Old Holiness Writings

Last week, I had written about an old preacher who had prayed for me when I was working a medical intensive care unit before he passed on.  My mind has been drawn to that event several times since I wrote about it.  Around that same time, our church hosted a preaching workshop that was an effort to help bivocational pastors with resources and inspiration to help with preaching.  I suppose that as the miles have clicked up in ministry, I have come to an observation that if we are called to preach, if we believe that preaching is important, and if it is one of the most regular things that pastors do, why aren’t their more efforts to help us get better at it?  I have preached more than my share of “bad” sermons, but it is not because I have neglected the efforts to improve.  I cannot even count the number of books I have read on preaching, the Logos mobile ed units I’ve worked through, the You Tube videos that I have watched, and have listened to probably thousands of sermons.

Book Recommendation--Stockholm Syndrome Christianity (Why Christian Leaders are Failing--and What We Can Do About It)--John G. West

I grew up reading books.  I am not sure if it was expected that I should read books but once I learned how to read, books became things that took my mind and spirit to places I had never been before.  I read all the Hardy Boys series, many of the biographies that were prevalent in the children’s library in Dothan, a host of stories about the advancement of America toward the west, and sports stories.  Duane Decker was a fictional writer that wrote about fictional major league baseball teams and the ups and downs of the players.  Beverly Cleary’s books about Henry Huggins were another big hit for me. 

Then I started reading the westerns that were written by Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey which led to Peter McCurtin and his Sundance series.  As I got older, I found Stephen Ambrose (recommended to me by Harold Hoffman) and read Undaunted Courage about Lewis and Clark and their expedition.  Then I started working through his books on World War II and that opened more books about the great war in the European theater.  Biographies by McCollough, Meachum, Chernow, and others were another avenue that I went down. 

Mixed in was another writer that I found about the time I started in RN school whose books captivated me for more than a decade—Robin Cook!  He has written more than 40 books, and I have read at least 35 of them, some of them multiple times.  Somewhere along the way I accidentally found A. J. Cronin whose writing, even to this day I find incredibly intriguing especially the two that I have read several times, The Citadel and The Keys to the Kingdom.  Another similar incidental find is The Lords of Discipline and The Great Santini by Pat Conroy, which pushed me to read all his other books—deep, melancholy, and provoking characters and twisting plots that have stayed with me for the long years since I have read any of his books.  I could go on and on about books and authors but that is not what this blog is supposed to be about—it is a book recommendation—so I shall commence with that task.

Why I Read Books

There is a periodic thought that rolls through my mind that I think at times is stimulated by something nostalgic.  Nostalgia is often a feeling that comes to us when we think about the distant past.  That thought has to do with my affinity to books.  I am incredibly thankful that I grew up in a home where reading and books were highly promoted by my parents.  My brother and I were latch-key kids in a time when culture did not seem to be nearly as confused and violent as it is now.  Around the time I got in the seventh grade, our parents let us stay home during the summer and sort of keep up with ourselves.  I am certain that there were those occasional times of sibling rivalry and bickering that naturally goes on between brothers but it is hard to remember any instances of that at this point in my life.  What I do remember are the Saturday visits to the church for visitation and door knocking which was followed by a trip to the local library which in turn was followed by a trip to grocery store.  The time frame was the mid to late 70’s where life seemed to be much slower and certainly more innocent.  Obviously, there was no internet, smart phones, twenty-four-hour stores and all of the other things that put us on the fast track now.  One of the greatest blessings of my life was growing up without a television in our home because of religious reasons.  I know that can seem like a shocking thing in our times but our church expressed a need for a clear-cut separation from the world and that was one of the things that my parents practiced.  So, I grew up without all of the popular sitcoms of the 70’s and 80’s that now seem so benign compared to what is piped into homes today.  Because of that “lack” (blessing!), we read books.