Behind the Big Picture

While preparing the Big Picture I did my best to keep things as accessible and brief as possible. Which means that if you’re a teacher or other leader, you probably have a few more questions. So here are the works I drew on while preparing our material. If you have any other questions, feel free to hit me up at www.inearthenvessels.com/contact.

+ WORKS THAT SHAPED THIS STUDY

• The Bible Project. Creative Directors: Jon Collins & Tim Mackie. Online video commentaries at thebibleproject.com & readscripture.org. These guys are master-storytellers. I’ve used their resources twice in back-to-back classes with middle- and high-schoolers, so you’ll see a few of their videos throughout the study.
• Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. Trans. Daniel W. Bloesch. Bonhoeffer Works—Reader’s Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. iBooks. Bonhoeffer turns exegesis into poetry, and places it at the center of Christian community. Absolutely the best book on “life together under the Word.”
• Buzzard, Justin. The Big Story: How the Bible Makes Sense Out of Life. Chicago: Moody, 2013. iBooks. I came across this pretty late in the game, but if you’re looking for a book-length treatment of the subject, start with this one.
• Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1908. A must-read for just about everyone, and the source of the one extra-biblical quote you’ll see in the text.
• Ferguson, Everett. The Rule of Faith: A Guide. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015. Print. Brother Ferguson is one of my favorite scholars, and in this short little book he shows how the early church remembered the Big Picture and then used it to disciple others.
• Hauerwas, Stanley & William Willimon. Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition. Nashville: Abingdon, 2014. iBooks. From the front cover: “A provocative Christian assessment of culture and ministry for people who know that something is wrong.” If Bonhoeffer is a poet, these guys are prophets, shaking contemporary churches out of their sleep.
• Lloyd-Jones, Sally. The Jesus Storybook Bible. Grand Rapids: Zonderkids, 2007. Print. If you only read one book here, read this one, especially if you’re doubtful about a story-telling approach to the truth. And no, it’s not just for kids!
• Pixabay.com. This where I got all the cool pictures. From their site: “All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist - even for commercial purposes.” But you can buy the photogs a cup of coffee!
• Vosburg, David A., PhD & Kate Vosburg. Jesus, Beginnings, and Science: A Guide for Group Conversation. Farmville, VA: Pier, 2017. iBooks. This little book is a joy to read. Their conversational approach and discussion format show through a lot in this guide.

+ THREE BIG QUESTIONS

• MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd ed. Notre Dame, 2007. iBooks. This is probably the most important book by any living philosopher. MacIntyre talks a lot about the problems with modern moral systems. Part of his solution: tell better stories. He’s also the inspiration for the third big question.
• McGrath, Alister E. Surprised by Meaning: Science, Faith, and How We Make Sense of Things. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011. iBooks. If science doesn’t make your heart stir, start here. If the idea of faith seems irrational, start here. And if you know a lot of people in one of those two camps, start here. This is the source of the first quote you’ll see in the slides, the inspiration for my first and second Big Questions, and one of three sources (along with The Language of God and Questions of Truth) I used to prepare the slides on the fine-tuning of the universe.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy-stories.” Tales from the Perilous Realm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. Print. If words like “story,” “myth,” and “fairies” give you the willies, then this is the essay for you. Tolkien wrote this as a lecture, which means the tone is conversational and it can be easily read aloud. One major point: the reason why stories move us is because they reflect the world’s greatest story—the gospel.
• Yeakley Jr., Flavil R. Why They Left: Listening to Those Who Have Left Churches of Christ. Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 2012. Kindle. This book is a must-read for shepherds, preachers, deacons, and teachers. Brother Yeakley presents the results of a survey he conducted among former members of the church, along with additional insights on human behavior, group dynamics, and just how to be the church.

+ A STORY WORTH SHARING

• The ESV Study Bible. Ed. Lane T. Dennis & Wayne Grudem. Wheaton: Crossway, 2008. This is like a one-volume commentary, plus a systematic theology, plus a practical theology all rolled into one. You should also check out ESV.org and its companion apps for iOS and Android. Of particular note here are the articles on how we got the Bible. These are also published separately as Understanding Scripture, edited by Wayne Grudem, C. John Collins, and Thomas R. Schreiner.
• Gilbert, Greg. Why Trust The Bible? Wheaton: Crossway, 2015. iBooks. This is by far the most accessible book I’ve read on this subject.
• Lightfoot, Neil R. How We Got the Bible. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003. iBooks. Brother Lightfoot does a great job telling about the story and evidence behind our Scriptures.
• Preface to The New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982. I usually begin my studies in the NKJV, before switching over to the ESV for teaching. The preface does a fantastic job summarizing the evidence for our Old and New Testaments, as well as different ways scholars approach that evidence in the New Testament.

+ IN THE BEGINNING & THE IMAGE OF GOD

• Aristotle. Politics. Trans. B. Jowett. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, 1994. iBooks. This may be a strange one to see here, but modern psychology has confirmed and extended Aristotle’s nature-habit-reason paradigm in important ways. This helps us better understand what the Bible might mean when it says we’re made in God’s image. 
• Collins, C. John. Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary. Phillipsburg. NJ: P&R, 2006. Kindle. This is probably the best commentary I’ve seen on these four chapters, and is both academic and accessible. Collins’ comments on covenants are also helpful.
• Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free, 2006. iBooks. This book is my second-favorite on the science-faith dialogue, right behind Surprised by Meaning. Collins’ personal journey from churchgoing, to agnostic, to atheist, to scientist, to believer, to the leader of the Human Genome Project is inspiring. His information on the moral law, genetics and fine-tuning is also helpful.
• Dahlsgaard, K., C. Peterson & M.E.P. Seligman. “Shared Virtue: The Convergence of Valued Human Strengths Across Culture and History.” Review of General Psychology, 9: 203-213 (2005). A cool but completely unwitting confirmation of the Moral Law. This is the source of the two slides in “The Image of God” titled, “Is There a Moral Law?”
• Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon, 2012. iBooks. This is perhaps the strangest book here. Haidt synthesizes a vast array of findings across the fields of neuroscience, psychology, biology, and anthropology to present his view on human nature. He sometimes takes a negative view of revealed religion, but his thoughts on oxytocin, mirror neurons, intuition, and the art of persuasion are important.
• Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001. Originally published in 1944 as a book on English education, I tell people all the time that these are the best 100 pages written in the last 100 years. Lewis’ ethical work is a natural bridge from the works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas to even more modern writers, like Alasdair MacIntyre, John Collins and Alister McGrath.
• Polkinghorne, John & Nicholas Beale. Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009. Kindle. This is the second strangest book. The authors do a pretty good job answering common questions about science and faith, but their theology is a bit off at times. However, their appendix on fine-tuning is the best of three books I used here.
• Sinek, Simon. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. New York: Penguin, 2009. Print. Okay, so maybe this whole section is strange. This one is here because it’s my favorite book on leadership. But it is also the best summary of the WHY and the HOW, and their relationships to the brain’s limbic system and neocortex (respectively). This also explains some of the strange capitalization I use in “Follow Me.”

+ COVENANTS OF PROMISE & FOLLOW ME

• Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Discipleship. Trans. Barbara Green & Reinhard Krauss. Bonhoeffer Works—Reader’s Edition. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. iBooks. Bonhoeffer again outdoes himself: discipleship, the Sermon on the Mount, evangelism, and “the visible church-community--all in one book. This is longer than Life Together, but well-worth the read.
• Chambers, Dan. Churches in the Shape of Scripture: Churches of Christ and the Quest to Be More Than Just Another Evangelical Church. Franklin, TN: FaithWorks, 2012. Print. Chambers’ title pretty much says it all. His strength is dealing with fairly controversial issues (baptism, instrumental music, women leadership, etc.) with the love of Christ. He also proves that being right doesn’t mean you have to be boring.
• Ferguson, Everett. The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today. Grand Rapids: Eerdsmans, 1996. Kindle. That title might not sound like your cup of tea, but Ferguson’s book really is a great book about everything. His thoughts on covenants, the Messiah, and ministry have been particularly helpful for me.
• Rhodes, Kevin W. Follow Me: A Call to True Discipleship. Kevin is a good friend, and one of the most thoughtful, hard-working people I know. In the foreword, Mike Vestal says it well: “Kevin offers … a veritable theology of discipleship.” You can also catch some of Kevin’s thoughts in a series of lessons called, “Follow Me,” at Polishing the Pulpit 2018.