Summer Reading: The Top 10 Novels for Pastors

#10Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.

"A Searching Novel of Sin and Redemption," this bizarre story from the queen of Southern Gothic literature is disturbing, hilarious, and profound. Returning war veteran Hazel Motes comes back to his Tennessee home to find it abandoned, precipitating a journey through a garish South, rife with the sacred and profane. Motes, an atheist, is (lack of belief notwithstanding) so preoccupied with theological concepts and symbols that God is inescapably and inexplicably behind every turning of his strange road.

O'Connor never makes interpretation easy, but the depth of her insight into depravity and redemption make this a powerful read.

#9Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie

This phantasmagorical tale is part allegory/part meditation on the importance of story. Haroun, a young man from a city that has forgotten its name, travels across a bizarre landscape filled with riddles, puns (in two languages), and colorful characters as he seeks the source of the stories that can return hope to his land and family. It's a meditation on how narratives define us that will connect for storytellers of the pastoral kind.

Light reading, but with big images that will worm their way into your brain. You'll either love it or hate it.

#8Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

It's a toss-up between this one and The Great Divorce, but this makes the list for its depth of feeling and excellent characters. Lewis's most critically acclaimed (and last) novel, Till We Have Faces reinterprets the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche to poignantly illustrate the strangeness of the divine, the smallness of our souls, and the human urge to accuse God for our sorrows.

"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

#7The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Completely underappreciated by the millions of high school seniors forced to read it, this American classic retains its power even 150 years after it was written. Central to the plot are themes of duplicity, sin, and redemption, and the question of what makes for true righteousness.

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."

#6The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

This story of a washed up "whisky priest" during a period of Mexico's history when Catholicism was outlawed opens a window into the mind and soul of a man of God who is an utter failure (alcoholic, lecherous, cowardly), yet unable to forsake his calling, even though it may mean his martyrdom.

His ministry to a hopeless Mexico reeling from revolution intersects the lives of people at various stages of damnation and redemption, as he quietly journeys to his own personal Calvary.

#5Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's a classic, and it deserves the status. This is a murder mystery, but not of the kind we're used to. The mystery is not who committed the crime (the reader knows that even before the murderer does), but of what the murderer's crisis of conscience will prompt him to do.

Dostoyevsky' masterpiece of obsession and violence ascends the heights and plumbs the depths of human nature. If you find it tough sledding at the start, stick with it; the last chapters of the story are, in my opinion, some of the finest in classic literature.

"The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!"

#4The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

When earth receives transmissions of lovely celestial music from a planet in the nearby Alpha Centauri system, Jesuit missionaries, ever at the forefront of mission and exploration, are the first to respond. Rome quietly assembles a team of priests and scientists to make peaceful contact with the inhabitants of the planet. The ensuing expedition leaves only one survivor, crippled in body and spirit, who comes under investigation by the Church after his return to earth. As his story comes out, Russell explores the relationship of suffering to ministry and faith, finding hope in despair.

This is science fiction at its best, taut and masterfully written. Central to it all is the pastoral/missional relationship between a minister and God.

#3Godric by Frederick Buechner

Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In this semi-fictionalised "autobiography" of medieval hermit Godric of Finchale, ordained minister Frederick Buechner explores the nature of piety and holiness against the backdrop of the bawdy Middle Ages. The earthiness of Godric's sin, and harshness of his decades-long penitence produce gems like this:

"What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish into the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard."

Powerful prose married to honest questions of spirituality.

#2Silence by Shusaku Endo

How can God be silent when his people suffer so much on his behalf? Set during the horrific persecution of Japanese Christians in the 17th century, this is the story of a Portuguese priest sent to serve Japan's hidden population of Christians, and to determine if rumors of his mentor's renunciation of faith are true. Endo's prose powerfully carries us through feudal Japan, exploring the relationship of Christ's sufferings to those of the church.

Silence is haunting and profound, showing the minister's identification with the suffering Christ as both a means of knowing God, and of serving the church in lavish, difficult ways.

#1Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

This winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction is an absolute must-read for pastors. John Ames, an aging pastor in Gilead, Iowa, writes a collection of letters for his seven-year-old son, who he knows will have little memory of him. Ames reflects on the legacy of his father (a Christian pacifist) and grandfather (a violent abolitionist), and how their ministries defined his own life and ministry, their families, and Gilead itself.

It all makes for a novel that is sacred, gritty, and utterly American. Robinson's themes of legacy, family, and the nature of the pastoral calling are unforgettable.

"Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters."