The best new books I’ve read in the last 30 days are listed below.
- (5.0) Be the Unicorn: 12 Data-Driven Habits that Separate the Best Leaders from the Rest by William Vanderbloemen (Harper Collins Leadership, 2023)
- (4.5) Hope Is Here!: Spiritual Practices for Pursuing Justice and Beloved Community by Luther E. Smith (Westminster John Knox Press, 2023)
- (4.5) The Leadership Runway: A Strategy for Ministry Succession, Leadership Transition, and Post-Founder Sustainability by Steve Murrell (Every Nation Resources, 2023)
- (4.5) Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society One Zip Code at a Time by Seth D. Kaplan (Little, Brown Spark, 2023)
- (4.0) Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty by Nikhil Goyal (Metropolitan Books, 2023)
- (4.0) Sitting in the Shade of Another Tree: What We Learn by Listening to Other Faiths edited by Keith Giles and Matthew J. Distefano (Quior, 2023)
- (4.0) Leading with Love: Spiritual Disciplines for Practical Leadership by Elaine A. Robinson (Fortress Press, 2023)
- (4.0) The Deep Down Things: Practices for Growing Hope in Times of Despair by Amber C. Haines and Seth Haines (Brazos Press, 2023)
- (3.5) Reduce Your Church’s Decline: Strategies to Stem Attrition by John Zehring (John Zehring, 2023)
- (3.5) No Congregation is an Island: How Faith Communities’ Navigate Opportunities and Challenges Together by Jennifer M. McClure Haraway (Rowan & Littlefield, 2023)
Unicorns
William Vanderbloemen is the Founder & CEO of Vanderbloemen – an executive search firm that has provided comprehensive search services for over 2,500 roles in ministry and non-profit leadership. Leveraging data from more than 30,000 long form interviews that comprised those searches, Vanderbloemen explores the 12 habits he and his team have discovered sets the best leaders apart from all others. Each habit receives a chapter length consideration that includes anecdotes, quotes, and stats, including the percentage of people in his data set that identified the habit as their primary strength.
This book is an excellent read for any leader seeking improved self-understanding and opportunities for growth. The data visualization above shows the percentage of people who identified a given habit as their best quality.
Welcome Back
Three authors on this month’s list have appeared on So What Faith in the past:
- William Vanderbloemen was featured when he co-authored Next: Pastoral Succession That Works (4.5) with Warren Bird in 2014. Additionally, he was mentioned in Previously Unheard of Jobs (2011).
- Keith Giles was noted last year (2022) on the occasion of the publication of Sola Mysterium: Celebrating the Beautiful Uncertainty of Everything .
- Matthew Distefano was included when he authored Heretic!: An LGBTQ-Affirming, Divine Violence-Denying, Christian Universalist’s Responses to Some of Evangelical Christianity’s Most Pressing Concerns (2018). And, he appeared recently when a quote from his current book was mentioned in 10 Invitations to Conversation.
2023 in Review
This is the 11th monthly list for 2023 (there was no list in January since the books I read in January appear on the February list). Prior lists can be viewed as follows: