| Books to use this fall at church |
|
|
Dear Outlook Readers,
Coming off a final summer vacation, I find myself in full “back to school” mode—the fall rhythm kicks in this week as my teenagers return to school, but I won’t fully feel it until “Get Connected” Sunday (AKA Rally Day ... Kickoff Sunday … or any number of catchy names churches assign to that Sunday after Labor Day!) As the pace picks up, I’m doubling down on the books I’ll draw on for classes I’m teaching, small groups I’ll work with, sermons I imagine, or more.
While preparing to teach a class on the Psalms, I came across Richard Bruxvoort Colligan's Dangerous Songs, and it is outstanding — his framework is shaping my class and his poetic approach to the Psalms is shaping me. Read on for the full review, and check out Bruxvoort Colligan’s unique contribution to the field of biblical literature.
Happy Reading,
Amy Pagliarella
Book Review Editor
P.S.: Keep an eye out for next month’s Page Turners, where we check out the new resources for Advent! The Outlook will also release our Advent devotional in early September for presale. |
|
BOOK OF THE MONTH Dangerous Songs: The Psalms and a Gloriously Disrupted Life
Richard Bruxvoort Colligan
Broadleaf Books, 201 pages
Published April 21, 2026
The Psalms are prayers, poems and songs that express the full range of human emotions. I’ve said this numerous times while preaching or teaching, and I believe it. But I’ve never deeply felt it.
Dangerous Songs asserts this claim too, and through the skill of its author, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, readers are invited to fully make the Psalms our own.
“The Psalms invite you to hear your life as a song in process,” he writes. Bruxvoort Colligan, a musician, songwriter and leader in spiritual formation, leans into his songwriting experience, offering lyrical reinterpretations of many psalms and describing the literary techniques in their musical art.
As a director of spiritual formation, he knows the Psalms' power to shape our faith, so Dangerous Songs is more than an exercise in art appreciation. He invites us to simultaneously experience the artistry of the ancient language, even imagining ourselves in Jesus’ circle, singing and hearing the words, while also experiencing the psalms as “dialogue partners who discuss with us that which is timeless,” as we apply them to our own lives.
Dangerous Songs offers a unique framework that lends itself to teaching; he frames the psalms according to "three dimensions of human life about which the psalmists sing: thriving, desolation, and unknowing." This, I am finding, is an excellent approach to the (coincidentally) three-week class I’ve committed to teaching on the psalms.
Churches seeking a resource for adult ed or pastors eager to explore the psalms in a sermon series could easily build upon this approach, perhaps incorporating the detailed (and free!) study guide provided on Bruxvoort Colligan’s website, to lighten the load and bring additional insights to the work. Individuals will also benefit from the study questions and the encouragement to journal or doodle after each chapter. As I read, I found myself wishing for a playlist to share in my classroom — that, too, is embedded within the study guide.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect is Bruxvoort Colligan’s ability to deliver solid biblical scholarship with dry humor. He’s deliberately funny, sneaking in bits of humor that make the Hebrew Bible accessible to non-academic audiences.
Bruxvoort Colligan has studied the Psalms extensively as part of his passion to write psalm-based songs for worship (he has written a song for all 150 psalms!). Through this work, he has teased out curiosities in the Hebrew, wondered about their authorship, and drawn on resources such as Howard Thurman and Walter Brueggemann. The songwriter's academic work focused on grief, and he briefly alludes to his own trauma, which surely informed his understanding of “desolation.” By gathering all of this up, Bruxvoort Colligan has written the book he was born to write, providing us with a book that is practical, formative, lyrical and experiential — kind of like the psalms.
|
|
“In terms of solidarity, much depends on what we make of and how we interpret the apparently stubborn instinct to see the pain of other organisms like ourselves as being experienced in the way we might experience such pain — and thus as constituting some kind of moral appeal or challenge to us…A remarkable amount of energy and ingenuity has, in the last few centuries, gone into the attempt to persuade us to be suspicious of our instinct to recognize genuine pain, sympathy, mental reflection and so on in other organisms — to make us suspicious, that is, of what we unreflectively take to be signs of a ‘first-person perspective’ equivalent to our own. Explaining that we are persistently likely to be deluded on this point — so that questions of solidarity need not arise — can be wonderfully reassuring.” |
|
| Book Giveaway! Congratulations to Page Turners reader TJ Remaley, who received a copy of last month’s quoted book, Doing Something New: A Prayer for Beginnings, generously donated by IVP Kids.
A lucky reader, selected at random, will receive a copy of this month’s selection, Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, kindly offered by our friends at Bloomsbury Continuum. |  |
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment