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Speaking Our Truth Without Shaming Those Who Don’t See It: The Soul of Shame

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Lee Hinson-Hasty is curating a series identifying books that Presbyterian leaders are reading now that inform their ministry and work. Why are these texts relevant today? How might they bring us into God’s future? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Linda Kay Klein

One of the most meaningful influences on my ministry and work today is Dr. Curt Thompson’s The Soul of Shame — a Bible-based exegesis of shame authored by a psychologist most comfortable in the intersection between interpersonal neurobiology and Christian spirituality.

At a time of tremendous national division, I wonder if some of us have become too comfortable with the notion that we and our kind are “right” and “good,” while others are “wrong” and “bad.” For example, I recently heard a pastor say that she would not speak with anyone from “the other side” unless they first admitted to her that they were a bad person. The room full of similarly-politically-minded pastors and other religious leaders mmhmm’d in agreement.

I am uneasy with how easy shaming has become among us. And I fear that, if left unchecked, it will continue to lead us down a very destructive path.

After all, that’s just what shame does.

Let’s pause for a moment and talk about what shame — or what Thompson calls “the primarily tool that evil leverages, out of which emerges everything that we would call sin” (page 22) — actually is, and how it affects us. From a research perspective, shame is different from guilt, humiliation, embarrassment or any of the other words we tend to lump together.

For example, researchers consider guilt the feeling “I have done something bad,” and shame the feeling “I am something bad.” The effects of these two neuropsychological states on people’s lives could not be more different. Whereas guilt makes us reach out to people and connect in an effort to repair relationships, shame inspires us to disconnect — perhaps we withdraw, lash out (either at ourselves or others) or hide.

It is important to name and fight for what we see as right, and against what we see as wrong. But when we engage in shaming — dehumanizing others by declaring them, rather than their positions or actions, to be wrong or bad — we create what Thompson refers to as “states of aloneness within us and between us, and most substantially between us and God” (page 54).

It is the disconnection that shame and shaming engenders within and among us that causes Thompson to refer to shame as “the emotional weapon that evil uses to (1) corrupt our relationships with God and each other, and (2) disintegrate any and all gifts of vocational vision and creativity” (page 13).

For communities that are, like me, trying to find ways to unapologetically speak and fight for our truths while honoring the humanity of those who disagree with us, Thompson’s book is a resource. He presents meaningfully about the nature of shame, which can help us understand the dangers of shaming, and offers Biblical tools for growth and healing. Thompson’s review of Biblical stories through the lens of shame also makes it a particularly strong tool for those interested in offering sermons and Bible studies on the subject.


Linda Kay Klein blends research and stories to expose unseen social problems and devise potential solutions. Her current project centers around the developmental effects of purity-based religious sexuality education programs on the lives of girls as they grow into adulthood. Formerly, Linda was the founding director of the Work on Purpose program at Echoing Green, a social entrepreneurship accelerator best known for helping launch Teach For America, the Freelancers Union, City Year, and over 600 other ground-breaking social change organizations.

Bonhoeffer Biography Espouses Transforming “The Proud and Hateful” into Love

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Lee Hinson-Hasty is curating a series identifying books that Presbyterian leaders are reading now that inform their ministry and work. Why are these texts relevant today? How might they bring us into God’s future? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Ken Kovacs

One book that is providing theological perspective and inspiration in these days is Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

For some time now, I’ve been interested in the experience of the Confessing Church, the resistance movement (from 1933 to 1945) within German Protestantism against the policies of the Third Reich. Marsh’s remarkable biography of Bonhoeffer, who was an active member of the Confessing Church, provides a fascinating window into the emergence, objectives, activities, struggles, and many disappointments of the movement.

Most striking is the way Marsh charts the changes in Bonhoeffer’s own theology, as he internally wrestles with and actively engages the demonic principalities and powers of National Socialism. Bonhoeffer’s activism and call to resistance were in response to, “The absurd, perpetual state of being thrown back upon the invisible God” (156), as he put it, to renewed Christological commitments, as well as a new interest in the centrality of prayer, worship, and life in community. “And the church,” Bonhoeffer said, “that calls a people to belief in Christ must itself be, in the midst of that people, the burning fire of love, the nucleus of reconciliation, the source of the fire in which all hate is consumed, and the proud and hateful are transformed into the loving” (204).

While it is false (I hope) to say that the present climate in the U.S. is exactly parallel to what happened in Nazi Germany (though there are eerie similarities), the church can be informed by what happened then as it seeks to be faithful today. Bonhoeffer witnessed a swift increase in authoritarianism, xenophobia, aggression toward the feminine, populism, and the dangerous conflation of religion, politics, and belief in an illusory national myth.

And, significantly, he soon realized that the church, along with its theological faculties in German universities, were theologically weak and ill equipped to withstand the collective force of what was happening around and in them. The Barmen Declaration, for example, expressed potential political resistance, but was largely ineffective and didn’t constitute real resistance. (Some of the Confessing Church members at Barmen were also members of the Nazi Party.)

Marsh maintains that, “[D]ogmatic proclamation would never be enough” for Bonhoeffer, because “every confession of Christ as Lord must bear concretely on the immediate work of peace. Obedience could not be separated from confession. The kingdom of heaven does not suffer lip service” (225). These are challenging words for all of us, especially for pastors and preachers.


Ken Kovacs has served as pastor of the Catonsville Presbyterian Church, Catonsville, Maryland, since 1999. Catonsville, situated in Baltimore County, borders Baltimore City to the east and the wealthy suburbs of Howard County to the west. As a result, their ministry reflects the experiences and needs of an economically-socially-politically-racially diverse demographic. Ken’s academic work is in practical theology, which explored the relationality of the Holy Spirit and the human spirit.

“Spirit in the Dark” Examines the Boundaries of Religious Life

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Lee Hinson-Hasty is curating a series identifying books that Presbyterian leaders are reading now that inform their ministry and work. Why are these texts relevant today? How might they bring us into God’s future? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Derrick McQueen

The book that is providing theological perspective and inspiration for me these days is Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics by Josef Sorett. It is a work that examines the African-American cultural movements and their artistic offspring. From the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920’s through the Black Arts movement, Dr. Sorett examines the pervasive effect religion plays on these commonly seen as secular literary visions. This work is exciting because it puts religion in conversation with the secular and in doing so allows the church/religion to erase the divide between what is inside and what is outside of the church walls, or the boundaries of religious life.

Spirit in the Dark does not attempt to answer the question, “How does the church make itself relevant in the secular world?” It lays claim to the ways in which the division between the sacred and the secular is an artificial one. In fact, it sees the religious as an integral ingredient in the African-American literary tradition.

Church book study group leaders will find this book extremely helpful in training the eyes and ears to the religious undercurrents in the secular literary tradition. As Dr. Sorett’s work deals with the African-American experience, the culminating lessons are also applicable or at least adaptable for many different communities. It is just that in Spirit in the Dark, Sorett’s impressive research makes clear that the African-American experience is one that able to be clearly defined and claimed as such in this rich tapestry of literary tradition and can serve as a model to other communities.

Specifically, it frees the preacher up to understand that the literary resource of the African-American literary tradition is ripe for bringing in texts to be in conversation with the Bible and the community. It also provides a way for preachers and pastors to parse culture without giving in to the demand to “do something new to fill the pews” by watering down the theological foundations upon which their churches and communities are built. This is an important book and readers will definitely find their own jewels within.


Rev. Derrick McQueen, Ph.D., serves as Assistant Director for The Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice (CARSS) at Columbia University. He is also serving as pastor to St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, N.Y., and is an adjunct professor of Worship and Preaching at Lancaster Theological Seminary. Derrick has been actively involved in work for LGBTQ inclusion in churches and society, facilitating dialogues and serving on the boards of such organizations as Presbyterian Welcome, That All May Freely Serve, More Light Presbyterians and Auburn Seminary. Recently he served as the Moderator of the Presbytery of New York City.

Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman “Sheds a Little Light”

by Lee Hinson-Hasty

Eighty years ago (1937) this month, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. published a poem by the Rev. Howard Thurman, an African American Baptist minister, professor of theology, and dean of the chapel at Howard University. The title of the poem was “O God, I Need Thee.” Thurman poetically describes our need of God’s sense for time, order, and future.

This month, the NEXT Church blog will help us all investigate God’s timing, order, and future by recommending and reviewing books that shed a little light on what is happening all around and within us in these seemingly chaotic days of 2017. The inspiration for this phrase, “shed a little light,” comes from James Taylor’s song, “Shed a Little Light.” You can watch a video of it being performed by the Lowcountry SC Voices in Columbia here.

Lent, if nothing else, is a time for reflection on what has been and living toward what is possible with God’s help. We die to our old selves as we pray to rise to newness of life in fullest form.

Thurman published Meditations of the Heart in 1953, the second in a volume of meditations that were originally written for personal and congregational use at Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco where he served as co-pastor with Alfred G. Fisk, a Presbyterian minister, and professor of philosophy from 1944-1953. Both were deeply concerned about building bridges of understanding among varied races, cultures, and faiths.

The purpose of these meditations is, as Thurman puts it, “to focus the mind and the heart upon God as the Eternal Source and Goal of life.” The meditations in this 210-page book are chock full of insight, centering prayer, and nourishment for the journey. For me, all three are needed in these days as they were for his congregation in the 1940’s and ’50’s. Meditations are the type of sustenance that fed civil rights leaders including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,. who was, in many ways, mentored by Thurman.

Mentoring voices from around the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and beyond will follow this post throughout the coming weeks, each from various walks of life and ministry contexts including those leading theological schools, congregations, presbyteries, the General Assembly, and non-profit organizations. Each will identify their context for ministry and call, a book they recommend, what the book is about, and why they believe it is critical reading today. My prayer is that these will become timely and descriptive “meditations of the heart,” so to speak, for a holy pilgrimage into God’s imagined future: the NEXT Church.

My sincere hope is that these posts will also provide a foundational backdrop for the conversations many of us will be having at the 2017 National Gathering on Well-Being in a Thirsty World.


I am Lee Hinson-Hasty and my call to ministry centers on vocation of leaders in the church and the world. I am always curious about how we find what Thomas Merton described as “our true selves.” Discerning vocation is, I believe, a personal, spiritual, religious, and theological journey, and, for Reformed Christians, it is a communal process. Vocation discerned becomes educational and, ultimately, economic in a particular social context. As a resource and advocate for theological education in the PC(USA) for more than a decade, I find my current call as Senior Director of Theological Education Funds Development at the Presbyterian Foundation provides me the best opportunity I know to invite and embolden others to used their gifts to glorify God in ways that will empower leaders of Christ’s Church by supporting future ministers. I pray regularly with James Taylor and others that we will all “Recognize there are ties between us… ties of hope and love, sister and brotherhood. …. We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead. We are bound and we are bound.”

A Lenten Book List

This book list was compiled during our Lent/Easter planning Church Leader’s Roundtable on January 10, 2017. We hope you will find these resources to be fruitful for prayers, liturgy, sermon inspiration and more.

A Pilgrim People: Learning Through the Church Year — John H. Westerhoff

Stages on the Way — Wild Goose Worship Group

The Awkward Season: Prayers for Lent — Pamela Hawkins

God is on the Cross — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Forgiveness: A Lenten Study — Majorie J. Thompson

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World — Brian D. McLaren

Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles our Judgment — Rowan Williams

Lectionary Liturgy — Thom Shuman (there are several options based on the Revised Common Lectionary Year)

Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self — Richard Rohr

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life — Richard Rohr

Building Community Across Divides: A Book List

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. In November, Don Meeks and Jeff Krehbiel curated “Can We Talk?”, a modest attempt at an uncommonly gracious conversation among colleagues who differ on matters of conscience. Can we bridge the theological differences that divide us? Can we even talk about them? Can we affirm the best in each other’s theological tradition while honestly confessing the weaknesses of our own? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

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We asked our contributing authors this month to tell us what they are reading or have read that has helped them in the work of building community across divides. Here’s what they said:

Jodi Craiglow

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, Andy Crouch
“I recommend this book probably five times as often as I recommend all other books — combined. Crouch’s main argument is simple but profound: We can’t change culture by critiquing it. We can only change culture by creating
more of it.”

Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf
“Easily (and simultaneously) the most beautiful and the most challenging book I’ve ever read. Volf argues that we can only truly experience reconciliation when we embrace “the other,” bringing them into our lives in the same way that we’ve been embraced by God.”

Roy Howard

Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World by Larry Hurtado
“This is a clearly written book of Christian history that has implications for the church of our time under a different empire and seeking a distinctive identity as Christians that will resist the idolatries of the culture and more than resistance, offer a compelling alternative. Our ancestors in the faith have frequently had to face similar challenges as we do.”

The Revelatory Body: Theology as Inductive Art by Luke Timothy Johnson
“This book explores theology through the experiences of the body: the dying body, the aging body, the sexual body, the body in play and the body at work. It’s a compelling argument by a New Testament scholar that scripture itself is a response to the experience of God in the body, and hence we should pay attention to the body for signs of God’s presence among us.”

Joe Duffus

City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Michael Gerson with Peter Wehner
“This looks like a fitting start for traditional or evangelical Christians to consider in light of changes in our culture and the sharp decline of civility in discussion.”

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
“This book tells the stories of various people whose lives were ruined by Internet ‘mobs’ that reacted to things those people said on social media. He wrote a long article based on the book for the New York Times a while back that I keep coming back to, because of what it says about how people’s online behavior has become so much more impulsive, vicious and bombastic than anything they might do face-to-face.”

Don Meeks

Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who are Tired of Taking Sides by Scott Sauls
From Amazon: “Whether the issue of the day on Twitter, Facebook, or cable news is our sexuality, political divides, or the perceived conflict between faith and science, today’s media pushes each one of us into a frustrating clash between two opposing sides. Polarizing, us-against-them discussions divide us and distract us from thinking clearly and communicating lovingly with others. Scott Sauls, like many of us, is weary of the bickering and is seeking a way of truth and beauty through the conflicts. Jesus Outside the Lines presents Jesus as this way. Scott shows us how the words and actions of Jesus reveal a response that does not perpetuate the destructive fray. Jesus offers us a way forward – away from harshness, caricatures and stereotypes. In Jesus Outside the Lines, you will experience a fresh perspective of Jesus, who will not (and should not) fit into the sides.”

Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew by Charles D. Drew
From Amazon: “Can Christians be political activists without hating those who disagree? As the next presidential election comes into view, Americans are deciding where to stand on the key issues. The church has often been as politically divided as the culture, leading many Christians to withdraw from politics or to declare alliances prematurely. But Charles Drew offers an alternative for people who care deeply about their faith and about the church’s corporate calling in the world. In this updated and revised version of A Public Faith (NavPress 2000), Drew helps Christians to develop practical biblical convictions about critical social and political issues. Carefully distinguishing between moral principle and political strategy, Body Broken equips believers to build their political activism upon a thoughtful and biblical foundation. This balanced approach will provide readers Democrats, Republicans, or Independents with a solid biblical foundation for decision making. Drew even helps Christians of all political persuasions to understand how they can practice servanthood, cooperation and integrity in today’s public square. With questions at the end of each chapter to help readers explore and apply principles, Body Broken will train believers to actively engage with political issues while standing united as a church.”

The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones
From Amazon: “Drawing on more than four decades of polling data, The End of White Christian America explains and analyzes the waning vitality of white Christian America. Jones argues that the visceral nature of today’s most heated issues—the vociferous arguments around same-sex marriage and religious liberty, the rise of the Tea Party following the election of our first black president, and stark disagreements between black and white Americans over the fairness of the criminal justice system—can only be understood against the backdrop of white Christians’ anxieties as America’s racial and religious topography shifts around them.”

Jessica Tate

Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart by Christena Cleveland
“This is a book that takes our all-too-common labels of one another as ‘right Christians’ and ‘wrong Christians,’ explores the sociology behind our division, and reminds us that Jesus commands us to love our neighbors (all of them), just as he did — relentlessly.”

The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s War of Words by Deborah Tannen
“Written in 1998, this one is starting to show some age, but continues to be a helpful book as it traces today’s public discourse (or lack thereof). While it is a linguistic perspective, not a theological one, Tannen opens by saying, ‘This is not another book about civility…. Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention — an argument culture.'”

Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation by John Carlin
“This book paints the picture of Nelson Mandela’s consistent and persistent work to humanize white Afrikaners and black South Africans to one another through the winning of their hearts in a united force behind the rugby team – the Springboks. It’s a compelling story of playing the long game, refusing to demonize, and seeking to find the image of God in every person. I read it as a parable.”

Quinn Fox

The Road to Character by David Brooks
“One of the leading public intellectuals of our day, Brooks challenges readers to focus on the deeper values that should inform our lives—by striving to shift the focus of our living away from the ‘résumé virtues’—achieving wealth, fame and status—toward the ‘eulogy virtues’—those character traits that are worthy of being at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty and faithfulness.”

To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter
“To change hearts and minds has been the goal of modern Christians seeking to correct a culture deemed fallen and morally lax. Hunter (author of Culture Wars) finds this approach pervasive among Christians of all stripes and in every case deeply flawed, to the point of undermining the message of the very gospel they cherish and desire to advance. After charting the history of Christian assumptions and efforts to change culture, Hunter investigates the nature of power and politics in Christian life and thought, and then proposes an alternative: what he calls the practice of faithful presence, rooted not in a desire to change the world… but rather in a desire to honor the creator of all goodness, beauty, and truth.”

Living with Difference: How to Build Community in a Divided World by Adam B. Seligman, Rahel R. Wasserfall, and David W. Montgomery
“Written by a team of scholars who specialize in helping communities engage with difference, this book explores the challenges and necessities of accommodating difference, however difficult and uncomfortable such accommodation may be. The authors are part of an organization that has worked internationally with community leaders, activists, and other partners to take the insights of anthropology out of the classroom and into the world. Rather than addressing conflict by emphasizing what is shared, Living with Difference argues for the centrality of difference in creating community, seeking ways not to overcome or deny differences but to live with and within them in a self-reflective space and practice.”

Thinking Creatively About Living in Transition

Each month, we post a series of blogs around a common topic. This month, Jan Nolting Carter is curating a mosaic of perspectives on the art of transitional ministry. How do we work with people and systems in the midst of change? What does transitional ministry look like inside and outside of the church? We invite you to join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!

by Robin Currás

When I was a young mother, I spent a good part of one summer’s vacation lakeside, in Vermont, blissfully writing “my novel.” When I write, I lose track of time, forget to eat, and emerge from this euphoria only with the sound of human alarm: “What’s for dinner?” or “Where are the kids? Alive, I hope.” On that particular vacation, my husband, tired of being ignored, finally tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hello?! We’re here to spend time together as a family.” He was right, and I made the decision to focus on my family. The problem is that when I returned home, I could not figure out how to be a full-time pastor, mother, and wife, and still carve out time to write. Preaching, crafting worship, and writing children’s plays sustained me.

lake-transitionalOn July 31, 2015, I stepped down from a seventeen-year call. My it-took-me-a-while-to-figure-out-and-accept next call was/is to be more present to my family and more specifically to my two teenagers who have to navigate the choppy waters of modern adolescence. For the first time in my adult life, I am not receiving a paycheck. Cue: identity crisis. But with crisis comes opportunity. I have a room of my own to write (Think Virginia Woolf.) and to ask the questions—Who am I? What do I love to do? What do I want to be when I grow up?—and to pray, “Lord, I’m listening,” all at the same time. I am being present to myself with the Holy Spirit as my constant companion.

Two books have found their way to my nightstand: one is Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward about the second half of life and becoming who you truly are, and the other is about leading change by C. Otto Scharmer entitled Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. Scharmer invites us to dive deeply into ourselves and be present with the source of our creativity in order to envision our future. It’s a different approach than other change theories (Think Heifetz–adaptive, Cooperrider–appreciative, Kegan—competing values, or Bridges—transition). Here, we have “presencing.”

I am thrilled and consider myself blessed to have this time and space to explore, listen, create, experiment, wonder, dream, and ask, “Who or what is the fullest expression of who God created me to be?” Scharmer recommends morning meditations or, in my language, dwelling in the Spirit. Another spiritual practice that I find helpful is Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages” from The Artist’s Way. She recommends writing three pages in the morning to start the day “to help you retrieve your creativity.” (Google it.) I find my three pages are often a conversation with God—some days are more profound or likewise mundane than others. (“Lord, I need to go grow grocery shopping sometime. We are out of milk. But I also want to work on my play, and exercise, and then there’s the basement. And what about dismantling racism?” I know my mind is not the only one that works this way.)

My prayer for my former church is that they are asking themselves similar identity questions. Who are they? Who are they without me? And, who, what, where are they called to be? I hope they are taking advantage of this time-between to ask the deeper questions and to wonder what is the fullest expression of who they were created to be as a church? It can be, and I hope it is, a creative time, a blessed time of communion with God to ask essential questions and discern together what is the Spirit’s will for their life together. And I hope they don’t rush it, which may be key. You know, the push to get to the next installed pastor without taking the time to seriously consider where God is leading. And then there’s the transitional pastors who get itchy after a certain period of time. And there’s me who wants absolutely clarity yesterday.

In times of transition, we have, both personally and collectively, an opportunity to reexamine, dive deep, change course, and reaffirm or reenergize oneself for ministry, to connect to The Source of Our Creativity. (And in my case, time to write!)

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Perigee, 1992. Print.

Rohr, Richard. Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011. Print.

Scharmer, Claus Otto, and Peter M. Senge. Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges: The Social Technology of Presencing. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2009. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1957. Print.


robin-currasRobin Miller Currás has 20+ years experience as a PCUSA pastor, with a majority of those years working in interdenominational settings. She has experience in adaptive leadership, family systems, transitional ministry, mediation and conflict management, New Beginnings mission studies, New Church Development, and missional church dynamics. She is a coach trainee in an International Coach Federation accredited program through Auburn Theological Seminary. Robin is mom to Ben and Eve, and wife to Carlos.  

What is the NEXT Church Reading?

by MaryAnn McKibben Dana

Happy March! This month on the blog we will be featuring reflections from our 2016 National Gathering. Watch this space for thoughts from a wide variety of folks, especially around the question, What “stuck”? What ideas, speakers, workshops or worship services are continuing to work on your heart as you envision “the church that is becoming?” We’ll be hearing from ruling elders, teaching elders, seminarians, and more.

We start with a list of books and blogs collected during our authors’ lunch, in which writers and book-lovers came together on Tuesday to share favorite books, websites, and other resources. What is the NEXT Church reading? What is the NEXT Church writing? Here are a few answers, in the order they were shared. Bold items are books written by NEXT attendees and leaders.

A list like this one is by nature incomplete, even inadequate. What would you add?
  • Aric Clark, et al — Never Pray Again
  • Martha Spong, editor — There’s a Woman in the Pulpit
  • Denise Anderson — Soula Scriptura blog
  • Kathleen O’Toole — Meanwhile (poetry)
  • Andy Weir — The Martian
  • Mark Douglas — Confessing Christ in the 21st Century, Believing Aloud: Reflections on Being Religious in the Public Square
  • Christian Wiman — My Bright Abyss
  • Ta-Nahesi Coates — Between the World and Me
  • Marilynne Robinson — The Givenness of Things
  • @ This Point — journal from Columbia Seminary, theological investigations in church and culture
  • Adam Copeland, editor — Kissing in the Chapel, Praying in the Frat House: Wrestling with Faith and College, Stewardship Made Whole (forthcoming)
  • Jenny Lawson — Let’s Pretend This Never Happened
  • Mark Davis — Left Behind and Loving It
  • MaryAnn McKibben Dana — Sabbath in the Suburbs, Improvising with God (forthcoming), theblueroomblog.org 
  • Theresa Latini —Transforming Church Conflict
  • Jennifer Harvey — Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity Series)
  • Scott Dannemiller — The Year without a Purchase (blog: Accidental Missionary)
  • Fredrik Backman — A Man Called Ove
  • Lynn Miller — The Power of Enough
  • Samuel Wells — Nazareth Manifesto
  • Charles Freeman — blog: Way More Important Than That (A blog on where faith and sports intersect … or don’t …)
  • Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru — League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth
  • Diane Roberts — Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America
  • Jessica Vazquez-Torres, contributor — Church Responds to Racism 
  • William B. Sweetser Jr. — A Copious Fountain: A History of Union Presbyterian Seminary, 1812-2012
  • Atul Gawande — Being Mortal
  • Diana Butler Bass — Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution
  • Ian Haney López— Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
  • Amanda Palmer — The Art of Asking
  • Stephen King — On Writing

mamd profile picMaryAnn McKibben Dana is a teaching elder in the PC(USA) whose ministry consists of writing, speaking, and freelance writing/consulting with non-profit organizations on their social media needs. She is a member of the NEXT Church Strategy Team. Connect with her at her website, The Blue Room.

Paracletos Reading List

Brownson, James V. et al: Storm Front: The Good News of God. Eerdmans 2003

Butler Bass, Diana: Christianity After Religion. Harper One 2012

Hudson, Jill M.: When Better Isn’t Enough: Evaluation Tools for the 21st Century Church. Alban 2004

Kitchens, Jim: The Postmodern Parish: New Ministry for a New Era. Alban 2003

Mancini, Will: Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement. Jossey-Bass 2008

Merritt, Carol Howard: Reframing Hope: Vital Ministry in a New Generation. Alban 2010

Rendle, Gil: The Multigenerational Congregation: Meeting the Leadership Challenge. Alban 2002

Whitsett, Landon: Open Source Church: Making Room for the Wisdom of All. Alban 2011

Essential Reading for the NEXT Church

A theological memoir. A scriptural guide to community organizing. A collection of stories and reflections from young clergy women. A cheeky look at the end times. These are just a few of the books featured at our two Author Luncheons during the 2013 NEXT National Gathering in Charlotte. During the lunch, authors shared a few words about their books, then we opened the floor for suggestions of books, blogs and resources that others have found helpful in engaging the church that is becoming. What is the NEXT Church reading? What is the NEXT Church writing? Here are a few answers. A list like this one is by nature incomplete, even inadequate. What would you add?

Books Featured at NEXT Left Behind and Loving It: A Cheeky Look at the End Times, Mark Davis Reflecting with Scripture on Community Organizing, Jeff Krehbiel Bless Her Heart: Life as a Young Clergy Woman, Ashley-Anne Masters and Stacy Smith Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time, MaryAnn McKibben Dana Church and Stage: Producing Theatre for Education, Praxis, Outreach and Fundraising, Dean Seal The Benefit of the Doubt, Frank Spencer (coming soon to Amazon) Take My Hand: A Theological Memoir, Andrew Taylor-Troutman Imagining the Small Church: Celebrating a Simpler Path, Steve Willis

Other Books Recommended by NEXT Church Conferees Einstein’s God: Conversations about God and the Human Spirit, Krista Tippett Geography of God: Exploring the Christian Journey, Michael Lindvall Effective Organizing for Congregational Renewal, Mike Gecan Putting Away Childish Things: A Novel of Modern Faith, Marcus Borg When Spiritual But Not Religious Is Not Enough, Lillian Daniel Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers, Gary Neal Hansen

Blogs and Websites (in no particular order) Mustard Seed Journal, Mary Harris Todd 1001 Hints for Youth Ministry, Kent Smith The Pudgy Parson (Still) Going to Graceland RevGalBlogPals Glass Overflowing, Marci Auld Glass Painted Prayerbook, Jan Richardson A Church for Starving Artists, Jan Edmiston In the Meantime, David Lose The Blue Room, MaryAnn McKibben Dana Spirit in the House, Dean Seal and the Forgiveness 360 Project Inside Outed Tribal Church, Carol Howard Merritt

Resources for Writers CreateSpace: Amazon Publishing Wipf and Stock (publisher) Presbyterian Writers Guild Collegeville Institute (writing workshops and programs) Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, Michael Hyatt