Suggested Reading List
A Sermon byThe Rev. Marion Kanour. Link is HERE
Glen Busch, a former rector of St. John's, has recommended the book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from Our Culture of Contempt by Arthur Brooks. It is a social science book rather than a religion book. Our own rector is eager to read it after viewing this very compelling interview on PBS News Hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO0gesJOqQ4 .
Ideal for book study or Sunday school, this book provides solutions for creating a real welcome by understanding economic class. Includes new chapter for assessing resources. This is the study book for St. John's Lenten Study program. Click here to purchase this book.
Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics and non-believers bring to religion. Using literature, philosophy, anthropology, pop culture, and intellectual reasoning, Keller explains how the belief in a Christian God is, in fact, a sound and rational one. To true believers he offers a solid platform on which to stand against the backlash toward religion spawned by the Age of Skepticism. And to skeptics, atheists, and agnostics he provides a challenging argument for pursuing the reason for God.
The remarkable New York Times bestseller by the "C.S. Lewis for the 21st century" (Newsweek).
A New York Times bestseller people can believe in-by a "pioneer of the new urban Christians" (Christian Today magazine).
click HERE to purchase this book.
In 1987, an IRA bomb buried Gordon Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter beneath five feet of rubble. Gordon alone survived. And forgave. He said of the bombers, 'I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge. . . . I shall pray, tonight and every night, that God will forgive them.' His words caught the media's ear--and out of one man's grief, the world got a glimpse of grace. Grace is the church's great distinctive. It's the one thing the world cannot duplicate, and the one thing it craves above all else--for only grace can bring hope and transformation to a jaded world. In What's So Amazing About Grace? award-winning author Philip Yancey explores grace at street level. If grace is God's love for the undeserving, he asks, then what does it look like in action? And if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a world that knows far more of cruelty and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Yancey sets grace in the midst of life's stark images, tests its mettle against horrific 'ungrace.' Can grace survive in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust? Can it triumph over the brutality of the Ku Klux Klan? Should any grace at all be shown to the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed and cannibalized seventeen young men? Grace does not excuse sin, says Yancey, but it treasures the sinner. True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with its insistence on getting close to sinners and touching them with mercy and hope. It forgives the unfaithful spouse, the racist, the child abuser. It loves today's AIDS-ridden addict as much as the tax collector of Jesus' day. In his most personal and provocative book ever, Yancey offers compelling, true portraits of grace's life-changing power. He searches for its presence in his own life and in the church. He asks, How can Christians contend graciously with moral issues that threaten all they hold dear? And he challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately wants to know, What's So Amazing About Grace? click here for a link to purchase this book
Recommended by The Right Reverend Mark Bourlakas, Bishop of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. Amazon describes it this way: There is a renewed conversation about identity and mission in American Anglicanism today, based on the recognition that the church s context in the U.S. has dramatically changed. The legacies of establishment, benefactor approaches to mission, and the national church ideal are no longer adequate for the challenges and opportunities facing the 21st century church. But if the Episcopal Church is no longer the Church of the Establishment and the benefactor model of church is dead, what is the heart of Episcopal mission and identity? Scholar and Episcopal priest Dwight Zscheile draws on multiple streams of Anglican thought and practice, plus contemporary experience to craft a vision for mission that addresses the church s post-establishment, post-colonial context. With stories, practices and concrete illustrations, Zscheile engages readers in re-envisioning what it means to be Anglican in America today and sends readers out to build new relationships within their local contexts. Click HERE for a link to purchase this book.
A book by our visiting Rector, the Rev. Dr. Glenn Busch. Leaning on the many years of friendship with his buddies, Glenn Busch recounts how he and his fishing friends have wandered in diverse places to comb the waters, hoping to catch the trophy fish...or just to be near the water in the company of each other. The nine fishing buddies--three doctors, an outdoor writer, two CPA's, a business executive, a substance abuse specialist, and a clergyman--are all over sixty and have been fishing together for decades. Their stories are true and reveal the humorous antics these friends commit...and pathos, as in the chapter entitled Ed's Bench that tells of when the men went fishing together for the first time after the death of one of the nine. Journey to the Final Cast will entertain and inspire. Expect to laugh out loud, but don't be surprised if you shed a tear as well. Click here for a link to purchase this book.
Women of the Passion offers readers a unique Lenten encounter. Women from Scripture who were transformed by their encounters with Jesus narrate the story of Christ's Passion through the traditional 14 Stations of the Cross. Readers will experience the Passion through the eyes of such women as the widow with the mite, the woman with the flow of blood, the bent-over woman, the woman taken in adultery, and, of course, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus. The book sets the stage with the anointing of Jesus by a woman, his denial by Peter as described by the High Priest's maid, and the dream of Pilate's wife. Then, Station by Station, readers accompany Jesus on his journey to the Cross. The book ends with Mary's wild grief over the loss of her son and the peace she finds as she places him in the tomb. Women of the Passion is perfect for Lenten retreats or as a Lenten program, especially during Holy Week. It is suitable for use by mixed groups of women and men, young and old. Click here for a link to purchase this book.
Blog by The Rev. Dr. Glenn Busch:
