"What Is The Use Of A Book," Thought Alice, "Without Pictures Or Conversations?"

Autumn is here, which means the return of high waisted jeans, appointment television (Project Runway starts November 14th!), pumpkin pie, art house films, and school. In honor of the fall semester, I thought it would be fun to ponder six of the most formative books I’ve read. Some are scholarly, some are frivolous, and all have had a major impact on my life.

The Bible: I was going to make this a list of the six most formative books I’ve read besides the Bible, but decided that I didn’t want to mention the most formative book in my life in passing. I was enthralled by the story of the Golden Calf when I was five. Learning the TOPICAL Bible study method in middle school changed my life. I discovered the richness of reading the Bible in context in college. I fell in love with the unified story of the Bible as I started writing kids’ curriculum. And I’ve recently wondered how I could have missed the overarching theme of God’s Kingdom after all those years of Bible study.

Disneyland: Inside Story: My zealous devotion to Disneyland (I chose my college partly because it was fifteen minutes away from Anaheim) was forged during the Bruce family’s annual trek to the park. Each year I spent eleven months and three weeks in eager anticipation of our trip and devoured every book about Disneyland I could find at the San Leandro Library. My favorite was Disneyland: Inside Story, which I checked out countless times. I would curl up on my heater and spend hours reading about Disneyland’s history from Walt’s vision of a place where “parents and children could have fun together” to the unveiling of Star Tours. It sounds silly, but Disneyland: Inside Story had a greater influence on my vision for children’s ministry than any practical ministry book I’ve read. The concepts of paying attention to small details, creating meaningful experiences for people and making decisions based on personal passions instead of trends have definitely informed my philosophy and I think Christian Education departments should make this book required reading.

The Knowledge Of The Holy: I read A.W. Tozer’s classic during my senior year of college and it changed the way I view God, the way I praise God, the way I pray, the way I teach children, and the way I read the Bible. Although I read many of the "great books" in college, The Knowledge of the Holy is one of the few that I'll still reread.

The Penny Whistle Party Planner: I’ve always liked planning things. I was a highly unromantic child, but spent hours designing my future wedding dress (along with the bridesmaid and flower girl dresses, naturally.) When I got a little older, I wrote course catalogues for the fine arts academy I dreamed of founding one day. I started to solidify my college major as a high school freshman. One of my favorite college activities was planning my classes for the next semester as soon as the new schedule arrived in my mailbox. So, it will come as no surprise that The Penny Whistle Party Planner by Meredith Brokaw and Annie Gilbar appealed to me when I was younger. It was chock full of creative themed kids’ party ideas (like a cheerleading party, a ballet party, and an orchestra party) with lots of do it yourself decorations, games, and crafts. Planning weekly Sunday school curriculum is sort of like planning a party (with crafts, games, science experiments, and drama activities all revolving around one theme) and I think that consistently reading The Penny Whistle Party Planner as a child helped prime the pump for my current profession.

Nicomachean Ethics/Desiring God: No one should read Plato during their first year of college. As a very ignorant (and practically minded) freshman, I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I mean, the guy was clearly crazy. All right, the cave analogy in “The Republic” was kind of cool, but FORMS? There’s really a perfect chair hovering around somewhere in the universe and all other chairs are just copies of it? This was more than my little eighteen year old brain could manage. Thus I was delighted to discover that Aristotle thought forms were irrelevant and was much more in line with my practical sensibilities than his wacky mentor. I was particularly intrigued by his position that happiness was man’s highest good and excited by how this corresponded with John Piper’s ideas about Christian hedonism in Desiring God. I’d never really thought about enjoying God before and developed a much deeper understanding of man’s ultimate purpose and God’s character by reading Nicomachean Ethics and Desiring God concurrently.

Evidence That Demands A Verdict: I became a Christian when I was three years old and never thought much about the validity of my worldview until I was a teenager. Suddenly I began to worry that the beliefs I’d embraced might not be true. My wise dad suggested I read Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands A Verdict and for the first time I saw that Christianity was reasonable and based on historical fact. Mr. McDowell gave me a lot of comfort and I still use his evidences for the resurrection with my kids.

So those are my six. What are some of the most formative books in your life?