Concordia Seminary will honor faculty members who have recently published books next Tuesday, May 19, 4:00-6:00PM, in the Seminary’s Koburg Hall (map and directions).

The celebration will include the requisite fine wine, hors d’oeuvres, and lively conversation. And the writers will be present to sign books. We’re not elitist at Concordia, so we want to celebrate with anyone who’d like to raise a glass to good writing and/or good theology. Everything is free but the books.

The following writers and their books will be feted:

• Charles Arand and Robert Kolb: The Genius of Luther’s Theology (Baker)

• Charles Arand, Robert Kolb and Robert Rosin: essays in The Pastoral Luther (Eerdmans)

• Kent Burreson: editor for He Was Crucified (Concordia)

• Robert Kolb: Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith (Oxford)

• Reed Lessing: Concordia Commentary: Amos (Concordia)

• David Maxwell: an essay in In the Shadow of the Incarnation (Notre Dame)

• Francis Rossow: Gospel Patterns in Literature (Kirk House)

• Quentin Wesselschmidt: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Psalms 51-150 (InterVarsity)

We plan to make this an annual…

Just in case your summer reading list has wilted in the heat, my good friend John Nunes, president of Lutheran World Relief, recently posted a booklist of top books for the globally enlightened student.

The list was in response to a college professor who asked him what books she should encourage her students to read to gain greater global awareness. He passed along the question to a group of friends and colleagues. I was honored to be included.

My contribution was as follows:

The Gospels in Our Image: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts, edited by David Curzon. A kind of midrashic collection of poems ranging from the deeply reverent to the keenly skeptical. Also a great primer in world poetry from the last century.

Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman. A classic in Black theology. A seminal read for the young Martin Luther King, Jr.

Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav…