I have benefitted from many of the books mentioned by Rosemary. In my recent years, I have been particularly inspired by Marcus Borg and his incredible gift for expressing spiritual truths. Three memoir writers already mentioned, Lauren Winner, Anne Lamott, and Frank Schaeffer are also wonderful, enlightened writers with fascinating stories to tell.

In college, I was introduced to a lot of popular hot-at-the-moment books, mostly Max Lucado and Bible studies. I even worked at a Christian bookstore, the kind that are actually more like Christian Stuffstores. Thankfully, I stumbled onto a few important books in the process such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship and C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I read more books by both and also found Richard Foster and Dallas Willard to be challenging.

Around the time I graduated from college, I picked up the book Rediscovering Church by Bill Hybels, pastor of the large suburban Chicago church, Willow Creek. This book shook my concepts of what church could (and should) be and changed the way I thought about Christian community. More than a decade later, I had a second paradigm-shifting encounter reading Christianity for the Rest of Us by Diana Butler Bass. As the former book influenced my last decade, I predict the latter will play significantly into my church involvement going forward.

There are so many others, but I’ll just mention two more whose work has resonated with me, Parker Palmer and William Sloane Coffin. Currently, I’m discovering contemporary feminist writers and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to discuss about those in the future.

1. Rosemary Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 9:43 pm

   Yikes, how could I have forgotten Dietrich Bonhoeffer!? I remember when were both reading The Cost of Discipleship in college and all the great discussions it spawned.