PastorHacks

Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life

New David Allen book out! And screaming deal on it at Amazon... I saw it yesterday at Powells for around $25, but just ordered it new on Amazon for half that. 

From the Amazon review: 

"David Allen shows us how to excel in dealing with our daily commitments, the unexpected, and the information overload that threatens to drown us. Making It All Work provides an instantly usable, success-building tool kit for staying ahead of the game.

Making It All Work addresses: how to figure out where you are in life and what you need; how to be your own consultant and a CEO of your life; moving from hope to trust in decision-making; when not to set goals; harnessing intuition, spontaneity, and serendipity; and why life is like business and business is like life.

This eagerly awaited follow-up to Getting Things Done is guaranteed to find an audience in today’s competitive business environment and among David Allen’s many fans. "

Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry

Few books hit me like water in the desert. But so far, this one is definitely like that. 

Barton has a way of talking about the realities of leading and pastoring that are both honest and transparent, and yet never lose sight of the solace and strength to be found by leaning in to the person of Jesus. 

From the back of the book:

""I'm tired of helping others enjoy God. I just want to enjoy God for myself." With this painful admission, Ruth Haley Barton invites us to an honest exploration of what happens when spiritual leaders lose track of their souls. Weaving together contemporary illustrations with penetrating insight from the life of Moses, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership explores topics such as responding to the dynamics of calling, facing the loneliness of leadership, leading from your authentic self, cultivating spiritual community, reenvisioning the promised land, discerning God's will together...

Each chapter includes a spiritual practice to ensure your soul gets the nourishment it needs. Forging and maintaining a life-giving connection with God is the best choice you can make for yourself and for those you lead. "

Highly recommended

Book of the week: Not The Religious Type

Confession- I haven't finished reading this book yet, but I'm enjoying it a lot and have read enough to want to recommend it. 

Dave Schmelzer pastors a church in Cambridge, MA- a church that lives and breathes in the heart of a decidedly secular and even anti-religious community. The book describes some of his journey from atheism to Christianity and some of the thinking and winsome approach that allows a church like his to reach a community like that. 

From the inside cover:

"In the tradition of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy comes this illuminating collection of thoughts on faith in a postmodern world.Not the Religious Type bridges the gap between the two communities in which many of us live--the secular and the religious--and suggests a new, unexpected way of seeing the world and our place in it.
Whether we're the religious type or not, there's a certain part of each of us that invariably wonders if it's true--if there's a God we can connect with who is alive and active, with the kind of perspective on our lives and futures that we could never have on our own.
As Dave engagingly explores these most important questions, he invites his readers into "a new and warmer spring," a way of thinking that will help both secularists who never imagined they would become people of faith and also people of faith who perhaps haven't experienced all from God that they've hoped."

The section on Peck's stages of belief and how they apply to the move from a rigid faith to a state of questioning and then on to a more mystical place of belief again was worth reading the book just for that- very helpful in understanding the kind of city I'm living in and what kind of church we need to be...

Check it out: 

Book of the week: TransforMissional Coaching

TransforMissional Coaching

Empowering Leaders in a Changing Ministry World

by Steve Ogne and Tim Roehl with Foreword by Ed Stetzer

Even leaders need leading. In the context of this greatly changing world, ministry experts Steve Ogne and Tim Roehl have coined the phrase "transformissional" to define the unique type of inspired coaching they offer to spiritual leaders in need of fresh direction.

"The path that the Lord of the Harvest has designed sometimes takes us beyond our comfort zone and off the map of our experience," they write. "We’ll help you understand how coaching helps leaders get traction and make progress in personal growth and ministry productivity. We’ll also help you become an effective coach so no matter where you find yourself—from church buildings to coffee shops to places you’ve never gone before—you can come alongside to help others live out their call and make a difference in their world."

You can download the Introduction, Chapter One and the Intro to Chapter Two at the publisher's website.

Book of the week: The Contemplative Pastor

I cannot tell you how much I am enjoying this book. The first couple of chapters alone on un-busyness and what it means to be a truly subversive pastor are worth the price of the book. 

I can only hope that when I reach his age and number of years spent in ministry that I'm even 1/4 as wise as Eugene Peterson. 

Please- get this book!

Book of the Week: The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching

"Packed with useful tools that span a wide array of homiletical issues…a tremendous value to preachers seeking to be effective communicators….Pastors will appreciate the many practical ideas, and cautions, offered by the contributors….Preachers of all ages should hear Chuck Swindoll's wisdom in his chapter Simplify….One of the first volumes a pastor should receive when beginning in ministry. With its brief chapters, the book can be utilized as a chapter-a-day continuing education resource." — Leadership journal 


The most complete practical encyclopedia ever on the practice of preaching based on articles from who’s who of over a hundred respected communicators of Christian truth, edited by Haddon Robinson and Craig Brian Larson using significant resources from the ministries of Christianity Today International. Includes audio CD with preaching technique examples from the book. 

Book of the week: Culture Making- Recovering our Creative Calling

From the Amazon Description:

It is not enough to condemn culture. Nor is it sufficient merely to critique culture or to copy culture. Most of the time, we just consume culture. But the only way to change culture is to create culture.

In his new book Andy Crouch unleashes a stirring manifesto calling Christians to be culture makers. For too long Christians have had an insufficient view of culture and have waged misguided "culture wars." But we must reclaim the cultural mandate to be the creative cultivators that God designed us to be.

A model of his premise, this landmark book is sure to be a rallying cry for a new generation of culturally creative Christians. Discover your calling to become a culture maker!.

Tim Keller, pastor, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City, author, The Reason for God
"Culture Making is one of the few books taking the discussion about Christianity and culture to a new level. It is a rare mix of the theoretical and the practical, its definitions are nuanced but not abstract, and it strikes all kinds of fine balances. I highly recommend it." 

Lauren F. Winner, assistant professor of Christian spirituality, Duke Divinity School, and author of Girl Meets God
"Are Christians to be countercultural? Or protect ourselves from 'the culture'? Or be 'in' culture but not 'of' it? In this bracing, super-smart book, Andy Crouch changes the terms of the conversation, calling Christians to make culture. I am hard-pressed to think of something that twenty-first-century American Christians need to read more."

Book: LifeHacker- 88 Tip to Turbocharge Your Day

If your hard drive is your outboard brain, you're a lifehacker — someone who loves to tweak your computer for optimum productivity to make it an ally instead of an adversary. Life hacks apply technology creatively, reprogramming your personal workflow to save time and effort. This book serves up 88 of them, outlined step by step and categorized by cost, platform, and level of geekiness. If you're overwired, overwhelmed, or totally tangled in the very technology that is supposed to simplify your life, this book is for you. 

A dozen ways to turbocharge your day

• Hack 3: Develop your digital photographic memory
• Hack 8: Permanently block time-wasting Web sites
• Hack 20: Automatically empty your digital junk drawer
• Hack 30: Send and receive money on your cell phone
• Hack 34: Carry your life on a flash drive
• Hack 40: Back up data to your iPod
• Hack 50: Script repetitive e-mail responses
• Hack 56: Securely track your passwords
• Hack 63: Quick-log your work day
• Hack 76: Take your browser configuration with you
• Hack 79: Capture Web clippings with Google Notebook
• Hack 87: Resurrect deleted files  

And more... check it out here

Recommended: Finding Our Way Again

So, all in all, I loved Finding Our Way Again. Loved it. Been carrying it around, sneaking pages when I could... I think I want to make it the text for our Life in the Way of Jesus theology pub, the one designed to introduce evergreeners to the disciplines. Not because the book itself is an exhaustive treatment of spiritual disciplines, but because in the whole sense of "If you want some people to build a boat, don't give them the plans, give them a love of the sea" this book will, I think, give people a passion for Christianity as a way of life which includes a set of common practices that enrich us, change us, and form us. 

First, the quibble, then the good stuff. 

TNIV- The Books of the Bible

Here's a cool deal...

What if the Bible were arranged more chronologically (and logically)? What if books that originally formed one unit were again reunited? And what what if we left off all the verse/chapter/paragraph headings and just red it as it was originally written- as whole books?

That's what the TNIV Books of the Bible does...

From the publisher's website:
The Books of the Bible project encourages better Bible reading, particularly by emphasizing the reading of whole books. The result is an inviting and clean visual presentation of the Bible, in Today's New International Version (TNIV), that can be understood and enjoyed more easily. The Books of the Bible differs from the format of most current Bibles in significant ways:

• Chapter and verse numbers are removed from the text
  (A chapter and verse range is given at the bottom of each page)
• Each book's natural literary breaks are shown instead
• There are no notes, cross references, or section headings in the text
• Text is presented in one column rather than two or more
• Books that have historically been divided into parts are restored
• Books are presented in an order that gives readers more help in understanding

Here's a type sample

Looks cool and would be especially good for devotional reading