Category: Ministry

This is part 4 of a 4 part series. Parts 1 – 3 are here, here, and here. This was composed in response to a request from a young man hoping some day to be a pastor.
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I have two final recommendations regarding your pastoral library. First, start early keeping an electronic record of all your books. If you start early, it is not a foreboding task. Then each time you buy a new book, you can add it to your record. You don’t want to start this once your library reaches 500 volumes!

Why would you do this? Insurance. If the place where you books are kept burns to the ground, you need to produce a record for the insurance company. At least this is what I’ve been told. I keep my record in a simple spreadsheet on my computer, and store it online as well. A snapshot of a portion of that is below. It could cost upwards of $20,000 or more to replace the contents of a mature library. Keeping a record is a small step of protection.

Secondly, resist, resist, resist the temptation to lend your books to others. I know that you are kind and nice and want to be helpful. But in my experience, two things happen when you lend your books. 1) They never come back. 2) As soon as you lend out that book that you’ve not needed for two years, suddenly, in THIS week’s sermon preparation, you remember something in that very book that would be helpful. And you don’t have it.

Books are your tools. You need to have them handy.

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My pastoral library is in the vicinity of 1100 volumes right now, though it could stand to be pruned a bit. How many volumes you have may simply be a product of the space and resources you have available.

One day my brother, who is not a pastor, and has a cynical bent about him, walked into my study and harumphed at my books, saying, “So, have you read all these?” “Some,” I carefully replied, “I’ve read twice.”

He seemed satisfied with that true, but slightly disingenuous, answer.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series. Parts 1 and 2 are here and here. This was composed in response to a request from a young man hoping some day to be a pastor.
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The rest of the library grows, for me, in something of a haphazard way. When I was young, the core of my library was formed by books I had purchased for seminary classes. This should give you a good foundation of good, useful, classic books.

As one studies, one realizes that there are certain works that one must have simply to be literate as a pastor. Most of these one will have picked up for classes but not all.

In building a library, I must remind myself of a couple of things: 1) I am a pastor, not an academic. My library will be restrained by that fact. And 2) my worth to the kingdom is not defined by the numbers of books lining my walls. I love books, but I am not in a competition to own the most. I just want them to be useful.

Within this framework, I want to have in reach books that either have been helpful in my pastoral work or show promise of being helpful. My books are my tools, and having tools that never serve any purpose and never will just does not make much sense. So occasionally, I go through my library and prune it of books that a) I’ll never read and b) show no promise in contributing anything to my future study or preparation.

Recommendations for new purchases come from a myriad of sources, not the least of which are my own peculiar interests. I read book reviews in magazines and journals and ask myself the question, “Is this book interesting enough to me or important enough that I will want to read it or will need to make reference to it sometime in the future?”

If the answer is yes, and I have the money, I’ll buy it. But I have learned that restraint is a good thing. I will often put books of interest on a wish list at Amazon, and there it will sit, not forgotten, but not purchased. Three months after determining that it is a ‘must have book’ I’m likely to see that no, it wasn’t that important after all!

Besides reviews in magazines, I take seriously what others I respect read and recommend – specifically other pastors and those whom I know are reading the kinds of things of interest to me.

This is part 2 of a 4 part series. Part 1 is here. This was composed in response to a request from a young man hoping some day to be a pastor.
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In building my library, one of the things I’ve wanted to do is to have at least one good commentary on each book of the bible handy and available. There are times when an issue comes up on a text in, say, 2 Thessalonians. It’s good to have something handy to help me address that.

Initially one can depend upon a good one-volume commentary. There is only one I recommend: New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. I recommend that over a popular favorite: Matthew Henry. I would not buy Henry – his comments are available for free in a lot of places. He has good devotional insight, but reading him can be tedious and not altogether helpful.

The easiest way to cover ‘every book of the Bible’ is to lay hold of a good commentary set. However, I have avoided that in general because of the inconsistencies from volume to volume in most sets.

I almost suggested that at least you should buy Calvin’s Commentaries. But mid-sentence I decided to commit heresy and suggest that as much as I think you could benefit from Calvin, don’t go for him immediately. His insights are amazingly relevant. However, I find that I rarely use him in my weekly sermon preparation.

The goal then is to have at least one good commentary for each book (or book grouping – like 1 and 2 Corinthians, or whatever). To pick the best ones, there are lists available. Professors are often happy to provide a list. I’d be able to steer you to some good commentaries. There are two frequently updated survey books out there by good conservative scholars which I have found very helpful: Donald Carson’s New Testament Commentary Survey and Tremper Longman’s Old Testament Commentary Survey.

When I was a young pastor, I was blessed with a generous gift of $900 (in 1988 dollars!) which I was able to use to build my skeleton of commentaries. If any of you would like bless a young pastor, give him such a gift (in 2010 dollars, of course!).

When I am going to be preaching or teaching on a book, I buy additional commentaries to flesh out my resources on that book. In this way, the library grows. Generally I find two to five good commentaries on a book which I use consistently when doing sermon preparation.

A young man I know is working his way through college with an eye toward attending seminary and eventually pastoring a church. That’s a great aim, for sure. God may redirect him along the way, but for now, and perhaps for good, that is his passion.

He asked me a few months ago some questions about books which I only recently got around to answering. I decided to post my answer here (modified for blog consumption) for two reasons.

1) There may be other students in a similar situation who might find some helpful ideas here, and

2) I’d like to encourage other pastors to add via the comments below their own ideas or guidelines for my friend.

His questions were two:

1) Where do you get your books?

2) How do you decide which books to get?

The first is markedly easier to answer, for sure. My answers for both questions will span four separate posts.

So, where do I get my books?

In general, I buy all my books from Amazon.com. It is so convenient that I can’t force myself to go elsewhere. I have occasionally checked prices at and purchased from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, but it is so much more convenient to search and buy on Amazon. [I know that there are many, many worthy small independent Christian booksellers. My conscience smites me here. But at Amazon I can go from login to payment in about 30 seconds and have my books in two days. I’m hooked.]

Occasionally, I want to buy a hardcover for a book that is no longer published in hardcover, or I need to buy a book that is simply out of print. For that, I use one of two on-line used book clearinghouses: ABEBooks (normally) or Alibris (sometimes). I’m sure there are other sources out there, but those are the ones that I have used successfully.

This is a highly relevant reflection from Sean Michael Lucas on the use of words.

It’s really about our attitude toward others. Dr. Lucas lifted this from this post by Tim Keller.

Dr. Keller in turn picked it up from an older guy named John Calvin. I am constantly amazed by the relevance of Calvin to contemporary ministry and life. So helpful.

Keller references positively a new bio of Calvin by Bruce Gordon called Calvin. Mine’s on order. (I’m captivated by the highly creative title.)