Leadership and ministry require knowledge and wisdom. Every morning I pray for wisdom because I constantly feel inadequate to lead my amazing team. With that said, I don’t think wisdom is a passive exchange. I don’t believe that God honors the request for wisdom without the pursuit of wisdom. And, that’s why I read voraciously. Wisdom is something that is developed over years. I think it is more like the 10,000 Hours Rule that Malcolm Gladwell made famous in his book Outliers, than it is momentary infusion of insight. So, if you are in leadership or ministry…or life, I implore you to read voraciously! Here’s what I read in September:
One of the best times to read is while traveling. I read this book while flying to and from Costa Rica on a scouting trip for a summer missions location. Osborne has a ridiculous amount of ministry experience. One thing I appreciate is that over the years, his church has grown from small to ginormous. Because of this, he has a good understanding of leadership and church culture in a variety of settings.
I really enjoyed this book. I was fascinated by his research into character. Tough’s thoughts on the importance of performance character as a predictor of success has influenced my thinking a great deal. If you have kids, this is a great book to help you think differently about training your children for success in life.
Recently, I attended an artist conference in Nashville, called Hutchmoot. During one of the sessions, Andrew Peterson asked the audience to share with the person next to them the last book they had read for fun. My answer was this book. The person next to me answered, “Isn’t that a book for work or something?” And, I said, “Yes, but I love my job and I love speaking.” In my head I thought, “Speaking is an art too dang it!” But, I didn’t say that because I have a measure of social awareness.
Anyway, this is a great book for those of us who speak or teach on a regular basis–in any format. I believe there are a million reasons to think of a student ministry teaching like a TED talk. We have much to learn from the best communicators in the world and this book is an insider’s look into the presenting philosophy of TED speakers. Check it out.
Sigh…yes, I read a book about trash. This book was amazing! The author grew up in the US scrap industry and then spent the better part of a decade in China exploring where American trash and scrap goes. If you’ve ever wondered where your car goes when it dies or whether that bottle of Tide you just emptied goes to heaven, this is your book. In my opinion, this book finds a nice balance between hardcore environmentalists and heartless big business. The truth is often in the middle. Idealism doesn’t often work in the real world.
As Americans who often think that separating our recyclables into the correctly colored containers is an act of heroism, we need to hear the story of how these items are actually recycled. We need to learn about these Chinese recycling centers, places so polluted that even the Chinese government, hardly a stalwart of environmentalism, has shut them down. We owe it to the impoverished rural Chinese who are poisoned by the thousands to transform our throw away metals, electronics and plastics into new goods that we can recycle all over again.
