I don't exactly recall where I came across this book (edit: it was Wilson Cochrane who recommended it to me), but I bumped into it earlier in 2022 and I just recently picked it up to read it through. It was fantastic, I'm so glad I did.

This book is essentially an exposition on the last 250 years of philosophical development in western culture. Starting with the romantics, making his way through Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin, continuing through Freud, and making his way into the countercultural 1960s and beyond (with. many other omitted from this list along the way), Trueman traces the layer-upon-layer of development of our understanding of the self that eventually culminated in the present moment with its current view of the self, and how sexuality and sexual expression is understood as a central facet of who we are. Trueman shows that the present moment and its conversations about sexual ethics are the natural culmination of the idea of the "theraputic self" and what it means when any sense of external authority to the world is removed from the ethical framework.

This was a dense read - it reads like an academic book on the history of philosophy - but it was a fantastic book. As someone who engages culture as a part of my pastoral vocation, I feel like I understand the intellectual underpinnings and trajectory of our culture's ethical imagination in a way I never did before. It also has all kinds of thoughts churning inside about how we can meaningfully engage said culture in dialogue.

I bumped into this book randomly at the library one day. I recognized the author because one of my favorite biographies is Isaacsons' Steve Jobs (admittedly as a creative visionary I find Steve Jobs incredibly interesting). On a whim I decided to snag the book and see if it would be a fun way to learn a bit more about the current state of Gene editing and vicarious experience the frontiers of science once again. I'm so glad I did!

Probably. most days that I read this book I found myself exclaiming to Brittany about how good a book it was and how much I was enjoying it. Isaacson's writing style is easy to read - even while unpacking somewhat technical scientific ideas - and his enthusiasm about this emerging field comes through clearly. It's a gripping story that weaves in and out of scientific discovery, entrepreneurial sprints, legal battles, ethical conundrums, and it runs smack into the Coronavirus and how gene editing played a role in diagnostics and vaccine development. The Code Breaker comes in at 481 pages, but it reads so well I hardly noticed!

I came across this book as a recommendation from Ken Fish. I recently recorded an episode on his podcast and afterwards he recommended that I check out this book and read it through. It was a bit older, but he suggested that some of what I was saying resonated with what Snyder offered as the trajectory of the church in our present day. The Problem of Wineskins is a prophetic challenge to dig deeper: to look beyond the Church-as-Institution that is still so prevalent in our models and methodology in our day and perceive the need to keep the wine (the fellowship of the Christian community), but let God introduce new wineskins (structures that help facilitate said fellowship).

I found this book really encouraging in that it confirmed a lot of the assessments I've made about how our present-day church models are increasingly not fitting this cultural moment and what it means to see the wine and the wineskins separately. The book does show it's age from time to time, but the prophetic challenge Snyder brings to the church feels relevant in our day as well.

I read this book as part of a theological mentoring program that I'm a part of, and I'm thrilled I did! I found this book incredibly interesting and enlightening to read. This book reads like a theological book (not for those not used to a level of academic reading), but it was well worth the effort.

Stronstad does a masterful job tying together Biblical threads from the Old Testament about the Spirit of God and showing how those threads run continuously through the Luke-Acts two-volume work. I found it really interesting and challenging. I don't think I understood why sometimes I've heard people say that Luke is the "theologian of the Spirit" before reading this book, but I get it now. I also found it really interesting that although Luke is the author who pens the most words of any in the New Testament, I've come across strikingly little conversation about his works. Compared with Paul or John, I found Luke was a gap in my study - and I suspect I'm not alone in that regard. This book helped me develop in a blind spot I didn't know I had.

I've listened to Mark Sayers in podcast form for a while and in general I've found his cultural analysis to be brilliant. I finally decided to pick up one of his books and give it a read. Fantastic stuff. In this book Sayers, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, grapples with the trajectory of culture in the west and what it means to be the Church in this era. He grapples with the idea of a "third culture" - the term he uses to describe post-Christianity as a culture and what it means to live as a counter cultural "creative minority" in an increasingly secular and anti-Jesus culture. Thought provoking and challenging stuff!

As I read Disappearing Church, I found myself grappling with the meaning behind cultural trends I've seen for quite a while, and I found that a really useful exercise. I also found myself wrestling at a deeper level with what it means to be a counterculture; something Sayers draws to the surface as a need for the Church to embrace. I also just really enjoyed it; it's well written and really thought-provoking.