Books I'm Into These Days

I have read more in the last two months than I did in all of 2013! I love reading, but when I lack margin, reading is usually one of the first things to go. So glad that I am making the changes necessary in my life to read again. I come alive. I'm choosing not to give extensive reviews of most of what I am reading right now, but I thought I would give some brief recommendations/reviews.

Finished recently:

"Leading on Empty" by Wayne Cordiero. Whoa!!! Wow!!! What a brilliant book! Packed with wisdom and insight for leaders. But for a very particular group of leaders. If you are any of the following, I highly, highly commend this book to you: Are you tired? Stressed? Worn down? Super busy? Worried that you may not be able to keep this pace for the long haul? Feeling burn out is coming? Lacking margin for health and family? Not enough YOU time? Discontent in your ministry? If any of this is you, read this book. If several or most of these are you, stop right now and buy and read this book in the next two days!

“Brothers, We Are Not Professionals” by John Piper. The opening few pages of this book are enough to make you want to jump up and yell hallelujah! So rich. However, this is classic Piper. I like him. But for me….about 25% of what he writes is too legalistic and rigid for my theology. Same with this book. About half of it is truly excellent. But there are plenty of chapters that I had to just skim. Very traditional, legalistic thinking. That said, the book contains 36 short chapters. So, it is an easy read and easy to skip what you do not want to read. I have a PDF of the first chapter…which is the best. Email me and I will send it to you. Oh, and my eyes were really opened on the chapter about “Not serving God”- It is not a biblical principle to “serve God.” Read it. You will be surprised.

“What Jesus Started” by Steve Addison. I suggested that our training team read this together. We did. It is good. I found the first half to be biblically insightful but somewhat sluggish reading. He gets much more practical in the second half. Good book. Just not blown away by it. Fairly basic stuff floating around everywhere out there.

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Below is what I am currently reading. I will share more reflections when I am done with them:

“God’s Will is Always Healing” by Joshua Greeson // Super eye-opening. Super controversial.

“The Permanent Revolution” by Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim // Excellent work on Ephesians 4 five fold gifts with focus on the lost apostolic role of the church.

“The Gospel in Ten Words” by Paul Ellis

Also Re-reading “The Making of a Leader” by Robert Clinton // It will mean more to me now than the first time I read it. And the updated version has some new pearls.

Then there are the 85 other books on the runway….got the rest of my life for those...

;-)