May was a month with not a whole lot of reading… but a month where I read one of the best books on leadership to date…

The Truth About Leadership: The No-Fads, Heart-of-the-Matter Facts you Need to Know
by James Kouzes and Barry Posner | 5 of 5 stars

This is perhaps the best book on leadership I’ve ever read (and I’ve read quite a few). In fact, it was so valuable that I gave it to our staff to read as well and as a reference for a 360-degree leadership evaluation. The majority of this book, after some reflection, seems to be fairly obvious for leadership, but seems to slip beneath the radar as the demands and stresses of leadership cloud our vision. If you are a leader you should read this book. If you lead a team of people, you should give this book to your team. It contains valuable insights, but as with any book implementation is the greatest challenge for moving forward.

Here are the books I read in April… I know it’s July… but it’s here now.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
by Anne Lamott | 3 of 5 stars

I read Bird by Bird not completely expecting what I would find… especially since this is a book about writing and I’ve never read a book about writing that wasn’t technical in nature. Lamott doesn’t present a technical way to write, but a very free flowing, experience laden work filled with stories about her journey towards being the writer she is today. All along the way there are helpful bits of insight into the creative writing process as well as tips for dealing with writers block and the normal self-effacing struggles a writer will run into. I enjoyed this book. If you’re looking for a non-technical, story driven work on creative writing, this is a good place to start.

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions
by Guy Kawasaki | 2 of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this book. Kawasaki’s previous book “The Art of the Start” was a brilliant and extremely helpful piece that helped walk me through some of the important processes for launching IKON. Unfortunately, The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions didn’t have the same level of brilliance. To me, this book felt more like a how to on manipulation instead of inspiration (as the title suggests). I had hoped for more.

Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit
by Henri Nouwen | 4 of 5 stars

I was first introduced to Uncle Henri in college through a professor that has had a greater and more profound impact on my life than perhaps he will ever know.

Henri has played a significant role in my spiritual formation and development in my 13+ years of pastoral ministry and has not only walked me through some valleys of despair and trial but has been a guide in helping me to help others through their valleys of despair and trial. Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit is a collection of essays, lectures, and conversations that Henri had with students and friends along the way before his untimely death. It was compliled by Michael J Christensen and Rebecca Laird, who have strived to keep the work of Henri alive through this important piece. I am thankful for his voice, and for their faithfulness to keeping his voice alive for generations to come.

I haven’t been a regular blogger for some time now, but I am hoping to change that. With that said, here are my latest readings from the past two months.

Talking About God: Exploring the Meaning of Religious Life with Kierkegaard, Buber, Tilich, and Heschel
by Daniel F. Polish | 4 of 5 stars
This was a fascinating look at four theological and philosophical giants who had a profound and lasting impact on the way in which we think about and interact with God. Polish did a great job of juxtaposing the Jewish faith of Buber and Heschel with Kierkegaard and Tilich and finding their common ground in the story of Abraham. This is a great primer and introductory book on the thought and position of each of these men who have had an important and lasting imprint on our culture and the church.

Finally Comes The Poet
by Walter Brueggemann | 4 of 5 stars
Every so often it does my heart good to read a good ol’ fashioned book about preaching (teaching). This isn’t your normal preaching book, however. This is a book that challenges, exhorts the preacher/teacher to not only accept his/her role as preacher/teacher but to reclaim the importance of this role within a community. Brueggemann challenges the teacher/preacher to elevate the role within the community for the sake of the community.

Preaching/teaching is a pretty interesting subject today, especially as we continue to cloud it up with our own preferences/stylistic hopes. We have done a good job of devaluing preaching/teaching and devaluing the preacher/teacher within our community and our society. Brueggemann challenges and encourages the preacher/teacher to step up to that challenge, meet it head on and push through because of how important preaching/teaching is to the community. However, at the same time Brueggemann also concludes that we must recapture preaching/teaching as an art form and each message as a work of art that is to be presented as such. It with this artistically crafted presentation that the community is allowed to exhale and proclaim, “Finally comes the poet!”

In The Name of Jesus
by Henri Nouwen | 5 of 5 stars
This has been and continues to be a tremendously formative book for me. In fact, it is one of the few books that I make sure to read every single year. Nouwen has a way of communicating the important aspects of spiritual formation and what centering your life around Jesus looks like, that truly causes you to pause and spend time introspectively examining yourself. Every time I read this work I am challenged and forced to reflect on new aspects and areas of my life that have either laid dormant or previously untouched.

Nouwen is a spiritual father for me, I was first introduced to this book in college and have never been able to wiggle away from the concepts and ideas that he presents that challenge my faith, my humanity, and my relationship with Jesus. Although this is a short book, you would do well to read it slowly and allow his words to soak in to your heart.

Love Wins
by Rob Bell | 3 of 5 stars
This is perhaps one of the most controversial books in the Christian realm in quite some time. In fact, it is so controversial that a pastor in North Carolina was fired for talking positively about the book on Facebook. So, here’s my two cents:

1. It’s not an extremely well written book. It’s a tall order to make 4 major doctrinal positions accessible to the masses in under 200 pages. Rob Bell is an extremely gifted communicator, but even this was too big a task for him to accomplish
2. This book does not, in my opinion, have staying power. It will simply be a flash in the pan as a book. However, my hope is that the conversation it sparked will remain. That in some way this book will serve as a course correction for the American Church away from the apocalyptic imagery we so quickly embraced with the Left Behind series and into a more biblical mode of understanding
3. Perhaps if we learn anything from this book, we will ultimately heed the title and understand and live out the premise that Love Wins in our every day lives and in our everyday interactions. That could truly create a world where the Kingdom of God is seen.

These are the books I read through the month of January, along with a few thoughts.

The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
by Steven Pressfield | 3 of 5 stars

This is a short, quippy book that asks us to wrestle with the force of Resistance that prevents us from being the people and creators we were meant to be. I found it fascinating that the initial push in Pressfield’s treatise on creativity was about the demon of procrastination. It is procrastination, Pressfield says, that is truly bore out of fear–not of what we would create, but of how our creations would be received by others. Pressfield peels away layer after layer of what prevents us from being our true creative selves landing on the assumption and even the charge to create, not only because it is what we were created to do, but because it is through our creation that we regenerate the world bit by bit.

Pressfield makes a good case, and for every creative type, this is a good read.

Counterfeit Gods
by Tim Keller | 5 of 5 stars

This is a short book packed with tremendous insight into the very core of humanity. Keller reaches across the spectrum of human existence and experience in laying before us the depths of human brokenness and our search to fill the cracks with anything. Ultimately, these fill-ins only provide us with a temporary and unsatisfying relief. Keller walks us through entire books of the Bible as well as familiar stories of Scripture that highlight and reveal the greater issues of self that continue to hold us captive.

Keller’s points are not to be missed, and Counterfeit Gods is a tremendous book to guide us along in weeding out the issues that keep us separated from truly forming into the likeness of Christ.

Small Faith, Great God
by NT Wright | 3 of 5 stars

Wright does a great job of balancing his writing between academia and accessibility. This is on of his more accessible books on the subject of faith and it’s profound implications on our entire theological perspective. Wright lays out a beautiful systematic theology throughout this book, and creates a great entry point for anyone wanting to learn about Wright’s perspectives on the way of Jesus.

Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
N.T. Wright

Harper Collins—Religion | Theology – Eschatology | Church Life
295 Pages

“Surprised By Hope is this generations Mere Christianity,” commented a fellow pastor here in the city of San Francisco. There has been a great deal of attention paid in the media to this work from a spot on Nightline and The Colbert Report to an article in TIME Magazine and an insightful interview by Brian Lowery in Preaching Today (among many others). Each article and interview seems to deal more with his conclusions rather than the framework by which he works to arrive at those conclusions (a good third to half of the book creates the framework through which his conclusions are derived.)

Wright concludes from his extensive New Testament research that our understanding of the afterlife is incomplete and because we fall short in our understanding we’ve constructed an after-life that is completely foreign to the understanding of the New Testament and early Christians. Instead of living out eternity in heaven (according to Colbert it entails getting a harp, drinking a mint julep and asking Ronald Reagan questions) singing songs to God all day while sitting on clouds, heaven is a mere step in the process before life after life after death occurs when the new heaven and the new earth are merged into one as described at the end of Revelation.

Therefore, the Christian response is to work towards new creation not sitting back to wait for the end of the world to occur. Perhaps what is most intriguing about this position is Wright alludes to and at several points calls out the fact that many Christians, including those in the United States are contributing more to the destruction of the world instead of new creation. We participate in this destruction with how we treat the environment (pollution, nuclear proliferation, destruction of rain forests and other environmental concerns) as well as how we treat others through economic slavery (the insurmountable debt we place upon third world countries, trade regulations, etc) and a slew of other ways. None of these hep to bring about new creation, but instead play into the systematic injustice of the worlds ruling structure.

Perhaps the most important thing to recognize about this book is the underlying thesis that your eschatological position truly does determine how you act and respond in the world. If you live as if “Left Behind” and the Rapture are to occur (Wright does a great job of de-bunking pop-theologies interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4) then there is no reason to give a rip about anything on this planet, from poverty and economics to war and violence and the only point become “saving souls” in a very gnostic understanding so that our spirit can enjoy life in the spiritual realm.

This is hands down the best book I have ever read. The call to action integrated with the amazing framework created by Wright for you to enjoy in Part 1 is a veritable playground for the mind.

Jesus Wants To Save Christians
Rob Bell & Don Golden

Zondervan—Religion | Christian Life | Spiritual Growth
218 pages

Go out and buy this book right away!

Bell and Golden sum up the book this way:

There is a church in our area that recently added an addition to their building which cost more than $20 million. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.

This book is about those two numbers.

It’s a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity; it’s about empty empires and the truth that everybody’s a priest; it’s about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate, and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

It’s about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.

This book is the story of the new exodus; the struggle of the Israelites who were delivered from slavery (Egypt), met God at the mountain (Sinai – “It is believed that this is the only faith tradition in human history that has as its central event a god speaking to a group of people all at one time.”), created their own Empire under Solomon (Jerusalem), and returned back to a life of slavery (Babylon). This is a story of a new exodus in which Jesus comes to free not only the Israelites but all of humanity from the oppressive system of empire once and for all.

Bell and Golden do a tremendous job of engaging the reader with their writing style (very much written in the same cadence with which Bell speaks) and incorporating a vast array of Biblical scholarship that speaks not only of the time it was originally written for (ancient Israel) but translates beautifully for us today — especially those of us living in the United States of America. This book will no doubt cause a stir and controversy along the political spectrum, but this work is a great contribution to the conversation.

My Beautiful Idol
Pete Gall

Zondervan—Religion | Christian Life | Spiritual Growth
293 pages

Pete Gall’s book, My Beautiful Idol is a memoir written in the same vein as Donald Miller’s Through Painted Deserts. Gall takes you through his journey during a painful, tumultuous and uncertain time in his life that spanned 5 years as he searched for direction, meaning, and ultimately wrestled with who he was and who he was becoming. There are some tremendously dark moments as he ventured inward revealing the thoughts and questions that ruled his life during this time, however at the same time this provided a breath of fresh air as his honesty and transparency revealed the truth that is prevalent in every human being – whether we accept it or not.

This is a great book to read during an inward journey to discover your place as a person as well as your “role” in the Kingdom. It can certainly provide a great deal of perspective, and point to the priorities that one should maintain. I think more than anything it gives the reader permission to evaluate their own life in a harsh light, perhaps more than one was previously willing to do. This, I believe, is the greatest benefit of this book because it forces you into your own darkness of self-actualization and coming out with a better understanding of the human condition as well as your own.