Make this the year you start reading again!
If you’re looking to sign up for the book club, the form is down below. If you want to know why you should sign up, read on!
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We live in a world of answers – billions to be found on TikTok, Twitter, and via your favorite AI bot. What’s more, some of those answers are even true.
But the Devil is clever, and instead of opposing the truth straight out, he’s set on trying to bury it under a glut of gossip, hot takes, memes and clips, half-truth gotchas, and outright (sometimes convincingly AI-generated) lies.
God has given us a firm foundation to stand on, so we’re not getting tossed to and fro by every attempted redefinition of marriage, justice, love, equality, gender, personhood, mercy, privilege, and more (Eph. 4:14). But we can’t help but be impacted by the sheer volume of lies being directed at us. If the storm outside our homes and outside our church doors isn’t exactly changing our thinking, it‘s probably, at least, shaking our confidence… and consequently crippling our witness.
That’s why RP is doing a book club.
Because, in addition to His Word, God has also given us teachers (Eph. 4:11) to equip us to grow in maturity, and some of those teachers have written fantastic books. The counter to the world’s trivia and noise is to dig deep and to fill our minds and delight our eyes with what’s true, praiseworthy, beautiful and unchanging. Although this can be done alone, we are a part of a body, and are meant to assist and encourage each other. And as we learn to see the world as it really is, we can grow in confidence again, and praise our Creator all the more loudly in our homes, and then also proclaim His Name to the culture around.
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MP: Why should we join RP’s Bucket List Book Club?
JD: One big reason is just to make better use of the “talents” God has given us (see Matt. 25:14-30), and I’m thinking here specifically of our brain, discernment, and wisdom. Even for those of us who were gifted a Christian school education in our youth, some – maybe more so us guys – may not have taken full advantage of what our parents and teachers were offering up to us. And even if you did your best in school, learning shouldn’t stop when you leave Grade 12. This book club is all about learning from the brightest people and best writers on the planet. We can learn from them via their books, and we can do so together, iron sharpening iron (Prov. 27:17). But how would you answer the same question?
MP: Whether university is realistic or not at whatever stage of life we find ourselves in, thanks to books and the internet we can now learn from teachers who are both brilliant and godly for a fraction of the cost of a traditional education. And we can do it from anywhere in the world. For example, I recently had to make a 12-hour drive with my wife Jaclyn. Since we both enjoy learning, I tried listening to a book I had never heard of before, by Steve Cuss, called Managing Leadership Anxiety. Before the drive was done, we finished the book. But this wasn’t just another book read and forgotten – it was transformational. It is proving to be instrumental in helping me with my long-standing battle with managing stress and anxiety. I have since joined an online course to learn more from the author and am experiencing the fruit in my roles as husband, father, elder, and Executive Director.
JD: And it all started with a book. You were also listening along with your wife, and I think that’s significant. With the book club, it was your idea that everyone has to sign up in pairs. Why is that?
MP: Good intentions only get you so far, but by adding someone to come alongside you in this, it brings a degree of accountability. Having a reading buddy – your spouse, a sibling, friend, maybe even our kids – is a great way to set things up to encourage us to keep at it (Eccl. 4:9-10). Plus, a lot of the learning comes from the discussions we have about what we read.
JD: So why are we calling it the “Bucket List Book Club”? You were originally thinking “RP Academy” to highlight the educational aspect, and I pitched “RP Foundations” because I thought we should tackle really important titles. So why’d we settle on the BLBC?
MP: Because these are books Christians would do well to read for our journey here on Earth. We’ve picked some of the most impactful books we know. But we’ve also emphasized accessible. I think a book club might sound like it is something only for people who already love reading. But the point isn’t the reading, but the learning together. Sure, reading is involved (or you can listen to it on audiobook) but this is about learning, and growing in wisdom, and that’s an activity we all need to be active in, right up until the day we die. That is also why there’s quite a mix: biographies, business books, and books that tackle grief, apologetics, parenting, and more.
JD: The variety is definitely a feature. But it might also have some wondering, if they’d never want to start a business, why they would ever want to read a business book. And if you don’t have kids, why would it still be valuable to read Tech-Wise Family, about best managing the tech in your house?
MP: We’ve picked these titles because they all have broad application. The Tech-Wise Family is, at its root, all about using tech as a tool, and managing it, rather than being managed by it – we’ve all experienced the pull of each ping. Author Andy Crouch’s very deliberate Christian focus will help everyone.
JD: And as to the business books, you’re much more the entrepreneurial sort, but even for me, I’ve never read a business book that didn’t teach me something valuable. We all have to manage our own lives, and our limited resources of time, money, and creativity – the business books we’ve picked have the sort of applications and insights that extend into non-business life too.
MP: What will it actually involve?
JD: You register at www.ReformedPerspective.ca/bookclub and then you are in! There is no cost, but you will need to order these books yourself. We’ll be reading one book a month and then meet via a video call with everyone else in the book club on the last Saturday of each month at 8 AM PT which is 11 AM ET. That means our first call is on January 31, 2026. As we noted above, we are asking you to sign up in pairs – grab a friend, spouse, sibling, or one of your kids. Your BLBC partner doesn’t even need to be local, but they do need to be someone you chat with regularly, so you can keep each other on track. Mark, can you share some of the books, in the order we expect to tackle them?
MP: We wrestled with which to pick, and settled on these. That said, it is possible we change it up a little, as we go along 🙂
1. The Grace and Truth Paradox by Randy Alcorn
2. Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud
3. Tech-wise Family by Andy Crouch
4. Factfulness by Hans Rosling
5. Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung
6. Upheld by Christine Farenhorst
7. Mission Drift by Peter Greer and Chris Horst
8. Cost of My Faith by Jack Phillips
9. Tactics by Greg Koukl
10. Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Butterfield
11. The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom