Naming Sources

Over time, everybody picks up sources—people whose ideas profoundly shape us. Or perhaps for others, it’s something of their way of life that forms us.

I’m 47 years old now, and many of the threads are so deeply wound through me now that it’s hard to know which particular giant’s shoulders I’m standing on in any given moment. But I feel my debts, nonetheless. And I want to name my sources—even if doing so exhaustively is impossible—I’d have to name every soul I’ve ever met, and each author who penned a word I’ve absorbed, every songwriter whose lyric that ever found its way to my ear; down to every actor who ever tried to sell me Captain Crunch in a 30 second spot between segments of Voltron, Thundercats, G.I. Joe and the others. These are the trillions of cells I’m made of, after all.

And yet, the proportions aren’t all the same, and I’ve felt particularly grateful lately for mentors like Paul Beavers and Keene Steadman, Mike Shepherd and Keith Jones, Laurie Mitchell and Kenny Barfield. At Harding, Daniel Stockstill, Paul Pollard and John Fortner wove their own threads into the way I think about life and God. As a grad student, Allen Black, Dave Bland, Rick Oster, Anna Carter Florence, Jeffery Tribble and Brennan Breed all found me at just the right time.

What got me started thinking about all this were the myriad authors who have influenced me deeply. It’s really too much to enumerate, but here’s a shortlist of thinkers whose work has shaped me as a theologian and minister:

Brennan Manning
Henri Nouwen
Walter Brueggemann
N.T. Wright
Darrell Guder
James K.A. Smith
Charles Taylor
John of the Cross
Augustine
Barbara Brown Taylor
Fredrick Buechner
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Annie Dillard
Jürgen Moltmann
Stanley Hauerwas
Thomas Merton
Anne Lamott