Leaders are Readers

Over the past month I've managed to accumulate more books than I've read all year. That's not too hard considering I've only read 5 books all year. This disappointment me greatly. It is about half of what I normally do in a year.

There are a few quotes that ring in my head when I look at this stack and think about my failure to read this year.

The first two are my paraphrases.

"Leaders are Readers"

"The things that change you the most are the relationships you build and the books you read."

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. ~Mark Twain.


So this will be my reading for the next few months or even year. My wife says I can have NO MORE untill I've read these. So I'm hitting them two at a time.

The two that I have started on are:

1. Leading from the Lions Den - Tom Harper
In this book, Tom has taken the entire bible and gleaned one leadership nugget from each book. So it is essentially broken down into 66 little bites of leadership lessons that applies to just about any avenue of life whether it be spiritual, personal, or business. What I love about this one is you can take a couple of bites (chapters) every morning and meditate on them the rest of the day.

2. Jesus Manifesto - Frank Viola / Leonard Sweet
Just now about 40+ pages into this one. I had heard that basically it just states, re-states, overstates, and then states once more of how "Christ IS Christianity." Stuff that most good Christians already know. It's true, BUT the way it is presented is very convicting. At least for me as a Christian minister. The real gut punch was a statement which cited that "most sermons are about anything BUT Christ and that He usually just get's an honorable mention somewhere in the message." The also exhort that church members should know more about Christ than about church programs or events. This book has really fighting through some questions in my head to be simply about keeping Christ in the center of Christianity. Oh and Frank Viola is NOT to be confused with this Frank Viola....which I did at first. Yes I actually have that card.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on either of these two.