Last night I finished Brennan Manning’s All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir. The book is the story of Manning’s life, written from his home in New Jersey as he heads into the last stages of his life. I accidentally read this book… my initial plan was to read Manning’s The Furious Longing of God but as he kept referring to parts of his life story, I couldn’t help but track down this book and dive into [...]

In January, my friend Todd Rhoades and I launched a project known as Ministry Briefing. Over the last few years Todd and I have noticed an increase in the amount of noise that ministry leaders are faced with on a daily basis. Whether it comes from social media, the radio, television, books, or the newspaper (do they still have them?), we are inundated with information everywhere we turn. When we first started kicking around the [...]

Earlier this week I finished reading Unbroken, from Laura Hillenbrand. The book tells the fascinating story of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic distance runner and World War Two Prisoner of War in the pacific theater, who went on to learn about grace, forgiveness, and the new life that only comes from Christ. The book is not what you would consider to be a “Christian Biography”, but rather comes off as a biography of someone who [...]

I originally picked up The Presidents Club as a fun read for our recent vacation. While I expected to find leadership applications for the church world, I wasn’t expecting to find quite so many similarities between being President of the United States, and the pastor of a local church. The book tells the stories of the relationships between former presidents, and how sitting presidents have leveraged them. What I didn’t think about heading into the book, though [...]

One of my passions in life is helping people figure out how to integrate their faith into their day to day life. Whether it is in our family life, our relationships, or the marketplace, our faith is meant to permeate every part of our lives. While integrating faith into family life and our friendships can be fairly easy, living out our faith within our workplace can be tricky. This is why I was so glad [...]

A couple of weeks ago I was given a copy of Tony Morgan’s new book to read and post a review for today. Last week was the first time in two years that this blog has gone dark for more than a day or two. My life changed significantly last week, and I look forward to sharing some of what has happened, and will happen over the course of the next several weeks. I am [...]

Several weeks ago I stumbled upon an article on Fast Company’s site about David Marquet’s book Turn the Ship Around!: How to Create Leadership at Every Level. Marquet is a retired Captain in the Navy, and is best known for engineering the remarkable turn around of the USS Santa Fe. Upon taking over the boat, David became the captain of one of the worst performers in the fleet and was given very clear instructions: turn [...]

We all have addictions.  Some may gamble, some may smoke, some may drink… I, on the other hand, consume Patrick Lencioni books.  That’s right… as soon as one is hinted at being published, I have pre-ordered it on Amazon.  As you might imagine, when I first heard about The Advantage I was a little giddy. Having read the book, I must say it is excellent material.  Organizational health is something that church leaders must learn, and this [...]

I love getting things in the mail.  The other day, I got a copy of Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller’s book Great Leaders Grow: Becoming a Leader for Life, compliments of Michael Nichols (whose blog you really need to be reading).  The book is short and sweet, I read it in a little over an hour (120 pages), and while we all know that we need to be growing as leaders… it gives a simple [...]

Scott Belsky introduces his book Making Ideas Happen by saying something that anyone who has led a ministry for more than three days knows quite well: Ideas don’t happen because they are great- or by accident.  The misconception that great ideas inevitably lead to success has prevailed for too long.  Whether you have the perfect solution for an everyday problem or a bold new concept for a creative masterpiece, you must transform vision into reality. We [...]