Christian Century magazine asked half a dozen prominent pastors for their "five essential books on ministry."
Eugene Peterson and Dietrich Bonhoeffer each appeared on more than one list--no surprise there. Peter Marty listed Peterson's Under the Predictable Plant, and Brian McClaren recommended Working the Angles. Both are good choices, but, were I to pick a Peterson book, it would be Reversed Thunder, which is the only book on Revelation that ever made any sense to me.
I chuckled a bit at Richard Lischer's choices because they were so...Lutheran. As essential books for ministry, he picked Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW), Faith and Freedom: An Invitation to the Writings of Martin Luther, and Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison. I'm not familiar with the Luther book, but ELW and Letters and Papers are both excellent choices.
Bonhoeffer is at his most approachable in Letters and Papers. In fact, for a sense of the man, there is no better resource. Not only is Bonhoeffer seen in a personal way, his theology is some of the most creative, al beit incomplete, of his all-too-brief career.
Brian McClaren listed Bonhoeffer's Life Together, also a good choice, especially for Americans. Exploring Life Together is a good way to explore the nature of community, something which is very much a part of our own history, but which also tends to get submerged below our emphasis on individuality. (McClaren also listed the very influential book on family process, Generation to Generation, written by psychiatrist Edwin Friedman.) My choices:
(1) Lischer is right. Evangelical Lutheran Worship is a great resource, mainly because it is a compendium of many things in one place--readings, psalms, creeds, confessions, hymns--and serves both as an important repository of the tradition and as inspirational aid. Other Christian traditions have a similar resource--it's not just a Lutheran thing.
(2-4) Both Bonhoeffer books--Life Together and Letters and Papers--plus, one more, Ethics. One of the biggest tasks confronting the church is a confusion of its role. Most people, including most pastors, think Christianity is a source of moral teaching and a guardian of morality.
It is not. Christianity has very little to do with morality actually. It's about death and resurrection, not our poor personal pieties. As the saying goes, "Jesus didn't come to make bad people good, he came to make dead people live." You can only talk about morality after you say that first, and, even then, you shouldn't overdo it.
Bonhoeffer gets at that in Ethics. If I remember this passage correctly, he says, "For the Christian, Jesus Christ comes to occupy exactly that 'space' that was previously occupied by the knowledge of good and evil." Pastors who spend their time pondering that thought spend their time well.
(5) Parables of Grace, by Robert Farrar Capon. The reason Capon is important is because he gets the above point, and because his analysis of the parables have many practical and pastoral applications. Plus, you read one of his books on the parables, and you'll want to read the other two as well.
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