A week off + short books + a couple flights = a longer than usual list of books for the month.
Orlando Saer. Iron Sharpens Iron: Leading Bible Oriented Small Groups that Thrive (Christian Focus 2010). Kent Hughes says this is “the best book of its kind I have ever read.” I agree. If your church wants Bible-oriented small groups this is the wisest, most practical, most helpful book I know. It’s short and easy to read too. Only negative: some clumsy formatting, layout, and clip art decisions.
Michael Lefebvre. Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms (Christian Focus 2010). I’ve said before that the lack of Psalm singing in the American church is a great shame. So I’m thankful for books like this that call us to revisit the “songs of Jesus.” Still, I was not convinced by the main theses that we don’t sing to Jesus we sing with Jesus as our song leader. The author leads a Psalms-only congregation. While Lefebvre doesn’t advocate for exclusive Psalmody, his dislike for much of traditional hymnody (e.g., Isaac Watts) does shine through at times.
Eric Russ. Discipleship Defined (Xulon 2010). Eric, lead pastor of Mack Avenue Community Church, is a friend of mine doing an exciting, faithful, hard work in inner city Detroit. He has a heart for intentional discipleship (and is very good at it). This short book gives one good way how you can do it too.
Jerry Bridges. The Pursuit of Holiness (NavPress 2006 [1978]). A brief, readable, convicting, wise, gospel-saturated look at personal holiness. This would be a great one for your church book table or a small group.
David Peterson. Possessed by God: A New Testament theology of sanctification and holiness (IVP 1995). I’ve liked every book in Carson’s New Studies in Biblical Theology (NSBT) series. This one is no exception. This scholarly work is a good complement to something written at a popular level like The Pursuit of Holiness. Peterson is especially strong in emphasizing our positional sanctification.
Carl Trueman. Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History (Crossway 2010). I’ve yet to read anything by Trueman that is dull. This book in historiography puts that thesis to the test, but Trueman still rises to the challenge. If you want to know more about Holocaust Denial, Marxism, Calvin and Calvinism, and what all this has to do with writing history, Trueman will scratch your itch. The best chapter is the one on “A Fistful of Fallacies.” A good book on an important, if little discussed, problem.
Josh Moody. No Other Gospel: 31 Reasons from Galatians Why Justification by Faith Alone is the Only Gospel (Crossway 2011). Josh is the senior pastor of College Church in Wheaton with a PhD from Cambridge. He’s worth listening to and so is this book. My blurb: “These expositions are clear, well-organized, exegetically careful, and theologically faithful. They’re also filled with good illustrations, personal application, and a proper dose of British wit. These qualities make for very good preaching and a very good book.”
J. Todd Billings. Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford University Press 2007). As a reworked dissertation, this book is not for the faint of heart. The discussion of Milbank’s theology of “Gift” was not particularly interesting to me (given my ignorance on the subject). But I was glad to see Billings dig deeply into Calvin’s doctrine of union with Christ. Billings does a good job of introducing Calvin’s doctrine of participation without mitigating at all (as some Calvin scholars do) the strong forensic elements in Calvin’s theology. An important work for scholars in the field of Calvin studies.