HERE ARE THE BEST BOOKS I READ THIS YEAR
I like to read and each year I like to post the books that had the greatest impact on my thinking and spiritual life. So here they are:
10. The Future of Management, Gary Hamel. This is not a Christian book, but a business book on how companies are changing the style of management from traditional models in the 80’s and 90’s. It examines companies like Whole Foods and Google and then examines how their models could impact other organizations. A great read on how people can be organized to accomplish a common goal.
9. Life’s Healing Choices, John Baker. This is the textbook for the Celebrate Recovery program. This book gives an excellent path on how to recover from past failures, addictions, and tragedies. Solid and Biblical, I recommend this book to anyone that needs to start over in life or faith.
8. Building Leaders, Aubrey Malphurs and Will Mancini. Leadership is such a buzzword today in church and there are plenty of books that talk about theories of leadership but few give the real nuts and bolts on getting the job done. This book gives you the tools to crank those nuts and bolts of leadership.
7. 5 Levels of Leadership, John Maxwell. I was first introduced to the five levels of leadership in John’s other book, Developing the Leader Within You, where he devoted one chapter to this topic. Now he has written an entire book on the subject and I’m glad he did. Out of all the leadership material John has produced I have found this simple paradigm of leadership to be the most useful. I wish I knew about it when I first got into leadership.
6. Real Life Discipleship, Jim Putnam. This book outlines the path of growing closer to Jesus Christ at a church wide level. I first heard Jim speak two years ago at a church leadership conference where he outlined this book. It is a fascinating way of looking at our faith.
5. The Praying Church Sourcebook, Alvin Vander Griend & Edith Bajema & Blueprint for the House of Prayer, Dr. Terry Teykl. This year I have decided the best way I can serve Celebration Church is simply encourage people to pray. I didn’t want to do a program, or a strategy, or even a sermon series on it. I just wanted to encourage people to pray. How can I do that since I took those elements off the table? These books helped show me how to achieve that goal.
4. The Story of Chrsitianity, Vols. I & II, Justo L. Gonzalez. These two tomes have so much information in them that I find my brain going into overload. I’ve always been confused as to why Christians thought monasticism was cool, or why the crusades were just, or how incredibly complex doctrines developed throughout the centuries. These books answer a lot of those questions for me.
3. Advanced Strategic Planning, Aubrey Malphurs. How do you plan the direction of your church for the next 2-5 years? How do you that in a way that will bring unity and purpose to the church. This book shows you how with surprising clarity. I wish I read this book a decade ago.
2. Church Unique, Will Mancini. This is the millennial generations Purpose Driven Church and answer to the “seeker” movement of the 90’s. This book is about each church discovering its unique calling in God and living that out. It has a missional mindset meaning God has given each church a mission to accomplish within its lifetime.
1. No Perfect People Allowed, John Burke. This book kicked my spiritual butt. This book taught me the power of acceptance and totally made me rethink my interpretation of Romans 6-8 and Galatians 2. It is my prayer to God that our church will actually be a church where we really mean it when we say we accept you as you are, whether homosexual, race, age, or income strata. It taught me that accepting others doesn’t mean agreeing with them. It taught me to accept others but also understanding that god doesn’t want to leave them, or me, that way. I recommend this book to everybody.
Y’all have a great New Year’s Eve and I’ll see you at church Sunday morning, right????? =)
