No, not that kind of shepherd.
I’m not talking about the image of a man leading his flock of sheep to greener pasture, or fending off wolves or bears or lions, or pulling a wayward animal out of a ditch, all the while balancing the latest periodical on his arm or scanning the online version on his smart phone for someone’s opinion about a recent book.
I am talking about pastors and their responsibility to guard the flock from bad doctrine posing as popular bestsellers.
Some pastors and bloggers review books simply by giving recommendations: Read or Don’t Read. To be honest, I don’t like reading book reviews (and am not very good at writing them), and generally seek the opinion of someone I trust to give me that summary conclusion: worth reading or not.
But perhaps pastors and others should offer more in such reviews and train the flock to read in a spiritually discerning manner. Which is, incidentally, what I will try to do with my reviews from this point forward. Yet there will still be occasions when the summary “thumbs down” will be apropos.
Do you want to know more about a book that seems to be all the rage, before you read it? Or would you like to have another’s opinion about a book you’ve read? Feel free to submit suggestions for review.