Space Coast Fellows Book Club
Who: Everyone is invited to join the Space Coast Fellows & Rev. Dr. Jason Carter
Location & Time: 2:00-4:00 pm, Oasis Room, Once/Month, select Sunday afternoons
Purpose: These books are not my “favorite” books nor are these books the ones that singularly “marked” my life spiritually. These are books that you might not read during your earthly pilgrimage yet for a seasoned pastor pointing you to tolle lege, tolle lege (“take up and read, take up and read”). Several of them are classics. Classics which not only are accessible to modern Christians but also are books which have shaped saints in the church for centuries. C.S. Lewis is famous for recognizing the “chronological snobbery” of the modern age (i.e. “recent is better”). The church is no exception.
Thus, we endeavor to read three of the five greatest theologians in the history of the church: Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Bonhoeffer’s Life Together and Cost of Discipleship are quickly becoming “modern classics” of the 20th century. Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr became a veritable cottage industry for various syntheses, rebuttals, and follow-ups about how believers relate to the nebulous “culture” all around them; a typology can be helpful in an age of contentious divisiveness.
The Space Coast Fellows program centers on the intersection and integration of “work & faith”. Thus, Every Good Endeavor by a modern Reformed author (Tim Keller) who worked in the heart of New York City is a good place to start. Finally, Henry Nouwen takes you down into the heart; any number of his books are “soul food”; Return of the Prodigal Son and Wounded Healer are two good places to start as any.