5 Books to Read When Your Church Is Searching for Its Next Pastor

n Winn Collier’s novel, Love massive, Be properly: Letters to a Small-city Church (Eerdmans), an out-of-paintings pastor named Jonas McAnn forges a bond with a pastorless congregation thru a series of handwritten letters on faith, life, and the whole lot in between. CT asked Collier, a pastor and creator residing in Virginia, to pick out 5 books to read when your church is searching for its next pastor.

Jayber Crow, through Wendell Berry

i might argue that Jayber, the city barber, serves as Port William’s genuine pastor. He receives confessions, buries the dead, and welcomes the outcast. He enters the metropolis’s pains and joys, understanding them as his very own. In unexpected and clever methods, Jayber Crow models the type of pastor and church many of us need, despite the fact that we haven’t found out it.

One: solidarity in a Divided world, through Deidra Riggs

In any church, moments of transition—in which the destiny is unsure or visions diverge—are ripe for war. Deidra Riggs gives a smart word, reminding us that though “love is difficult . . . whatever continues me from loving my neighbor is in direct opposition to God’s preference.” in addition, Riggs offers a penetrating project, reminding us how the gospel’s name to harmony insists upon repentance and racial reconciliation. If a church is assessing its hopes and priorities for the years in advance, what better time to take a extreme study chronic divisions in Christ’s frame?

A Prayer magazine, via Flannery O’Connor

If prayer does now not gasoline all the church does, then we've got misplaced our manner. O’Connor’s adorable magazine of petitions, written while she was cementing her earnest preference to live in deserted devotion to God, are vibrant and human. She scribbles down her questions, boredom, goals, and theological wrangling. This line stops me quick: “I do no longer wish to presume. I want to like.” What if we stopped presuming our plans and agendas for our church, and in simplicity and religion sought out the God of affection?

The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the art of non secular path, by using Eugene Peterson

some thing type of pastor a church may additionally want (charismatic persona, visionary leader, bold activist), Peterson reminds us of what we need maximum: a pastor immersed both in God’s lifestyles and our lives. For Peterson, the foremost query on a pastor’s mind need to be: “who are those unique people and the way am i able to be with them in the sort of way that they could come to be what God is making them?”

The Jubilee: Poems, by means of John Blase

they are saying that each time stress rises, creativity is the first issue to go. maybe this is why poetry frequently receives overlooked. but we want poetry. Blase has written a marvelous collection packed with existence, with God, with friendship and loss, hope and melancholy, love and regret. If a search team study one poem at the begin of each assembly, it would pass hearts in unexpected approaches.

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