Books Worth Reading

Have a New Teenager by Friday

2011-12-06T11:11:00.000-05:00

By Kevin Leman

The information printed in this book will often make you think "this is just common sense" but then you will find yourself asking why you don't do it that way. Once again Leman has provided an excellent resource for those raising teenagers.

Since I have two teenagers in my house I found myself laughing at how accurate he is at what goes on in so many of our homes today. If you are struggling with a teenager or have one that is getting ready to become a teenagers this is a great read that will make you laugh while challenging you, inspire you and maybe give you the courage to try something new.

The first half of the book is something to think about Monday through Friday and then the second half addresses many of the challenges of living with a teenager today.

I bought this in preparation for a seminar I am working on called “Raising Teens in this Wacky Crazy World” but hope we can apply some of the things I learned in my own home. As a pastor it will go on my books worth reading list.

Heaven is for Real

2011-02-08T19:11:00.004-05:00

<p$1>
By Todd Burpo

With Lynn Vincent

While I am sure many will wonder if this is a true story it is a wonderful story of a four year old boy that is misdiagnosed and almost dies before making a full recovery. Months later while passing the hospital his dad asks if he would like to go back to the hospital while they are there. Colton, his son, begins to talk about his experience with being in heaven with Jesus while he is there to the surprise of his parents.

The book is about the next several years as he describes people that he met in heaven, people that had died long before he was born and he knew nothing about. This included a miscarried baby that his mother had lost before he was born and he had never been told about. He talked about his grandfather that had died in a car accident in 1961 and can identify him from a photo when he is a young man. His dad is a pastor and will share his story of faith struggle during Colton's illness and his journey of trying to learn Colton's story without influencing what Colton remembered.

In this story you will see this young boys experience with heaven, God, Jesus, angles, those that have died and what he learned. I found the story compelling and a quick read that will make you think of many questions and maybe answer a few. It is a book worth reading.

Imagining Church

2010-12-17T08:15:00.005-05:00

Seeing Hope in a World of Change

By Gary and Kim Shockley

<p$1>

Do you have a vision for what the church should be? There is a lot of controversy in our church today about what the church of the future should look like. Gary and Kim Shockley do an excellent job in this book of asking us to look to the future of the church and how we should determine what the church should look like without telling us how it should look. At first that may sound like it fails to do what we want and it some ways maybe it does. There are no recipes here, no this worked here so it will work for you, but many ideas on the process for deciding how your church can develop a plan for what God would like to see your church become.

Gary and Kim have started two churches and Gary now is the director of Path1, the United Methodist Church new church start consulting agency. While sharing their stories of both their experiences in the church and working as consultants with other churches they challenge you to be willing to look at the church in new ways. They will ask us to look at the way the church connects to the community, focuses on worship and funds its ministry in a new light.

I think you will find this will help you design a process that will allow you to lead your church into the future that God desires for you, a disciple making and growing congregation that is likely to look very different than how you have looks in the past.

A Celebration of Sex

2010-11-19T10:21:00.003-05:00

By Douglas Rosenau

If you want to have one book on your shelves dealing with sex and relationships this just might be the best book I have read.

While many Christian books deal excellently with the importance of relationship in marriage or the mechanics of good sex this book does both and an excellent job of tying the two together. I find it interesting how many people think that you will just know what to do and enjoy a sexual relationship with your spouse as if it is the most natural thing in the world and then find themselves disappointed it was not what they expected it to be.

Rosenau does a great job showing how this wonderful gift of God can be a tremendous blessing to our marriage. He does not shy away from topics that have often been ignored or undervalued like fantasy, erogenous zones, lovemaking cycle, the mess, mutual pleasuring, body image being orgasmic, desire and frequency, sexy after forty-five, disabilities, malfunctions, affairs and additions. It is all here in this one volume that will make you smile, laugh and maybe even cry as you realize what an awesome gift God has given us to share with our spouse.

If you want to have one book on your shelf, or in the nightstand so the kids don't see it, this is a great book for your library.

As a pastor I have had conversations on almost every topic in this book with someone in the last 15 years.

The Mentor Leader

2010-09-19T21:18:00.002-04:00

by Tony Dungy
<p$1>

You should read this book! I don’t know that I have ever made that broad of a statement before about a book. The truth is we are all leaders in someone’s life whether we want to be or not. Each of us in mentoring someone be it our children, the people we work with or go to school with. Someone is watching you and learning how to act.
While using his experience as a football coach at all levels this is not a book about football. It is about leadership and what it takes to be the kind of leader that develops other leaders. Dungy says “Unity of purpose and a desire to make other people better must start at the top if these goals are going to ripple through an entire organization.”
“Building a life of significance, and creating a legacy of real value, means being willing to get your hands dirty. …. Whether it’s your business, your school, your community, or your family, if you want to make a difference in the lives of the people you lead, you must be willing to walk alongside them, to lift and encourage them, to share moments of understanding with them, and to spend time with them, not just shout down at them from on high.” We must focus on the significance if we want to make a difference in the world we live in.
The marks of a mentor leader are character, trustworthy traits, competent, focused on integrity, secure in their own skin, and be authentic. He makes it clear that to be a mentor leader we must be willing to learn and to be mentored ourselves.
He uses Jesus as a model and is not afraid to show how his faith has impacted his work and helped him grow as a man and a leader.
I hope you will take the time to allow this book to impact your life.

Insight on Romans

2010-07-14T08:12:00.002-04:00

By Chuck Swindoll<p$1>

I was thrilled to see that Chuck Swindoll was going to write a series of Bible commentaries and looked forward to this first one and was not dissapointed.
This is a great commentary for those that want to learn more about Paul's teachings and is written is such a way that I can recommend it for both lay and clergy. Lay people will like it because it is written in language that everyone can understand like all of Swindoll's writing but they will still learn a great deal about this foundational book of the Bible. Clergy will find it will help them present a message that the non Biblical scholar can understand and recieve insight from.
This commentary will challenge you, make you think and encourage you as you reflect on what Paul taught the church at Rome and has been used for years to teach those of us that have followed.

It's Your Ship

2010-05-10T08:52:00.000-04:00

Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy

Captain D. Michael Abrashoff

If you are willing to be challenged to look at leadership in new way from someone who made changes in one the most traditional rigid organizations in the world, the US Navy, this book will make you think in new ways. While serving as the captain of the USS Benfold he transformed one of the poorest performing ships in the Nave to one of the best.

This is the story of the need to change with both those that had authority over him and those over which he held authority. Providing leadership that has an impact is the center of this story. In chapters titled, Lead by example, listen aggressively, communicate purpose and meaning, create a climate of trust, look for results, not salutes, take calculated risks, go beyond standard procedure, build up your people, generate unity and improve your people’s quality of life, he leads you through the process of change that he used.

As a pastor of a church in a traditional mainline denomination I found the wisdom here well worth the time it took to read this relatively short book. We often think that our progress and ability to make a difference are too limited by the traditions and structure of the church. Here is a look at someone that worked in that environment and made a difference.

7 things he’ll never tell you {but you need to know}

2010-03-08T08:49:00.002-05:00

By Kevin Leman
<p$1>

This is a book for ladies that love their husbands and want them to know it. God designed us male and female and that means we are different in many ways. In this book Kevin Leman talks about what men crave in their relationship with their wife. Most men are terrible at allowing anyone including their wife to know what they really need in life. I found myself smiling and saying things like "so I am not weird!" and "I know exactly what you are saying!" as I read this book.
"It's Thursday and I am out of words already." (But if you want to keep talking honey, go ahead)
"Think of me as a four-year-old that shaves."
"I have a purple dining room, and I couldn't care less!"
"I'm desperate for you to need me."
"I've thought about sex 33 times today, and it's not even noon."
"I told you I didn't want to go!"
"I'd take a bullet for you."
Those are the topics for the seven chapters helping you understand how to connect with your husband and tell him you love him.
This will go on my recommended reading list for couples during premarital and marriages counseling as well as those that are just trying to improve their relationship.

SimChurch

2010-03-08T06:09:00.002-05:00

<p$1>

By Douglas Estes

If you are interested in the newest frontier of the church then this is a must read for basic understanding of the virtual world. I had been looking for something that would help me as a person with limited technological understanding to understand the virtual world and how the church can move into it and this book gave me a great basic understanding.
Estes says that "Today is the third most exciting time to be alive in Christian history: we're on the cusp of the third wave of the church." The first two were the advent of the Roman road system and the expansion of the written word and the invention of the printing press. Now the internet has opened up a new wave of communication possibilities in the virtual world. "Just as the church in ages past needed masons, architects, and artists to create spaces where people could feel prepared to worship God, so too does the church today need coders and futurists with contrite hearts to build new types of churches for new types of people."
There is no doubt that the internet is going to play an integral part of the future of our churches. Most of us have wanted to dip our fingers in by using a web page or maybe a social network but very few are willing to explore the virtual world of creating a church online. This book will challenge you to think in new ways about your internet presence as well as giving you some food for thought for your local brick and glass building. He is a pastor of a local church as well as working to create an effective internet presence.
Written in an easy to read non-techno style I think you will find it a thought provoking and challenging book. I recommend it.

Nineteen Minutes

2010-03-04T20:50:00.002-05:00

By Jodi Picoult

<p$1>

You should read this book! I don't often run across a book that I think could help transform a community if people read it but this is one of them. While it is a novel and so a work of fiction it is very clear that it was well researched and based on possible reality.

It opens with a young man walking into his high school and shooting, killing and wounding many students. The story really isn't about the event of the shooting, it is about what lead up to it and the immediate aftermath of this incredible disaster. If you have ever asked yourself if that kind of thing could happen in your school I think this will open your eyes to how easy it could happen. As with every event like this there is a story behind the perpetrator that most of us really don't want to hear about after the event.
Bouncing back and forth between the time of the shooting and its aftermath and the history that led up to it with the main characters she weaves a story while dealing this issues we all face every day. It will challenge you to think about our relationships with our children, parents, student, teachers and other peers. It deals with peer pressure including sex, bullying, beauty and athletics.
I hope you will take the time to read this and then talk to the kids in your life and ask the question, "How can I help make sure this doesn't happen here?"

The Shack

2009-01-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

This is one of the most thought provoking books I have every read.

It is an easy and entertaining read that will give you a chance to reflect on your relationship with God, the people you love and those around you. It may also make you wonder if some of the things you think about God are not fully accurate what other possibilities are.

If you can read a novel and not get caught up on every little theological point that you disagree with and like to reflect from time to time on what you believe this book it worth the time to sit and read.

The Crisis of Younger Clergy

2008-05-20T22:03:00.000-04:00

By Lovett Weems, Jr & Ann Michel

We have all noticed that there are far fewer young adults in our churches. What many may not have noticed is that the number of young clergy, those under 35, are declining at an alarming rate.

If you want your eyes opened to a situation that could be critical to the future of the church then this book is well worth the time to read. It will challenge the way all parts of the church need to look at how we are handling our new and younger members of the clergy.

The book is based on data from a study done by the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. The number of young clergy has been decreasing for years and while that seems to have leveled out, it is still a concern for a number of reasons. The reduced number of clergy is reflecting the lower number of young people in youth and young adult programs in our churches.

One of the major considerations is the entry process that is used for new clergy entering the system in the United Methodist Church. There are a number of those entering seminary that are not willing to put in the years for seminary and then an extended time before ordination. The costs of seminary, lack of financial support and low starting salaries is also a major factors in loss of young clergy.

Many pastors graduating today are out of churches that have no relationship with the churches that they are being asked to serve in first appointments. Traditionally the majority of pastors came out of small rural churches and their first appointment was in a similar church. Today many of the pastors are entering the system from urban or larger suburban churches but are still being assigned to small rural churches with whom they have trouble relating. A part of the gap is a generation different in these first appointments.

There is also the problem that many of our young pastors are expected to bring in young people to the church but the church body is not prepared or willing to receive them. With many clergy leaving seminary with more than $30,000 in debt salaries are a large part of the problem as well.

We cannot afford to continue to watch our young clergy leave the denomination or expect those that remain in the system to save it. This book addresses these issues and more and will open your eyes to new insights on the state of the church today.

Fusion: Turning First-time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church

2008-05-10T12:14:00.000-04:00

By Nelson Searcy

I have been reading a lot about radical hospitality lately. The church needs to learn to not only attract new people into the church but learn to assimilate them into the life of the church. Too often we do things to encourage visitors to the church and then don’t know what to do with them when they come and the leave and we never see them again.

This book is a simple read with a simple system to assimilate guests (not visitors) into the life of the church and move them to active members of the church. Most of what is here is so simple that you will find yourself asking why didn’t I think of that.

One quote that really got my attention was “When your second-time guests walk through your door, they unknowingly come face to face with a fork in the road. Four to six months from that moment, they will either be assimilated into your church or they will be gone.” What are you doing with guests at your church?

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations

2008-05-04T19:37:00.000-04:00

Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations
By Robert Schnase

Bishop Schnase in this work tells us the church must focus on Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-taking Mission and Service and Extravagant Generosity in order to be about the business of making disciples for Jesus Christ.

As a Natural Church Development Coach (NCD) I found this volume intriguing since it uses many of the same thought processes about focusing the church and helping it to move in a new direction. It would make a great study for a local church trying to refocus its ministry. If you want to learn what some key points are in being a disciple making congregation then this book is worth the read. I am thinking about using it as a study in my church for a foundation in renewing ministry and growth.

Leading Turnaround Churches

2008-04-06T20:44:00.000-04:00

By Gene Wood
If you are a leader in a church that is stagnant or declining like more than 85% of the churches in the United States and want to turn it around to growth this book is a must.

Turnaround ministry is for those that like a challenge and are not afraid of conflict. In this book Wood deals with many of the costs of leading a church to the changes necessary for new life and growth. Before you enter this type of ministry you should consider the costs. They can be very high and the pressure considerable.

He talks about what a turnaround looks like and the characteristics of those leaders. He also addresses what you can expect from your pastor if you want them to do turnaround ministry.

Wood says that 95% of all problems in the church come from a power struggle.

This book will help leaders understand and evaluate their ability to lead their church from a plateau and decline to a time of growth. This ministry is not for the weak. I highly recommend this book to all church leaders.

They Like Jesus But Not the Church

2008-04-06T19:27:00.000-04:00

By Dan Kimball

If you are looking to minister to people in their 20s and 30s then you need to read this book. The image of the church is so poor for this generation that we must make substantial changes if we are going to reach them for Christ.

One of the keys will be to get out of the comfort of our church buildings and into the community in which they live. They sure are not coming to us or into the church.

This age group is known as the emerging generation. The church says it wants to do ministry with this generation but what will it take to make that possible is addressed in this book.

What the Emerging Generations Thinks about the Church
The church is an organized religion with a political agenda
The church is judgmental and negative
The church is dominated by males and oppresses females
The church is homophobic
The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong
The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally

If you are a traditionalist this book will make you very uncomfortable. If you think the church needs to be or do something different then this will give you thoughts on what that might be.