What's Best Next

You are here: Home / Archives for 2 - Professional Skills / b Hard Skills

Mortimer Adler on the Necessity of Hard Books

by

Piper summarizes the case Adler makes for reading hard books:

In his classic, How to Read a Book [Adler] makes a passionate case that the books that enlarge our grasp of truth and make us wiser must feel, at first, beyond us. They “make demands on you. They must seem to you to be beyond your capacity.”

If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your understanding. It’s the hard books that count. Raking is easy; but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.

Evangelical Christians, who believe God reveals himself primarily through a book, the Bible, should  long to be the most able readers they can be.

This means that we should want to become clear, penetrating, accurate, fair-minded thinkers, because all good reading involves asking questions and thinking.

6 New Books from My Inbox

by

I’m going through my in box after being gone for a week, and there are 6 new books in it that I’m looking forward to reading or dipping into a bit more (or, 4 that are actually new, and 2 that are new to me).

King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus

Tim Keller’s new book. I’m very excited about it — though I still haven’t had a chance to read Generous Justice (which I’m much looking forward to). Tim also did a recent interview with the Atlantic which is very good.

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier

I haven’t dipped into this much yet and don’t know a ton about it. I think I came across it in a bookstore recently and ordered it from Amazon in order to take a closer look at it. But the topic (namely, cities) is important to me and it looks like it might have some helpful insight, so it seems worth taking a look at. You can also read an interview with the author and his recent article in the Atlantic, “How Skyscrapers Can Save the City.”

The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way

Michael Horton’s new systematic theology. I’ve really enjoyed and found helpful the parts that I’ve read so far. And I’m grateful for Mike Horton’s ministry in general, which you can learn more about at The White Horse Inn.

The Four Holy Gospels

A production of the four gospels featuring the artistic work of Makoto Fujimura, “a devout Christian, and one of the most highly-regarded artists of the twenty-first century.” I was very interested in this when I first heard about it, and some friends graciously gave a copy to me this week (thank you!). You can also see Justin Taylor’s recent interview with Makoto Fujimura.

Acts (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)

I try to have a solid commentary on most books of the Bible. I’m reading through Acts now as part of my reading through the Bible this year and picked this up when I realized I didn’t have anything yet on Acts.

The Acts of the Apostles (Pillar New Testament Commentary)

Along with Bock’s commentary on Acts (above), these are probably the two best two commentaries on Acts.

Why the Pursuit of Buy-In Can Kill Innovation

by

From Larry Osborne’s excellent book Sticky Teams: Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page:

Leaders and leadership teams can easily get sidetracked by the endless pursuit of buy-in. The reason for this is also one reason we overuse surveys and polls: we’re looking for a way to get everyone aboard.

Certainly, leaders and leadership teams need broad buy-in for their current mission and methods of ministry. But when it comes to setting a new direction or starting new initiatives, it’s seldom needed.

Buy-in is overrated. Most of the time, we don’t need buy-in as much as we need permission.
Buy-in is usually defined as having the support of most, if not all, of the key stakeholders (and virtually all of the congregation). It takes a ton of time to get. It’s incredibly elusive.

Permission, on the other hand, is relatively easy to acquire, even from those who think your idea is loony and bound to fail. That’s because permission simply means “I’ll  let you try it,” as opposed to buy-in, which means, “I’ll back your play.”

I’ve found that most people will grant the pastor, board, or staff permission to try something new as long as they don’t have to make personal changes or express agreement with the idea.

For instance, when we started our first video-venue worship service in 1998, most of the staff and the congregation thought it was a nutty idea. They’d never seen one before, and no one else in the country had yet started one. All they could imagine was a glorified overflow room, and we all know what an overflow room is: it’s punishment for being late. They couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to go to one.

Frankly, if I had believed the buy-in myth (or if our board had), I’d still be trying to convince everyone that video cafes can work. And they’d still think I’m nuts. But since all I asked for was permission to try it, I got the okay; as long as their names weren’t on it, they didn’t have to sell it or go to it, and it didn’t cost too much money.

Needless to say, on this side of the multi-site revolution, video venues proved to be a good idea. But the key to getting it off the ground was my willingness (and that of our board and staff) to settle for permission rather than buy-in.

You Don't Need to Know it All

by

A good word from Josh Kaufman in his book The Personal MBA:

One of the beautiful things about learning any subject is the fact that you don’t need to know everything — you only need to understand a few critically important concepts that provide most of the value. Once you have a solid scaffold of core principles to work from, building upon your knowledge and making progress becomes much easier.

Along with this, Kaufman quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson’s helpful point on methods and principles, which is good to keep in mind:

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Asking Questions is the Key to Understanding

by

From John Piper, in his latest book Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God:

One of the best honors I received during my six years of teaching college Bible classes was a T-shirt. My teaching assistant made it. On the back it said, “Asking questions is the key to understanding.”

When I speak of becoming intentional about thinking harder, that’s mainly what I mean: asking questions and working hard with our minds to answer them. Therefore, learning to think fruitfully about biblical texts means forming the habit of asking questions.

The kinds of questions you can ask of a text are almost endless:

  • Why did he use that word?
  • Why did he put it here and not there?
  • How does he use that word in other places?
  • How is that word different from this other one he could have used?
  • How does the combination of these words affect the meaning of that word?
  • Why does that statement follow this one?
  • Why did he connect these statements with the word because or the word therefore or the word although or the words in order that? Is that logical?
  • How does it fit with what another author in the Bible says?
  • How does it fit with my experience?

For more on what Piper means by asking questions of the text, you can also see his article “Brothers, Let Us Query the Text.”

Offensive Study and Defensive Study

by

This is an enlightening distinction that Gordon MacDonald makes in Ordering Your Private World:

In my earliest years of ministry, when this business of mental growth had not yet become a discipline for me, most of my study was what I now call defensive study. By that I mean that I studied frantically simply because I had an upcoming sermon go preach or talk to give. And all my study was centered on the completion of that task.

But later I discovered the importance of something I now call offensive study. This is study that has as its objective the gathering of large clusters of information and insight out of which future sermons and talks, books, and articles may grow. In the former kind of study, one is restricted to one chosen subject. In the latter, one is exploring, turning up truth and understanding from scores of sources. Both forms of study, offensive and defensive, are necessary in my life.

We grow when we pursue the discipline of offensive study.

Reading is Real Work

by

A good word from Gordon MacDonald’s Ordering Your Private World:

Some months ago I led a seminar for pastors on the subject of preaching, and discussed the matters of study and preparation. Since a number of spouses were present when I spoke, I said to the group, “Now, some of you may be tempted to think that when your spouse is reading, they are really expending second-class time. So you are liable to feel free to interrupt them on impulse. What you need to realize is that they are working every bit as much as the carpenter who is in his shop sharpening the blade of a saw. Within reason, you ought not only to avoid interrupting your spouses, but also to try your best to maximize their privacy if you want them to grow in effectiveness.”

Two additional thoughts. First, the main thing I want to emphasize here is not his point on interruptions (though that is an important consideration — as long as taken together with his “within reason”). Rather, the main thing I want to emphasize is simply that reading is real work. When the purpose is study and learning, it is not second-class, throw-away time.

Second, the importance of reading is true not just for pastors, but for people in all vocations. Everyone in any vocation should devote time to reading and studying to advance their skills and ability to be effective in what they do. And when you do this, it is not leisure time, but real, first-rate work that is just as important (perhaps more important) than the rest of the work that you do.

Usable Web Forms are a Form of Marketing

by

Seth Godin recounts a painful experience filling out a form on the Jet Blue website. Here’s the key point:

The problem with letting your web forms become annoying is that in terms of time spent interacting with your brand, they’re way up on the list. If someone is spending a minute or two or three or four cursing you out from their desk, it’s not going to be easily fixed with some clever advertising.

In other words: Take some of that money you might have spent on advertising (print or online) and make your website more usable. That treats your customers or constituents better and will have more impact because giving your customers a good experience builds your brand far more effectively than any ad could.