The sun has been out, and it feels very summery here for once! You may have already looked for books to read in the sun or on holidays, but to add to your list, here is a selection of inspiring and faith-filled books to accompany you through the summer.
Phoebe: A Story – Paula Gooder
First, we have a suggestion from Bishop Cherry Phoebe: A Story The book is a story written by theologian Paula Gooder and is an absolute treat. While fiction, it opens our eyes to what was going on in the early church and the characters at play.
Blurb:
Around 56 AD, the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome. His letter was arguably his theological masterpiece and has continued to shape Christian faith ever since. He entrusted this letter to Phoebe, the deacon of the church at Cenchreae; in writing to the church that almost surely met in her home, Paul refers to her both as a deacon and as a helper or patron of many. But who was this remarkable woman?
Link:
God On Mute – Pete Grieg
What do you do when God is silent? When your deepest prayers are not answered? Pete Grieg wrote this book in response to this question. It wonderfully shares and illustrates where God is. It has helped me explore my doubts and fears—a book for delving deeper into faith and prayer. Prepare to be challenged!
Blurb:
Pete Grieg, the founder of the 24/7 Global prayer movement, wrote this book out of the pain of his wife’s fight for her life and the difficulty of unanswered prayer. Still watching the prayer movement they founded change lives worldwide. Pete Greig steps into the dark side of prayer and emerges with a hard-won message of hope, comfort, and profound biblical insight for all who suffer in silence.
Link:
Confounding the Mighty: Stories of Church, Social Class and Solidarity – Luke Larner
Have you ever thought the church’s role in society sometimes falls short? This book challenges us to think about how we view others and the implications of that, especially as the church.
Blurb:
It is long past time for the church to talk seriously about social class. Bringing together the stories of eight contemporary Christian ministers and theologians from working-class backgrounds and putting their own life experiences into conversation with theological reflection, Confounding the Mighty explores what role class plays in the lives of Churches, education establishments, and social justice movements in 21st-century Britain and beyond.
Link:
How to Human: Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects Us – Carlos Whittaker
This is a perfect book to remind us that the simple things we can all do to connect with others and the world around us can make a difference right where we are.
Blurb:
These are crazy times, people. We are more agitated than ever. We’re fighting. Wrestling with big issues. Less connected than ever to one another and to God. It’s a perfect storm: debilitating anxiety, crashing relationships, and forgetting what it feels like to, well, be human.
In How to Human, author, speaker, and social-media personality Carlos Whittaker offers a fresh vision for becoming the best versions of ourselves. We can refuse to let disagreements define us. We can say no to becoming upset, rage-filled humans and say yes to fuller, happier lives. It begins as we make the shift from “me” to “we” to “everybody” in a three-part journey to be human, see fellow humans, and free those around us.
Link:
How to eat bread: 21 Nourishing Ways to Read the Bible – Miranda Threlfall-Holmes
How do you read the Bible? Do you find it difficult? This book is written for all people to find depth and meaning in the bible and explore it in a meaningful way! (this book will be used next year as we take time as a Ministry Area to look at the bible more deeply).
Blurb:
As a vicar, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is used to being asked to recommend a book on how and why to read the Bible. Filling the gap between popular Bible reading notes and more academic books, How to Eat Bread is the book she’d give to anyone wanting to explore the Bible as part of their faith. Its three main sections delve into the rich heritage of how Christians have read the Bible down the ages:
From the Larder – ways that scripture itself uses other parts of scripture or models and demonstrates different ways of reading
Grandma’s Recipe Book – historical methods of biblical interpretation
Molecular Gastronomy – the insights and methods of modern theological hermeneutics
Encouraging readers to try out a variety of tried and tested ways of Bible reading, experiment with different ingredients and sample the results.
Link:
My Big Story Bible: 140 Faithful Stories, from Genesis to Revelation
This is a wonderful bible for younger and older children. Beautifully illustrated and put together you will be captured by the stories and discover Gods big story together!
Blurb:
My Big Story Bible takes the adventure of reading a children’s Bible to a new level. As you’d expect from Tom Wright, the narrative bursts with lively storytelling and a deep love for the original scriptures, while the vibrant illustrations on every page will delight young readers and help them to imaginatively understand the key events of the Bible.
Perfect for readers aged 7-12 years, My Big Story Bible not only offers a faithful and vibrant retelling of all the major Bible stories of the Old and New Testament, but theologian Tom Wright invites children to discover the many surprising ways in which the stories link to one another, and how together they form the BIG STORY of God’s plan to make everything right and bring heaven and earth together when Jesus returns.
Link:
Sounding Heaven and Earth: A Poet’s Corner Collection – Malcolm Guite
If you have tuned in to any of our videos or picked up one of our daily reading books, you will have noticed that we often include poems by Malcolm Guite. Here is a collection of his for you to enjoy and get stuck into.
Blurb:
The back page column of the Church Times, famously occupied for many years by Ronald Blythe, continues to be a breath of fresh air in the hands of poet and priest Malcolm Guite.
His acute observations of the local, the everyday moments of conversation and life’s simple pleasures are doorways into a bigger reality of a world suffused with the meaning and beauty that lies beneath surface appearances.
His lucid, perceptive and imaginative musings follow a similar pattern to the sonnets for which he is so renowned. In his own words, he treats these 500 word essays ‘a little in the spirit of the sonnet, with a sense of development, of a ‘turn’ or volta part way through, and a sense that the end revisits and re-reads the opening’.
These draw together everyday events and encounters, landscape, journeys, poetry, stories, memory and a sense of the sacred, and fuses them to create richly satisfying portraits of the familiar that at the same time opens the way to an enchanted world.
Link:
