Patreon Subscriber Drive: Final Week

Three Albums for the Classical Music Beginners

1. Six Evolutions: Bach Cello Suites. Yo-Yo Ma
2. Beethoven: The Symphonies and Reflections. Mariss Jansons and his Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
3. Mozart: The Complete Piano Concertos. Murray Perahia

Three Short, but Hugely Profound Recent Books

1. Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age. Tony Reinke
2. The Ten Commandments: A Guide to the Perfect Law of Liberty. Peter Leithart
3. The Possibility of Prayer: Finding Stillness with God in a Restless World. John Starke

Three Perceptive Journalists You Should Always Read

1. Jia Tolentino at The New Yorker.
2. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic.
3. Ross Douthat at The New York Times.

Three Christian Kids' Books That (Probably) Won't Make You Groan

1. Jesus and the Very Big Surprise. Randall Goodgame (author) and Catalina Echeverri (illustrator)
2. Sophie and the Heidelberg Cat. Andrew Wilson (author) and Helena Perez Garcia (illustrator)
3. Goodbye to Goodbyes.  Lauren Chandler (author) and Catalina Echeverri (illustrator)

Three Knockout 
Teaching Series'

1. Theology of the Sexes. Alastair Roberts
2. FIghting the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. John Mark Comer 
3. A Heart for God (Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). Paige Benton Brown

Three Classic Articles That Come to His Mind on a Weekly Basis

1. Jerusalem and the New Testament. The tour-de force New Testament and historical survey where N.T. Wright convinced him that "the Holy Land" is no longer the right way to talk about Jerusalem. There's also a dynamite description of prayer.
2. Christ and Nothing. DBH has gone off the rails of late, but this article from 2003 is the most stirring and elegant presentation of the uniqueness of Christ Phillip has ever read.
3. The Way Things Really Ought to Be: Eucharist, Eschatology, and Culture. If you stop viewing Communion with a zoom lens and let Leithart help you see the bigger picture, you'll never look at bread and wine the same again.

Three Nashville Restaurants He'll Miss After Moving to England in April

1. Mitchell Delicatessen. Home of the best breakfast bar and reuben in town.
2. Rudies Seafood, Sausage, and Taproom. Where the Tuesday night jambalaya and BOGO pints can't be beat.
3. Folk. Three simple words: tiramisu cream puff.

Three London Restaurants He Can't Wait to Return to Soon

1. Dishoom. The twenty-four hour black daal (try it at home) and bacon naan roll are crying out for consumption.
2. ROVI. Yotam Ottolenghi's vegetable, fermentation, and fire centered lunch spot. 
3. The Nag's Head. A pub too charming and grumpy to even have a website.

Three Books on Marriage that Actually Get It Right
 

1. Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. John Gottman and Nan Silver
2. Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Sue Johnson (and a follow-up written from a Christian perspective, Created for Connection).
3. Getting the Love You Want. Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt

1. Godless—A classic Western with a modern twist: An outlaw with a heart of gold has to save a town (of only women) from a marauding band of even-worse outlaws. Jeff Daniels plays a great, spooky villain.
2. Big Little Lies—A murder mystery plays out in high society Monterey and unlikely friendships form as five women try to cope with trauma, modernity, and each other.
3. It isn't new, but no list with this title would be complete without (for my money) the greatest story ever made for TV: Breaking Bad.

• Read Jake Meador's Evil As Depicted in Breaking Bad and Mad Men
• Listen to Lindsey Patton on Encountering the Fall in Fiction and Denis Haack's Life On The Edge: Journeys of Film Into Darkness.

Three Poetry Anthologies to Read for Years

1. The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. Edited by Robert Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade.
2. Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal times. Edited by Neil Astley.
3. Joy. Edited by Christian Wiman


 

Three Favorite L'Abri Meal Recipes

1. Chicken and Chorizo Paella. (Here you go, Rob. Now it's yours.)
2. Andy's Thanksgiving Biscuits and Gravy. This recipe has been confusing Brits—for whom a "biscuit" is a "cookie"—for years.
3. Groundnut Stew from The Groundnut Cookbook. If my last meal can't be biscuits and gravy, I choose this.

Three Board Games to Play with Friends Late Into the Night

1. Codenames. Try to get your team to guess certain words with only a grid of possibilities and a one-word clue. There is a surprising amount of strategy to it. 
2. One Night Werewolf. A short game of bluffing, guessing, and hidden identities. 
3. Carcassonne. The classic tile-placement game that is easy to learn, fun to play, and not too competitive.

Three Songs of Our Cultural Moment

1. "Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes. "I was raised up believing I was somehow unique like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes—distinct in each way you can see. And now after some thinking I'd say I'd rather be a functioning cog in some great machinery serving some thing beyond me."
2. "Everything Now" by Arcade Fire. "Every inch of space in your head is filled up with the things that you've read. I guess that you've got everything now."
3. "Bury A Friend" by Billie Eilish. "For the debt I owe, gotta sell my soul/'Cause I can't say no, no, I can't say no... When we all fall asleep, where do we go?"

The Only Three Books on Writing You Need

1. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Short vignettes on writing by one of the world's best writers.
2. Mystery and Manners by Flannery O'Connor. Essays on faith and writing by this sassy, wise, Christian writer.
3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. Part autobiography, part writing guide. King offers what is still the best advice on writing I've ever found: "Read a lot. Write a lot."

Three Free Seminary Courses Worth Listening To

1. Apologetics and Outreach by Jerram Barrs. This course is a master class in how to share the Christian faith in today's world. 
2. Ancient and Medieval Church History by David Calhoun. So many mistaken ideas about Christianity come from a poor understanding of church history. This course corrects many of them.
3. The Book of Revelation by Jerram Barrs. Here are 53 lectures on the most misunderstood book of the Bible.