Heidi Wong and Jee St. John posted SOLA’s Top Ten Articles in 2025 with their brief comments followed by excerpts from each piece. And Steve S. Chang shared Looking Back on 2025 and Ahead to 2026: Serving the Church Faithfully.
Our Young Writer’s Cohort continues in the section below. We’re happy to introduce you to some new writers! And in case you missed it, I’m proud to present the winners of our Asian American Book Awards 2025!
Keep in touch on X and Instagram. For more, check out my Asian American Worship Leaders Facebook group and TGIF Playlist on Spotify. This weekly newsletter is one of the many ways you can get connected with SOLA Network. Find us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
Aaron Lee, Editorial Curator
Enter our giveaway! Thanks to Christian Focus Publications for providing, in partnership with @diveindigdeep, SOLA Network, and FCBC Walnut. 1 winner will receive these excellent books!
- Mothering Against Futility: Simona Gorton offers a thoughtful reflection on balancing meaning and mundanity through the fear of the Lord. This short, accessible book applies the gospel to motherhood. Drawing on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, Gorton extends grace to the everyday realities of raising young children.
- Wiser with Jesus: Zack Eswine writes about overcoming the temptations that hinder your relationships, steal your time, affect your decision-making, and cloud your sense of purpose. He walks you through the Proverbs, showing their structure and beauty along the way, illustrating both with Scripture and examples from his own life.
- Beyond the Back Row: Katie Polski offers families a way to rediscover the beauty of the local church. This heartfelt book provides a glimpse of what the local church was meant to be. Through personal stories and biblical truth, this book inspires readers to see the church as God sees her and motivates them to play an active role in building up the body of Christ.
ARTICLES FROM AROUND THE WEB
1. Sara Kyoungah White: Being a Christian Writer is Costly
“Here is the hard truth for the Christian writer: it is far easier to write movingly about prayer than to actually pray, far easier to pen an essay about forgiveness than to forgive, far simpler to wax eloquent about beauty than to take on the hiddenness of what true beauty requires. In the end, we can write in the tongues of men and of angels, but if we have not love, we are nothing.”
2. Jen Wilkin: The Great Omission
“We tend to view the Great Commission as a call to make converts, when in fact it is a call to make disciples—learners. It explicitly requires teaching those converts to be learners who obey all that has been commanded. According to Jesus, we are to replicate by passing along the good deposit that was passed along to us.”
3. Jeramie Rinne: How Far Does an Elder’s Authority Go?
“How far does an elder’s authority go in the local church? This question assumes at least two things: (1) That elders, in fact, have authority to direct church members. (2) That their authority has limits.”
Our Books and Reviews page is your one-stop resource for all of your reading needs. It features Asian American authors and issues, recommendations, and interviews.
BOOKS, PODCASTS, MUSIC, MOVIES, AND MORE
“When a leader like you uses and develops your God-given writing talents, when you think of your gifts as part of your pastoral vocation, you can write in a way that both glorifies God and serves your neighbor. We hope you will.”
2. Andrew Davis: We Have Smartphones — Why Memorize Scripture?
“If God’s words stay outside us, they cannot bear fruit in us.”
3. Aaron Lee: Related Works
Book Reviews: Together: Why We Need the Local Church by Gabriel Wingfield and Isaac Wingfield, Revelation: Eternal King, Everlasting Kingdom by Jen Wilkin. Find me on Substack. Listen to our TGIF playlist on Spotify. Join my Asian American Worship Leaders Facebook group.
Edited by Tom Sugimura, Here We Stand: Reformation Truths for the Church Today celebrates the legacy of the Reformation and its impact in shaping our faith even to this day. In addition to Tom, the book features chapters written by Nam Park, Tranwei Yu, Geoff Chang, and Johnson Pang. Read more about the book from Tom, and be on the lookout for an author interview coming soon.
FEATURED THIS WEEK ON SOLA NETWORK
1. Asian American Parenting Podcast: Building Bridges with Our Teenagers
“Monica and Danny discuss ways parents of teenagers can either build bridges of communication or break down bridges of communication with their teenagers. They discuss ways that parents can both connect and nurture ways of communicating with their teenagers, which can help with their mental and spiritual well-being, versus causing more stressors in their lives.”
“Chloe T. Sun provides a pastoral and contextual commentary on one of the most epic books in the Bible. Sun’s volume broadens the global reading and interpretation of Exodus by way of being a non-Western scholar and female writer.”
3. Daniel Hahn: The Fruit that Grows at the Pace of Grace
“The patience of Christ embodied in the lives of his people carried through the generations that faithfully hold true to the gospel. This is how patience finds itself taking root and puts itself on display in each generation for generations to come.”
4. Melanie Ma: Peace Amidst Wandering Thoughts
“It is because of the cross, that we are guaranteed that our cries and longings will be met with His tender desperation of offering glimpses of the eternal peace that we will receive when we meet Him face to face.”
5. TGIF: Roundup for January 2, 2026
Today’s Thoughts Become Tomorrow’s Habits / Hope, Joy, and a Forever King / What I Learned from Bach, the Worship Director / We Must Reframe Our Concept of Joy in Worship / My Top Ten Books from 2025 (+ a Bonus)
6. SOLA Network: TGIF Subscription
Get our TGIF installments delivered straight to your inbox for free every Friday. Join today so you never miss out.
General disclaimer: Our link roundups are not endorsements of the positions or lives of the authors. Header image by @shutter_speed_ on Unsplash.
Aaron Lee is our Editorial Curator. Aaron also serves as the Social Media Officer of First Chinese Baptist Church of Walnut in California’s San Gabriel Valley, home to the largest concentration of Asian American communities in the United States. Visit him online at DiveInDigDeep.com.