Pastor's Roundtable Reading Lists

Wondering what to read next? Looking for a book for your reading group?  Try one of these titles*, read and discussed by the Pastors Roundtable Group the past 3 years. This group is  led by Dr. Ken Swetland and Dr. David Horn at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Hamilton campus:


2008-2009:
The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor by John Stott
The Shack by William Paul Young
Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship by David Peterson
Religious Affections by Johnathan Edwards
Let Go: To Get Peace and Real Joy by Francois Fenelon
Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to do About it by Julian Duin
The Surprising Work of God by Garth Rosell

2009-2010:
Christ and Culture Revisited by D.A. Carson
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther by Roland Bainton
Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald Dayton
Jesus Through the Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels by Kenneth Bailey
Courage to be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Post-Modern World by David Wells
Christ- Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice by Bryan Chapell
Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old- Fashioned Way by J.I. Packer and Gary Parrett
Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul Tripp
Signature Sins: Taming Our Wayward Hearts by Michael Mangis

2010-2011:
How Then Should We Choose? by Douglas Huffman
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxes
Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck
Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic by Chris Castaldo
Judge Sewell's Apology: A Biography: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience by Richard Francis
Erasmus- Luther: Discourse on Free Well by Ernst F. Winter
Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes us Just by Tim Keller
Love Wins by Rob Bell 








*Book titles with a hyperlink are available at Gordon-Conwell's online bookstore, in partnership with Christian Book Distributors (CBD). Every time you place an order through the online bookstore, Gordon-Conwell will receive a percentage of the sales.  Within the last two years, Gordon-Conwell has received over $20,000.  These proceeds support the Seminary's educational services for students.

Pastors' Roundtable Reading List

Wondering what to read next? Looking for a book for your reading group?  Try one of these titles*, read and discussed by the Pastors Roundtable Group led by Dr. Ken Swetland and Dr. David Horn at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Hamilton campus:

The Pastor by Eugene Peterson
Ten Myths About Calvinism by Kenneth Stewart
Allah by Miroslav Volf
Worship and the Reality of God by John Jefferson Davis
Nearing Home by Billy Graham
The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
Technopoly by Neil Postman
Evangelical Theology by Karl Barth
Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton by Kevin Belmonte

*Book titles with a hyperlink are available at Gordon-Conwell's online bookstore, in partnership with Christian Book Distributors (CBD). Every time you place an order through the online bookstore, Gordon-Conwell will receive a percentage of the sales.  Within the last two years, Gordon-Conwell has received over $20,000.  These proceeds support the Seminary's educational services for students.

Pulling a Sting

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

When he said it, not many of us really thought that much about it at first. In fact, it sounded a bit odd. We were all sitting around the Ockenga conference table—the thirteen of us as we do every month at our Pastors Roundtable—and one of our group told us very innocently that the thing that finally was bringing his congregation back to life was his fledgling little Junior High ministry.

This pastor had been racking his brain for years, trying to motivate his church toward some sense of vitality. He had given his congregation the big vision talk, followed quickly by the even bigger envisioning process, leading to the development of a vision statement. He had read all of the books. He had preached all the sermons about perishing without a vision. Nothing seemed to pry his congregation from the grips of years of lethargy. Nothing…nothing seemed to be working.

And then, out of no where, with hardly a strategy in mind and certainly beyond the scope of his own best intentions, the right volunteer couples from his little church in Maine, with the right giftedness and sincerity in their hearts, connected with the right junior high students. And it was this that brought new life as families began to be attracted to his little church. Broadsided with the simple and unintended! Imagine that; the life and vitality of a church resting on the narrow shoulders and low riding jeans of a group of adolescents. The church took off.

In subsequent conversations with this and other Pastor Roundtable groups, similar stories began to surface. In another of our New England churches whose pastor had a cup of coffee on a pro sports team, the church’s sports ministry to the community became the place of new growth and excitement for the congregation. For another pastor, it was their children’s ministry. Imagine a church whose annual summer focus on Vacation Bible School became the spark that has brought genuine excitement to the entire congregation the year round.

I wonder sometimes if we miss the forest through the trees for those of us who are committed to breathing new life into our places of ministry. With our best intentions in tow, we place five thousand pounds of vision and strategy down on a five hundred pound church. It is utterly crushing.

I admit it. I have done the same thing periodically when asked to do church consulting. Frankly, it is not that difficult to diagnose the problems within most churches. The real difficulty lies in churches having the resources and the will to respond to the solutions offered. The economics of the situation work like this: The smaller the church, the bigger the problems to be solved. But, alas, the smaller the church, the less resources there are to respond effectively to proposed solutions. The solutions sometimes almost become more onerous than the problems.

To be considered healthy, why must every church have a thriving small group ministry and thriving youth ministry and thriving evangelism ministry and thriving hospitality ministry and a thriving community outreach ministry and so on…? Rather, what if we looked at our churches more organically than systematically? It takes some investigative work, but where is the place—sometimes ever so small—of vitality in your church? Where is there evidence that God is working, and how can we come along side of that place(s) where He has decided to work uniquely in your setting? Where is the thin thread in your church that, if pulled, could unravel into whole new possibilities for your church?

I am convinced that every church has these areas, sometimes in the most surprising of places. As one pastor of a church that is filled with the currently perceived deadly demographic of elderly people told me the other day, the point of excitement currently in his church is a small group of his elderly couples that have found new excitement in their faith. The fragrance of their newfound excitement has wafted across the rest of the church. Go figure, old people and junior high kids: places where God is doing His best work in His church. There must be a God.

Reading in the Company of Others

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

What are you reading? Look down there on your nightstand, or is it the little table next to your desk in the office? Or, perhaps I should ask, ‘are you reading…anything?’

I confess, in the midst of some of the frantic moments of my day-to-day life, these questions conjure up huge mountains of guilt for me. There are times when all I want to do is crawl into a small dark corner, sit on a soft barker lounge, and escape into the drama of a flat screen television. You know the scene: the diet coke and chips are on my right side, the clicker is on my left side and then… clear as day, I hear those aggravating, sniffling words from my dear old friend, Charles Spurgeon,

The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all of people. YOU need to read. (#542 Spurgeon Sermon “Paul-His Cloak and His Books” in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit 9 (1863): 668-669).

Sometimes I just hate Spurgeon.

Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes a date with a barker lounge chair, a diet coke, and a clicker is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, put the three together and they can become a habit, and habits sometimes become preoccupations, and preoccupations sometimes become lifestyles.

So, how do I get out from this corner of guilt that I have painted myself into? Recently, I have begun to approach reading in a new way, new way for me, that is. Actually, my guess is that this approach has been around for a long time and I have just been looking the other way.

For years, I have viewed reading strictly as a solitary enterprise. That is, take the television and clicker away and you would have seen me on that same barker lounge, with the same diet coke, only this time reading alone. What I chose to read was a private affair. How I engaged with the ideas in the book was a private affair. How I used what I learned was a private affair. Everything was private.

All this has changed recently. I am beginning to view reading more communally, that is, as an act of community. For the past two years I have found myself in a monthly reading group and have found the experience liberating for a variety of reasons. First, do you see the rut that follows me wherever I go? Left to my own inclinations, I tend to read the same types of things over and over again. What is it for you? For me it is biographies and historical novels and survival literature. Being a card-carrying member of the group has changed all of this. What we read is a group decision. I have been forced to read things I otherwise would not have read. Go figure, I just read two great books on worship that would have, otherwise, been on the bottom of my reading list.

Further, the book group has allowed me the opportunity to think through what I have read in the company of others. Imagine this; my first reading of a book is not always right! Sometimes in mildly annoying ways, these men have forced me to think differently and creatively. Our reading together has challenged me in ways that would not have been the case if I were reading in solitude. Typically we have walked away from our times together intentionally asking ourselves how the residue of what we have read will stick with us for the long haul. How might the book we just read change us even in small but concrete ways?

Maybe it has something to do with the air in the room that us common readers of books share. Once ideas are floating out there, outside of our individual heads, they somehow become more objective and concrete. We find that none of us are in sole possession of them; they exist separate from us. Like a good tennis match, watching these ideas being batted around from one side of the room to the other has made reading an entirely new sport. I like that.

Seminary or Cemetery?

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology and
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling at the Charlotte campus

“Seminary or Cemetery? Cultivating Spiritual Vitality in Theological Education.” This was the title of the Integrative Seminar at GCTS-Charlotte this past Saturday. The title reflects the common joke about seminary experience: that it kills the soul. We spent this past Saturday talking about this topic. Dr. Hollinger challenged us in the opening chapel to ask ourselves “have we lost our first love?” speaking from the letter to the church at Ephesus from Revelation 2:1-7. He pointed out that Ephesus was once a thriving city with a vibrant growing Christian community. Now it is an empty ruin. The challenge for us is to journey through seminary and our theological education without becoming an empty ruin. How can we do this?

Dr. Steve Klipowitz started the day with a presentation on the survey he took of GCTS-Charlotte students. He asked our students to rate their spiritual vitality and indicated whether it had increased or decreased during their seminary training. About 50% of the student body responded to the survey. Respondents were 37% MDivs, 28% MACCs and the rest the other MAs. I will not repeat all the results here, but I would like to highlight some of the outcomes that could be worth noticing and taking into consideration.

The average score on spiritual vitality was 6.65 out of 10. However, the responses really were bimodal: there were a group of students who reported their spiritual vitality was “fair” and a group that were “good” or better. There were some key factors that discriminated between these two groups. The three most important were: active involvement in a vital church, maintaining regular devotional life, and participating in a small group. Students reported factors contributing to the decline in their spiritual life such as tyranny of the urgent (over-committed, too busy, stressed), lack of devotional time, and just the vagaries of life. Those who reported the poorest spiritual vitality tended to be those working more than 40 hours a week as well is going to school, being in seminary more than four years, and being in full-time ministry.

I would just make a couple of comments: while the seminary is very concerned about the spiritual life of students and tries to be actively engaged in encouraging spiritual vitality, the three biggest factors were factors that are for the most part outside the control of seminary: Church, devotional time, and small groups. Again, some of the biggest threats to spiritual vitality are in the students’ control; e.g., working more than 40 hours a week while going to seminary.

At student orientation this year, I encouraged the new students to consider their priorities and make adjustments in their time commitments to accommodate the demands of seminary. When I came to GCTS for the D.Min. program, I sat down and counted the cost. I realized that I needed to add about 20 hours to my weekly schedule for work related to the program. I then chose to drop teaching Sunday school, leading a small group, serving on the board of a nonprofit, and serving as faculty adviser for a Christian sorority at UNC Chapel Hill. All of these things were good things, but they were not the things to which God was calling to me at this season of my life. I encouraged the students to think about this, and decide whether good things might be interfering with God things.

I will leave you with a couple of other gems from the day. Dr. Alan Myatt talked to the students about spiritual friendships, and the important role they can play in maintaining spiritual vitality. He recommended the book Sacred Companions: the Gift of Spiritual Friendship & Direction by David G. Benner. I encourage you to check it out. Finally, I will leave you with some of the questions that were addressed to the students at our integrative seminar:

• In what ways are you encouraged by your spiritual condition?
• In what ways are you challenged or discouraged?
• What steps can you take to support and encourage future spiritual growth in your life?
• In what ways do you think the seminary could better support spiritual formation in the lives of students?
• How could students better help each other maintain a fervent life with God?