Summer Reading Lists 2022

We asked College Church staff and elected leaders to share their summer reading lists. You can see their lists below. Check back because we will update the list as we get more responses.

Josué Alvarado, pastoral resident 

I struggled to focus during my prayer time, and it was of great help to read a small book by Donald S. Whitney titled Praying the Bible. That is how I discovered the richness and usefulness of the Book of Psalms during my prayer time. I learned to use God’s Word to speak back to him and avoid the many distractions of repetition and selfishness.  

Additionally, I came to pray and meditate with The Valley of the Vision, a collection of Puritan prayers, edited by Arthur Bennet. This has helped me to improve my meditation and prayer. A great encouragement for those who are seeking to be efficient with their time of prayer to worship the Lord.  

I would recommend Defending Your Faith by R.C. Sproul. He defines apologetics and provides a solid defense of the reason for God from a philosophical perspective and provides arguments to trust the Bible as the trustworthy Word of God. Our faith is not illogical, and it has a firm foundation. We ought to be ready to present a defense of the hope that is in us.  

Cheryce Berg, director of children’s ministries 

Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are Full by Gloria Furman 

Family Shepherds: Calling and Equipping Men to Lead Their Homes by Voddie Baucham Jr. 

The Connected Parent: Real-Life Strategies for Building Trust and Attachment by Karyn Purvis and Lisa Qualis 

Who Am I and Why Do I Matter? by Chris Morphen 

Mark Berg, elder 

No Little People by Francis Schaeffer 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie 

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham 

Lisa Burlingame, hospitality committee 

Everyday Holiness by Josh Moody 

Revelation, A Shorter Commentary by G. K. Beale 

More Than Conquerors by William Hendriksen  

Deeper by Dane Ortlund 

Jay Cunningham, nominating committee 

Everyday Holiness by Josh Moody 

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman 

Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (for anyone who enjoys well written fantasy) 

The Road to Character by David Brooks 

Prayer by Tim Keller 

What it Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics by Carter O. Snead  

It’s time to re-read C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. 

The Brothers Karamazov is one of those books it seems like any American should have to read, so I’m finally going to plunge in. 

David Gieser, elder 

Peace Child by Don Richardson 

Mission Drift by Chris Horst and Peter Greer 

Tim Hollinger, technology director 

I’d like to either re-read the Chronicles of Narnia series or read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. 

David Kelley, evangelism and culture impact committee 

Pro Rege by Abraham Kuyper 

Amy Kruis, deaconess 

Deeper by Dane Ortlund 

Technopoly by Neil Postman 

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson 

Elanor by David Michaelis 

Ann Lawrenz, deaconess 

Life Together by Dietrich Boenhoeffer 

Ten Words to Live By by Jen Wilkin 

Strange New World by Carl Trueman 

Jack by Marilynne Robinson 

Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis 

George Herbert Collected Poems 

 Sarah Lindquist, evangelism and culture Impact committee 

A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing by Laura Barringer and Scot McKnight 

To the Heart of the Matter: The 40-Day Companion to Live a Culture of Life by Shawn D. Carney 
short devotions on how to live out a pro-life ethic 

Curt Miller, missions pastor 

Confronting Injustice without Compromising the Truth by Thaddeus J. Williams 

Ben Panner, college pastor 

Side by Side by Ed Welch 

Jeremy Taylor, elder 

Polycentric Missiology by Allan Yeh 

Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey 

Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone 

Footprints in the African Sand by Michael Cassidy 

Motus Dei by Warrick Farrah et al. 

Come, My Beloved by Pearl S. Buck 

Wendy Robinson, board of missions 

Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church by Paul David Tripp 

Wil Triggs, director of communications 

The God of the Garden by Andrew Peterson 

Gospel People by Michael Reeves 

The Glory of Christ by John Owen 

Red Stilts by Ted Kooser 

Where the Light Fell by Philip Yancey 

Tim Wang, board of missions 

The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission by Christopher Wright 

The Beasts, the Graves, and the Ghosts (Christian preaching during Chinese Festivals) by Hann Tan 

Brian Wildman, elder 
Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church by Paul David Tripp 

The Righteous Mind: Why People Are Divided By Politics And Religion by Jonathan Haidt 

Everyday Holiness: Becoming Who You Were Made to Be by Josh Moody 

The next book in the Cork O'Connor mystery series by William Kent Krueger.  

Ashes on Beauty by Lorraine Triggs

Aunt Kay and Uncle Don were fixtures of my childhood. Their Christian counterparts were our Uncle John and Aunt Betty, neither couple were actual family, but family formed from community—one in the household of faith, the other in the houses of South Kenwood Avenue.

During the summer, after the afternoon soap operas and before the dads came home from work, Aunt Kay would walk across the street to our house, cigarette in hand, to join my mother on the front porch for conversation and neighborhood gossip. But first things first, my mom would instruct us to get an ash tray for Aunt Kay.

We didn’t own ash trays. What my mother was asking was for us to choose the prettiest teacup from her small, but treasured collection, and bring its saucer out for Aunt Kay—you guessed it—to tap her cigarette ashes in it. Gross. Disgusting.

By far, the prettiest teacups were from Aunt Betty, who would bring back a cup and saucer from her trips to Scotland to visit her family. We would purposely choose one of Aunt Betty’s cups, hoping our mother would ask us to put it back—they were too perfect, too much of a treasure for cig butts and ashes.

Well, that was a non-starter, and we were indignant at my mother’s careless attitude toward her fine bone china. What prompted our childish indignation was the house rule that the teacups were off-limits for our al fresco tea parties. Mother did not want us to ruin her lovely teacups with hose water, sticks and mud. Come on, Mom, really? But it was okay for Aunt Kay to ruin them? My pharisaical leanings were showing, and at such a young age.

Jesus had a similar careless attitude, not to fine china, but to alabaster flasks. The disciples, like me and my sisters, knew better. In Mark 14, sandwiched between the chief priests and scribes plotting to kill Jesus and Judas Iscariot’s betrayal, we see Jesus, not on a porch, but reclining at the table in the house of Simon the leper. Then an anonymous woman walks into the room, breaks an expensive alabaster jar, and pours the oil on Jesus’ head.

Talk about the indignation flying around that table—why did the woman waste the ointment? Why did she ruin the flask? We could have sold it all to give to the poor. Mark says that they scolded her.
Then Jesus says, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” Her act of ruin became a gospel proclamation as she anointed Jesus’ body beforehand for burial, and beauty would come from the ashes of betrayal and death.

We adored Aunt Betty, but my mother knew her better than we did. She would not have minded the burning cigarette finding rest on her bone china gift. In fact, if she were on that porch, she probably would have made Scottish cream scones and served tea in the now saucer-less cup for Aunt Kay, as my mom dumped the ashes in a beautiful display of grace.

Ashes on beauty, beauty for ashes.

A Prayer for Our Hearts

from A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Everlasting God, Lover of our souls,
Open our eyes to see your love for us—
your love which was established before creation
and continues unfailing and unending, even unto this very hour.
Your Word tells us that you had a plan for us a long, long time ago.
A love for us not based on
performance,
or beauty,
or inherent value.
A love which sent a Savior to the unlovely,
the destitute,
the helpless,
the condemned.
A Savior whose love prompted him to say:
“Come unto me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Lord, may you this day be the present help of all who turn to you,
whether hurt or ashamed,
whether sick or disheartened,
whether afraid or defeated,
whether troubled or angry.
You have come to change the human condition drastically, totally . . .
the sinful heart,
the stony heart,
the rebellious heart.
Holy physician, divine surgeon . . . work in our lives that our souls might prosper in spiritual health and vitality.
Do this in the life of every person now praying to you.
Thank you, Lord,
for hearing,
for answering,
for meeting every need.

Reunion by Wil Triggs

There was one person I wanted to see more than anyone else at last week’s LittWorld conference in Hungary. That person was Serhii Sologub.

We met at the previous LittWorld when John Maust asked me to interview him for MAI. That interview felt like old home week for me. I heard about his journey to faith in the context of Soviet atheism. How God had rescued him and called him into ministry.

His name tag read Sergey. “Call me Serhii,” he insisted. “Sergey is Russian; Serhii is Ukrainian. I am Ukrainian,” he explained.

Serhii had published a book on family devotions. He proudly showed me the book. On the back of the book was the logo of the publisher—Mission Eurasia. That is the mission founded by Peter and Anita Deyneka, the mission where Lorraine and I served. Not only that—he was a pastor at the church where Charley and Cheryl Warner attended.

It was like finding a brother I never knew I had. Honestly, I could have talked to him at every break and shared every meal with him, and I would have been happy. This was exactly the sort of person we had given many years of service for. A Christian, moving into ministry and writing for his people. We did a video interview as well.

But he didn’t come to that pre-pandemic LittWorld just to talk to me, plus I had other writing assignments to complete and others I genuinely wanted to meet. We did talk again, and Serhii went on to discover an English publisher (Moody) for his book and learned a lot about writing and publishing at the conference.

That was almost four years ago, and just a few months ago, Charley was in the office meeting with Curt Miller to plan the visit of five pastors from Irpin Bible Church. Charley said to me, “Serhii is coming to Wheaton!” He explained the concept of five pastors coming to find out about our pastoral residency as a possible model for pastoral training at their church.

When they arrived, we were all hearing the rumors of the Russian invasion. I went to an early morning meeting where all five pastors were to be. I was excited to see Serhii. I looked around the room, hoping to see him.

Charley introduced a Sergey. I looked at him. If this was the Serhii I met at LittWorld, well, he was taller, stockier. It looked nothing like him. Was my memory playing tricks on me?

There were indeed five pastors, but Serhii—my friend—was not one of them. Pastor Vasil kindly recorded a video message from Lorraine and me smiling and waving, saying that we hoped to see him at LittWorld in just a few weeks.

As the invasion happened and the war began, we were all praying for the pastors to get back to their families. But I also was praying for Serhii, the pastor who stayed in Irpin. I didn’t know why he had not come.

Lorraine went to women’s retreat, and I flipped cable news channels and internet news to see everything I could about the war. Irpin became front-line news. A man from Irpin Bible Church was killed. Some of the other pastors were texting messages about their travels and what they were doing once back.

As we watched the images of mothers and children leaving the country, the news came out that men under 60 were not allowed to leave Ukraine. I assumed this meant even for a short-term training event like LittWorld in neighboring Hungary.

It seemed impossible that he would be able to come this time, but John Maust told me that not only was he coming--he was bringing his daughter with him.

When we arrived at Lake Balaton outside of Budapest, we checked in and touched base with John Maust, then unpacked and stepped out of the hotel to head toward town and find some dinner. And there he was—Serhii and his daughter. After many hours of driving, they had arrived.

He looked the same as I remembered. He looked good. And his daughter was lovel and an aspiring writer. We spent more time together catching up. So many questions.

Ukraine allows a father to cross the border with a child or children. His book has been published in English, but also in German, Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, and they are talking about publishing in Hebrew as well.

Besides being a small group pastor and a writer, Serhii is a web developer. When the war broke out, he created a program to help people keep track of where the church had scattered. Rivne, Irpin, other places in Ukraine, as well as Poland and Germany—and they are forming small groups in those places where people have fled. In addition, staying behind enabled Serhii to be part of the team working to care for the church and community.

“We are meeting our neighbors,” he said, of the many who live near the church and are only now discovering the loving hand of Jesus at Irpin Bible Church. The church is intact, but 70 percent of the city is damaged.

So what are you writing, I asked. Or are you? It’s easy to say that you’re too busy to write. If there was ever a case where this would be true, it seems to me that this would be it.

“I have started to write the stories of people in the war,” he responded. “Vasili, Vitali, Dima—little glimpses of people and what they are doing to help.”

Now this is a book I’d like to read. He likely won't put himself in that book, but his story inspires, too.

And then it was time to say goodbye.

Early yesterday morning, I emailed Serghii and asked if he had any prayer requests. He replied, "Please pray with us for the team at the new center for people in Gostomel. Our church opened it just this week. We need brothers and sisters who can come and help people there."

Serhii ended his email with this footer: "God is good. All the time." And my brother believes what he believes all the time. War has not changed that. God's goodness guides us all today--in Ukraine and here in our homes even now.

Trench Warfare by Lorraine Triggs

We checked our schedules. We were still good for dinner at 6 p.m.—two moms connecting after a busy day at a conference we were at with our husbands. The conversation started off with the usual niceties, and then took a serious turn as we circled then landed on the topic of our children.

I went first. My son is out of the house and not really following the Lord. She had asked a direct question about him, and I couldn’t figure out a way to dodge it.

My friend said that her oldest daughter switched colleges after COVID and is now enrolled at one closer to home.

We took the conversation to a deeper level as I confessed my son’s struggles with serious mental health issues for which he sees no need for help. Her youngest daughter, now graduating from high school, had been bullied throughout high school and sank into depression. She is slowly moving forward, but it is a hard road for her.

“I keep thinking back, trying to figure out where I went wrong as a mother,” I said, a bit let-down that my friend didn’t react to my comment right away. We continued our meal together.

Later, at the dessert bar, my friend referenced my feelings as a mom and responded. “I feel the same way,” she said softly as we chose our desserts from the dessert bar. “We mothers do.”

Sisters in the trenches is how another friend would describe us. Only my trench is here in Wheaton, in Winfield; her trench is in Lahore, Pakistan. Our dinner was in Siofok, Hungary, at the 2022 LittWorld conference. Our friendship is in Christ.

Our cultural differences enhance minds that are one in Christ despite our differences in culture and style. In friendship, we learn to love, different as we are from one another.

American Lorraine is direct and says whatever is on her mind; Pakistani Jingle is quiet and thoughtful in sharing what is on her mind. She takes time to share and chooses the next evening to tell me that her pastor has a son, a bit older than mine, who has the same struggles.

She gets it. Her pastor gets it. Now we are praying together for our children. We get it together. Had I plowed through the conversation, impatient for Jingle to respond like American me, I would have missed all this. I had to wait.

This probably explains why I cringe when someone says, “Oh, they’re perfect. They’re just like us. They fit right in.”

Other than the glaring theological flaw in that statement, what does it say about people who aren’t like us? You know, the imperfect ones over there, who don’t fit in? People who may not look like us or communicate the way we do?

Jesus’ mindset was all about loving and rescuing people who were not like him in some pretty fundamental ways.

In Luke 14:12-14, Jesus told the parable of the great banquet with its guest list: the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind (v. 13). Left off the guest list were friends, brothers, relatives or rich neighbors - not everyone on this list is like everyone else. The people on this list are not the ones we normally want to be around, but, I want to be on that list. Could it be that Jesus is describing me as one of the poor, crippled, lame or blind?

Let's learn to enjoy the differences now because I think the banquet ahead is going to be beautifully full of them.

A Telling Story by Wil Triggs

It can be awkward. Talking about yourself. I mean, I’m really not that interesting, am I? And frankly speaking, you probably aren’t either.

We’re just people.

Is it a surprise that the hardest stories to get people to do are the Eye Openers in worship and the I Believe stories in Connections. People love to listen to them or read them, as long as they are on the listening or reading side, not speaking or writing side.

Your story of faith isn’t really your story. Sure, it’s about you. And no one else can really tell it like you can, because it happened to you. But it’s not really about you, is it? It’s about Jesus saving you. It’s really about Jesus. Without him, there is no story at all.

Think about your story not as your own bio pic, but as an original story with Jesus at the beginning, middle and end. Here’s a bit of my story.

A long time ago, in a parking lot far, far away, no. This was before there even was a Star Wars.

I was sitting in the passenger side of the old blue Dodge with my brother-in-law. This car would one day become mine, but I didn’t know that then. It was his car, for jaunts to church or seminary or other errands, not the big family car we normally drove when we were all together. He stopped by his college for some reason, and I was with him. I can still smell the SoCal heat in that car mixed with a little dust and that recently turned-off car smell. We were talking.

If there was anyone on earth that I could trust to say these things to, it was him.

At that moment, I was the unhappiest I think I had ever been. I wanted to flee my home because of my dad’s drinking. Things got better, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t want to make my parents feel bad or leave my school, but I couldn’t see a way out. So on weeks when school was out, I fled to the homes of other family members.

I don’t remember what I said in the car, but we ended up talking about the nature of the cosmos. It was an admittedly roundabout way to address my situation. He explained to me how protons and neutrons were charged. They were opposite. They should move away from each other instead of somehow being attracted, somehow holding together.

I didn’t get it. What did any of that mean? Was the point that, at its core, the universe itself was some kind of contradiction? Maybe it was just some bizarre mystery that didn’t quite make sense. Just like my unhappy life. I sound like a whiner, I know, but I was somewhere in my teens when this happened.

I looked out the window and stopped talking.

Then he handed me a Bible opened to Colossians and asked me to read Colossians 1:17 out loud. I took the Bible from him, looked down, and with the sun shining through the windshield onto the page, I read:

“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together,” I said.

This verse is easily read over in the longer passage, but for me all those years ago, there was a different kind of charge in those words. The living Word was starting to do something.

If Jesus was holding every together—in terms of science, yes, but not only that. If Jesus is holding together the universe, if he is in every particle, then even in my hard situation, he was right there. Even in every scary moment now, I was not and am not alone.

If there was anyone on earth that I could trust to say these things to, it was the third person in that car with us. The One who could help me hold it together. The One who loved me even then and he loves me now. How can the story go untold?

You have one, too.

Scattered Clothes by Lorraine Triggs

My Jewish-turned-Christ-follower mother incorporated a lot of her upbringing into bringing up my sisters and me. By far, our favorite was no work on the Sabbath, which we translated to no chores from Saturday evening to Monday morning. Our shared space became a wilderness for clothes and shoes—neither making their way to closets or dressers. Our beds were unmade, our homework buried under the piles of clothes. We knew that our room had to regain a semblance of order come Monday morning, but that didn’t stop us from throwing clothes on the floor.

I thought about my childhood wasteland the other day as I read one of the gospel writer’s accounts of Jesus’ last few weeks on earth. There’s a lot of mention about clothes and cloaks on the ground or floor or in and out of tombs.

There’s Lazarus, the dead man who came out of the tomb, hands and feet still wrapped with strips of linen, even though his sister Martha warned everyone of their bad odor. When Jesus instructed those at the tomb to take off his grave clothes, I suspect Lazarus dumped those rotting clothes on the ground without a second thought. Time for some new clothes.

And then there’s Jesus. He shrugged off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist and picked up a basin of water. In another wardrobe change, Jesus wears a crown of thorns and a purple robe. Oddly enough, he didn’t shrug off this robe or crown nor even denounce the cries for his crucifixion.

All this leads to graveclothes again—Jesus’ graveclothes. We watch Joseph and Nicodemus—the former a secret disciple, the latter a night visitor to Jesus—carefully, gently, wrap the dead man’s body with strips of linen and 75 pounds of myrrh and aloe. Did Joseph weep when he gave the fragrant spices for burial? As he prepared this lifeless body for burial, did Nicodemus recite the Teacher’s words to him, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Death is a strange way to bring about forgiveness and eternal life.

Ezra Klein, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, made this observation in a recent opinion piece: “What I, an outsider to Christianity, have always found most beautiful about it is how strange it is. Here is a worldview built on a foundation of universal sin and insufficiency, an equality that bleeds out of the recognition that we are all broken, rather than that we must all be great. I’ve always envied the practice of confession, not least for its recognition that there will always be more to confess and so there must always be more opportunities to be forgiven.”

Yes, Mr. Klein, this is beautiful and strange. But it's something much greater than worldview.

One dead man is called out of the tomb and lives; one dead man enters the tomb, and we live.

One man is free from rotting clothes with their stench of death; the other takes on the stench of sin and death, enters the rotting wilderness of our souls, and exchanges our rot for his righteousness and we are free from sin’s penalty.

A tomb is a strange place to find linen cloths scattered about and a face cloth for the dead, folded up by itself. Indeed, this empty tomb is a strange place for the fragrance of spices to linger long after three days. The reality of those odors remind us that he really did die. He put on the cloths of death. But then he took them off and left them on the floor of the tomb for all to see.

The One who was dead is risen, ascended, interceding, living in and with us now and forevermore.

A Palm Sunday Prayer - from A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Christ our God, Prince of Peace,
Who on this day did enter the rebellious city midst shouts of “Hosanna,”
Enter our hearts and subdue them entirely unto you.
Rule over us in all the concerns and circumstances of our lives:
the work of our hands and the whims of our hearts;
the ambition of our dreams and the sins of our desires;
the experience of our friendships and our secret thoughts toward others.

Save us from the hypocrisy that sings “Hosanna” in the temple and cries
“Crucify him” in the marketplace of daily business.
Save us from the sham that praises with lips, but betrays you in our deeds.
Save us from the treason that boasts loyalty in the upper room and then makes cowardly denial in the judgment hall.

Lord, grant that as you look over us in this moment,
You will not weep as you did riding into Jerusalem on that momentous day.
Grant that every person in this place of worship will want you as king of their lives,
as sovereign monarch in every relationship.
May each of us in reverence and adoration truly say,
“Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

We pray that the day will speedily arrive when, in your glorious return,
every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess
that you are Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Amen