So we really are trying to clear out some books.  Sold a box load at our local bookstore last weekend.  Gave away another box load this weekend at a grad student retreat.  So what is awaiting me when I get home?  You guessed it–two box loads of books from my good friends at InterVarsity Press!  Right back where I started.

Here are 10 that caught my attention:

1.  Troubled Minds:  Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission by Amy Simpson.  I have several friends dealing with loved ones facing mental illness.

2.  On a related theme is Restoring the Shattered Self:  A Christian Counselor’s Guide to Complex Trauma by Heather Davediuk Gingrich.  Once again, because I know people who have survived such traumas and carry the wounds of these.

3.  The next two address our digital world.  The first is Ministry in the Digital Age, by David T Bourgeois.  The cover mentions that we are in a “post-website” world.  Sigh!

4.  The second is a bit more profound.  Shaping a Digital World by Derek C Schuurman focuses on how the big narrative of creation, fall, and redemption might shape our use and development of digital technologies.

5.  The next book moves from shaping the digital world to shaping our brains.  The God-Shaped Brain by Timothy R Jennings, M.D. explores how our beliefs about God change our brains.  I have some neuroscience friends who might find that intriguing!

6.  While we are on the shaping theme, my good friend Robbie F Castleman has recently published a new book: Story Shaped Worship.  What she explores is how the narrative of scripture shaped a pattern of worship for Israel and the early church and what it means to have our worship today shaped by this timeless story.

7.  The Global Diffusion of Evangelicalism:  The Age of Billy Graham and John Stott by Brian Stanley is the latest volume in IVP’s History of Evangelicalism series.  Every one of these has been outstanding and I look forward to this installment centered around two of my heroes.

8.  This one should be a great resource for our Dead Theologians group:  Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics by Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel.

9.  The new atheists love to fix on the idea of holy war in the Old Testament as an argument for rejecting God.  Holy War in the Bible, a collection of articles edited by Heath A Thomas, Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan (who wrote Is God a Moral Monster–here is my review) promises to be an excellent resource in responding to this argument.

10.  Bonhoeffer, Christ, and Culture is another collection of articles edited by Keith L Johnson and Timothy Larsen.  Bonhoeffer’s life and work has captured much attention of late.

I haven’t read any of these yet and probably won’t get to all of them.  Local friends, let me know if there is something you are interested in.  But I’m sure, Lord willing, that you will see some of these reviewed down the road.

OK, now for some shut-eye!