Change What You Read

Towards the end of each year, Spotify, a music streaming service, gives you a rundown of your listening stats. This year was a big break from last year. Last year, the Newsboys and The Rolling Stones. This year it was pretty much all what is called Christian Contemporary Music. “In Christ Alone,” by Newsboys was number one, but my number one artist this year was Sovereign Grace Music. The only non-Christian-Contemporary artist, and this surprised me, was George Benson.

So, yeah, fine, I lose all my rock-n-roll street cred.

It has made me reflect, think back, and remember, that this has been a year of changing some habits, notably how I prepare my sermons, and I think that impacted what I listened to. I have also been doing a lot of thinking about worship, especially contemporary worship, and wanting to make sure that we include more Psalms in our songs, and that we try to make sure we go for depth of theology. It can be lacking. Now, to be fair, you have 600 hymns in a hymnal chosen from probably 20,000 over 400 years. They can’t all be zingers. I am very happy to say there is some real depth in some songwriters like Brooke Ligertwood, Matt Boswell and a number of others.

It also made me think back to reading habits. My dad got me a really nice copy of Hermann Hesse’s novel, Steppenwolf (written before the band came out, you Philistines). And I have to say, it is going to be a wild ride, reading this at 55 versus 15…

What follows is a plea to my fellow Methodist pastors. In my book recommendations, however, lay people will find some gems.

A number of years ago, The Christian Century had something about the two most popular authors among United Methodist pastors. They were Henri Nouwen and Will Willimon. And it hit me. That was the problem in the UMC. I am not talking about the disaffiliations and all that difficulty. We have an evangelism and discipleship crisis. You say, but so many of us are no longer UMC. True, but that is where we were, where we were formed, and we are bringing that with us. The good and the bad.

What’s the problem with Nouwen and Willimon being the most popular authors? Well, first, the schism in the UMC revealed that Willimon is unhinged, and was definitely not the John-Boy-Walton-aw-shucks kinda guy his persona indicated. I have nothing bad to say about Nouwen; I like him a lot. His books Adam, and The Road to Daybreak were very important to me. But the top two authors are shepherds, pastoral. And we (yes, I mean you, GMC) have an evangelism and discipleship crisis. Henri Nouwen and Will Willimon cannot provide the backing and the framework to get out of it.

Ephesians 4 is clear that Jesus gave these gifts to the Church: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers.

We only ordain the last two. We do not pay much attention to the APEs, Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists.

No wonder, if we only look for and ordain Shepherds and Teachers, we only read books by and about shepherds and teachers…

If we’re going to move forward, we have to change what we read, and how we practice ministry. [WARNING: if anyone in the comments says, but “we can’t just throw Nouwen out the window,” I will fight you in the parking lot. Any parking lot. I like Henri Nouwen. But put him down and grab some other books for awhile.]

So, here are some books to help get us thinking about evangelism and discipleship.

The Master Plan of Evangelism, by Robert Coleman. If you are only going to read one, this is it.

Discipleshift, by Jim Putman and Roert Coleman

The Training of the Twelve, by A.B. Bruce. This is a more scholarly, Biblical-theological work.

Cultivating A Life For God, by Neil Cole.

Methodism Can Be Born Again, by W.E. Sangster

Heart Talks on Holiness, by Samuel Logan Brengle

This is not exhaustive, but it will get you started.