Books of Interest

I want to suggest a few books I have read (or am reading) that I think worthy of your time. I'll include the Title, Author, and a BRIEF description of each, with (hopefully) a cover-shot of the book.

Most of these books can be found easily at any good bookstore, or Online. You can even click on the image provided of each resource in order to be taken to the author's site, a video, or a great place to purchase the book.

Remember--you only have time to read so many books in a lifetime, and we all read at different paces, with different interests, etc. Read what you want to read--not just what someone suggests.

But you should always be reading the Bible, no doubt!

Master Leaders: Revealing Conversations with 30 Leadership Greats is a good book I'm currently reading by the statistics and leadership guru (yeah, I know the origin of the word) George Barna.

Barna interviewed 30 great leaders and compiled their answers to a long list of questions into a fictional, yet compelling conversation. Got the audio book as a gift, and liked it so much that I bought the hardcover book about half-way through the audio.

Written by David Platt (whom I had the pleasure of having as a grader for one of my seminary preaching classes years ago), Radical takes aim at Christians who are more concerned with living the American Dream than following the Biblical Christ. Unfortunately, that aim is at all of us -- including Platt.

Platt takes a humble and humbling approach to a tough and "radical" topic, and succeeds. Read a great review of the book here: http://www.discerningreader.com/book-reviews/radical

Click the image below to view a short promo video for the book / challenge, narrated by Platt.

Tough Calls: Game-Winning Principles for Leaders Under Pressure, by Travis Collins (a former professional football referee), is a great little book that delivers just what it promises. Collins fills his chapters with simple suggestions and great illustrations to help you understand exactly what he means.

Just finished reading it (didn't take long at all), and don't regret buying it. Good little resource.

Mike Sares' Pure Scum: The Left-Out, the Right-Brained, and the Grace of God is about Sares' journey with founding and continuing in the Scum of the Earth Church.

Designed for people who felt out of place or unaccepted at other churches, SOTE Church became a place for people to come as they were, and be introduced to the merciful grace of Christ Jesus.

Worth the read.

Okay, so I've already mentioned Jonathan Acuff's Stuff Christians Like elsewhere on this site.

I read it, laughing out loud, and being convicted by portions of it, as well.

My wife is reading it, and is being similarly affected.

Last night, my 16-year-old son picked it up, and laughed like a child. Not that that's unusual ...

Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, explores the claims of the wildly popular Emergent church movement (people like Rob Bell and Mark Driscoll, for example), and gives their own responses.

By all definitions, DeYoung and Kluck are the right kind of people to be involved in the Emergent movement -- they're young, Christians, etc., etc., but are not emergent for very specific reasons.

Fiction -- this first book by Ted Dekker was written (in part) to help Dekker deal with the tragic loss of his best friend and brother in a motorcycle accident. Son of missionaries in Indonesia, Dekker had made millions in business ventures after moving to the United States.

The book takes a man who had worked hard and should be a millionaire (but is cheated out of it) and sees him lose everything precious to him -- and pinpoints how those with and without Christ deal with tragic loss and doing what's right.

If you enjoy fiction, you'll enjoy this one.

Written by Christian fiction legend Frank Peretti, Monster is a highly entertaining thriller that deals with ... uh, well ... I don't want to ruin the surprise.

You could suffice it to say that it deals, literally, with a monster.

Or, if you don't want to go into it blind (like I did), you can read an interview with the author about the book by clicking the image below.

I used to be somewhat embarrassed that I was a Lewis fan, because "friends" thought all he wrote was the Narnia Chronicles. I let myself be influenced by their ignorance.

Lewis was a prolific writer, and still a best-selling author, more than 40 years after his death. Quick aside -- did you know he died the same day JFK was assassinated?

Though I disagree with Lewis on some things (such as the idea that belief in Purgatory is "reasonable"), I find myself agreeing with him more often than not.

Here are a couple of quotes from one of his masterpieces, Mere Christianity:

"Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have."

" ... God's demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. Each time you fall He will pick you up again. And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection."

Amen.

While I could not possibly provide you with ALL the Lewis links online, nor even point you to the "best", click the photo of Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis below for a little overview of the man.