On My Shelf helps you get to know various writers through a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their lives as readers.
I asked Joseph Sherrard—associate pastor of discipleship at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church and author of The Augustinian Pastor: Deep Wisdom for Modern Ministry—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
It’s not a small stack, and there’s usually a mix of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction there depending on what I’m in the mood for at the moment and how demanding of a read I’m up for in the evening.
Pastors work in words, and I have found that poets are often the people in our culture who take the best care of words. Right now there are two volumes that I’m working through: Malcolm Guite’s After Prayer (which includes a number of poems that expand on George Herbert’s beautiful poem “Prayer”) and W. H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety. Each year I read Auden’s For the Time Being during Advent, and I wanted to explore his other work. His extended poems are quite complex, so it’s extremely helpful that this edition is annotated by Alan Jacobs.
For fiction, I’m currently reading Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse. I don’t include a lot of postapocalyptic fiction in my reading diet because I don’t want to feed my imagination solely on that genre. But I do think it’s an interesting vehicle for asking the question of what matters most in life. And Enger’s answer to this—music, literature, beauty, and love—is moving and satisfying.
And for nonfiction, I recently read Harmut Rosa’s The Uncontrollability of the World with some fellow pastors. I love reading in community; when I discuss good books with friends who are careful readers, I inevitably learn much more than I would on my own. Rosa’s description of the paradox of modernity—the desire for more and more control at the cost of draining life of the very meaning we long for—has a lot of explanatory power when I think about the world around me and the people I’m called to shepherd.
Now that I’m done with Rosa, I’m rereading Oliver O’Donovan’s Common Objects of Love, a book that requires a great deal of time and attention in order to understand and digest.
What are your favorite fiction books?
As a young pastor I fell in love with Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. There was just something about John Ames’s voice and narration that nourished my imagination for the work that I’m called to do. I’ve since read each of the books that follow in her series on Ames, Boughton, and their families.
As someone called to the cure of souls I’m always trying to better understand my people’s hearts, and so there are certain writers who I enjoy reading because they are such excellent students of character, virtue, and moral psychology. At the top of my list is Jane Austen, not least because of the subtle way she depicts the arc of repentance in Lizzy, Emma, Marianne, and others (C. S. Lewis’s essay “A Note on Jane Austen” is insightful on this point). I’d also include Middlemarch by George Eliot, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and The End of the Affair by Graham Greene in this category.
I said I don’t read a lot of postapocalyptic fiction, but Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a book that was providentially placed in my life at a particularly dark moment. McCarthy’s harrowing story depicts a narrative world that is despairingly bleak and yet also somehow beautifully hopeful. I was a different man when I finished that book.
I also have slightly eccentric seasonal reading habits: Every year in the winter I read one of P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh murder mysteries, and every summer while I’m at the beach I read one of John le Carré’s spy novels.
What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t first mention Augustine’s Confessions. It is a book that I return to again and again, and when I do I am consistently amazed by just how much Augustine was able to do in this book. It defies simple summary but I think it can be read profitably by all.
Peter Brown’s biography of the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine of Hippo, is an impressive biography not only because of its comprehensiveness but also because of how well written it is and also how carefully and sensitively Brown treats his subject.
There are other pastoral biographies important to me: At the top of the list is Collin Hansen’s biography of Tim Keller, which reminded me of why I am so grateful for Keller, particularly his incredible ability to synthesize and simplify so much information for the purposes of ministry.
I also immensely enjoyed both Timothy Dudley-Smith’s two-volume biography of John Stott and Geoffrey Wainwright’s biography of Lesslie Newbigin—both subjects are pastors who sought to share the gospel both faithfully and thoughtfully to an increasingly post-Christian West.
While not quite an autobiography, Robert Caro’s Working is my favorite book by a writer on the writing life. Caro—famous for his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson—is a model of the blue-collar work of both grinding out research and also revising and re-revising (and re-re-revising!) in order to tell the story well.
What are some books you regularly reread and why?
I come back again and again to Lewis, whether it’s in reading for myself or alongside others. For me, The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce together provide a comprehensive manual of discipleship. I’ve read these books many times over and still find myself wincing when Lewis exposes my own self-protective self-deception via Uncle Screwtape’s letters or through the voice of one of the “ghosts” who finds him or herself in the High Country.
Every year I have the opportunity to read Andy Crouch’s Strong and Weak with a group of recent college graduates in my city, and I’m grateful for the occasion to be reminded of the simple 2×2 approach that Crouch gives as the path to true flourishing. I’ve found it to be a consistently generative framework for understanding myself as a pastor and leader.
When I am trying to think through doctrinal issues, I find that I often turn to John Webster, who was a professor at St Andrews when I was doing my doctoral work. His essays on the shape of systematic theology in The Domain of the Word and on the virtues that accompany theological work in God Without Measure have a way of orienting my mind to find the clarity I need for theological work.
What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?
My call to the ministry is deeply bound to the joy I’ve found in continually rediscovering the power of the gospel. There are a handful of books that help me to be restored to the joy of my salvation and that shape me for the work I’ve been called to.
Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ has helped me to develop a sensitivity to what he calls the “tincture” of gospel ministry—a heart that doesn’t hear just the words but also the music of what God has done for us in Jesus. Similarly, Richard Lovelace’s Dynamics of Spiritual Life has given me language for the need for the church to be continually renewed.
In a slightly more academic register, I did my doctoral work on T. F. Torrance, and his little book The Mediation of Christ gave me language to understand what Jesus’s high priestly ministry means for me. And while my understanding of the uses of the law is Reformed rather than Lutheran, Gerhard Forde’s On Being a Theologian of the Cross expounds the cross in the kind of homiletic voice that drives people to Christ.
What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?
I was one semester into seminary, trying to discern whether I was called to pastoral ministry or the academy, when I was assigned Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule. Gregory begins by describing pastoral ministry as “the art of arts” and then goes on to demonstrate just how much wisdom and attentiveness this calling demands.
I started the book wondering if pastoral ministry would be intellectually demanding enough to satisfy me; when I finished it, I realized just how foolish this question was. Gregory helped me to see how challenging and glorious this calling is. It’s one of those books that we can keep coming back to in order to remind us of what “the most needful thing” is in ministry.
You’ve written a new work on Augustine, and you say you’ve apprenticed yourself to him. What is it about Augustine that has drawn you into his body of work, and how has he most shaped your calling as a pastor?
Simply put, Augustine speaks with wisdom and insight. It is so easy to be pragmatic and superficial in pastoral ministry—the tyranny of urgent is a real thing in this calling. But Augustine has consistently challenged me to press deeper: into my own heart (Confessions), in knowing God (The Trinity), and concerning world history and current events (The City of God). And he does all of this as a local church pastor. By apprenticing myself to Augustine, I’ve found he’s given me tools and instincts to bring more to the work of pastoral ministry.
While many know of Augustine’s Confessions, his work on Christian doctrine, and his tome on the Trinity, what would be the most surprising or most overlooked book of his you’d recommend?
In response to a letter from a fellow pastor, Augustine wrote a little guide to catechesis called Instructing Beginners in the Faith. This book is full of so much delightful wisdom. Augustine gives an evangelistic appeal to explore the Christian faith, a biblical overview, and spiritual guidance for those seeking to know Jesus.
But my favorite part is a brief section called “How to Avoid Discouragement,” which shows us Augustine’s heart for fellow pastors. For those looking for deeper wisdom for the work of discipleship, I’ve found this to be an insightful work.
What’s your best piece of writing advice?
Writing is a craft, which means that it’s about so much more than simply sitting down to pound out words. There’s a good deal of work that has to be done in preparation: reading good writers, reading books on writing, outlining chapters in advance. But the most important part comes after the draft is completed. I’ve learned that it’s in the patient work of revision that my writing really begins to improve.
What are you learning about life and following Jesus?
In this season it seems as if the lesson the Lord is teaching me is trust. On the one hand, the older I get the more I realize how much of life is out of my control. The doctrine of providence has become increasingly dear to me as I learn to let go of my tendency to anxiously plan and scheme to provide for myself. But on the other hand, I’m able to see more clearly now just how good God has been to me. His faithfulness has been proved in my life again and again.
