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Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Augsburg Fortress). I would bundle this latest Lutheran hymnal with its earlier iterations, the most important being The Lutheran Hymnal of 1941, as well as The Daily Office, published in 1965. They are the portable containers for the Psalms, canticles, prayers and the church’s liturgical language, which in my ministry proved to be the most important components of every hospital visit, counseling session and private devotion.

Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, by Eugene H. Peterson (Eerdmans). This book, along with Peterson’s The Contemplative Pastor, reminded me again and again of my responsibility to guard my heart well, “for from it flow the springs of life,” as the proverb says. I was surprised when I left higher education to become a pastor that it was actually harder in the pastorate to keep my devotional life alive than it had been in the secular world.