Bio, Books, and Such: Collin Hansen

During the summer I’ll be posting micro interviews on Fridays. I’ve asked some of my friends in ministry–friends you probably already know–to answer questions about “bio, books, and such.” My hope is that you’ll enjoy getting a few more facts about these folks and getting a few good book recommendations.

Today’s interview is with Collin Hansen,  author and Editorial Director for The Gospel Coalition.

1. Where were you born? Madison, South Dakota

2. When did you become a Christian? Age 15 in 1997. I attended a retreat with a youth ministry and for the first time saw peers who loved Jesus and wanted to tell others about him.

3. Who is one well known pastor/author/leader who has shaped you as a Christian and teacher? Ranging from how I teach and evangelize to how I love God and fight sin, I have learned the most from Tim Keller. He’s a big reason why I serve with The Gospel Coalition.

4. Who is one lesser known pastor/friend/mentor who has shaped you? Two men were used by God during a crucial time of my life. I’m eternally grateful for Chris Sarver, the man who led my Cru ministry in college, and Ben Gildner, our preacher during that time and the man who officiated our wedding.

5. What’s one hymn you want sung at your funeral? No doubt it would be “My Song Is Love Unknown.” Just look at this closing stanza:

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
in Whose sweet praise
I all my days
could gladly spend.

6. What kind of nonfiction do you enjoy reading when you aren’t reading about theology, the Bible, or church history? I never get tired of reading history. And you could exhaust multiple lifetimes trying to keep up with publishing on the American Civil War. But I enjoy learning the stories of these citizen-soldiers making decisions under unfathomable pressure as they changed history in untold ways. I’m usually also reading a book about place-making in our transient age.

7. What are one or two of your favorite fiction authors or fiction books? No doubt Fyodor Dostoevsky would top that list for his penetrating insight into the human psyche and a world that denies God. But I also appreciate Marilynne Robinson’s touch for revealing the profound in the mundane.

8. What is one of your favorite non-Christian biographies? I’m cheating, because this is a biography about a Christian. But it’s not written by a Christian, and it doesn’t focus on his Christian faith. Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken might be the best story I’ve read outside the Bible. By the time you finish the book, however, you’ll understand why the title is so misguided.

9. What is one of your favorite books on preaching? I don’t preach as often as I’d like, but the best book I know about forming the preacher himself is Zack Eswine’s Sensing Jesus.

10. What is one of your favorite books on evangelism? I haven’t yet read anything that surpasses J. I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.

11. What is one of your favorite books on apologetics? Oddly enough I learned more about apologetics by reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion than I have reading most books by Christians that assume good arguments will carry the day.

12. What is one of your favorite books on prayer? I need books that reveal my need for prayer as a means of grace more than I need books that teach me how to pray. So in that regard Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God exposes my older brother heart and need to humble my judgmental, critical self before my Savior.

13. What is one of your favorite books on marriage? We might have avoided a lot of pain and heartache if Tim and Kathy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage had been available when my wife and I got married in 2003.

14. What music do you keep coming back to on your iPhone (or CD player, or tape deck, or gramophone)? My list of favorites playing in the background now includes “Canon in D Minor,” “Live and Die” by the Avett Brothers, “Adagio in G minor for Organ and Strings,” the arrangement of John Newton’s “I Asked the Lord” by Indelible Grace, “Alabama Pines” by Jason Isbell, and “May Your Power Rest on Me” from Sojourn.

16. Favorite food? When I left Chicago I abandoned my two favorite foods: deep-dish pepperoni from Lou Malnati’s and steak kabobs from Naf Naf Grill. Thankfully in Birmingham I can walk to Saw’s Juke Joint, and you’ll never surpass their flash-fried chicken wings or pork and greens over grits.

17. After the Bible, a hymnal, and a shipbuilding guide, what book would you want with you on a desert island? Louis Zamperini actually survived being stranded in the Pacific, so I might learn a thing or two from Unbroken.