I’m unfortunately skilled at missing the obvious. Perhaps the most obvious boat I missed for many years is the importance of relationships. Scripture continually elevates the emphasis God places on me loving and influencing others, and popular culture teaches likewise through expressions like “it’s not what you know but WHO you know.”
These two books offer insight about relationships from very different perspectives. The first trains me in “life coaching” skills – both in my own walk with God, and as I mentor others. The second encourages me to be very strategic about my relationships, knowing that those “quiet conversations” just might be something God uses to change the world!
Life Coaching That Churches Can Use: Reggie McNeal’s newest book has an unusual title, Get a Life: It IS All about You. The “me” focus is very intentional, but the purpose is to offer individual coaching so that readers can live a life of greater focus and meaning. Through humor, personal examples, and insightful questions, McNeal masterfully walks people through five crucial questions: (1) Why am I here? (2) What is really important to me? (3) What is my scorecard? (4) What am I good at? and (5) What do I need to learn?
As churches become more missional, they often need appropriate people-development tools. Most discipleship curriculums today are age-based, gender-based, or issue-driven, but not life-development focused. This book fits that unique niche. Starting with the question, “Why not get a life?” Reggie McNeal both inspires and guides you along the way with appropriate questions and discussion opportunities.
McNeal says, “My hope is that churches will use this volume in their ramp-up to life coaching. It can be used one-on-one or in small group settings since it contains a clear ‘discipleship’ component. It also can be used by churches to engage pre-Christians in a topic that is of great interest to them—themselves—with the hope that God uses the conversations facilitated by the book to woo them to Himself.”
This highly readable volume is excellent for churches to use congregation-wide in conjunction with a teaching series, in classes, or in other discipleship settings.
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Social Networking: This book, Oxford University Press’s lead title for this fall, is a nominee for the non-fiction Pulitzer Prize. In researching Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, D. Michael Lindsay interviewed more than 300 highly placed insiders – former U.S. Presidents, senators, politicians, university presidents, public intellectuals, Hollywood producers, celebrities, CEOs, business leaders, start athletes, megachurch pastors, and parachurch directors. Many spoke of how their faith affected their work and their influence on society. Most of these household names allowed Michael to quote them in the book, which adds to its fascinating, highly readable and often riveting style.
Lindsay, now a professor at Rice University, tells the story of how evangelicals, once at the periphery of American life, today wield power in the White House and on Wall Street, at Harvard and in Hollywood. Starting from 1976 (the year of “born again” Jimmy Carter’s election), he explores evangelicals’ impact on government/politics, higher education, arts/entertainment, and business life. He tells us who the real evangelical power brokers are, how they rose to prominence, and what they’re doing with their clout.
One of the book’s most striking learning involves the way in which evangelical public leaders have met each other and network together: social networks, especially through parachurch organizations. “The growing influence of American evangelicalism, accompanied largely by evangelical public leaders working through their social networks, has brought the [evangelical] movement back into the public square,” Lindsay concludes. “This, in fact, is the most intriguing thing I found. . . . It is through religious institutions, not corporate or professional bodies, that these elites most often overlap today” (emphasis added). Translation for me is the importance of personal relationships between leaders—how quiet conversations can lead to decisions with national and even international impact. Wow!
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