This month’s list of the best books I’ve read over the last 30 days that were published this year is filled with authors who have never before appeared on my blog.
- (5+) Loving and Leaving a Church: A Pastor’s Journey by Barbara Melosh (Westminster John Knox Press, 2018)
- (4.5) 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest) by Marc Effron (Harvard Business Review Press, 2018)
- (4.0) Solus Jesus: A Theology of Resistance by Emily Swan and Ken Wilson (Read the Spirit, 2018)
- (4.0) Healing Justice: Stories of Wisdom and Love by Jarem Sawatsky (Red Canoe Press, 2018)
- (4.0) The Power of a Positive Team: Proven Principles and Practices that Make Great Teams Great by Jon Gordon (Wiley, 2018)
- (4.0) Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future – and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo (Portfolio, 2018)
- (4.0) Preaching While Bleeding: Is There A Prophet in the House? by H. Beecher Hicks, Jr. (Urban Ministries, 2018)
- (3.5) The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Save Us from Drowning by Aaron Niequist (Waterbrook, 2018)
- (3.0) Mystics and Misfits: Meeting God through St. Francis and Other Unlikely Saints by Christiana N. Peterson (Herald Press, 2018)
So What?
This month’s top two books are quite different. Both, however, speak to the value of doing whatever one is called to do or be to the best of one’s ability.
I’ve long been a student of the changing American religious landscape. In recent years, I’ve listened to many people share their stories of loving and leaving a church. Loving and Leaving a Church: A Pastor’s Journey is Barbara Melosh’s story. Her entry into pastoral ministry came later in life after a career as a professor. The book is all about her first call, and her only experience in a settled ministry. After transplanting herself and her husband into a new community, she invested seven years of her life loving a dying church until it became clear that she was ready to move on. In her own words this experience was about being faithful not about achieving any sort of numeric or financial success. To read this book is at once to enter into Melosh’s experience and to connect with the experience of an increasing number of pastors who are serving declining congregations that have yet to move into the final stages of death and dying or to experience the miracle of resurrection and new life.
Every person has the power to change more about individual performance than popular wisdom suggests. About half of the factors that contribute to personal performance are fixed or unchangeable (IQ, core personality, socioeconomic background, etc.). The other half, however, are flexible. Marc Effron’s 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus On What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest) is a research based volume that provides practical guidance on flexible or changeable elements through what he calls the eight steps:
- Set BIG goals and seek out coaching to assist you in achieving them
- Identify and adopt behaviors associated with high performance
- Accelerate your growth by targeting key experiences
- Strategically build your network
- Maximize your fit within the organization
- Be the you the situation requires or will most benefit from
- Commit to taking good care of your body
- Avoid distractions
As you think about your own experiences in ministry and in life more generally
- How do you balance being faithful with being successful? Alternatively, is one or the other your primary goal?
- Which of Effron’s eight steps do you find to be most difficult? Identify a few specific action items to work on that step.