A New & Right Spirit

In a postmodern culture shaped by consumerism, it’s little wonder that there is confusion about what the church is supposed to be in the 21st century. In A New and Right Spirit, Rick Barger argues passionately for congregations to reexamine what it means to be an "authentic church" in a culture where authenticity is hard to come by.

The Re-Storied Life: A Call to Flourish

Does something feel off? Even in a world filled with achievement and endless striving many people carry a quiet ache beneath the surface--the sense that life was meant to be more than exhaustion, fear, performance, or survival. In The Re-Storied Life, pastors and longtime friends Rick Barger and Lorne Hlad invite readers into a deeper, more hopeful way of living rooted in the story of God. Drawing on years of ministry, personal loss, global partnership in Haiti, and the depth of the Christian tradition, they explore how people's lives become shaped by false scripts--and how grace can awaken them to a new story marked by hope, identity, healing, and flourishing. This is not a book of easy answers or simple formulas. It is an invitation to discover that even in an aching world, each person's story is still being written.

I’m Still Here, Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

A book for these times, Austin Channing Brown weaves her autobiography as a Black woman in America with theological and sociological chops. Powerful, raw, and authentic to the core, this book is a necessary read for my white brothers and sisters, especially those in the church. If you have been fortunate enough to have been stirred from your core by seeing and hearing Austin Channing Brown speak, this book will get you up out of your seat and into the movement for restorative justice.

Love Without Limits: Jesus’ Radical Vision of Love with No Exceptions

Rich in authentic theology and undergirded by storytelling of people and communities choosing to love without limits, Bussie’s book is a necessary read for our time. It is a book that as people say, “meets the moment” in which we are living. It is truly radical and subversive in our world and aligns with the kind of love without limits that got Jesus killed.

Outlaw Christian, Finding Authentic Faith by Breaking the Rules

Jaqueline Bussie’s first book rightfully won wide critical acclaim. Taking on a way of being “Christian” that is in bondage to unspoken “rules,” i.e. never be angry at God, never doubt, dance around speaking about evil, and more, Bussie invites us to break all the rules and find new life and freedom through an honest and humble faith. As one who underwent deep trauma and grief with the sudden death of her beloved spouse, Matt, at the age of 52, Bussie had to listen to her own rule-breaking advice to survive and heal. 

Braving the Truth, Essential Essays for Reckoning With and Reimagining Faith

This is a book for all whose faith journeys have been impacted by the honesty and deep-hearted faith of Rachel Held Evans. Published 7 years after Rachel’s tragic death, Sarah Bessey, author and best friend to Rachel, compiled what is essentially an anthology of RHE’s essays on everything from faith to doubt to church and essential critiques on the USAmerica church and Christianity.

Wholehearted Faith

Any book by Rachel Held Evans is going to be deeply personal, honest, and provocative about life and faith. This one was published posthumously with the help of her good friend, Jeff Chu. Rather than a book, per se, this is more of a collection of essays. If you have ever wrestled with your faith, doubted, or thought about walking away, this book will serve as a welcome companion.

A Failure of Nerve, Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix

This book should be mandatory reading for anyone preparing for leadership in any form. Published after the death of the author from his unfinished manuscript and notes left behind, Friedman takes on all the fallacies of presumed norms about leadership and invites us to an awareness of the power of anxiety, emotional and imaginational gridlock, and the forces that promote sabotage. He offers an alternative way of leading that is grounded in full awareness of emotional processes.

Fierce Love

The cover of the book proclaims, “A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World.” This book has much affinity with Bussie’s two works listed on this page, but comes at us with a different voice – a Black woman preacher/pastor in New York City who herself has experienced deep trauma and for whom the divisions of race, ethnicity, caste, sexuality, gender and the like are not theory to her. Using the tenets of the Zulu philosophy of ubuntu and with proclamation and storytelling, Lewis argues that only a radical all-inclusive fierce love can heal this world. The book, based on ubuntu, posits that the world will not get better until we all get better. Lewis then lays out nine practices to breakdown tribalism and all our divisions so that we can all heal and live.

I Can Do No Other, The Church’s New Here We Stand Moment

“Death is real, but life is realer” is the mantra that has defined Anna Madsen since doing the hard work of integrating her theological formation with profound grief flowing from a tragic accident. One year after receiving her PhD in German, the accident took the life of her husband and inflicted a life-altering brain injury to her son. Reckoning with human suffering, systemic injustice in America and its related sociological issues, as well as the global climate change, Dr. Madsen posits today in America as another time of status confessionis. She speaks to it prophetically and hopefully using Luther, the Reformation, and eschatological hope. Raw, authentic, and delivered by someone with theological savvy and precision, this book is a must read for any leader or theology student seeking to frame the realities of today and the role of faith in envisioning a redemptive tomorrow.

Joyful Defiance, Death Does Not Win the Day

A powerfully theologically grounded book, written by Anna Madsen, that takes on the power of death head-on. Not just death after one’s final breath, but all the “deaths” life in this world throws at us. With her lucid proclamation of the cross and the empty tomb, the book calls us to resist all forms of death with eyes open and with the courage made possible by the astonishing promises of God.

The Sum of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Heather C. McGhee is the board chair for Color of Change, the nation’s largest racial justice organization. She is also a senior fellow at DEMOS, a not-for-profit think tank. With fiscal and macro savvy and a profound expert in social policy, her book exposes why all of America loses because of our racism. How is it that we have among the very worst health care systems, infrastructure, and education systems among all wealthy countries. With data backed up by research and fleshed out with succinct story-telling, McGhee brings to realism why we all lose, especially whites, and are much less than what we can all be.

Renew Your Life: Discovering the Wellspring of God’s Energy

A real, raw, and incredibly hopeful book by one of our church’s finest pastors.  Renew Your Life speaks to the depleted, fed-up, and ready-to-throw-in-the-towel-and-give-up child of God who has been overwhelmed by the demands of life in a digital never-turn-off world and in a career or family that asks too much.  This book has spoken deeply to me and to others whom I love too much to not share this book with them.

The Philadelphia Chromosome

What is a book on leukemia doing on a list of leadership resources? In 2014, this work was named as The Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year. The story it tells is important, but more important are the character and insistence of the key players. For over four decades they developed and brought to market a drug that turned one of the deadliest cancers into something treatable. For those who want to believe that there are people out there who are willing to do whatever it takes and leave no path untrodden or stone unturned to find a cure for cancer, this book will inspire you. Though the breakthrough drug this book chronicles is not a cure, for many it is almost as good as a cure.   

To Fool The Rain

Real and inspiring stories from the Central Plateau of Haiti of courageous women rising out of dehumanizing poverty to a path to a better life. As the communications director for Chemen Lavi Miyò, Steve Werlin has walked with the women whose stories are in this book. They are some of the most compelling underdog-to-victor stories on our planet and a testimony that the world’s worst poverty can be eradicated with thoughtful and intentional grassroots accompaniment. Be careful. After reading this book you may find yourself in Haiti.  

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson is the first woman of African American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. In this groundbreaking book, Wilkerson argues that racism is insufficient for defining the systemic oppression and unspeakable horrors experienced by black persons in America. Extremely well-researched and undergirded by rich story-telling, Wilkerson makes all the linkage from the white person’s claim as the “dominant caste” to the evils of slavery. Connecting the American story with Nazi Germany and the social systems of India, the book is a very difficult read, not because of the way it is written. It is actually a page turner, but its difficulty is in the shock of its content and how it exposes and lays bare the phenomenon known as whiteness. If the Black Lives Matter Movement and the culture wars in America over race have sent you looking for resources, Caste should be at the top of your list.

The Haitian Timoun Foundation  

Creating life-giving impact to Haiti’s poor, HTF is committed to being, thinking, and acting as the most highly effective grassroots movement we can be. www.htflive.org