Some time ago, I packed up a lot of the books on my shelves in anticipation of our upcoming move. Robin and I figured that we could get a head start on preparations by packing up some of our non-essentials. Since I didn't plan on using all of my books, I picked up a handful to read over the coming months, and put the rest in boxes in our office. On the shelf in the photo to the left, I lined up the books I wanted to read, and started to dive into them (the number of books on this shelf has nearly doubled since then, thanks to some new purchases, and I don't intend to read all the books on the shelf there anymore).

While I have gotten through a few of them, overall I haven't gotten very far. If you pay any attention to the little Goodreads widget on the sidebar of this blog, you'll notice that it hasn't changed very often. After I finished seminary last May, I decided that I needed a bit of a break, and so I took up reading a bit of literature and some other things that did not require a great deal of mental energy. Before long, though, I found that I was not reading very much at all, and now I am at the point where I am finding it a bit difficult to get back into it.

There are all kinds of excuses I could make, of course, and some of them are legitimate. Up until about a month ago I was working well over sixty hours a week, and that took away a great deal of my time. Others are not so legitimate, such as wasting time browsing through photo albums on Facebook. Either way, I have come to find that it is not as easy as it once was to sit down and so some sustained reading.

My to-read shelf contains what I think will be some very interesting reads. In the summer, I started to read Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz's Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God, because one of the main responsibilities I will have in the role I'll eventually be taking up at St John's Church in Hull is to find ways in which the church can minister to the city. I didn't get too far in the book, but Conn and Ortiz's exploration of the role of the city in the Old and New Testaments was fascinating, and I'm not sure why I ever put it down. I made my way through a few of the essays in Herman Bavinck's Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, and although they were quite intellectually challenging, they are all marked with Bavinck's characteristic erudition, wisdom, and pastoral sensitivity. There are also a few books up there that I have read in the past but wanted to read again – Martin Lloyd-Jones' Preaching and Preachers, Al Wolters' Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, and Mike Goheen and Craig Bartholomew's The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (which I originally read in draft form in college while they were still making final revisions to it), to name a few. I added a few new volumes recently that I want to get into as well, such as a recent book by one of my university professors, James Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings, and another by one of my seminary professors, John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God. Not yet on the shelf is Jamie Smith's little book, Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition – the bookstore was out of it when I went over there a few days ago – but that is another I plan on reading when I get my hands on a copy.

I can't make many excuses about the lack of time anymore, since my hours have been cut back quite a bit. Now it is just a matter of getting back into the habit of reading. I need to regain my focus, to be able to sit down and read for an extended period of time. There are any number of distractions when I try to do this, but I need to find a way to ignore them and focus. Oddly, I have found that some of my best reading has happened in places like a coffee shop, where there is lots of activity and noise around me. But I can't afford to spend an hour in Starbucks every night just so I can get some reading done.

This turned into a far longer post than I imagined it would, so let me end by asking, are there any tips or suggestions you have when it comes to reading? What helps keep you focused?

The pastor of our church is retiring in April, and after going through his collection and taking home the books he wanted to keep, he graciously allowed three of us who are seminary students to pillage the rest of his library. We went to the office a few nights ago and began to mark out our territory. About half of Martyn Lloyd-Jones' series on Romans was there as well as Philip Schaff's 8-volume History of the Christian Church, which were the two sets I wanted most from all the books on the shelf. The other two guys did not mind, so I happily put them in my box. While I know Schaff's work is available online, I wanted it on my shelf, especially since my area of interest is church history and historical theology and Schaff's history is still an important one in the field. I was able to grab a few more worthwhile items as well, which you see in the photo to the left.

Collecting new books never gets old, but it does fill up our bookshelves very quickly—once I get these put into their proper places, we will almost be out of shelf space again.

While I was working yesterday a tweet popped up from Adrian Warnock saying that he was starting a live chat session on his blog about his new book, Raised With Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything. I tuned in for a little while (though I was limited to text interaction since I had neither webcam or microphone with me), and enjoyed the discussion there. I was quite intrigued when I first heard about the book a short while ago. Here is Amazon's product description:

What impact should Jesus' resurrection have on individuals and churches? Popular Christian blogger and teacher Adrian Warnock urges Christians not to neglect the implications of the resurrection.

Jesus truly is alive today. But compared to his atoning death, Jesus' resurrection sparks relatively little discussion in the church. Inadvertently,we can become so focused on the good news that Christ died for our sins, that we almost forget he was "raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25).

In Raised with Christ, author Adrian Warnock exhorts Christians not to neglect the resurrection in their teaching and experience. Warnock takes his cue from Acts, where every recorded sermon focuses on Jesus' resurrection. He stresses that Christians who faithfully proclaim both the death and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and live out the implications of that message in vibrant, grace-filled churches, will be enabled to reach a world that lives in death's dark shadow.

The power of the risen Christ is active in every true Christian, transforming our lives. Raised with Christ will help you discover afresh the massive implications of the empty tomb. Jesus' resurrection really has changed everything.

When I was in college, one of my professors, Jim Payton, was always very intentional about stressing the resurrection for similar reasons. Part of his interest in Eastern Orthodoxy (about which he has written a great introductory book) was owing to the fact that they place far more stress on the resurrection than Protestants do.

I think Warnock's concern is a legitimate one, and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of the book. There are a myriad of theological implications in the resurrection, and it is good to recognize that the work of Christ, and the gospel itself, is incomplete without it. Find out more about the book by visiting raisedwithchrist.net.

As I was browsing some recent books the other day, I noticed one called Education for Human Flourishing, a recent book by Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis. It attempts to lay out a thoroughly Christian philosophy of education in response to the pervasive pragmatism of modern education. In the preface, they discuss the urgent need for us to rethink how we do education. We are thrown into the educational system at a very early age, the authors write, and because of the structure of that system,

You might recall a post a few months ago with some tips and advice on reading from Gideon Strauss. I'm revisiting the reading tips again today, and these present tips concern those sorts of books which you may choose to mark up, those which you may have to read for school or just think are worth the time and effort to really delve into. Today's advice comes from the late Mortimer J. Adler (via Steve Bishop).

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here’s the way I do it:

• Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
• Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
• Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
• Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
• Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
• Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
• Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance.

The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.

Given that I'm a seminary student and have to work my way through a lot of different books, I found these tips especially helpful. It is always good to have your own system for marking up a book, something that works for you. I employ a lot of the same techniques Adler does, my weapons of choice being a 0.7mm mechanical pencil and a small ruler for underlining. I know some people are averse to marking up books, but I'm not. When I open the book and right away see certain things underlined or the various notes in the margins, I begin to quickly recollect the information I thought important on the pages.

Also, earlier today James K. A. Smith was asked some questions about reading which he posted on his blog. Be sure to check those out as well because he offers some good advice derived from his own reading habits.

James K. A. Smith's new book, The Devil Reads Derrida, grabs you immediately—not only is it shod in a can't-turn-your-eyes-away red, but it bears a provocative title that compels you to drop whatever you're doing, pick it up, and scan the table of contents.

That is just how I reacted when I walked into the RTS Bookstore some time ago and saw it on the shelf of new featured items. At this point, I've only read the introduction and the first chapter, but it looks as if there will be lots of great material in this little volume; certainly some good material on which to blog.

Smith makes his overarching theme known within the first few pages of the introduction. Christian scholarship, he contends, is something done in public—that is, it is ultimately done in service to the Church, for the purposes of discipleship. When academics withdraw into the scholarly world, and the roads they travel never intersect with the laity, the latter will begin to look for wisdom and guidance wherever they can find it.

His intention, following the lead of Richard Mouw, is to work out of a hermeneutic of charity. He admittedly finds himself frustrated from time to time with "his people," the evangelical world, yet realizes that this is precisely the reason he can't withdraw from those circles even when he wants to. In his own words:

No matter how much I might disagree and be frustrated by their positions and interpretations, I know that above all my brothers and sisters want to be faithful disciples of Jesus. Even if I think they've bought into all sorts of questionable assumptions and causes; even if I think they've been co-opted by cynical political machines; even though I might think they've assimilated the worst sorts of cultural prejudices; even if I think God wants to invite them to 'higher' cultural passions—there is a sense in which I think they're just trying to make their way in the world the best they can. And if they've bought the paradigms sold to them by the voices on Christian radio that I think are problematic, then the burden is on me to show them otherwise. My responsibility is not to condescendingly look down upon them from my cushy ivory tower, but to take time to get out of the tower and speak to them—and, please note, learn from them. Christian scholars would do well to be slow to speak and quick to listen.

This hermeneutic of charity is not just romantic or utopian; in my experience, the wisdom of this stance has been confirmed. When I take the time to teach an adult Sunday School class, I find Christians who are hungry for wisdom. And though ultimately I might be trying to induce a paradigm shift in their thinking, hoping to basically de-program the way Christian radio has got them thinking about gender or justice, I find that so long as I begin from the assumption that we want to bring all of our thinking and doing under the Lordship of Christ and the light of the biblical narrative, my brothers and sisters are quite happy to hear a different take on their settled convictions—as long as it is offered in charity and humility, not with scolding and condescension (xv-xvi).

Reading this last night was refreshing; it was as if Smith was taking my own thoughts and neatly putting them in paragraph form. Next to glorifying God, the deepest desire I have is to take my abilities as an academic (well, that's rather audacious—perhaps an aspiring academic, or maybe a pseudo-academic) and use them in service to His people in order that they might come to know and serve Him better, and to love Him more. That is one of the reasons I love teaching the adult Sunday School at our local church, and why I see myself being involved in the educational ministry of the church for years to come.

Smith rightly points out that in the family of faith, there is no "us" and "them." It's only "us," bound together by the name of Jesus Christ. If those whom God has gifted with intellectual and academic abilities make primary use of their gifts outside of the Church, we can only expect churches full of people who lack wisdom and discernment.

In the last few days I have finally gotten around to reading Andy Crouch's award-winning book, Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling. Toward the end of the third chapter he addresses the topic of worldview, one I enjoy discussing, and points out that our calling as Christians in regards to culture goes beyond the abstract tendencies of worldview thinking:

The language of worldview tends to imply, to paraphrase the Catholic writer Richard Rohr, that we can think ourselves into new ways of behaving. But that is not the way culture works. Culture helps us behave ourselves into new ways of thinking. The risk in thinking 'worldviewishly' is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyze it. We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books. These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods. And they will subtly tend to produce philosophers rather than plumbers, abstract thinkers instead of artists and artisans. They can create a cultural niche in which 'worldview thinkers' are privileged while other kinds of culture makers are shunted aside.

But culture is not changed simply by thinking (64).

For someone like myself who has a tendency toward this kind of abstract thinking, this is a key point. It's not that worldview thinking is unimportant, but that it is only one part of our larger calling as Christians. Culture making requires action.

Several years ago, I emailed Gideon Strauss—friend, former professor, and recently appointed director of the Center for Public Justice—asking for some advice on how to read better. Below, slightly edited and abridged, is his reply:

I have three 'secrets':

1. I am almost always reading. I'd guess I am busy with about five books at any given time. I always have a novel on the go, for two reasons: novels calm me and comfort me, and novels are like reading speed exercise equipment for me—when I read novels, my reading speed goes way up. This is true for the non-novel reading I am doing as well. I read whenever I can get an opportunity—other than movies on DVD, I watch no television. I scan a lot of magazines and web stuff, and I am always looking out for books on the many topics that interest me. I put an enormous amount of books on hold at the library via their internet catalogue.
2. I scan most books quickly, and I retain a lot of what I've scanned. So I'd look at the inside cover summary, the contents page, the introduction and the conclusion. Only if it really, really grips me will I read more than that.
3. If I am going to read a non-novel book thoroughly, then I make a real performance of it. I buy my own copy, I fold and mutilate the pages, I underline and annotate the book in pen, and then I write down the best bits (summaries, quotes, references, etc.) on 4x6 cards that I store in little boxes for future reference. Very few books get this treatment.

Over the last few years, I have found his suggestions very helpful, although I've employed them with varying degrees of success. And if I am going to get really involved in a book, I wouldn't fold pages or use pen to make notes (I prefer a 0.5mm pencil), but that is just personal preference.

What do you think? Are these helpful suggestions? Do you have any additional tips that you use when reading?