It's one of my favorite quotes, and the one that keeps running through my head as I try to put an objective spin on my favorite IVP books of 2011. Honestly, it's a ridiculous idea. We label things like books and movies and music and art as "favorites" not solely for what they are (for their transporting melodies or poetic prose) but for how they make us feel, and for what they reveal about our own souls. Remaining objective requires that we leave behind that which is uniquely us--our biases and idiosyncrasies, our experiences and baggage--that which has shaped us and formed us and leaves us longing for more. Objective is boring. And, I'd argue, impossible.

And so favorites, like opinions, are as subjective as they come. If not, we'd all run off and get new ones. With that epiphany, here's my Subjective Best of 2011.

Publishers Weekly called Invitations from God by Adele Calhoun "a persistent critique of modern culture and of status quo Christianity." Hearts and Minds Books called it "a treasure" that requires us to take inventory of that which we accept and reject, and to examine how it shapes who we are.

It also happens to be written by a friend of mine. I met Adele six years ago when my husband accepted a job at the church where Adele worked. I knew her first as pastor, then as mentor and now as friend. During pseudo-therapy sessions on her sofa or muddy hikes through the woods, our conversations dripped with both the anticipation and the anxiety (mostly mine) of hearing and responding to God's invitations.

I wasn't alone. I watched hundreds of women flock to sit at her feet, to soak in her teaching, to sop up her wisdom. To pretend I don't bring the knowledge of who she is and the difference her words have made in the lives of others, including my own, to the pages of this book is, well, ridiculous. "Invitations shape who we know, where we go, what we do and who we become," says Adele.  Both her words and her actions have done the same for me. Subjective Favorite #1 goes to her.

I fell in love with God Behaving Badly the moment I read the subtitle: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? What a seriously fantastic question! It represents countless conversations with my own father, a man of deep faith who has struggled, like so many of us, to understand how a loving God could seemingly be (and these are my words now) so dang mean. More often than not, those conversations found me bumbling along until I'd finally shrug my shoulders and concede, "Honestly Dad, I don't really get it either."

And so when I cracked open this book and found the conversational style with which David Lamb answers some of our hardest questions, I was overflowing with thanks. (Later, when I realized Lamb is an Old Testament professor who actually has the gift of teaching, I was smitten. My parents, both retired school teachers, remain the best teachers I've ever known.) When Christmas rolled around, I eagerly wrapped up this book and gave it to my dad, a reflection of the bond we've shared as we've earnestly pursued our Creator. God Behaving Badly wins Subjective Favorite #2.

Choosing only two favorites doesn't seem like nearly enough, especially when I scan the plethora of passionate, insightful, transformational books here at IVP. But favorites, unlike opinions, do have a limit.

What's yours?

***

I used to bemoan the fact that I wasn't alive during the 1950s or '60s, when injustice seemed so much more overt and movements seemed so much more robust. At that time there was no way to ignore the suffocating discrimination of Jim Crow segregation in the South. The task of realizing justice in our contemporary context often seems more difficult because injustice and inequality have become mutated genes that seem more invisible. The Goliaths of economic injustice and inequality may be more covert and institutionalized but are still pernicious. Goliaths are still embedded in systems and structures that subjugate and oppress. . . .

Trying to tackle injustice based on our own limited abilities means playing small. Instead we must tap into the renewing power of faith to overcome the barriers that get in the way of transformed nonconformism.

The first and most common barrier is inertia. Particularly in this Internet age, we are barraged and inundated with constant information and marketing campaigns enticing us to do or buy something. This information makes it more difficult to grab people's attention and solicit their commitment. After a while, we either start shutting out this information overload or become increasingly jaded about solicitations for our time and attention. Inertia becomes our fallback and the keeper of the status quo.

. . . The second barrier is fear, which includes the fear of real or perceived risks associated with getting in the way of injustice. We may fear fallout from colleagues, family or even friends, particularly if the issues we are getting involved in are controversial. Living a countercultural life of activism can involve persecution, particularly in countries that don't enjoy the same degree of protections for free speech and assembly as the United States.

. . . A third barrier is apathy. We can easily become desensitized to the pain and suffering in the world. Apathy is often fed by cynicism, the belief that nothing will really change regardless of our actions.

. . . As people of faith, we are often uneasy about power and blind to the power we possess. While it is important to remember Lord Acton's dictum that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," we are often overly timid and passive about using our God-given power because power takes on an overly negative connotation. But power can be used for life-affirming or life-denying purposes. Dr. King said it best: "power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is shallow and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice."

. . . The last barrier is a feeling of isolation, which makes people feel alone and alienated from people who share similar interests and values. In any campus, workplace, church, and so on, are countless people who are waiting for the right call to action to be drawn out of their isolation. Without an invitation we often fail to realize the degree to which other people share our values and desire to build a better community and world.

. . . Activism can be intimidating, particularly when you think about the complexity and seeming intractability of many of the injustices in the world. Where does one start? What are the best entry points? . . . Creative maladjustment involves a broad range of daily-life commitments. At its core, it requires making a daily commitment to what Gandhi described as "being the change you want to see in the world." Our actions must become a mirror image of our core values and convictions. . . . We are called to be good stewards not simply of our money but also of our time and our talents. Creative maladjustment . . . a more holistic and radical stewardship of our time and resources . . . is at the very heart of discipleship.

I always liked the Magi. Really, who wouldn't? "We three kings of Orient are / chewing on a rubber cigar ..." Sing it if you know it ... 

That silly satire is my earliest impression of the Magi. But it hardly merits the feast day offered every year on the Feast of Epiphany, celebrated on January 6. On this day we're encouraged to look at the freshly incarnated Jesus through the eyes of "wise men." 

In his book The Gospel of Matthew: God with Us, the second volume in our Resonate series, Matt Woodley gives us a true sense of the meaning of epiphany, the discovery of the Christ that vindicates every journey, no matter how difficult or seemingly hopeless. An excerpt from Matt's book follows.

***

The Magi represent a universal human drive to embark on a quest. Their stargazing wasn't recreational or philosophical; it signified the red hot coal stuck in their throat, their longing for joy, their participation in the search. After intently watching the stars and planets, after reading the signs and searching the clues, they embarked on a quest. "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea," Matthew tells us, "during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?'" (Mt 2:1-2). We don't know much about them, but we can assume this was a costly search driven by deep desire. In one sense the Magi represent all of us--seeking, questioning, longing human beings who awaken to life as a quest.

But they also represent something about God, for the Magi are not only seekers; they are questers who have been outquested by God. According to Matthew, God initiated their long and costly journey through part of his good creation--a star (Mt 2:2, 9). They may have spotted the star, but God used the star to guide them out of their everydayness toward joy. God also guided them through his spoken word, refining their initial quest through an ancient Old Testament prophecy recorded in Matthew 2:6:

But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
   are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
   who will shepherd my people Israel.

At each stage of their quest God sought the seekers, recapitulating the journey described by Augustine's prayer: "I should not have sought you unless you had first found me." . . . We start out the quest intending to discover something, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something only to find that someone was looking for us. We assume we're ascending to God and realize that God is descending to us. This is divine mercy. . .

It's hard to miss the application for us: the questing God of Jesus, the God of grace, still seeks seekers, welcoming home sinners and outsiders. He still guides us step by step through nature, circumstances, relationships, failures, triumphs and especially the Holy Bible until we are led to worship King Jesus. The church, living at the foot of Jesus' crib and cross, should do no less.

In the time before Christ, not many people were talking. The prophets had gone silent for centuries; Israel itself was in mute submission to Rome. And then one day Zechariah, member of the priestly class, emerged from the temple unable to speak, because he had not believed what he heard when the angel of the Lord spoke on God's behalf.

Zechariah hadn't been struck mute because of unrighteousness any more than his wife, Elizabeth, had been unable to bear children because of unrighteousness. Luke's Gospel describes both of them as "righteous in the sight of God"--words not thrown around carelessly in the Scriptures. No, the same God who allowed an elderly Elizabeth to become pregnant just as Sarah, the matriarch of Elizabeth's people, had become pregnant late in life, struck Zechariah mute because of his unbelief, because of his lack of faith, because of his fear.

We don't know how long Zechariah could not speak. We assume it was nine months because we fill in the gaps of the stories we read. But Luke's Gospel doesn't tell us; it only tells us that Zechariah completed his time of service, that he returned home, that "at their appointed time" (nine months + x) God's words through the angel came to pass and Elizabeth gave birth to a child. And eight days after that, Zechariah's lack of faith was overwhelmed by the evidence of God's wonderworking power in the child borne to his wife at such a late age. His fear was overwhelmed by a direct experience of God's goodness to his people. And Zechariah obeyed the word of the Lord and named his child John. And "immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God." This is what he went on to say:

"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
    because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
    in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies
    and from the hand of all who hate us--
to show mercy to our ancestors
  and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
    and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace."

That soliloquy made it into the Scriptures, which means it's counted among the words of the Lord. The fruit of Zechariah's silence is God's word to us in Advent.

We don't often think of something cosmic, something fundamentally redemptive, emerging from silence. Israel itself didn't expect its deliverance to be birthed out of its silent acceptance of the tyranny of Rome. But maybe, if we defy the timidity that tempts us along the way, our silence can bear something like the Word of the Lord: words of mercy we didn't know we had in us, offers of reconciliation we never expected to make, gifts of forgiveness and peace to those we'd long shunned. Silence has the capacity to bear grace, as evidenced in Zechariah's life, as evidenced on a silent night in a little town.

As we wait for Christmas this year, let us accept with faith the silence of God as something as living and active as the Word of God. Let us keep silent not out of fear or indifference but in solidarity with the patience of God. Let us speak boldly when it is appointed for us to speak and commit ourselves to listening for God until a word is given. Let us bear gladly the burden of responsibility laid on us by the Word of God even as we wait for the Word of God to relieve us of all our burdens. Let us prepare ourselves to enjoy the fruit of silence even as we do our part to prepare the way of the Lord in the world--a world that in many ways is oppressed by sound and fury, a world that in reality aches for silence as much as it longs for God to speak. Let us wait, in short, for Christmas.

First of all, I would require that all IVP employees bring action figures to work so that we could compare our favorites between coffee breaks.

Next, I would put Dave Zimmerman's (that's me, in case you've lost track of who is really in charge here!) desk in the middle of the IVP bookstore. This would save him valuable time in having to walk up front to meet authors and apologize to them for having to wear visitor name tags. Authors would also be impressed with how many books he has in his office library. At Christmastime we could relocate the Christmas tree to his current office and take turns squeezing in to sing Christmas carols in groups of six--which would be a sextet and about as racy as we get around here.

I would further require everyone to carry their pencils over their left ears as an expression of action orientation (always ready to strike an ill-construed gerund) and a long overdue recognition of Dave Zimmerman's (still me) pervasive influence in the office.

Finally, I would tell the world how much Dave means to our office culture. His hard work, unique sense of humor and love for organizational structure (you and I know better, but Bob doesn't, and in case he reads this blog I want him to think that I do, in fact, love organizational structure) are legendary at IVP--sort of like the blue chair room. Maybe we could even put the black chair in the blue chair room into Dave's office to keep all of our icons together! If you like this blog just hum the eighth verse of "Awake, My Soul" (hint: it has a doxological feel to it; if you don't get the hint, you have missed too many office meetings!) and tell Dave you really liked his latest blog.

The Boss (but you really know who this is)

P.S. Don't forget to wear your pencil over your left ear next Friday!

***
This post was written not by Lisa, Suanne, Rebecca or Dave, but by the ultimate doppelganger, Bob Fryling--publisher of InterVarsity Press and apparent weekend hacker. We apologize for the extra-meta nature of this post and for the sextet joke.

Well, it's official and officially public. Chris Smith and I signed a contract with InterVarsity Press/Likewise Books to write a "Slow Church" book. This is what I'll be working on the next seven months. (I'm excited that Besides the Bible is at IVP now too!)

So I think it's a first in IVP's history (at least in my memory) that we've done something as old-school corporate as organizational mergers and acquisitions. But earlier this week we did just that, announcing our purchase of Biblica Books, a line of books from Biblica Worldwide. (Read the official press release here.) Biblica translates the Bible into languages spoken by 1 million-plus speakers, has completed more than 100 languages, and is the translation sponsor and ministry publisher of the New International Version of the Bible. The missions of our two organizations have a lot of overlap, and our book-publishing interests align nicely, so we were seen from the beginning as a good landing spot for their books program. 

Now comes IVP's happy challenge of taking over the work of Biblica Books, both in selling and distributing 170 titles currently in print, and editing and producing thirty titles currently in process. It's a lot of work, but honestly, it's the fun part--new relationships with authors, new ideas moving from our warehouse into the marketplace, new strategies for promoting our books collectively and individually. The books we're taking on include

• Operation World, a global prayer guide currently in its seventh edition.
• The Cross, the story of Arthur Blessitt's forty-year experiment in literally carrying a cross all over the world.
• Besides the Bible, reviews of 100 "must-read" books for the church, edited and compiled by Dan Gibson, Jordan Green and John Pattison (who just signed a contract with IVP for his book Slow Church with Chris Smith). Full disclosure: I'm a contributor to this book, and IVP's publishing history makes a pretty good showing in the bibliography.

It's difficult, when thinking about so classically corporate a move as an organizational acquisition, to think of so quaint an idea as welcome. But we've been talking about hospitality lately here at Strangely Dim, and this really is a matter of that. Publishers are referred to as "houses" for all sorts of reasons, but particularly because the work of a publisher is inherently relational, inherently personal, inherently missional. What happens at a publisher is illuminated helpfully by what happens at a house. You don't invite people (authors, endorsers, coworkers, other organizations) haphazardly; you welcome them, which is to allow them to become a part of you, to be shaped by you even as you are shaped by them.

So we welcome Biblica Books in the fullest sense of the word, and we commit ourselves to the work of welcome. And we invite you to do the same, to help us celebrate the joining of these two publishing efforts and to pray for the fruit of our work together.

• "The board of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in the U.S.A. determined that the Fellowship should undertake its own deliberate publishing program, replacing the somewhat haphazard activities of the preceding years. That meeting came to be considered the official birth of IVP in the United States." This from the anecdotal history of InterVarsity Press, Heart. Soul. Mind. Strength.
• "The sermon 'My Heart--Christ's Home' was first preached in the fall of 1947 . . . at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley. . . . The evening sermon was not written out in manuscript form but simply outlined and preached extemporaneously from notes." This from an article in the March 1979 edition of Fuller Theological Seminary's Theology, News and Notes, and later published in the second revised edition of My Heart--Christ's Home.

Like I said, relatively inauspicious. A few years later an editor at IVP contacted the sermon's author, Robert Boyd Munger, asking for permission to publish it in booklet form. Munger said yes, forgoing such nagging details as a written contract, and IVP's most enduring publication began its now nearly sixty-year run in print.

The beauty of My Heart--Christ's Home is its simplicity. The concept comes from a recurring theme in the New Testament: in Christ God makes his home in our hearts.

• "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." (Ephesians 3:17)
• "If a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." (John 14:23)
• "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20)

But of all these notable players in the game, Munger is arguably the MVP. Sixty years after he delivered just another Sunday evening sermon, people are still reading it, talking about it, thinking about it, playing with it, struggling with it, praying about it, living it. Munger's story begins simply, with a relatively naive invitation:

 After Christ entered my heart, in the joy of that new-found relationship, I said to him, "Lord, I want this heart of mine to be yours. I want you to settle down here and be fully at home. I want you to use it as your own." . . . He was glad to come and seemed delighted to be given a place in my ordinary little heart.

It ends simply too, although with all (or at least most) of the naivete evicted:

"Here it is, all that I am and have forever. Now you run the house. Just let me stay with you as houseboy and friend."

He took my life that day. . . . A deep peace settled down on my soul that has remained. I am his and he is mine forever!

Simplicity on both sides, with the commensurate complexity tucked in between. Such is the story of any story, from "Once upon a time" to "happily ever after." Such is also the story of any life, from dust to dust, from strength to strength. Munger ends his sermon with yet another invitation, this one to each of us, to make the story of My Heart--Christ's Home our own story:

May Christ settle down and be at home as Lord of your heart also.

• If there's a sucker born every minute, then I've been born again and again and again.
• I have a handful of talents, but none of them is home repair or even the ability to retain knowledge about it.
• Not every looming home repair crisis demands a costly fix.

I learned this last point, thankfully, soon enough for it to matter. Let's see if I can explain this. My furnace stopped working, so I called my furnace installer to take a look. He couldn't make it, so he sent his brother, who ascertained that the furnace wasn't working because the water heater was siphoning off its gas to heat our water. This was due to years of neglect of basic water heater maintenance, as well as decades of bad do-it-yourself decisions made by the house's previous owner. Three thousand dollars later, my water heater and a fair bit of piping were replaced, and my furnace was working again.

But then the main water pipe started leaking. I called the hot water heater guy, who told me that my now uberefficient water heater was exposing a systemic flaw caused by yet another poor do-it-yourselfer in my house's history. This fix would run me $1500, and if I didn't act soon I was risking a burst pipe and a houseful of water.

That's it? I asked him how much I owed him. He checked his watch and told me, "Thirty bucks." For those keeping score, that's roughly 2 percent of the other bid. I paid him $150 and very nearly gave him a hug. If I ever let anyone other than Chris DeLuca touch my plumbing, somebody smack me.

There's something inherently risky about letting someone into your house, especially if they're coming in response to an expression of need. Hardly a week goes by without news reports of home invasions, fraud and robbery that began with a knock on the door in the wake of calamity--people claiming to be sent by your insurance to fix hail damage on your siding, people dressed as city workers claiming to need to check your gas or water or electricity, people dressed as police claiming to be investigating a crime only to perpetrate one once you let them in. Communicating need and opening your door are alike acts of vulnerability, and there's a world full of people only too happy to take advantage of you right when you're ready to trust.

But we continue to communicate need, and we continue to open our door, because really, what other choice do we have? And every once in a while someone comes to the door and responds to your need who knows what he or she is talking about and actually has your best interests at heart. So we continue to risk vulnerability, and sometimes we're rewarded for it.

Hospitality is a spiritual discipline, I think, precisely because it's an act of vulnerability. The apostle Peter encourages us that we may well entertain angels simply by opening our door, and the Bible bears him out with various reports of angelic and even divine visitations. But there are other examples of scoundrels paying visits, which itself is an opportunity for us to grow in our spirits. It was the scoundrel Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, after all, who visited and robbed a vulnerable bishop, but it was the vulnerable bishop who redirected Jean Valjean on a more redemptive journey.

When we stop opening our door to those offering help, we effectively stop communicating our need--even if, as is often the case, we get more and more needy from behind closed doors. I've found that it's much easier to complain about troubles than to actually seek deliverance. That affects our relationship to God--we keep God locked out of our daily needs and so refuse to let him be God--but it also affects our relationships with one another. And our souls (and really our whole culture, which is as needy as we are) suffer for it.

This whole experience with my leaky pipes has reminded me that I'm a person in need, and I live among a people in need. It's reminded me that my God shall supply all my needs, and the needs of all those around me, and that sometimes God will do so by putting us in touch with each other. And while there are scoundrels waiting to catch us at our most vulnerable, even they have needs that maybe God has us in mind to address. And all these encounters hinge on whether or not we'll open the door.

That reminds me of a little cartoon from my childhood. I hope you enjoy it.