Towards that guilt, I thank one of my recent reads, Under the Unpredictable Plant, (which I apparently didn't bother to review here!) for reminding me that reading is indeed an important part of my work, and that reading is never merely self-indulgent luxury - even if it feels like it.  Reading feeds.  Reading stretches.  It launches me into extended periods of wild-eyed speculation and theological round ups.  It forces me out of my comfort zones, out of the familiar, out of the expected, and prepares me for a Big Bad World that is never as neat and tidy as my sinful humanity wants to try and make it.  As much as I need to read, the people that I serve need me to be reading even more.  

I'm also excited to find that the people I work with and for enjoy reading as well.  It's such a treat to run across a fellow bibliophile and be able to wax poetic about the joy of words and the possibilities such seemingly simple marks on a page can offer.  

But there's a lot of stuff to read.  A lot to choose from.  And honestly, most of it isn't worth the time or effort.  The explosion of vanity presses, print on demand technology, and more and more targeted niche publishers results in a glut of books that are by and large useless, and more often than desirable, actually dangerous.  They present the ramblings and wishful thinkings and imaginings of people who I trust are well-intentioned, but are hopeless misinformed or underinformed about themselves and others and the world around them.  Without a doubt, part of the reason that at my ripening age I have yet to author and publish anything other than technical textbooks is due to a fear of people like me.  Critical people who don't offer a lot of grace to those bold enough to commit their thoughts and hopes to print and ask other people to read them and live by them.  That's a heavy calling.  And while I do that every week and every Sunday morning with the group of people I'm called to lead, there's something ponderously larger in scale about moving into the realm of hard copy books.

So until I write the Great American Novel or at least something that I hope will be helpful to somebody,  I try to encourage others to read Good Stuff.  Some of it is pleasurable to read.  Other stuff has to be waded through by force of will.  Both kinds of reads might be Good Stuff.  Ease and pleasure are not the only marks by which we ought to judge the worth of writing.  

Towards that end, here are two more resources for the readers out there.  These are the academic journals published by the two official seminaries for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  

The first comes from my alma mater, and is the Concordia Journal, published by the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.  This is a quarterly journal on a variety of theological topics.  It includes book reviews and sermon helps for clergy in addition to scholarly articles on topics that vary in their interest level (at least to me) as well as their practical application.  A subscription is $15/year if you live in the United States.  If you're part of an LCMS congregation, your pastor should be receiving them for free, and might be able and willing to share them (though your request might surprise them!) if you ask.  I'm assuming if you're reading this you have e-mail (or know someone who does), so you can send an e-mail to cj@csl.edu for information on subscribing.  There is a related online site that doesn't reprint the journal articles, but has a variety of theological musings and resources that might be of interest to you (or a good sleep aid).  You can reach that site atconcordiatheology.org.

The other journal is published by the Ft. Wayne, Indiana seminary, and is titled the Concordia Theological Quarterly.  Their website is http://www.ctsfw.edu/ctq/, and you can send e-mail correspondence & requests for subscription to ctq@ctsfw.edu.