September 3, 2024
Learning To Be Vulnerable
This blog looks at just a few things I’ve learned in my journey of learning to be more vulnerable and maybe you’ll be encouraged by it in your own journey.
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Adam Johnson
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December 27, 2023
Our 13 Favorite Books of 2023
If you're searching for another good read to add to your list, look no further. The Crosspoint staff team has compiled a list of their favorite books that were read this past year. Read on to find a brief description and links to purchase the books for yourself!
Each year our church staff shares some of our favorite books from the past year.
We do so from the deep conviction that learning is at the heart of following Jesus. The word disciple in Greek literally means student or learner. As such, reading is an important spiritual practice for many of us as disciples.
Reading deeply and widely helps expose us to new ideas and insights, challenges existing assumptions and convictions, prompts self-reflection and examination, and invites us to live more faithfully in the world.
Note that not all of the books listed below were published in 2023. These are just books we read this past year. Also, note that just because we recommend a book does not mean that we agree with or endorse everything in the book.
We believe that considering different perspectives, even those that we may not agree with, can help clarify our own beliefs, values, and practices. Moreover, in an age of increasingly polarization marked by group think and confirmation bias, reading broadly can help us break out of our echo chambers.
Life Worth Living by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
Submitted by Mac McCarthy
Life Worth Living is a captivating and thought-provoking book that takes a deep dive into the most fundamental questions of human existence while offering profound insights on what it means to lead a truly fulfilling life. Based on the course content of the most popular class offered at Yale — a class by the same title — the authors explore various answers to life’s most pressing questions from a variety of religious traditions. While the authors are confessing and committed Christians, they interact both charitably and critically with other religious traditions while tilting the table toward their readers to own their own answers and conclusions. We all want to live a fulfilling life. This book only further solidified for me that the most fulfilling life is found in faithfully following Jesus of Nazareth.
“Entering into a new way of life is hard. Entering into a truly flourishing life is really hard. How hard? Impossible, Jesus says — for humans, at least. It would take divine intervention for us to live the sort of lives truly worthy of our shared humanity.”
The Book of Common Courage by K.J. Ramsey
Submitted by Pattie Burns
K.J. is a licensed professional counselor and author who also happens to live with chronic illness. Her words are both poetry and prayer that I have found helpful and comforting when I struggle in my own prayer times. She puts words to what it feels like when you hit a wall or feel the disorientation that can come in times of stress. This book navigates the tension of living in this world, with our broken hearts and bodies, while walking with a Savior who sees and holds it all.
“When we cannot find the words to pray, we are not faithless. We are feeling the fact that we are both embodied and vulnerable.”
Did God Really Command Genocide? by Paul Copan and Matt Flannagan
Submitted by Cameron Lucas
This question was raised in a philosophy class I took at a secular college and really shook my faith because no Christians around me seemed to want to talk about it or had a good answer. While I don’t agree with all their conclusions or arguments, the authors do a great job of complexifying a difficult topic and showing that there might be more to the story than what we see at first glance. The authors get in the weeds of many biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments and counter arguments regarding a host of issues related to that question. If you don’t mind the very philosophical and academic tone this book has, it’s a thorough and enlightening exploration of this difficult question.
What if Jesus Was Serious? by Skye Jethani
Submitted by Mac McCarthy
It is somewhat shocking to me, as a pastor, how many people I encounter who claim to follow Jesus but who remain utterly unfamiliar with the life and teachings of Jesus. Perhaps even worse, however, are those who have ignored and distorted the teachings of Jesus to create a Jesus in their own image. I’m convinced that following Jesus involves faithfully living into the teachings of Jesus. In this short book, Skye Jethani walks through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (the best summary of Jesus’ teachings) with creativity and applicability. Written at an incredibly accessible level, our family has been reading through this book together by taking a chapter a week. I’d recommend this book for anyone wanting to take Jesus’ teachings seriously or lead their family in that direction.
“What if the underlying malady afflicting Christians today isn’t that we take Jesus too seriously, but that we’ve failed to take Him seriously enough? What if much of the culture’s judgment of Christians isn’t the result of obeying Jesus, but the result of Christians ignoring Him?”
Tell Her Story by Nijay K. Gupta
Submitted by Katie Ignatowski
Growing up in the church, it was pretty rare to hear about biblical figures who were women, especially those who held any form of authority. Nijay Gupta provides a walkthrough of the women who were leading, teaching, starting churches, funding ministries, and spreading the gospel throughout the Bible. These women were also persecuted for their faith, suffered, and faced jail time. The book highlights a few of them, such as:
- Deborah, one of the major judges in the Old Testament
- Phoebe, Pauls’ trusted coworker
- Prisca(Priscilla), strategic leader and expert teacher
- Junia, an apostle
Knowing the stories of these women is a critical step in understanding the full and rich history of our faith, and how we stand on the shoulders of the men and women who came before us, exercising their God-given gifts to share the Good News.
“Deborah is an important answer to the question “Can a woman . . . ?” or “Is a woman allowed to . . . ?” Deborah could. Deborah was. God was behind it; he filled her with prophetic wisdom, and her sung words became part of the Word of God, testifying to the brave and wise woman who brought God’s peace to a troubled people."
The Lord Is My Courage by K.J. Ramsey
Submitted by Josiah Shirek
Psalm 23 has long been embraced as words of comfort for people who are walking through dark moments in their lives. K.J. Ramsey helps bring newfound meaning to this passage by combining her expertise as a therapist with insights she gleaned from nomadic shepherds, walking through the Psalm line-by-line. This book brings to light just how important it is for followers of Jesus to have an intimate understanding of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Reading this inspired new prayers and spiritual practices that have helped transform how I experience God in my daily life. The Lord Is My Courage will encourage you and teach you to experience the love and presence of Jesus even in the darkest and most painful moments of life.
“Courage is not the absence of anxiety but the practice of trusting that we will be held and loved no matter what happens.”
Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson, M.D.
Submitted by Pattie Burns
One of the most helpful lessons I have learned in my Christian life is that God uses so much more than the tools I’d been given -primarily prayer and scripture reading – to move us toward healing and wholeness. ‘Just meditate on and memorize this verse and God will renew your mind.’ It’s just that, this didn’t always do the trick, which led me to assume that I was doing something wrong. Dr. Thompson demonstrates that God literally rewires and renews our minds when we do the work of addressing our history and personal patterns of relating. Portions of this book can be a bit more academic (learning the basics of brain science) though much of it leans toward understanding and application and is well worth the read. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to understand more fully how God wired us for growth, both in our relationship with him, and with the people we love.
“No wonder, then, that we often struggle to release ourselves to God. We may have no template in our brain to facilitate that process. The way you understand and try to make sense of Jesus will be filtered through your memory and your story. That’s because God generally works through the system that he created and called good, our mind/brain matrix. He uses our implicit and explicit memory functions, not only to draw us closer to him, but also to heal, renew, and vitalize those very functions. And this doesn’t happen only metaphorically.”
Fill These Hearts by Christopher West
Submitted by Cameron Lucas
In the Christian faith tradition, sexuality is often talked about in the negative; “don’t look at this”, “don’t think about that,” “don’t sleep with that person”, etc. Of course it’s true that sexual desire can tempt us to do things we shouldn’t do and pull us away from God. But what if our desires are actually God-given and meant to be enflamed, not stifled? What if the problem isn’t our desires, but where and how we’ve directed them? In a world that idolizes desires of all kinds, Christopher West helps us see that God’s vision for our desire isn’t stifling but empowering as our desires ultimately reveal the cry of our hearts for God.
“Finite things can never satisfy our yearning for the infinite”
How Far to the Promised Land? by Esau McCaulley
Submitted by Katie Ignatowski
I love a good story about redemption. When Esau McCaulley learned that his father had died, he experienced a variety of emotions. Preparing to deliver the eulogy for a man who had largely abandoned him in childhood for a life of drug abuse and violence sent him on a journey to find more about what made his father the person that he was. His eyes were opened to the hardship and injustice that he lived through growing up Black in the rural American South in the mid-1900s. What resulted from this journey was a fuller understanding of not only what contributed to his father’s brokenness but also of his family’s rich history of faith that sustained them through seasons of darkness and loss. This book tells a true story of how God shows up in broken places and is always at work to redeem that which seems beyond hope.
“People are always more than the bad decisions they make. As long as we draw breath, there is always a chance to start anew.”
You’re Going to Make It by Lysa TerKeurst
Submitted by Brittany Knuteson
In March 2023 our family experienced a sudden and traumatic loss. Sitting in our sunroom each morning with the Lord and this book was the best step I took towards healing. In this 50 day devotional, Lysa takes you on a journey to process pain and heartache. With both a morning and evening devotional, she helps you stay connected to God and continue loving others even in the middle of discouraging and disappointing circumstances. Each day there is a bible verse and a statement of truth, poignant questions, and a space to journal. Throughout the book, she keeps you grounded in biblical truths as you wrestle with your pain. Through these truths and God's promises reiterated to me through Lysa’s book, truly I learned that I will be ok.
Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton
Submitted by Cameron Lucas
I’ve had a really hard time with solitude and silence. I would much rather read something, journal, pray or do something than just sit quiet and still in God’s presence. Ruth Haley Barton does a masterful job at being both inspirational and brutally honest about how difficult this practice is. Each chapter is short, punchy and includes a practice to help you enter into solitude and silence with an open heart to experience God’s presence.
“In solitude God begins to free us from our bondage to human expectations…our thoughts and our mind, our will and our desires are reoriented Godward so we become less and less attracted by external forces and can be more deeply responsive to God’s desire and prayer in us”
A Church Called Tov by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer
Submitted by Mac McCarthy
Tov is the Hebrew word for good or goodness. In light of the toxicity and abuse being exposed in churches across America, this book invites readers to reckon with the cultural toxicity within the American church and how we got here. But more than asking readers to take an honest look at the problems within the church, the authors point to a better way, a way characterized by goodness. Written with a profound commitment to and hope for the local church, the authors invite followers of Jesus on a transformative journey toward empathy & grace, truth & justice, service & sacrifice, and Christlikeness. If you want to be a tov agent helping create a tov culture alongside us at Crosspoint, I encourage you to read this book along with the sequel, a book entitled Pivot.
“Church culture matters. As we live into our culture, our culture begins to live into us. A good culture will shape us toward goodness; a toxic culture will shape us toward evil.”
How to Hear God by Pete Greig
Submitted by Pattie Burns
Pete Greig knows how to dive into a topic with depth while remaining readable and accessible. This book is a follow-up to his previous book, “How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People”. I especially appreciate his discussion of;
- The role of imagination in prayer and hearing God
- That we relate to God as unique individuals; introverts and extroverts, auditory, visual, or kinesthetic processors, and with personal history and relational experiences that shape how we view God
- The importance of needing “to listen for his voice in the anticlimax of life’s nonevents”
- An entire chapter on hearing God speak through community, creation, and culture
Wherever you are in your faith journey, this book encourages you toward learning the voice of Jesus in your everyday, unique, and yet ordinary life.
“Most of the time we miss the voice of God not because it’s too strange but because it’s too familiar. He sounds like a song on the radio, a fleeting thought, the old man next door. The God of the universe is rarely weird. He is the very one who has predetermined and defined that which we consider “normal,” so it would be ludicrous if he had to somehow banish himself from his own norms whenever he wanted to communicate with his own creation. He speaks in a familiar accent. He impregnates the natural with the supernatural and makes the mundane holy. Again and again he comes to us, as one mystic puts it, disguised as our own life.”
