Academic
Spiritual Leadership; J. Oswald Sanders. [Amazon] [Audible] Think How to Win Friends and Influence People, except with all the anecdotes being about British missionaries. Kind of a proto-John-Maxwell.
Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach; Jane Vella. Reads as part memoir, part textbook of an incredible world traveler and educator. Anyone who works with adults in any form or any culture can learn something useful.
Cultivating Communities of Practice; Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder. The story of how business creating Communities of Practice. Anyone who really wants to move from small groups to missional community needs to really understand what they’ve tripped upon.
Life on the Vine: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Christian Community; Philip D. Kenneson. “It may be read as a biblical and theological study, as an inspirational work on spirituality, as incisive cultural criticism and as a practical guide to Christian discipleship.” (from Amazon.com.)
Living Faith Day by Day: How the Sacred Rules of Monastic Traditions Can Help You Live Spiritually in the Modern World; Debra K. Farrington. “Farrington formulates a practical and thoughtful guide for developing an individual, God-centered “rule for life,” incorporating monastic wisdom into everyday activities.” (from Amazon.com)
Personal
Fiction
The Passage; Justin Cronin. One of best reviewed books of the last two years. Think of 28 Days Later on the scale of The Stand.
Millennium Falcon; James Luceno. [Amazon] [Audible] I’m a sucker for the Star Wars Expanded Universe books. Han and Leia, now grandparents, travel the universe to learn the history of the ship that saved the galaxy.
Non-Fiction
Getting Things Done; David Allen. [Amazon] [Audible] I’m thinking a lot about productivity these days. Allen is the great popular thinker of our day.
The Big Sort; Bill Bishop. “a one-idea grab bag with a thesis more provocative than its elaboration. Bishop contends that as Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and in the end, politics.” (from Amazon.com)
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