Book Recommendations for Christian Women

I recently read Aimee Byrd's excellent No Little Women: Equipping All Women in the Household of God and it is one of the best books I have read on women and women's ministry in the local church. In one of the book's footnotes, she links to an article she wrote for the OPC with book recommendations for women. I share the relevant portion of that article here with titles for Christian women that will be especially helpful and trustworthy:

If you have women in your church who are interested in studying the books in the Old Testament, Nancy Guthrie’s five part series, Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament, is outstanding. The Old Testament can be intimidating to teach, especially if you do not have any formal education. But Guthrie has provided a great resource for teachers, or even for private study, with tables and maps to help the reader gain an understanding of the historical context from which the book is written. Guthrie is faithful to the meaning of the text, highlighting the main themes while helpfully breaking down the important details. What I like best about this series is the author’s zeal to show how the Old Testament Scriptures point to Christ. Readers will finish the study enriched by Guthrie’s teaching. She also provides discussion questions for the ten-week studies and accompanying videos for the group studies. 

Nancy Guthrie has written many good books. She is also a great resource for bereaving families. Her work here comes from her own painful experience that drove her to find comfort in God’s Word. Her book Holding on to Hope: A Pathway through Suffering to the Heart of God has been a help to many grieving families. And while on the topic of bereavement, Jessalyn Hutto has written a helpful, small book, Inheritance of Tears: Trusting the Lord of Life When Death Visits the Womb, for women who have suffered a miscarriage. These are great resources to offer to women in your church.

Kathleen Nielson’s Living Word Bible study series is worth noting. I love how these books are spiral bound and have the feel of a notebook that the reader can write in. Along with great teaching, the benefit of using Nielson’s studies is that she constantly forces the reader to go digging in the biblical text herself to find the meaning of the text. She doesn’t prepackage her teaching into easily digestible bites, but rather teaches the reader to be a student of the Word. Nielson is not aiming to be an “answer person,” but a teacher, and she does that well. She also has a section at the end called “Notes for Leaders” that will help your teachers do the same.

The issue of biblical distinctions between manhood and womanhood has been more pressing in the church lately. One book that I have found refreshing to read in this area is Hannah Anderson’s Made for More. What I appreciate about this book is how, as a conservative, Anderson does not write in an over-correcting way against feminism by focusing more on men’s and women’s roles as the subject matter rather than Christ. She begins with our identity as beings made in the image of God, and how that is true for both men and women. She then moves to our differences, and how we depend on one another to fully reflect God’s image. This isn’t a book that cherry picks all the “pink” verses to teach biblical womanhood, but one that covers the big picture of the fall, redemption, and restoration as it teaches about our blessing and distinctiveness as women. Hannah Anderson is an engaging writer who is a joy to read.

Another favorite of mine is Melissa Kruger’s book on contentment, The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World. When I first picked this book up, I thought that it was only written for a certain type of woman. I quickly realized how beneficial it is for every woman in the church to read. Kruger writes like a friend who wants to help you find your satisfaction in Christ. While it is convicting, her book encourages weary women with the richness of the gospel.

Both Melissa Kruger and Gloria Furman have written gospel-centered books for new mothers. Kruger’s Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood is an eleven-week devotional Bible study for busy moms, who of course still need to be nurtured in the Word throughout the week. What I like about this book is Kruger’s reminder that we aren’t to be more concerned with what we are doingas busy moms, than with what we are becoming in Christ. The study isn’t about how to be a better mom, but on being a disciple of Christ as a mom. Gloria Furman’s Glimpses of Grace helps moms find those glimpses of God’s kindness to us in our everyday living. She offers a short, easy read that focuses on living our lives to the glory and praise of God. This is a needed encouragement for every mom. These are good books to give new moms, or mothers who are beginning to learn more about the faith. Also, Jen Wilkin has written a helpful book for beginners in Bible study called Women of the Word.

This, of course, isn’t an exhaustive list. It’s just a few suggestions. And I am encouraged to know that there are more great books for women in the making. But women shouldn’t just read books written by women, specifically for women. And this is an issue that I think is worth discussing. While I do think that it is valuable for women to have resources like this, I am afraid that women’s groups are getting pigeonholed into a target market that is quite limited. Wouldn’t it be great to have a women’s group reading through some of the Puritans, or the theologically robust books that have stood the test of time? 

Women's Ministry as a Commodity

The following is an excerpt from Aimee Byrd's excellent, No Little Women: Equipping All Women in the Household of God. I am convinced it will be one of the most important books pastors and elders should read this year.

My cohosts of the Mortification of Spin podcast and I once went on a dangerous mission. We went into a Christian bookstore to broadcast live a conversation about best seller lists. Okay, we only pretended to be in a Christian bookstore—but it was still pretty dangerous. Imaginary security guards were after us, and we almost didn’t make it out of there with a coveted pack of Testamints™. How would we be able to share our faith and our passion for fresh breath with others if we couldn’t get some Testamints™? 

But we were really looking at a current list of Christian best sellers, and it was quite revealing. Evangelical Christians are not generally expected to be critical thinkers. And this is sad. During the show, cohost Carl Trueman observed that there’s a lot of “sentimental drivel” marketed to women. As insulting as that sounds, it is true. We did that episode a couple of years ago, but unfortunately the list of Christian best sellers looks strangely familiar, in terms of content, every time we take a gander. The best sellers list is often dominated by women authors, which in itself isn’t a bad thing—but just about all the books on the list are filled with theological error. And the ones marketed especially to women appeal to the emotions and sentimentality of the reader while subverting the faithful teaching of Scripture. Does this reveal more about the women who read, about the churches that they may or may not attend, about Christian bookstores, or about Christian publishers? We all have some responsibility in this. 

Women are a prime target market for Christian publishers and bookstores. In 2014, a global consumer study found that during the previous year Christian book sales grew four times as fast as those of the secular market. And women are reading more than men, buying 72 percent of Christian fiction and 59 percent of Christian nonfiction books. Barna’s research in 2015 continued to show that women read more than men do, revealing that almost twice as many women as men read Christian nonfiction. So it makes sense to provide a good selection of Christian books for women. We have our own genre now in the Christian book market. Before the establishment of Christian trade publishers, pastors and professional theologians were the main authors of religious books. Readers would buy these books with a good idea of the confessional position and theological qualifications of the author. However, most of these books weren’t written with women in mind. 

Interestingly, the first “trade” book that Zondervan published in 1938 was titled The Women of the Old Testament. The Zondervan brothers must have picked up on something while they were selling books out of the trunks of their cars. Maybe there was a big consumer base of women readers. But it wasn’t really until the mid-1990s that women began to break into the Christian publishing world as a popular genre of their own. By then, technology had grown enough for women like Kay Arthur, Joyce Meyer, and Beth Moore to begin to have their own ministries, radio programs, and prolific speaking engagement platforms, helping them to establish themselves enough to be able to publish. These women all became best-selling authors, blazing a trail for many other women to follow. 

Women like Joyce Meyer and Beth Moore, and now Lysa TerKeurst, Jen Hatmaker, Christine Caine, and Priscilla Shirer, have a charisma that is attractive to many women—and also to a significant number of men. Television, videos, and social media are used well, making them all the more engaging. They have a way of appealing to empathy, humor, and the desire to hear an entertaining story. Their friendly demeanor sends a message of trustworthiness and conveys the sense that you aren’t merely buying their books and learning from their videos to get information, but are also learning from someone who is just like you or one of your friends. The combination of these gifts tends to disarm people. So they learn from them and read their books without critical discernment. And if someone does offer some criticism, it comes off as a personal attack. 

All of a sudden, the doctrines of the church that those before us died to protect become obtuse, and the psychological jargon of our times becomes more palatable. The language of the gospel gets hijacked in order to teach personal fulfillment. That is what much of the Christian best seller list has come to, anyway. Many of the top-selling Christian books appear to have a high view of Scripture, but, once you get past the sparkling endorsements and attractive cover design, they teach extrabiblical revelation, mysticism, New Age spirituality, the prosperity gospel, or just plain bad exposition. These are not harmless books. 

The evangelical culture has stereotyped women. So much of what is marketed as Christian literature reminds me of the airbrushed, digitally doctored, duct-taped cover models. The truth isn’t good enough, so it gets a new spin. And then it sells. But is it still truth? Christians are responsible to be discerning readers, to separate the truth from the lie. Why should women be less responsible? Instead, discernment has become just as unappealing as the truth it stands up for. It seems that we have entered an era of what I call Pinterest Christianity.

We can take a Bible verse and paint it on stair risers. We can put together super-cute baptismal ceremonies with dramatic sandbag candles. We can distract people from our potentially offensive doctrines by offering our own homemade remedy and marketing it in a trendy Mason jar. We can take an Old Testament prophet and turn him into a poster boy for a great diet plan. We’ve become brilliant at taking the old and making it new again. We unleash the ordinary with sparkling promise that goes viral. And followers are giddy with the new revelation. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking Pinterest. I happen to love it. But we shouldn’t take this whimsical approach to our theology. We need to love God’s truth for what it is—all of it. Because he is good.

 ---Aimee Byrd. No Little Women: Equipping All Women in the Household of God (Kindle Locations 1426-1470). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.