living Into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us

by Christine Pohl

We commonly hear that we were made to exist in community, but few authors discuss how challenging it can be to build an authentic community in our fallen world. In this book, Christine Pohl explores four Christian practices – gratitude, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and hospitality and how these practices can help build and sustain genuine community.

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Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become Like Him. Do As He Did.

by John Mark Comer

Romans 12:2 instructs us "… not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." But how exactly do we not be conformed to this world?

In this book, John Mark Comer shows us what it means to follow Jesus. By learning to rearrange our days and open up space for God in our daily lives, we can be with him, become like him, and do as he did.

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