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
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
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
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
The Tacit Dimension
Fleming Rutledge
Advent
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
Guilt and Grace
Elton Trueblood
Essays in Gratitude
While It Is Day (autobiography)
Brian Williams
The Potter’s Rib
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Love Alone is Credible
Prayer
DonJPayne 