Brennan Manning portrays an intimate and challenging portrait of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. Challenging the ideas of contemporary Christianity which embrace a consumeristic mindset, and instead embracing a life where the signature of Jesus is seen in every aspect of daily life. Brennan is one of the most important voices in the church crying out for the Bride of Christ to return to its first love and scorn anything else that gets in the way.

Blue like jazz is a book that rattled me when I first read it. I was a youth pastor at the time and it made me rethink the way that I did ministry and the way that I looked at faith. Miller is open and raw in his description of the Christian life and his journey of faith. This is an excellent book to begin the conversation about what faith looks like in a postmodern paradigm.

This is the best book on leadership that I have read. It is only four chapters long, but it gets right to the heart of what it means to be lead like Jesus. Nouwen uses Christ’s temptation in the desert to point out that all leaders are faced with the temptation to be relevant, popular or spectacular, and powerful, and how dangerous these can be. It is a book that brings you back to the basics.

Hinds Feet on High Places is a classic allegory about the (emergent) journey of faith. The story follows Much-Afraid as she journeys to the high places with the help of Master. This is such a great story because I love the metaphor of “the journey” in regards to our faith. A delightful read.

I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes every Sunday in the comics. I loved the adventures that Calvin would take with Hobbes and the nonsense they shared. Calvin was an introspective thinker, a time travler, an inventor, a spaceman, and a regular kid. Hobbes was a tiger.

Kimball gives practical ways of assisting those who desire to reach out to an emerging generation of postmodern thinkers. This is not a “how-to” book as much as it gives pastors and leaders insight into how the emerging church is developing and where it is going. Kimball offers his picture of a Vintage Faith.

My copy of Velvet Elvis is covered with highlighter and notes in the margins because this book is packed with good stuff. Bell encourages his readers to continue to reimagine faith, while always keeping the historical Jesus from scripture in mind. Bell challenges the idea that there is one perfect way to do church, and instead states that our idea of the church should always be evolving and emerging to meet the needs of the community around us.

Athanasius was a Christian bishop in the third Century who was a part of the council that wrote the Nicean Creed. His writings on the incarnation of Christ are just as relevant today as they were in 318 AD when he wrote them. Ahtanasius originally wrote it to counteract the heresy of Arianism, and provides good insight to the union between Jesus’ humanity and divinity. My dad has my copy of this book so I haven’t read it in a while.

Mclaren tells fictional story of a science teacher and a conservative pastor’s journey towards an enthusiastic embracing of postmodernism as applied to the Christian message. This book is a stepping ground for anyone interested in seeing how the postmodern mindset can coexist with the truth of Christianity. McLaren continues the story in, The Story We Find Ourselves In.

I read a few Ernest Hemingway books while I was in Europe and it reminds me of the romance of traveling the world. Hemingway is a gritty writer who portrays the beauty within the brokenness and pain of life.