The Most Influential Books in My Life and Ministry
It should go without saying that I do not endorse or agree with everything in every book listed below or everything written by each of these authors.
Mortimer J. Adler – How to Read a Book
Ray S. Anderson (actually, anything by Anderson, but these are my favorites)
Everything That Makes Me Happy I Learned When I Grew Up
Living the Spiritually Balanced Life
Ministry on the Fireline
On Being Human
Unspoken Wisdom
Jack and Judith Balswick – The Family
Robert Banks – The Tyranny of Time
Karl Barth – Church Dogmatics and Evangelical Theology: An Introduction
Wendell Berry – All his novels, some of his essays (not as much a fan of his economic and social theories)
Harry Blamires – The Christian Mind
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Ethics
John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
Robert Farrar Capon – An Offering of Uncles and Health, Money, and Love, and Why We Don’t Enjoy Them
Jacob Firet – Dynamics of Pastoring
Justo Gonzalez – A History of Christian Thought (3 vols.)
James Houston – Joyful Exiles and The Mentored Life
John F. Kilner – Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God
T.A. Noble – Holy Trinity, Holy People
Henri Nouwen – Reaching Out
J.I. Packer – Knowing God
Eugene Peterson – Working the Angles
A.T. Pierson – George Muller of Bristol
Michael Polanyi – Personal Knowledge and The Tacit Dimension
Fleming Rutledge – Advent and The Crucifixion
C.H. Spurgeon
An All Round Ministry
Autobiography (2 vols.)
Lectures to My Students
Helmut Thielicke
The Evangelical Faith (3 vols.)
Faith, the Great Adventure, How to Believe Again, and his other published sermons
Notes from a Wayfarer (autobiography)
T.F. Torrance (anything by Torrance, but these are my favorites)
Atonement
The Ground and Grammar of Theology
Incarnation
The Mediation of Christ
Reality and Evangelical Theology
Paul Tournier – The Adventure of Living and Guilt and Grace
Elton Trueblood – Essays in Gratitude and While It Is Day (autobiography)
Brian Williams – The Potter’s Rib
Hans Urs von Balthasar – Love Alone is Credible and Prayer
DonJPayne 