Books for Further Reading

We discussed some books in class in our last session, and as promised I'm giving you a short list of these here. I do most of my book shopping at http://www.bookfinder.com/, a site which searches a lot of different booksellers (Amazon included) and gives you the best price, including shipping.

For Christian Thought, our main textbook is Created for Community by Stanley Grenz. For a basic introduction to the course I use Who Needs Theology? by Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson (I see it listed by just Grenz as well as Grenz and Olson - same book). I also have my students do a "Life Response Project" out of The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg, because theology is not just about correct thinking, but much more importantly about living correctly as a member of God's kingdom. This assignment/book results in something very unusual every semester: thank you notes from students for the work I've assigned! If you decide you want to go much deeper after you've finished these, I heartily recommend Christian Theology: An Introduction by Alistair McGrath. It's available in a number of editions, and any of them from the third edition on are worth getting (just in case you find a big difference in price between 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions).

We actually started our discussion on books with the topic of church history. An excellent and non-boring look at history with an eye to theology is The Story of Christian Theology (also listed as The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform - get whichever is cheaper) by Roger Olson. I also like the two-volume set The Story of Christianity by Justo Gonzalez.

Have fun meeting some of my friends!

Link for Christian Thought outlines

For anyone following along with our discussion on God's story and our place in it, I have a link here for the outlines we'll be using. These are in Microsoft Word format, and you can download them and use them for organizing your notes as we discuss things.

I'm sharing them from SugarSync, which is an excellent way of putting resources up for others to access. They offer free storage, and you can check my post in my TechRoadShow blog for some of the ways I use this. You might find some of these ideas useful as well.

Looking forward to another session tomorrow with the class at Cedar Park! We'll be discussing perhaps the most crucial element of actually doing the work of a theologian: judging what is true, and just how important that particular truth is. (Just in case that's set off sirens in your mind, while my choice of favorite color and my choice of belief about God's existence both are "truths", one of these is much more important than the other!)

See you tomorrow, I hope!