Reading as a Spiritual Practice | Jeff Crosby

What if picking up a book could become a form of prayer? In this conversation, host John Terrill sits down with Jeff Crosby — publisher, author, and lifelong champion of the written word — to talk about his book World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading (Paraclete Press, 2025).

Jeff brings more than four decades in bookselling and publishing to a deeply personal question: why should we read? His own reading life began with Sunday comics in the Indianapolis Star and baseball biographies, until one book — The Admiral’s Daughter, heard about on Good Morning America — “flipped a switch” and opened, in his words, “this idea of a world of wonder.” From there, a career took shape: 13 years as a bookseller, 24 years at InterVarsity Press (ultimately as its publisher), and now as president of ECPA, the trade association of Christian publishing.

In this episode, John and Jeff discuss:

How a liturgy before reading — drawn from Douglas McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy — can transform how we approach any book

Why reading diverse voices (across gender, ethnicity, and genre) is a pathway toward becoming more human and more Christlike

The practice of rereading: how books like Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld and Kent Haruf’s novels serve as lifelong companions

Three practical strategies for becoming a wiser reader — including the one question Jeff asks almost everyone he meets

Why Jeff’s bookstore friend was counseled to fast from books — and what that revealed about his relationship to scripture

How reading together (from team check-ins at ECPA to hosting 75–100 person “Books in Nature” dinners) transforms community

Jeff’s next book: The Spirit in the Sky — on music, spirituality, and 17 artists from Paul Simon to Marvin Gaye (Bloomsbury, October 2025)

Jeff recorded this conversation the day before his mother’s memorial service, turning to the Psalms and a poetry collection called Joy (edited by Christian Wiman, Yale University Press) as companions in grief. His witness here is as much lived as written.

Guest Bio

Jeff Crosby is the president and CEO of ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publishers Association) and has worked in bookselling and publishing for more than 40 years — from running a Lagos bookstore near Indiana University to 24 years at InterVarsity Press to leading the trade association of Christian publishing. He is the author of World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading (Paraclete Press, 2025) and The Language of the Soul. His writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Books & Culture, CRUX Journal, and other publications. He lives in the Chicago area with his wife, author Cindy Crosby.

 Resources Mentioned

• Jeff’s website: jeffreycrosby.net
• World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading — Jeff Crosby (Paraclete Press, 2025)
• The Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music and Our Search for Graceland — Jeff Crosby (Bloomsbury, October 2025)
• Every Moment Holy — Douglas McKelvey
• Markings — Dag Hammarskjöld
• Reading for the Love of God — Jessica Hooten Wilson (Brazos Press)
• Joy (poetry anthology) — edited by Christian Wiman (Yale University Press)
• The Meaning of Your Life — Arthur C. Brooks

CONNECT WITH US
Subscribe to The UpWords Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and visit slbf.org/studio to learn more about our work at the intersection of faith, the academy, and the marketplace.

This episode was created by the SLBF STUDIO at Upper House.

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour

Transcript

— Intro

Jeff Crosby 0:03

Well, I think that the diverse reading is is very similar to trying to cultivate diverse relationships. As I get to know people who are quite different from me, I believe my life is enriched. I believe that empathy, uh, which I know has been a lot in in the public discourse in recent years, but I I believe we need more of it, not less of it. And I think that as I encounter uh and develop, cultivate uh relationships with a more diverse group of people, I am just I am more human, I am more thoughtful, you know, I am more understanding. And I think that reading does a similar thing.

Dave Conour 0:45

Welcome to the Upwards Podcast, where we explore the intersection of Christian faith in the Academy, the Church, and the marketplace. What if reading could be more than information or even inspiration? What if it could become a spiritual practice, a way of encountering beauty, deepening empathy, and even meeting God? In this episode, John Terrell sits down with Jeff Crosby, publisher, author, and lifelong champion of the written word, to talk about his book, World of Wonders: The Spirituality of Reading. From comic strips and baseball biographies to devotional poetry, Jeff shares the story of how reading shaped his life and how it can shape ours. Together, they explore reading as a spiritual discipline, the power of diverse voices, the importance of rereading, and how books can awaken imagination and wonder in a distracted world. Whether you're an avid reader or someone who's struggled to pick up a book lately, this conversation might just reopen the window. Let's join the conversation.

— Falling in Love with Reading

John Terrill 1:49

Jeff, uh, we've we've uh interacted uh some in the past, and I know you've been here to Madison, to Upper House a couple of years ago, I believe. But it's really great to welcome you today on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us.

Jeff Crosby 2:04

I appreciate being on us, John. Thank you.

John Terrill 2:06

Yeah. It's and I just want to we're gonna talk about your book, World of Wonders, a spirituality of reading, but I cannot recommend this book enough. So I, you know, all the details will be in the show notes, but I just encourage everybody to pick up a copy of this book. Um I I enjoyed it immensely, and um, it really inspired my reading habits. Um, and I'm a pretty avid reader and I learned lots of new things and and just really enjoyed what you had to share. Jeff, I one of the reasons I like this book is because it's so personal. You share some of your own stories, um, how reading has been an influence in your life. I wonder if you could uh share with me when you first fell in love with reading and how reading has really shaped the trajectory of your life. Love to hear some of those stories uh going back, maybe even to childhood, about your love for reading.

Speaker 2 2:54

Well, as a kid, my love for reading was was mostly the Sunday comic books in the Indianapolis Star. I loved reading the funnies. We called them back then, uh Beetle Bailey and Snuffy Smith and Peanuts and all that. I didn't read a whole lot more as a child. Our home wasn't really a home populated by books, nor did we live near a library in my earliest days, but I expanded to reading sports biographies in grade school, you know, out of out of the school library. So I was a big baseball fan. I'd read books on Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron or my favorite Roberto Clemente. But uh it really wasn't until my senior year of high school that I, in your words, fell in love with reading. Um, and it was through a very strange book. It was called The Admiral's Daughter. I heard about it on uh Good Morning America, hosted then by Joan London and David Hartman. And uh it was the story of a Ukrainian woman in search of her United States naval admiral father that she never knew and he never knew her or knew of her. And I don't know precisely, John, why it was that book that sort of I think of it as flipping a switch or opening the sash of a window, and all of a sudden I just I saw something different in books, something that opened uh this idea of a world of wonder. I I think, you know, in those days, um, you know, the Soviet Union was uh thought to be a nemesis, and you know, all of the stories about the people there were so dark and and foreboding, and this woman's story was none of that at all. And I just was captivated. And from that point forward, I became an avid reader. And then in my university studies, I met uh the woman who became my wife, and her parents ran a bookstore. And I think that was the they owned an operator bookstore about an hour from the campus. And and we would go down and visit. I would sit in the aisles of the store and you know, read books that I couldn't afford to buy, but they would occasionally send them up to the university uh dorm that I lived in. So I think meeting Cindy and her family and spending time in their bookstore was like just throwing fuel on the fire of what was lit through the Admiral's daughter.

Speaker 1 5:16

And I want to talk about your kind of life professional journey

— A Life in Christian Publishing

Speaker 1 5:19

because you have really um been involved in lots of dimensions of the book industry. I wonder if you could just touch on that for the benefit of our listeners and viewers. We'll put a lot of this in the show notes. Your biography is really fascinating, but but share a little bit about your just your professional journey and your involvement with books and publishing.

Speaker 2 5:39

It's been a great ride. I I look back on it all and think, you know, it's just I've been reading Arthur C. Brooks' book, The Meaning of Real Life the Last Few Days. Just a fascinating book. I would highly recommend. But it's it he talks, he has a long chapter on vocation. It's put me in a very reflective mood about, you know, this kind of looking back at the career. I studied journalism. My plan was to be a sports writer. I wanted to cover Major League Baseball. I did that for a very short period of time. I was in the clubhouse at Riverfront Stadium covering Cincinnati Reds just for a game or two. But for the most part, I was taking pictures of people who caught big fish in the quarries and little league baseball and girls' softball and things like that. But after a short time, Cindy and I really uh sensed a calling. And, you know, that word can be thrown around a lot, but it was a distinct calling to work with Christian literature. And we had an opportunity, through the influence of her parents, to purchase and reopen a Lagos bookstore near Indiana University in Bloomington. And so we just uprooted from, she was a journalist as well at a competing paper. And we just uprooted and we followed that call. So we worked as booksellers for 13 years. Then for a short while, I joined Large Corporate America and worked for the world's largest book distribution company. So they would buy and sell books from all publishers and resell to bookstores. And I realized I didn't really enjoy the corporate life, even though it had perks like you know, citation jets that you could fly on from time to time, or a yacht you could take clients out on. But that just wasn't my cup of tea. And in 1997, Interversity Press offered the opportunity to come and be one of its executive leaders. And it was really IVP books more than any other. When I made that shift from the Admiral's daughter and became a reader, it was books by John Stott and James Sire, Calvin Miller, a lot of names, John, you would be familiar with. Those were my early readings, and they all had the same colophone on the spine. It was IVP. So when the publisher there invited me to come, uh it was, I was fairly easy picking as my wife less so. But we did I did that for 24 years, ultimately becoming its publisher, and then now taking a job five years ago as the president of ECPA, which is the Trade Association of Christian Publishing. We have members from AMG to Zonderman, most things in between, including IBP. I report to a board and we serve publishers through a variety of means. But I I always continued to be a writer throughout all of those shifts. And um I carried with me the dreams to write three different books. They were very distinct, one on uh spiritual formation, one on reading, and one on music. And somehow in the shift from being a publisher to serving publishers, it opened up space. I think space in my uh work life, space in my heart, uh, maybe uh in my mind, space where I wasn't fearful of being rejected by the community that I work for. And so those three books have come to fruition. So I I've really seen, as you said, all dimensions of the Christian publishing industry from retail to wholesale to publishing, and now an umbrella association that provides services to them. It's it's been a great journey. And Brooks has helped me uh recover the sense of calling through all of that.

Speaker 1 9:24

That's wonderful. And um, a lot of our listeners and viewers will know uh Byron Borger. We often have him on to do his um take on you know upcoming books, books soon to be published, that kind of thing. And um, you rival Byron. Uh, you may, between the two of you, I'm not sure I can find somebody that's that that's more passionate about books and uh can speak so um uh uh intelligently about them. And one of the great things about this book is that you have these wonderful lists uh at the end of each chapter with uh all kinds of book ideas. I'll get to that. I want to I want to come to some of those questions, but and I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. You can correct me if this isn't right. Carolyn Weber, she wrote the introduction. Yeah. Carolyn Weber, uh, in the introduction to your book, writes, um, this book is written wholeheartedly for anyone in need of enjoyable restoration, which is pretty much everyone. I'd love to hear from you, Jeff, who you wrote the book for and why did you write the book?

— Who Is This Book For?

Speaker 2 10:28

Yeah, I had three distinct audiences in mind. I I had I had people like I was before reading the Admiral's daughter who who didn't read, or if they did, it was it was kind of it was merely a diversion. Diversion is fine, but it was that's pretty much all it was. So I had them in mind, wanting to bring them along at least to consider a larger world of reading. And so people who were reading, but maybe in either just a utilitarian way or in a divergent way. A second audience was people who didn't read at all, and sadly, there are a whole lot more people, other than reading in the digital context on the phone, what your phone displays to you because of the algorithms um determining what you're going to see. So I was also writing for people who don't read at all, who maybe think they should, or maybe I could persuade them that there's a reason to do it. I was also reading, uh writing to people like me who um read a lot and just trying to give them maybe some uh some new ways of thinking about what they're already doing, and also challenge them to read more diversely than they might. In the same way that I mean, I have a huge music library right here to my right because I call music the language of my soul, even though I've worked in the world of books all of my adult life pretty much. I think we're drawn to certain, many of us, to a certain genre of music or an artist or something like that, and we we can get in a rut and just stick with it. Similarly, in our reading, you know, we get the every Grisham book or we get every Makoda Fujimura book or something like that. But we need to branch out in a a lot of different ways. So I was trying to write to people like me and Byron Borger who read all the time, but give them some new pathways, some new things to think about, and even as you said a moment ago, some lists of what I think are some of the best uh reading. And um, yeah, so I I was motivated really to accomplish those things. I think I was also, John, uh, I'm I in my mid-60s now, you know, I'm I'm looking toward the end of my career, and I think I was also writing to myself, why have I done this so long? Why did I not stick in the corporate world where things were a little easier in a sense, in terms of some of the some of the ways most people think about a job? Why did I return to the not nonprofit world and work the majority of my career there? So I think I was recovering a sense of, yeah, what how did I get here? Why have I done it? You know, this long obedience in the same direction I did of Eugene Peterson. And in the process of writing, I, you know, I feel like I came to some to some sense of that.

— Reading as a Spiritual Discipline

Speaker 1 13:24

Well, one of the things you do in the book is you make a strong case for reading as a spiritual discipline. I wonder if you could speak to that. Why uh and how can reading be formative uh spiritually in our lives?

Speaker 2 13:38

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think depending on our approach to reading, we can certainly use it to invite God to meet us in the midst of it. I I love something I I don't know if you've encountered it, John, from a series of books called Every Moment Holy. A gentleman who's um going to be speaking at one of our ECPA events in the fall named Douglas McAlee. I was really touched by and confirmed in this idea of reading as a spiritual discipline by by one of his liturgies, the Every Moment Holy books. If your listeners aren't don't know, it's a it's a collection of liturgies for different seasons of life, grief or transitions and things like that. But he has a liturgy before reading or before beginning a book. And I was really deeply influenced by that. I let me just read a short bit of it as he uh as we begin reading this book, and then I'll skip a little bit. It says, What does it draw out of me? What joy, what longing, what fears, what temptation, what hope, what mirth, what love of beauty, what awe, what wonder, what doubt, what faith, what resolve, what unfinished grief, what unintended wound. And I remember reading Doug's piece and thinking, that's that's a different way of approaching a book. It's even deeper than my prior ideas of reading as a spiritual discipline. But I think if we have that sort of mindset as we approach, whether it's a novel like uh Dostoyevsky's Brother's Karamatsaf, which I would name as my favorite book, you get to that section on the Grand Inquisitor, and all of a sudden you're just tears are streaming down your face, and you stop and you say, What just happened to me? You know, what did I just encounter in the reading of that section of that classic late 1800s Russian novel? So I that's that's kind of the sense in which I think of it, John, as a spiritual discipline, that we're inviting God into our midst and to meet us there in the midst of that reading, whatever it may be that we're reading. And different books will have a different applicability to this kind of idea than others. I I'm excited about the John Grisham book that comes out in September. And my my relationship to those books is very different than the the majority of what I read. But the other piece of uh spirituality of reading is somewhere in the book I talk about developing a liturgy of reading. And the idea there is just some practices to ensure that we are reading and then that we're inviting God in the midst of it. So I have things like making a commitment for a time to read and finding the format that best fits your patterns of reading. There was a time when I would have said that had to be print, but that's no longer. I think audio and other ways are are nearly equally as good. And finding a space or spaces that are conducive to reflective reading, having a journal nearby. I always have a journal, particularly if I'm reading nonfiction. Build lists of books to read and read and then dialogue and community with others. So that that notion of liturgy, it it encompasses as I begin a book, but it also is the intentionality and inviting God to meet me and encouraging you as a reader to do so, meet you in the midst of that reading.

Speaker 1 17:20

Jeff,

— Reading Across Genres & Diverse Voices

Speaker 1 17:21

I wonder if you could speak to reading across genres. I know that's an important dimension that you really bring to the forefront in your book. How have you done that in your own life? How does that fit in with reading books over and over again? I've heard different people weigh in, you know, read less broadly and read more regularly the books that really touch your lives. Uh I wonder if if you might weigh in on that strategy. But but I but again, across genres, um that's one of the strengths that comes out even in the book recommendations, is that you're such a a diverse reader. How does that fit into the spirituality of reading?

Speaker 2 18:01

Well, I think um that the diverse reading is is very similar to trying to cultivate diverse relationships. That, you know, getting as I get to know people who are uh quite different from me, I believe my life is enriched. I believe that empathy, uh, which I know has been a lot in in the public discourse in recent years, but but I I believe we need more of it, not less of it. And I I think that as I encounter uh and develop, cultivate uh relationships with a more diverse group of people, I am just I am more human. I'm more I am more thoughtful, you know, I am more understanding. And I think that reading does a similar thing. I I think of travel uh as another way. I mean, at University Press I used to travel all the time, uh, more than I wanted to, but there was a byproduct, a great value of that, of of engaging with other cultures and realizing it is sort of a decentering of me, a decentering of the American way. And so I tie all of that in with uh reading more diversely, that I think we build empathy, understanding, and uh so reading our opposite gender, you know. I I've heard a lot of men, particularly sadly, uh pastors tell me I don't really read books by women. Like you have to. If you have not read Marilyn McIntyre, you know, you must. Um, you are missing out. So it's the fullness of understanding of human persons, of stories. I just think that we become more human, we have the potential to become more Christ-like, and uh we have the potential of healing the fractures in our world. I don't know if I've answered your specific question, so feel free to to follow up uh genre. That's what I left out. So reading fiction, reading poetry, and uh memoir. I used, you know, I was discipled in the in the intervarsity press and intervarsity press academic kind of way, and I I mostly read nonfiction uh until I would say, you know, the past 20 to 25 years that began to change. And reading across those genres, I just think has has really it's broadened my view of the world and of the work that I did. And reading poetry is kind of the over the last five years, it's been one of the things that has been most nourishing and eye-opening. I used to not be able to read it, and my wife really helped me open up to that. She is uh a writer herself, and uh she introduced me to Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon and people like that. And I just, wow, all of a sudden, okay, what what had been a stumbling block for me became uh life-giving. And so that's part of the impetus, John, for what you saw in the book of uh a real plea to read more diversely, you know, including ethnicity and and race and and gender.

Speaker 1 21:09

Well, you make a strong case for that. You also um come back to books over and over again. I wonder how you make choices about that and how does continuing to swim in the waters of these great books and authors just continue to nourish you and help you grow spiritually as well.

Speaker 2 21:27

Yeah, C.S. Lewis was one of the early, you know, proponents in my world of reading

— The Case for Rereading

Speaker 2 21:34

again. You know, he in one of his books he has a an admonition that, you know, for every new book we read, we pull an old one to read or to reread. Um, and I paid a lot of attention to his his thinking on that. I definitely read more books for the, you know, each year. The the majority of the books that I read are for the first time. But I have certain touch tone books, uh, Lewis's Mere Christianity is one of them. A Touch of Wonder by Arthur Gordon is another. There are some novels like Kenta Rup's Plain Song and Even Tide that I will go back and reread. I've also had a model of that through my wife. She's a much more voracious reader than I. And she is very happy to reread, I mean, the Brother Cadville novels right now. And as she as she does that, she says, often it's as if I'm reading it for the first time. Where she is in that moment is different than the last time she encountered the monk Cadfill. And so it's as if she's reading it for the first time. So I'm definitely more of a breath than rereading, but I have opened myself up at the encouragement of both Lewis and my wife to reread those things that have been touchstones. The biggest touchstone for me, John, is a book you may be familiar with, is Markings by Doug Hammerschuld, you know, a former UN general secretary, uh, who never intended for that book, which is called an enduring spiritual classic. Hammerschold never intended for it to be published. And I think it is for that very reason he was so open, so self-revealing, so honest. And the book, uh I got a paperback copy right over here that is held together by a rubber band because I read it so often. And it's in my briefcase. Any any trip I take of more than a day, a Homershold goes with me. So that is the biggest touchstone. I think I may have written about that. I'm not sure.

Speaker 23:39

If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to the Upwards Podcast so you never miss an episode. You can find more resources, events, and past episodes at slbf.org slash studio. And if this episode resonates with you, consider sharing it with a friend, or maybe even starting a conversation of your own around what you're reading right now. Let's rejoin the conversation with Jeff Crosby.

Speaker 1 24:06

Speaking

— Reading Through Fear (The Airplane Story)

Speaker 1 24:07

of travel, you share an interesting factoid that just got me laughing uh as I was reading your book about your habits of reading on airplanes. I wonder if you if you could share that.

Speaker 2 24:18

Oh my. Yeah. So I I had a serious fear of flying, and I had a job that caused me to have to fly all the time. It came about because of a of a near um crash at Denver's old Stapleton Airport where the air traffic controllers put my jet down on a runway where a 747 was about to take off. And the impact of that, I mean, thankfully the the pilot was aware, and and all of a sudden we were going straight up in the air and circled Colorado Springs and came back. But I just had this phobia about flying and how how am I going to overcome that? I've always been interested in aviation. I grew up for a short part of my childhood out in Seattle where I could almost see the Boeing factory from my house. So I just began, I began reading aviation uh books, I particularly books about airplane crashes. I think, and I probably write about this, John. I've forgotten, I believe, to reinforce for me how safe airline travel really is, how unusual it is to have crashes. And it's not uncommon when my seat mate, you know, sees I'm reading this book on airplane crash in Sioux City, Iowa. Why would you read that on an airplane? And so I have, you know, I have my story. Uh I had a fear of flying, and he's helped me overcome it. So that's where it came from. Both an interest in aviation as well as a part of therapy to overcome the fear of flying, because uh that publishing house I worked for wasn't gonna let me not fly.

Speaker 1 25:56

Well, it's a serious topic, and I don't mean to laugh away the seriousness of the loss of uh uh air uh disasters, crashes, and so forth. But I just, you know, I just la as I sort of imagined you in the seat in the person next to you. A good strategy. We we might all be helped by, you know, sort of leaning into our fears in that kind of a way to overcome some of our fears. So thank you for sharing that.

— Three Strategies for Wiser Reading

Speaker 1 26:22

I want to get real practical. I wonder if you could just share like three practices of becoming a wiser reader. Just three strategies. If you were just advising somebody, how would you tell them to become a wiser, uh, a wiser reader?

Speaker 2 26:35

Aaron Powell Well, there are some books beyond World of Wonders that I would recommend, you know, as a starting point, you know, but so books about books or books about about reading. Um, there's a great book that Brazos Press published called Reading for the Love of God. It's written by Jessica Hooten-Wilson, who is a professor at Pepperdine. And I think a book like that, or hopefully World of Wonders, which is more story-based, hers is a bit more professorial, would give you uh some real encouragement and sort of a pathway to deeper reading. I think a second, uh, read the you know, the New York Times book review or or or you know, there aren't sadly very many of them left, but the ones that are the Saturday uh Wall Street Journal book section is phenomenal, usually. I read both of those every week and then determine which of those I'm gonna read and pop onto the library app and reserve them or make a note to buy them if it's something I'm gonna want to keep. So reading to inform yourself about what is coming out. And then the third strategy I would say is be in relationship with other people like you, um, who are are great readers and ask the question, John, what are you reading right now? You know, always be prepared to share, you know, what you are as well. But I never, I I should say I am rarely in a conversation with someone where I don't ask the question, what are you reading? You know, particularly if it's someone who's led me well in the past, I pay a lot of attention to

— When to Fast from Books

Speaker 2 28:11

that.

Speaker 1 28:11

You also at one point in the book suggest fasting from books, which again I thought I wasn't expecting that. Why might we fast from books uh and and how might it become an effective personal strategy at various uh stations or junctures of our life?

Speaker 2 28:28

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, the story there was um a friend who runs a bookstore in Dallas, Texas, he was in a meeting with a spiritual director, so a person who listens, you know, listens and reflects back what they're hearing from the directee. And Rick was talking about how he had been for quite some time in a season where he couldn't read scripture, he couldn't read the Bible, the sacred text of his own faith. And as the spiritual director, you know, listened to him, one of the things she reflected back to him, knowing how vociferously he read, she said, Have you ever thought about fasting from your book reading? And he was really taken aback by that because he was lamenting the fact that he hadn't, for whatever reason, it had been quite some time since he had picked up the very book that was the foundation of his faith. And so he went through a season of fasting from books. And um, as Rick and I have been dear friends for about 40 years, and as he shared that story with me, I just put it down in the journal I was working on this book, and I thought I want to come back to that. And I reflected on my own reading of scripture, and I thought, yeah, there have been seasons where that's been true for me as well. It's probably not uncommon for someone who reads as widely as Rick does, or or I or Byron or others, to perhaps set aside the thing that we think we know, because we've been reading it for decades, and and yet there is um there is something, it's not magical, but there's something important about staying in touch with the scripture. So uh in my case, after talking to Rick about that, I began reading the Psalms almost devotionally. A book that Dane a man named Dane Ortland, he married meditations with um with 150 Psalms and and created this devotional Psalter, it's called. So that's yeah, that's where that came from. I think there may be times where if you're being prevented through your your reading from reading something as important as that, if you are a Christian, um, it might be worth fasting from books. And and there are uh are other perhaps seasons of your life if you're caring for our family, has been my mother until her recent passing, caring uh in a hospice situation, you know, for someone where so not so much fasting, but giving yourself permission to to step aside from reading and not feeling guilty about that and paying attention to the thing that's before you that's so important.

Speaker 1 31:07

Yeah, and I as I recall uh from your book, you have some some really helpful input about how to read the Bible as well. I know I bought a copy of the Immersed Bible, which I think you recommend, which is um others have tried, I think it's published by Zonovan. Others have tried this where you just the Bible is presented in a way that's just more reader-friendly. Chapter titles, verses are out. It's on a nicer paper, kind of laid out like uh like a novel in some ways, uh more inviting on the page. And um lots of good strategies about not just fasting from books to re-engage with scripture, but but how to read scripture in fresh ways as well.

Speaker 2 31:46

Yeah, that series has been really helpful to me. And they also encourage you to to read the Immerse Bible in community. So it's broken into different portions like the Messiah and and uh historical books and things like that. It's it's been a helpful, fresh way of reading.

— Reading Together: Community & Teams

Speaker 1 32:03

That prompts me, you know, a lot of the conversation today has been about individual transformation. I wonder if you could speak to community transformation by reading together. You know, how has that influenced you? Do you have a regular rhythm of reading in community? Do you read with your leadership team? How have you seen books been transformative in the life of communities or even teams?

Speaker 2 32:26

In the team that I work with right now at ECPA, we have a very small team, but uh and we're all remote. So when we come together, our agenda is built virtually through Google Docs, and you know, we build the agenda collaboratively. And one of the things that we the very last thing on the agenda every week is what have we been reading. It's uh more most recently is one of the ways that um uh the the novel Theo of Golden, which has been much talked about, I don't know if you're familiar with it, John, but a book that went from being self-published to now being the number one New York Times bestselling uh novel for several weeks running. So someone posts something about Theo of Golden. So we we share with each other books that we're reading and what impact they're having. Another thing, which I don't write about in World of Wonders, but in a previous book, is I used to host dinners. Uh, we called them books in nature uh dinners, and uh it got to be uh up to 75, 80, uh at most it was a hundred people in our home about every other month. So we we would have a book that we were focused on. If we could, the author would be there with us. A lot of authors live here in the Chicago area where I'm based. And so there was a there would be a teaching or a speaking or just an opening message from the author if he or she was there. But we we were all reading uh a similar thing, and then there was a often in the reading, there was a connection to the natural world. So that's another way. Uh, right now I have the privilege of accompanying one of my pastors invited me to uh spend a year reading with her. So as a means of attempting to recover a way of reading, she has young two young children, had recognized that she wasn't reading as much as she used to. And so, you know, there's some accountability in reading together. So we're doing that currently over the next year. So those are some different ways that um I I know other people, you know, are in book clubs and and things like that. I'm not. It tends to be more unusual things, such as the three I've just spoken of.

— Advice for College Students

Speaker 1 34:44

No, that's that's that's really helpful. We work in a university context, as you know here, and um we work with college students uh as well as faculty and grad students and others, but a lot of students are really busy. You know, they've got the academic load they carry. How would you advise students uh during their collegiate years to think about reading? What kind of practical strategies or goals would you propose? Uh maybe they're modest, maybe they're not, but but what would be your advice for college students and the habit or patterns of their reading?

Speaker 2 35:22

Well, a lot of those students probably either fly home on break, at least undergraduate students probably fly home, or they may drive home on a break holidays or something like that, and consider rather than listening to music or through uh Audible or uh Spotify. Um the the quality of audio publishing has increased so much in the last 10 years that uh I just read a book on Emmett Till called The Barn, that I read half of it in print, and then I had a long trip to Grand Rapids and I listened to the second half of it on Spotify, and they were equally incredible experiences. And so that would be one way. Utilize the time as you travel back home for a break. A graduate student may not be uh doing that. Perhaps a strategy would be to find something that's on the shorter side, you know, markings by Dog Hammerschild uh is only I think it's only about 30,000 words. But find something of interest that doesn't have a daunting page count and pick that up and just see what it what it may be fasting from academia for just that moment. And and I would say uh, you know, academics perhaps think about a novel, you know, a Kent Haruff novel or uh one of the others that I recommend uh in the book that perhaps can just transport you to another place for a short while. But I do, I I'm not so old that I don't remember what it was like to be a student. And uh to uh in fact, I did a graduate degree when I was in my 40s, and so I remember that for sure. And uh so try to find a way through some of those suggestions or or others that you think of to just um make time and space for reading that is outside of your discipline and think of it as an investment in your future in a different way than your academic reading.

— Reading, Imagination & Wonder

Speaker 1 37:23

Aaron Powell I think in that response, you use the language uh transport to another world to break some of the academic patterns, uh, to begin to think and imagine in new ways. You use wonder in the title of your book. This is uh the book is entitled World of Wonders, The Spirituality of Reading. I wonder if you could just tie the discipline of reading to imagination and opening up the practice of wonder. And I ask this because it feels like in today's world, we have a little bit of a deficit of imagination and wonder. We can um get caught up in the news cycles, the uh social media algorithms, all the other things that I think uh begin to sap us of really being able to think creatively or imagine new possibilities. Why is reading so important? I know you believe this with every fiber of your body, but why is it so important to imagination and wonder?

Speaker 2 38:21

I I referenced earlier the book that I'm just uh just about finishing uh today, The Meaning of Your Life by Arthur C. Brooks. He has a chapter in there called Surround Yourself with Beauty. I think that by reading, I I think in the process of reading, uh especially if we read well, if we read wisely, as you said a moment ago, um, we have the potential of surrounding ourselves with beauty. So in the same way that a you know, a classical piece of music that is just um that touches us in some subterranean way, or a trip, as I mentioned earlier, you know, in my case, uh Ireland, you know, uh became a um, you know, going to Glendeloch, County Wicklow on the south uh east coast of Ireland, they became this wonder-making situation. I think that reading has the potential to do that as well. I know it does for me. Um even reading a phrase, there are phrases in certain books, or the way the the way the author uses uh syntax or or the the structure of paragraphs, the the power of a a four-word paragraph. Maybe I'm an odd bird, but I it just I'm stopped in my tracks and I thought that is a beautiful sentence. That is a beautiful way of expressing this reality. I think of the woman who wrote the foreword to the book, Carolyn Weber, and she she wrote a memoir called Surprised by Oxford, which was the story of her conversion over three or four terms at Oxford University. And there were pieces of that memoir that transported me to the River Thames in a bench, and and this uh friend of Carolyn's giving her this gift as they sat on this bench. It just beautifully illustrated so much that was going on in the book. It just it inculcated the sense of wonder about what was happening in her life and through her in mine as I read. I could feel, you know, the wet air in Oxford and I could see, you know, the water, and I could I could sense sitting on the bench with them. Wonder, it's kind of like, why do you love that song? It you know, you say it's because of the melody. That seems kind of frivolous. Why can wonder be instilled through the process of reading? It's like trying to define the wind or to try to say why music is so beautiful. It's really hard for me, John. It's a great question. I've been wrestling with how to do it. But I come back time and time again to the idea of a window is closed, the drapes are pulled, all of a sudden, the drapes are pulled to the side, the window is thrown open, and you see something as

— The Chapter Book Lists

Speaker 2 41:13

if for the first time, and you're filled with a touch of wonder.

Speaker 1 41:17

One of the real gifts of this book is your lists of 15, I think roughly 15 book recommendations at the end of each chapter. How in the world did you arrive at those lists? My my guess is it was difficult to pair it down to 15, but what was your process to to kind of work toward those lists? And again, it's a it's a real selling point of the of the book. And I think uh at jeffcrosby.net, you actually give a little bit of background about how you made some of these choices and you do a bit more annotation on the books. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 41:49

Yeah, I'm still working on getting that posted, but it will be there. And it's Jeff Reed, J E F F R E Y Crosby.net. There was a musician who had commandeered uh the the Jeff, so I had to be Jeffree. Only my mom calls me that. But uh on one level, it was very easy. It was it was almost like stream of consciousness. Okay, I'm I finished that chapter on memoir. What are the 15 memoirs that most stand out? And I just I typed them into the manuscript. On another level, as I went back and you know, was doing edits and I read something new, oh, that has to be in there, what's gonna come out? It became a little more difficult. And I definitely have a couple of books that I I grieve not including because they were they were so, so important to me. So um I'm hoping there will be a second edition and maybe I can expand that a little bit. But the way the lists were built, it truly was as I finished the text for a given chapter, as I reflect back on which are the ones that made me think that this genre of reading or or this season of the reading life. The last third of the book is reading in the seasons of life. So in seasons of of uh of grief or fear or doubt or wonder, it was the ones that just immediately rose to my top. I still have a really strong memory and and recall, and so I just put down the ones that that were top of the mind. What are the ones that I, if I was sitting with you in the upper house, that I would say, John, have you read this? You know, have you read this novel or this collection of poetry? What were the ones that rose to the top? And that's what I put there. But there are a couple that uh should have been there, and um, you know, I blame it on uh a tight editorial turnaround at the end.

Speaker 1 43:40

Those g those lists are a real gift to the readers. Um I know

— Jeff's Next Book: The Spirit in the Sky

Speaker 1 43:44

you're working on a new book. Tell us about the new book. I mean it's finished. I think it comes out this fall.

Speaker 2 43:48

Yeah, in October 1, it'll be with Bloomsbury Publishing out of London. It's a book called The Spirit in the Sky uh The Power of Music and Our Search for Graceland. Music is something I I referenced earlier. It's the it's the book that my wife has been uh telling me I needed to write all along. And I I knew I would sometime. Finally got it done. Uh seventeen different artists. Chapter one is Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel. The last chapter is Marvin Gaye. There are more contemporary artists in the in the middle parts, but it includes others like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison and Bruce Coburn that that people might have heard of, but also some that they haven't. I I didn't want people to pick up the book and think, oh, I know all I need to know about all those people. So there's someone named Judy Sill, who was uh the first artist signed to Asylum Records by David Geffen before Jackson Brown, before the Eagles, before Joni Mitchell, uh Judy Sill was the first. So I have a chapter on her and Bill Withers uh and others. So Tracy Chapman, uh the staple singers. So a lot of it's from the 60s, 70s, 80s, a little bit further than that. But so I'm really looking at kind of three dimensions. One is there's a a short biographical dimension of it. There is also the spirituality, not necessarily Christian, but the spirituality that infused or came out of their music, and um, and then a little bit of narrative about how did it impact me. So uh a little memoir in it, a little biography biography memoir, and then a spirituality. So all of them are artists who deeply influence my life. It was a lot of fun to write about. I look forward to it coming out in hardcover in the fall.

Speaker 1 45:38

Terrific. It sounds wonderful. Jeff, I want to end with

— What Jeff Is Reading Now

Speaker 1 45:42

this question. What are you reading? Um, I know that's an important question you ask of others, but I'd love to know what's on your bookshelf these days.

Speaker 2 45:49

Yeah, well, I've I've referenced the meaning of your life a couple of times. He wrote a book called From Strength to Strength that was pondering, you know, what to make of the last half of your life. And I'm a little I'm a little beyond that, but I I loved it and it made me immediately want to pick that up in terms of scripture and still reading in the Psalms as we've been walking with my mother through her journey toward her death last week. So uh the psalms have been accompany me and then um reading a collection of poetry uh edited by Christian Wyman. He's probably best known as the author of a book called My Bright Abyss, but he's a amazing poet. And the collection is called Joy. I've been thinking a lot about uh that subject as I prepared to write a eulogy of my mother, and and the two words that will be in that are on Saturday are inspiration and joy. So uh Wyman's collection of poetry of others' uh poems is called Joy, published by Yale University Press. Those are the current reads.

Speaker 1 46:55

Yeah, wonderful. Jeff, thank you for carving out time with us. Um we lament your loss. Uh I didn't even know about it. So thank you for honoring this commitment. Um I I'm sorry for the loss of your mom. It sounds like the the service is tomorrow. We're recording this on a Friday. So pray for um a time of real celebration for the gift of uh your mother. And just I we're just so grateful for the work you're doing, bringing good um writing to the world, uh helping to uh empower authors to do the good work that they've been called to do. You've been a gift to the church. So thank you for everything that you do on behalf of the life of the church.

Speaker 2 47:37

Thanks for all that you're doing uh there in Madison as well, John. Thanks for having me on. It's been our pleasure.

Speaker 47:46

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Upwards Podcast. As Jeff Crosby reminds us, reading isn't just about consuming ideas, it's about being formed by them. It's about slowing down, paying attention, and allowing truth, beauty, and story to shape who we're becoming. So maybe the next step is simple. Pick up a book, revisit an old favorite, or ask someone the question Jeff always asks: What are you reading? To hear more conversations like this, subscribe to the Upwards Podcast in your favorite podcast app and visit slbf.org slash studio. Until next time, keep looking upward and living with purpose. Go in peace.