The best new books I’ve read in the last month are
- (5.0) Necessary Risks: Challenges Privileged People Need to Face by Teri McDowell Ott (Fortress Press, 2022)
- (4.5) This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley (Convergent, 2022)
- (4.5) Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care: How to Respond When Things Are Falling Apart by Karen A. McClintock (Fortress Press, 2022)
- (4.5) The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent & Defy Effectively by Todd B. Kashdan (Avery, 2022)
- (4.0) The Struggle to Stay: Why Single Evangelical Women Are Leaving the Church by Katie Gaddini (Columbia University Press, 2022)
- (4.0) The Long Haul: 2022 Lenten Devotional by the United Church of Christ Stillspeaking Writers’ Group (Pilgrim Press, 2022)
- (4.0) Churches and the Crisis of Decline: A Hopeful, Practical Ecclesiology for a Secular Age by Andrew Root (Baker Academic, 2022)
- (3.5) Storycraft: The Art of Spiritual Narrative by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Fortress Press, 2022)
Necessary Risks
Necessary Risks is the hardest book I’ve read so far this year not because of the manner in which it is written, but because the content spoke directly to me and pushed me to know more, do more, and be better as a person of privilege. Terri McDowell Ott is a White Presbyterian pastor a few years my senior who served as pastor of three congregations before transitioning into her current role as a college chaplain. In Necessary Risks she invites readers to learn from her own journey, through wide ranging contemporary literature, and experientially by participating in application directed questions and activities that conclude each chapter.
Chapter titles: Risk Going, Risk Staying, Risk Learning, Risk Teaching, Risk Following, Risk Leading, Risk Listening, Risk Speaking, Risk Failing, and Risk Succeeding