“Reading is an immense gift, but only if the words are assimilated,
taken into the soul – eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight.”
Eugene Peterson

Trygve Johnson

Summer reading:
(Novel) Susan Howatch, The Wonder Worker
(Memoir) Eugene Peterson, Pastor
(Poems) T.S. Elliot, Chorus from the Rock
(Higher Education) Quality with Soul: How six colleges and universities keep faith with their religious traditions, Robert Benne
(Preaching) Craig Barnes, The Preacher as Minor Poet

David James Duncan, The Brothers K
Chaim Potock, The Gift of Asher Lev
James Torrance, Worship Community & the Triune God of Grace
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Past

Paul Boersma

Richard Mouw, Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil world
Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian
Mitch Albom, Tuesday’s with Morie

Kate Davelaar

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Kate Kooyman

Sonia Nazario, Enrique's Journey
Kathryn Stockett, The Help
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight Moon

Lori Bouwman

Summer reading:
(Novels) Francine Rivers, The Lineage of Grace Series (5)
(Novels) Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn, Sullivan Crisp Series (3)

D. Arthur Fife, The Secret Place
Tony Campolo & Mary Albert Darling, The God of Intimacy & Action
Ron Hall, Denver Moore & Lynn Vincent, Same Kind of Different As Me  
Brennen Manning, Abba’s Child    

Josh Banner

Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Tim Winton, Cloudstreet
Alexander Schemann, For the Life of the World
Walker Percy, Message in a Bottle
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek 

Jerry Root

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
Tim Keller, Generous Justice
Sarah Young, Jesus Calling
Jan Johnson, Savoring God's Word
Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship
John Stott, Why I am a Christian
Tim Keller, Reason for God

Good Reads

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read the old one in between.  If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one for every three new ones…Every age has its own outlook.  It is specially good seeing at certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes.  We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.  And that means old books.”
                       - C.S. Lewis

Getting Started

The Bible
Apostles Creed
Nicene Creed
Heidelberg Catechism
John Stott, Basic Christianity
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Trevor Hart, Faith Thinking
Eugene Peterson, Answering God
Jerry Sittser, The Will of God As a Way of Life
Debra Rienstra, So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality

Classics

Augustine, The Confessions
Athanasius, On The Incarnation
Irenaeus, Against Heresies
Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care
Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
Augustine, City of God
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Ignatius Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises
Blaise Pascal, Pensees
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Bonaventure, The Souls Journey into God/The Tree of Life/The Life of St. Francis
John of the Cross, The Collected Works
Soren Kiekegaard, Purity of Heart
Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics
Hans Urs Von Bathasar, The Glory of the Lord
Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theological

Good Books to Reshape the Imagination

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov/Crime & Punishment/The Idiot
David James Duncan, The Brothers K/The River Why
George Elliot, Middlemarch
George Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest
George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin
Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces/The Chronicles of Narnia
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy)
Sigrid Undset, Kristen Lavransdatter
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose/Crossing to Safety
Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
Susan Howatch, Glittering Images
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Flannery O’Connor, Everything that Rises Must Converge
Chaim Potock, The Chosen/My Name is Asher Lev/The Gift of Asher Lev/The Promise
Leaf Enger, Peace Like a River
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
Frederick Buechner, Godric
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Illych
Tony Morrison, Beloved
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
Shusako Endo, Silence
Kathleen Norris, Dakota
Walker Percy, The Second Coming
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Ivan Doig, This House of Sky
Walter Wangerin, The Book of the Dun Cow
Anne Tyler, Saint Maybe
William Shakespeare, anything
Victor Hugo, Les Miserable
Forrest Carter, Education of Little Tree

Poetry

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Poems
Dante, The Divine Comedy
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Richard Wilbur, Poems
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems    
George Herbert, The Temple
John Donne, The Holy Sonnets
Luci Shaw, A Widening Light
Czeslaw Milosz, The Collected Poems
T.S. Elliot, The Four Quartets/The Wasteland
Wendell Berry, The Timbered Choir
Seamus Heaney, The Collected Poems
Raymond Carver, A New Path to the Waterfall
Garrison Keillor, ed., Good Poems

Prayer

The Psalms, (The Bible)
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer
P.T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer
Frederic von Hugel, The Life of Prayer
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, I am an Impure Thinker     
Friedrich Heiler, Prayer: A study in the History and Psychology of Religion
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
Jacques Ellul, Prayer and Modern Man
Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Prayer
Steven Chase, The Tree of Life
James M. Houston, The Transforming Friendship
Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Hearts True Home
The Book of Common Worship
John Bailie, A Diary of Private Prayer
David Adam, The Edge of Glory: Prayers in the Celtic Tradition
John Oliver Nelson, ed., The Student Prayerbook
Ben Patterson, Deepening Your Conversation with God
Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind Fresh Fire
Wesley L. Duewel, Mighty Prevailing Prayer

Spiritual Theology

Martin Thornton, Pastoral Theology: Reorientation
Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places/ Eat This Book
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Spiritual Care
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
Benedict, The Rule
Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Christian Character
Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life
Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man/The Prophets

Spiritual Direction & Disciplines

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath
P.T. Forsyth, The Cure of Souls
Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship
Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life/Letters of Spiritual Direction
Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction/Seven Story Mountain
Keith Anderson, Spiritual Mentoring
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu
Martin Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being
Eugene Peterson, Under The Unpredictable Plant/Five Smooth Stones/Subversive Spirituality/Working the Angles/The Contemplative Pastor
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey, Now and Then, and Telling Secrets
A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God and Knowledge of the Holy
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos
Dorothy Day, The Long Lonliness
Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines
J.I. Packer and Loren Wilkinson, eds., Alive to God: Studies in Spirituality
Basil M. Pennington, Lectio Divine: Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying Scripture

Worship

James Torrance, Worship Community and the Triune God of Grace
Evelyn Underhill, Worship
Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down/A Royal Waste of Time
Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone to Talk
J.G. Davies, Westminster Dictionary of Worship
Robert Weber, Ancient Future Faith
Sally Morgenthaler, Worship Evangelism
James F. White, An Introduction to Christian Worship
Don E. Saliers, Worship & Spirituality
Edward Folwy, From Age to Age
Frank Senn, Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical
James 0’Connor, The Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist
Tim Dearborn and Scott Coil, Worship At the Next Level: insight from contemporary voices           

Mission & Evangelism

Stanley Hauerwas  & William Willimon, Resident Aliens
Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community
James Davidson Hunger, Cultural Wars
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian
David Bosch, Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture
David Bosch, Transforming Mission: paradigm Shifts in Theology and Mission
Darrell Guder, Missional Church: Toward an Ecclesial Christian Ethic
George Hunsberger & Craig Van Gelder, The Church Between Gospel and Culture
Patrick R. Keifert, Welcoming the Stranger: A Public Theology of Worship and Evangelism
Robert Weber, Liturgical Evangelism
Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave If Freedom, Justice and Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas.
Norman Kraus, The Community of the Spirit: How the Church Is in the World
Sherwood Lingenfelter & Marvin Mayers, Ministering Cross-Culturally: an Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus
Charles VanEngen, Mission on the Way: issues in Modern Theology
Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church
Hippolytus, The Treatise on the “Apostolic Tradition.”

Vocation

Richard Bolle, How to Find your Mission in Life
Robert Coles  & Brian Mahan, Forgetting Ourselves On Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition
Craig Dykstra, Growing into the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practice
Gill Farnham & Ward McLean, Listening Hearts: Discerning Call in Community
Os Guiness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life
Steven Garber, The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior During the University Years.
Gregory L. Jones and Stephanie Paulsell, ed., The Scope of Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher.
Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning , Purpose, and Faith.
Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living.
Mark Schwen, Exiles in Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America
Gerald Sittser, The Will of God as a Way of Life

Trygve’s Interests

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?...A book must be like an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.”
- Franz Kafka

Preaching

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine
Karl Barth, Homiletic
Fred Craddock, As One Without Authority
Frederic Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale
P.T. Forysth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind
John A. Broadus, On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons
Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet
Walter Ong, Orality & Literacy
Richard Eslinger, The Web of Preaching
Richard Jensen, Thinking in Story
C.H. Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students
Robert Jacks, Getting the Word Across
Richard Lischer, The Company of Preachers
Thomas Long, Preaching the Literary Forms of the Bible//The Witness of Preaching
Henry Mitchell, Black Preaching: The Recovery of a Powerful Art
Eugene Lowry, The Homiletical Plot
Paul Scott Wilson, The Practice of Preaching
Michael J. Quicke, 360 Degree Preaching: Hearing, Speaking, and Living the Word
John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today
Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching
Thomas Long & Cornelius Plantinga Jr., A Chorus of Witnesses
Ronald J. Allen, Patterns of Preaching; A Sermon Sampler
Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life
William Willimon, Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized
Robert Farrar Capon, The Foolishness of Preaching

Theology & Imagination

Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination
E.J. Furlong, Imagination
Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination/Poetics of Imagining
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
Mary Warnock, Imagination
Paul Avis, God and the Creative Imagination
Ian Barbour, Myths, Models & Paradigms
Jeremy Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise
E. Bevan, Symbolism & Belief
Walter Brueggemann, The Bible and Postmodern Imagination
Garrett Green, Imagining God: Theology and the Religious Imagination
John MacIntyre, Faith, Theology and Imagination
Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred
J. Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language
Amos Wilder, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination
George MacDonald, “Imagination” from A Dish of Orts
Mary Warnack, Imagination

Culture & Theology

Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post Liberal Age
Hans-George Gadamer, Truth and Method
Charles Jencks, The Postmodern Reader
Graham Ward, The Postmodern God: A Theological Reader
Catherine H. Zuckert, Postmodern Plato’s: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida.
Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language
Lawrence Cahoone, ed., From Modernism to Postmodernism
Diogenes Allen, Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction
Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be.
Tom Beaudoin, Virtual Faith
Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion.
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change
Terry Eagleton, The Illusions of Postmodernism
Charles Lernert, ed., Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classical Readings
Stanley Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism
Millard J. Erickson, The Evangelical Left: Encountering Postconservative Evangelical Theology
Richard J. Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern World
Alister McGrath, A Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelism     
Thomas Oden, After Modernity…What?  Agenda for Theology?
Timothy Philips and Dennis Okholm, Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World
Leonard Sweet, Faith Quakers
Dave Tomlinson, The Post-Evangelical
David Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision

Other Resources

Sexuality Resources

“Hooking up:  Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus,” by Kathleen A. Bogle
Breaking through many misconceptions about casual sex on college campuses, Hooking Up is the first book to understand the new sexual culture on its own terms, with vivid real-life stories of young men and women as they navigate the newest sexual revolution.

“Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity,” by Lauren F. Winner
Lauren Winner speaks candidly to single Christians about the difficulty—and the importance—of sexual chastity. With nuance and wit, she talks about her own sexual journey. 

“Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America’s College Campuses,” by Donna Freitas
Based on dozens of face-to-face interviews, Sex and the Soul explores the sexual and spiritual lives of today’s college students to find out what students had to say about these highly personal subjects. 

“Sex God,” by Rob Bell
God and sex go together.  You can’t separate the two, says Rob Bell, because this physical world is intimately linked to deeper spiritual realities.  And so, in order to make sense of sexuality, at some point you have to talk about God.  With beauty and unusual insight, Sex God explores this connection.

Alcohol and Substance Abuse Resources

Substance Abuse Awareness Group :A student-run support and accountability group. Meets every Tuesday from 11:00-11:30am and every Thursday from 7:00-7:30pm at the DeWitt Counseling Center. For more information, contact Jon Zita at jonathan.zita@hope.edu or Vanessa Claus at vanessa.claus@hope.edu.

Alcohol Education Group: A group that provides helpful information about the impact of alcohol and other substances while giving support to make healthy lifestyle choices. This group is led by Ziyah Dock, Hope College Counseling Center and who is also a Certified Addiction Counselor. Will meet for four sessions on Thursdays from 11am-12noon at TBD location. For more information contact the Counseling Center at ext. 7945 or email dock@hope.edu.

Bridge to Life Recovery of Evergreen Ministries:A group that uses a 12-step approach to help people with their hurts, habits, and hang-ups. Meets Sunday nights from 7:30-8:40pm at Evergreen Ministries. For more information, contact Tom Kragt at tom@egm.org or call 616.669.7700.

http://www.hope.edu/student/residential/youcount/