1. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

I will never look at decision-making the same way again.

Looking at a wide range of studies from behavioral science, the authors reveal the biases and predictable errors in our thinking that lead us to make decisions which are not necessarily best for either ourselves or others.

While incredibly useful for our personal decisions, this book is primarily targeted towards those who have the ability to impact the decisions that other people make (i.e. those in leadership positions).  As “choice architects,” the way that we lay out and communicate options for people has a remarkable impact on what they will choose.  The initial example used is that of a college cafeteria.  Based on how the food is arranged, students will inevitably eat more of one item than another.  This is unconscious and no one would want to admit that a simple factor like having an item at eye level would cause us to consume more of it, but it’s true nonetheless.

This, of course, has ethical components to it.  To think that a leader or politician can influence which decision you make by subtly manipulating the variables can make anyone uncomfortable.  But do we have an obligation to “stack the deck” so that people are more likely to make decisions that are beneficial for them?  If a small tweak in strategy can, say, influence a person to save money more wisely or eat a healthier diet, what’s our responsibility?

Thaler and Sunstein introduce the loaded term, “Libertarian Paternalism,” and argue that it is possible to maintain people’s freedom of choice while simultaneously nudging them towards the decisions that are best for them and others.  Check it out and see if you agree.

2. Love Does

Bob Goff

There is a reason that Goff is making it on my list two years in a row, and it is this: He restores my hope for humanity and inspires me to be a better version of myself.

As the title of the book suggests, he believes that love is a verb and is meant to be lived out and experienced.  He shares story after story of what it looks like to say “yes” to others, whether that means starting a school for children in Uganda or letting a young love-struck guy use his backyard (and boat) for the scene of his wedding proposal.

Perhaps an equally strong theme throughout the book is simply “whimsy.”  Bob lives his life with a profound sense of playfulness, optimism, and curiosity.  He would much rather do things than plan to do things.  One of his phrases is, “Don’t make a plan, make a call.”  He believes many people are paralyzed by overthinking and trying to get all the details right before moving forward.  Bob just moves forward.  While this may lead to failure and heartache, he is remarkably resilient and maintains hope in the face of it all.

Bob’s life is unique and attractive.  You will think that he’s crazy, while simultaneously wanting to be more like him.  He, of course, wouldn’t want this, because he believes that Jesus made you unique and attractive as well.  Bob Goff is everybody’s cheerleader as they discover the life that they were created to live.

3. Reframing Organizations

Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal

Bolman and Deal see life within an organization as incredibly complex, with multiple layers and perspectives to be understood at any given moment.  In their view, leaders struggle when they fail to grasp this complexity and remain stuck in seeing only one or two angles at a time.  In order to help people lead more creatively and to see more clearly what’s unfolding in front of them, the authors propose that there are four frames through which to view the world.  They are structural, human resource, political, and symbolic.

In the structural frame, organizations are like factories, with systems, structures, and processes to be created and understood.  People require goals and are motivated by achievement and progress.

In the human resource frame, organizations are more like families, a place to find belonging, acceptance, and relationship.  People desire to be understood and to be meaningfully connected with others.

In the political frame, organizations are jungles, filled with competing interests and power struggles.  In order to survive, people need to acquire the tools of negotiation and influence.

In the symbolic frame, organizations are temples, providing a place of significance and meaning for its members.  People are motivated by vision and need leaders to be storytellers, culture creators, and spiritual guides.

Viewing organizations and leadership scenarios through these four frames has been immensely helpful for me this past year and has helped me to empathize with those who see things differently than I do.  For a fuller review of this concept, check out my article entitled “The Four Frames of Leadership.”

4. What is the Bible?

Rob Bell

If you find the Bible to be simplistic, boring, or legalistic, Bell would say that you haven’t really read it.

As a once-prominent influencer in the Evangelical church, Bell has been somewhat pushed to the fringes for his often contrarian views and unorthodox perspectives.  This is precisely what makes him such an engaging writer and speaker.  He isn’t concerned about towing the party line, but is fascinated by the dynamic and evolving understanding of God that the Biblical writers express.  To him, the ancient writings of the Bible are alive with nuance, ambivalence, and mystery.  The writers are struggling to understand who God is and what he’s doing among them.  They even disagree with one another at times and put forward their own interpretations of particular events and moments.

While we are tempted to read this collection of writings like a textbook, with one clear meaning per passage, Bell argues that the writers themselves treat Scripture more like a work of art –filled with layers of meaning, mystery, and beauty.

One of Bell’s strengths is his ability to bring the reader into the world of the original audience and help them understand why these words were written and how they would have first been heard.  The Bible is not a divine work that descended from the heavens, but the work of human authors who were trying to convey something about God to a particular group of people in a particular cultural context.  The more we can understand that original context, the more value these words can have for us today.

5. Prelude to Foundation

Isaac Asimov

I have to somewhat force myself to read fiction; it just doesn’t feel “productive” enough most of the time (this is silly, of course, when you consider how much Netflix I still manage to fit into my life). Compared to binge-watching a new TV series, though, reading fiction is incredibly relaxing and I can do it during the day when the kids are home and not worry about what they’ll see or hear on the screen.  It feels like I’m on vacation every time I pick up fiction.

When I do find time for this, Isaac Asimov has become one of my go-to authors.  He is a legend in the sci-fi world for a reason.  Anyone here old enough to remember the Will Smith movie, “I, Robot?”  If so, you’re somewhat familiar with Asimov – the movie was inspired by his robot-series novels and his three laws of robotics. 

Asimov is skilled at creating vast universes and future timelines that feel believable.  You read about his scenarios and think, “Yeah, that could happen.  Humans are like that.”  Like any of the great fiction writers, he understands the fundamental strengths and flaws of humanity, which causes you to resonate with the characters, regardless of which impossible context they are placed in.

Prelude to Foundation is the first in a series of prequels to the Foundation series (don’t read them first; start with the main series).  The basic premise to the entire series is that one brilliant young scientist, Hari Seldon, has figured out a way to reliably predict the future of civilization using the rules of mathematics and psychology.  Termed “psychohistory,” this prophetic power not only guides people at key points in their history, but begins to shape it by its very existence.

I won’t say too much.  The series is brilliant.  If you’re a sci-fi fan, Asimov is a must-read.  Hint: read at least one or two of his robot novels before diving into Foundation.  Trust me.

6. Sweet Surrender: How Cultural Mandates Shape Christian Marriage

Dennis Hiebert

The Church talks a lot about marriage, but how much of what we say and encourage stems from a Biblical worldview and how much has simply been adopted from culture?  As a professor in sociology at a Christian college, this is a question that Hiebert has been wrestling with for many years.

Tracing practices and ideologies about marriage through history to see where they developed and how they were reinforced is enlightening but also a little unsettling.  Looking separately at topics like the criteria for choosing a future spouse, the type of love we expect to receive, our notions of what a sexual connection needs to look like, and even how and why marriages end, Hiebert slowly reveals the extent to which the Church has merged its beliefs and values with the ideals of culture.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect for me was not that we’ve adopted cultural values (this happens all the time and is not necessarily unhealthy), but that we have absorbed them so fully that we’ve begun to believe that they’re Biblical.  We’ve “baptized” ideologies that the original cultures would never have espoused and begun to hold them up as a picture of Christian marriage.  Considering how little the Biblical writers actually have to say about marriage, our theology about it today is entirely too elaborate.

If you feel the pressure of all the things that your marriage “should” be, this book will feel like freedom for you.  Embrace the marriage you have and don’t worry about the fact that it doesn’t look like someone else’s. God is not disappointed in you.  There is more than one picture of a healthy marriage.

7. A New Kind of Christianity

Brian McLaren

Do you ever feel like the “good news” of Jesus doesn’t feel like good news?  Apart from being told that we’re created in God’s image, the rest of the story seems to focus on how terrible we are as human beings and how we’re destined to suffer forever in the proverbial lake of fire.  “But wait,” we’re told, “The good news is that a very small number of us will avoid this fate because of what Jesus has done.”  Well, if you press harder, it’s not so much as a result of what Jesus has done, but more so related to whether or not we believe the exact right thing about what he’s done (“right” being determined by the spiritual powers that be within the Church).  But this is great news, right?

Let’s be honest, too often, our good news sounds more like a tragedy.  McLaren, along with a growing number of scholars and authors, believes that it doesn’t have to be this way.  He believes that the message of Jesus really is good news for all of Creation and that slowly, and often with good intentions, the Church has come to accept a distorted view of what God is doing in the world.  What I appreciate is that he does not turn this discussion into a finger-pointing, politicised battle over who is right and who is wrong, but is rather raising questions that have long been avoided in an effort to bring a renewed season of health into Christianity.

Love him or hate him, McLaren is shining a spotlight on the elephants in the room and causing us to have discussions that are long overdue.

8. What Color is Your Parachute?

Richard N. Bolles

• 59% of people are in their jobs or careers despite not having made a conscious decision to be there. 
• Approximately 50 percent of college-educated people who graduated over the last five years took jobs that do not require a college degree.
• Two-thirds of adults wish they had sought out career guidance earlier in their life.

These figures, provided by Capuzzi and Stauffer, reveal something important about our decision-making processes when it comes to our careers.  Or rather, it reveals our lack of decision-making processes. 

Considering that we spend roughly 80,000 hours of our lives working, one would think that we would dedicate a few of those hours to making the right call and finding the right fit.  Benjamin Todd makes this point well:

If you could make your career just 1% more impactful, or 1% more enjoyable, it would be worth spending up to 1% of your career figuring out how to do so. That would be five months of full time work – or 800 hours.

Thankfully, it won’t take you 800 hours to read this book.  It might only take you 8 (i.e. 0.01% of your career life).  This will be time well spent.  From a guy who has taken every personal assessment under the Sun, I still managed to learn a few things about myself as I went through this guide.

This book will help you identify what types of careers you’re well-suited for by looking at things like your favourite skills, people you work well together with, topics you most enjoy learning about, workplace environments, and much more.  One helpful tool that this book introduced to me, which I will use in other contexts as well, is the “prioritizing grid.”  This is very practical and useful way to turn a random list of items into an ordered, prioritized list that can actually help you make a decision.

Regardless of how many of your 80,000 hours you have left, you’ll find this guide helpful.

9. Sustainable Youth Ministry (and Children’s Ministry)

Mark DeVries

Yes, this is two books, so I’m cheating a little bit here.  They’re joined at the hip, though, and both are equally beneficial.

DeVries and Safstrom have created the guides that every youth pastor and children’s pastor needs in order to do their jobs well.  While the heart of ministry is ultimately relationships, underneath every successful ministry, there is a whole world of structures and systems that create the necessary framework for these relationships to form.

DeVries shares the analogy of a dance floor to illustrate the importance of this framework.  He tells the story of a gifted dancer whose performance is cut short when her foot breaks through the rotting wood of an old floor.  Rather than addressing the issue and repairing it, the performance continues and the audience simply waits in nervous anticipation for the next dancer to fall.

Similarly, in ministry we can get so focused on the performance – engaging programming, facilities, visuals, etc. – that we never address the broken foundation.  Ministry leader after ministry leaders fails, gets hurt, or burns out and we simply continue on with the performance of programming, hoping the next leader will fare better.

These books are a call to go beyond the stereotypical, laid-back, youth pastor approach to ministry and build something that lasts.  Let’s create a “dance floor” that supports and multiplies the number of people in our churches who are investing in the younger generation.

I appreciate these books so much, they inspired a two-part series on ministry structures and systems.  Check them out if you want to learn more.

10. Program Evaluation: Methods and Case Studies

Emil J. Posavac

It can be so hard to know if what you’re doing is making a difference when working in ministry (or any human-service related program).  On the surface, every initiative and every program has value, and success stories are found in all of them, but are they all equally worth the time and resources we pour into them?

This guide will reveal how important it is to evaluate what we do, but also how difficult it is to do it well.  Have you ever put out a survey or tried to evaluate the program that you lead, only to have the results collect dust afterwards?  It’s surprisingly easy to create an evaluation that isn’t actually good for much at the other end.

If you’re ready to move beyond feel-good satisfaction surveys, anecdotal evidence, and gut-level debriefs, this book will be immensely helpful for you.  Yes, I realize that this is an academic textbook and not something that the average leader will pick up and read cover-to-cover, but even reading a few relevant chapters could transform how you assess whether or not you’re winning as a team.

If you want a quicker read, I’ve begun a 3-part series on program evaluation that will help you get started.