The Elements of Rhetoric is slim volume, but it’s packed with wisdom both ancient and up-to-date for anyone wishing to write, speak, and even think clearly. With its terse and punchy tone, it reminded me a little of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Besides giving twenty-six rules, it also illustrates and reinforces these rules from classic literature, making this book a gateway to even greater books.

(I should give a shout-out to my friend Eric Brown for telling me about this book. I was on the phone with him when he told me about it, and I ordered it before we ended the conversation.)

I’m not a fan of that phrase in the subtitle, “surviving the church,” but getting into the book itself helped me understanding where Yancey was coming from. Having grown up in a religious environment that had a form of godliness but lacked transforming power (i.e., was racist and legalistic), Yancey had some serious thinking to do about what it really meant to follow Christ. I found myself appreciative of Yancey’s honesty in wrestling through issues and his enthusiasm in introducing his readers to his “unlikely mentors”—Martin Luther King Jr., G. K. Chesterton, Dr. Paul Brand, Dr. Robert Coles, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. C. Everett Koop, John Donne, Annie Dillard, Frederic Buechner, Shusaku Endo, and Henri Nouwen. However, since the issues Yancey was wrestling with were of eternal import, I also found myself ultimately unsatisfied—longing, from beginning to end, for decisive guidance not from human wisdom, but from the Bible itself.

This is undoubtedly my favorite book of 2023. (I think I wore out a few people talking about it so much.) Although it was first published in 1979, most of it feels incredibly up-to-date and needed today. Lovelace described his book as “a manual of spiritual theology, a discipline combining the history and the theology of Christian experience.” It sparked in me a desire to see spiritual renewal in my own life, in the life of my church, and beyond.

The Pastor as Counselor, with 59 pages of loosely-spaced text, is easily a one-sitting read. But this does not mean that it is a light read. Powlison loads wisdom by the pound into each phrase and sentence. I agree with Paul David Tripp’s endorsement: “If you’re a pastor, this book is a must-read, but not just once. Read it again and again, praying that its beautiful vision would become your daily ministry model.”

The book is obviously directed to pastors, but its principles are applicable to all Christians. Besides, if more church members read it, they would be better motivated to pray that their pastor would be the kind of counselor God calls him to be!

I am an unabashed Herman Bavinck enthusiast. (One of my goals is to read everything by him that has been published in English. So far, I’ve completed his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics, Wonderful Works of God, Philosophy of Revelation, Preaching and Preachers, and Christian Worldview. I’m working on his Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, Reformed Ethics, and still need to acquire some other of his works.) I liked this book so much that I read most of it and gave it away before I could finish reading it all! Nevertheless, what I did read was characteristically rich. This reviewer says it well: “Accessible, thoroughly biblical, and astonishingly relevant, it offers a mature and concise handling of the origins of marriage and family life and the effects of sin on these institutions, an appraisal of historic Christian approaches, and an attempt to apply that theology.”

If you decide to read this book, you should be aware of Bavinck’s historical context (the Netherlands in 1908) and purpose (a theology, not a practical manual). While his theology is sound, some applications of that theology Bavinck himself would later change. For example, he at first opposed, and then supported, women’s right to vote. As Eglinton notes in the introduction, this “should serve as a useful reminder of the need for a careful contemporary reading of Bavinck’s practical applications on the family.”

I heard somewhere that college students, instead of taking psychology courses, should read the Russian 19th-century novelists Dostoesvsky and Tolstoy. I am inclined to agree with this.

I first read The Brothers Karamazov when I was in college recovering from strep throat, and I read it again this past year. Like any great book, I discovered that it grew with me. I learned more from the second reading than from the first. Now I am reading it a third time.

The Brothers Karamazov is a long and arduous read. It requires patience, persistence, as well as a pencil and notebook (to keep track of all the characters and their various nicknames). But I believe the effort will be well-rewarded by a keener insight into the paradoxes of human nature, the problem of evil, and the splendor of the Christian faith.

“I don’t believe God, but I miss him.” These opening words express the theme of Barnes’ entire book as well as the general malaise of our post-Christian age. This is the sort of book to read as the Apostle Paul must have read the pagan poets Aratus and Epimenides—not to be edified, but to see that even godless men, when they are honest, may be the mouthpiece of profound truth.

I doubt that Julian Barnes himself would object to my calling him “godless,” since he remains cautiously skeptical about God’s very existence, and does not hesitate to use Jesus’ name as a curse word. Nevertheless, in his utter (and often profane) honesty, Barnes gives startling clarity to humans’ fear of death (Hebrews 2:15), craving to be known, loved, and justified, and suspicion that no one is righteous enough to validate their own existence, among other things.

I’ve benefited immensely from Keller’s sermons and writings, and was very sad when he passed away in May of 2023.

In Tim Keller Hansen takes readers chronologically through Keller’s life, focusing (as the subtitle indicates) on the books and people that shaped his mind and heart.

A book that not only follows the life of this great Christian leader, but also points to the great leaders that influenced him—that’s a book I can get excited about. When reading it before bed, I had a hard time putting it down, and an even harder time getting to sleep after I did.

It was high time I read this classic work by Tolkien (I had read The Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, and The Two Towers, and finished, of course, with The Return of the King). Entering into Middle Earth does require some cultural and geographical adjustment, but, like any kind of travel, the experience is enriching.

What can I say? Tolkien has created characters, places, images, and plots which, once thought, cannot be unthought. He also has passages that make the heart sing and soar and certain that there must be a heaven or nothing at all.

The past few years have seen a rise in “exvangelicals” and “Christian deconstruction” stories, but this is not one of them. Although Jon Ward delivers some painful criticism evangelicals should be attentive to, he remains committed to Christianity and even optimistic about evangelicals.

I reviewed this book on my blog, and noted that it “is a story that, in the end, celebrates instead of despises Christianity. Ward concludes Testimony not by imagining a world without Christianity, but by asking, ‘What would a more Christian witness look like?’”