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Category: Book Review

  • What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do by Cloud and Townsend

    As a book review blogger for Thomas Nelson, I received Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend’s book, What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do earlier this week. I was surprised at how small the book was when I first got it. But this isn’t a review on how the book looks, so let me get into my review.

    Summary
    If I could describe this book in a few sentences, I would say that it is a short book on “right to the point” principles on how to to biblical handle trials and hardships in your life. The advice in this book probably isn’t anything that you haven’t heard before, but the difference is that it is clearly being said, and Cloud and Townsend support their advice with solid biblical references.

    My Thoughts
    What I enjoyed most about this book also was one of my annoyances – it was really short. I read it within a couple of hours. The brevity of the book leaves the reader with really impactful principles, but I wonder how well such a short book would connect with someone who is sincerely looking for answers. In my experience in pastoral counseling, sometimes the quick answer isn’t the helpful answer.

    The truth is that everything that Cloud & Townsend offers is simply what the book says it is about – principles. Principles in their definition implies clarity and simplicity, so a long drawn out book concerning principles would be an oxymoron in itself. Here are a couple of things that I found insightful:

    • …personal valuse are not created in a vacuum; they are formed in the contect of community

    • Sometimes we have to take responsibility for situations that are not our fault…Determining who is at fault in your situation isn’t nearly as important as determining who will do something about it…What matters most is taking ownership through God’s strength and wisdom to d o something about it.

    • …expect pain as a regular part of life…the more we bluster, the harder it is to learn the first lesson of trouble: It must be accepted as a normal part of life.

    • View your problems as the next steps of growth for you.

    • The steps: Set goals, record progress, gather resources, acquire information, identify tasks, evaluate progress, explore preferences, remain flexible, pray continually, pace yourself.

    Of all the things that this book covers, the main point that spoke to me was the importance of being vulnerable with you trials and problems in the context of close relationships. In my life, I know that I can be isolated. If I was to be at fault in handling life’s problems, it would be in this way. As a pastor, you sometimes feel the need to be guarded. You feel like there is an unwritten rule that pastors are not allowed to have pain, feel depressed, or go through trials – much less share it with others. But that’s not biblical. It’s not healthy. It’s not right.

    So would I recommend this book? Sure. In fact, I think I’d like to stock a few in my library just to give out.

  • The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield

    Disclaimer: For those who are offended by the idea of a book written how beer and the religion of Christianity may have relationship with each other, you are invited to read my review, but remember that this is a review…not an endorsement.  With that said…my review!

    As the son of two parents whose conversion stories included a turning from unbiblical standards of being “intoxicated”, I was taught that beer had nothing to do with God.  For years, I believed that the only type of people who touched beer were non-christians.

    I think it can be safe to say that life has taught me otherwise.  There has been much debate on the issue of consumption of alcohol and being a follower of Christ.  These debates are not just among the “common people”, but even among those many would consider theologians or religious and biblical scholars.  History has proven to us that even respected church fathers have been recorded to have many a conversation over a beer.  That beer was most often made by Guinness.

    The book, The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield, arrived at my home a little over 2 months ago from Thomas Nelson.  As a person who loves the study of history, I was very curious to see if this truly was a “biography of the beed that changed the world” as the book promoted itself to be, or if it was just another person trying to prove that it’s ok to drink beer and be a Christian.  Was this going to be a book of historical facts, or a collection of opinions?

    My observation was that this was definitely a book of facts.

    This may be the reason it took me so long to finish.  Intriguing as the information was, it did carry on at times like a text book.  None-the-less, there were many great things about this book.  Why was that?

    Because this book not only told the history of Guinness, but it explored how the Guinness family’s faith shaped how influenced the world around them.  If anything, it showed how a family could be ministers in their community without actually being ministers by profession.  Though many of the Guinness family did chose vocational ministry over working at the brew house, the business of the Guinness brewery was always a motivator and empowering of benevolence.

    Even though the current face of the Guinness company no longer looks like its humble and Christian beginnings (much like the many prestigious universities of the United States), a study of it’s history is one that portrays what a business that is lead by a follower of Christ can look like.

    If you’re looking for more ideas on how to live “Your Best Life Now”…keep moving.

    Or, if you’re looking for this book to replace a thorough personal study of God’s Word on the consumption of alcoholic beverages, then you’re going to be very dissapointed.

    but…

    If you’re a history buff who wants to see what Christianity in the “marketplace” looks like…pick this up.

  • Book Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

    It’s not very often I pick up a book and read from cover to cover in one sitting. This time I did. All 255 pages of it. ok…I guess I did stop to make myself some ramen noodle soup, but other than that I was completely overwhelmed by Donald Miller’s new book.

    The truth is that I have a copy of his older book, Blue Like Jazz, but have never finished it. It wasn’t that it wasn’t good, it just didn’t overwhelmed me to finish it. I think I’m going to back and finish reading that book too.

    I guess it wouldn’t be too much to say that Donald Miller is probably one of the best story tellers I’ve come across in a while. I haven’t been this mesmerized by an authors ability to pain pictures with words since I read Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows as a child. Why? Simply put, he tells a good story.

    In the opening of his book, Donald writes this:

    “…if what we choose to do with our lives doesn’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.”

    A Million Miles in a Thousand Years basically is set on explaining this principle. From sharing stories of how he when through the painstaking process of rewriting his life for a movie, to falling for a girl with a cute nose during a grueling trek through the mountains to Machu Picchu, he somehow inspires you to live for something more. And subtly yet profoundly her establishes that this is best understood in living the life of biblical faith.

    So what would I say about this book? Probably what Max Lucado said when asked to submit a review of the book… “I already want to re-read this book.”

  • Book Review: The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player by John Maxwell

    The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team PlayerI picked up John Maxwell’s The 17 Essential Qualities of a Team Player in the bargain bin at the bookstore a couple of weeks ago.

    Being that I am a firm believer that effective leadership is best done in a horizontal environment (where each person is a vital player) and not in a verticle environment (where one person at the top dictates what those below are to do) – I was excited to find some insights.  After all, even though not all readers are leaders, all leaders are readers!

    So here’s some things that really stood out to me.

    • Teamwork and personal rigidity just don’t mix.

    • A person’s age can be determined by the degree of pain he experiences when he comes in contact with a new idea.

    • Commitment and talent are UNCONNECTED – unless you connect them.

    • …you cannot make a commitment to uncommitted people and expect to receive a commitment from them.

    • You cannot have teamwork unless you have communicative players.  Without communication, you don’t have a team; you have a collection of individuals.

    • If you have any kind of difficulty or conflict with a teammate, don’t let more than twenty-four hours go by without addressing it.

    • Having hidden agendas, communicating to people via third party, and sugarcoating bad news hurts team relationships.

    • Open communication increases trust, trust increases ownership, and ownership increases participation.

    • The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

    • Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

    • It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.

    • What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are, and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.

    • People have just two choices when it comes to their emotions: they can master their emotions or be mastered by them.

    • Discipline means doing the right things at the right time for the right reason.

    • If you try to push people to work in areas where they have no talent, you will only frustrate them.

    • Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

    • Being intentional is…about focusing on doing the right things, moment to moment, day to day, and then following through with them in a consistent way.

    • A team really isn’t a team if it isn’t going anywhere!

    • Anyone who loves his opinions more that his teammates will advance his opinions but set back his team.

    • You can’t make the other fellow feel important in your presence if you secretly feel that he is a nobody.

    There’s so much more to this book.  I receommend this to anyone who feels God has called them into leadership because leadership is more like football and less like tennis – it takes a team to win big!

  • Book Review: Lost and Found

    Lost and Found: The younger unchurched and the churches that reach them

    When I received this book last week, I couldn’t wait to read it.  Over the last 10 years I have not only watched young adults disconnect from the church, but even struggled with the same sentiments that I know exists among my generation.  As someone who has dedicated his life to serving people who desire to have an engaging and maturing faith in Jesus, I can’t help but feel my heart break as I watch my peers and the generations that surround them become more and more ambivalent (or even turned off completely) towards Jesus and the people that represent Him.

    As I began to read this book, I quickly realized that this was the perfect companion to a book I had reviewed called UnChristian.  If UnChristian is a book about how unchurched people view Christians and how Christians represent the faith they follow, then this book is about the practical ways (and proven) that fellowships of believers can reach people far from Christ and far from the church with intentionality.

    I am not going to lie.  The first 2 sections (a total of 7 chapters) was a tough one to go through without feeling like your brain was going to explode.  There are so many statistics and analysis that the human brain can handle in one setting.  To the books help, they did a great job of breaking the numbers down in visual ways that “connected the dots.”

    The last section of this book broke down how churches were effectively reaching young unchurched people.  This section was a little easier to read, as it was both encouraging and challenging.  It was encouraging because you felt as though you were gaining some really good input into how things could be done at your local fellowship to foster an environment where the unchurched can be reached.  But it was also challenging because even though the book didn’t outright say-so, the change that is needed to reach a generation of unchurched people requires intentional and strategic changes in the lives of the people who lead churches – pastors.

    The book is HUGE on content, and there are more sentences underlined in this book than any I have read to date, but here are the ones that I think you’d appreciate.

    • Christianity will not die out in this generation or any other, but this generation is not connecting well to the current expression of Christianity.  And that should concern us.

    • …you should not just read this book.  You should spend some time listening to and talking to unchurched young people.

    • Exposure (to church) as a child was not a positive enough experience to encourage attendance as an adult.  For many, the probably had negative experiences…Poor attitudes toward the church that are established as children may be insurmountable, even with the natural curiosity about spirituality.

    • …the younger unchurched are not more upset at the church than the older unchurched

    • The younger unchurched are more open to hearing about Christ (than the older unchurched).

    • Groups seeking to build relationships among young adults will not be short-term study groups but rather long term commitments before becoming true communities with trust and intimacy.

    • …we are in a day that is “postmodern,” a day when people are tired of the modern belief that everything can be answered by science and reason.

    • They (young unchurched) like to study the “hard-to-talk-about” topics.  They love tough questions and despise pat answers.

    • In years past a church served those they wanted to reach…Now the church has the opportunity of reaching people for Christ by allowing those people to serve with them.

    • …we’d rather have messy relationships with lost people than not know them at all.

    • (On the topic of expositional versus topical teaching) “We are going to have this mix (of both) because we know that Jesus preached topically.  Jesus never preached an expositional sermon in His life…He always preached topical and He used illustrations and stories.

    • Technology must always be a servant to the Gospel.

    • Technology doesn’t make bad preaching good and it doesn’t make a bad worship leader a good musician, and technology doesn’t make people who don’t want to connect, connect.”

    Obviously, these quotes WILL be misunderstood outside of the context of this book.  When UnChristian came out, I passed it along to my key leaders who were serving with me.  I will be doing the same with this book.

  • Book Review: Choosing to Cheat by Andy Stanley

    Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins when Family and Work Collide
    By: Andy Stanley

    If you’re married or married with children, you have battled with the tension of balancing your professional career with your personal family life. I know I do. That’s why I picked up this book when I saw another pastor I know had read it and had some positive things to say about it. Here are some blurbs from the book:

    • Your creator does not define your life by your career achievements or the neatness of your pantry. And neither does He define life by the number of hours you spend with your family.
    • Good intentions have never accomplished anything.
    • It is not enough for the (your family) to be your priority. They must feel like it.
    • …couple must find common ground for the sake of monitoring the vital signs of the family.
    • We are instructed to do our jobs and love our families (see Colossians 3:23). When you love your job and do your family, you’ve not only stepped outside the bounds of family, you have stepped outside the will of God.
    • God doesn’t reveal His will for our consideration. He reveals it for our participation

    Anyways, this is a great book for the spouse who feels they neglect family too much and the spouse who stays home and feels the other works to much. I finished the book in about an hour and a half. It is short and to the point. I will definitely be using the material in this book for my pre-marital counseling sessions.