Additionally, since I have so many recommendations, I’ve decided to break them down into the following categories: Church Growth, Theology, Christian Living, Leadership, Self-Improvement, Business, Sociology, and African-American Studies.  I will devote blog space to cover each category in subsequent posts.

Here we go:

Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People by Ken Wananabe

BEST BOOK I EVER READ ON PROBLEM SOLVING!!!

When will authors & book publishers discover effective leaders are busy leading and like to read short books?  Ken Watanabe originally wrote Problem Solving 101 for Japanese schoolchildren.  His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant.

He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months.

Watanabe’s Secret:

He uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend.

Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for elementary students to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.  GET IT ON YOUR KINDLE NOW!

Honorable Mention: 101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: IT’S SIMPLY THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ ON PROBLEM SOLVING HANDS DOWN!

Black Economics: Solutions for Economic and Community Empowerment by Jawanza Kunjufu

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN’S RECESSION SURVIVAL GUIDE

Black Economics: Solutions For Economic And Community Empowerment answers the critical questions of why foreign businesses have been so successful in the African American community.  But Black Economics does much more than merely identify and describe the dimensions of this chronic financial drain on the black community, it recommends clear, concise, practical and urgently needed empowerment solutions to assist the black community to secure economic gains.  Jawanza Kunjufu is candid, knowledgeable and persuasive.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: The author discusses the history of African-American businesses, the obstacles, and solutions for personal and community empowerment.

WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT THIS BOOK: Black Economics should be required reading in every economics class, every urban church, community activists, and on the lending shelves of ever black community’s public library.

Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business Empire by Reginald Lewis

This biography of business magnate Lewis is based on his unfinished autobiography; he died in 1993 at age 50 from brain cancer. This book, part history, part eulogy is the story of an African-American from the wrong side of the tracks in Baltimore who made it through Harvard Law and then into corporate financing eventually purchasing and leading Beatrice International one of the larger food companies in the world.

His journey from middle-class Baltimore resident to international citizen makes for fascinating reading. He was in the process of writing his autobiography when he died, and Blair Walker consulted many sources in order to give a full and accurate account of this intense, goal-oriented man’s life.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:  Not only was Reginald Lewis an extremely successful businessman, but he was also a caring philanthropist.

How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: Straight Talk on Making It in America by Earl Graves

The author is the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine and owner of several companies. He provides a good overview of the procedures for starting a new business plan, getting a bank loan, and marketing.  An introduction is helpful, but a person would need to know a lot more than what’s here to really start a business.  Eighty percent of new small businesses fail within five years.  Much of Graves’s time is spent talking about his personal business history, racism, and political issues.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:  Value hard & expect no handouts.  While this book would help anyone regardless of race, it should be required reading for all young (college and high school age) African Americans.

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins

This monograph is a response to questions raised by readers in the social sector.  It is not a new book. I have direct experience in the social sector with over twenty-five years as an advisor or board member of several, varied non-profits. “Good to Great and the Social Sectors” resonated with me as it fills a very deep void in social sector leadership guidance.

Many seminary professors & academicians are not too fond of churches adopting business models and principles.  I openly embrace business principles because we can learn from them and make our organizations stronger.   In fact, due to the diffuse power structure that exists for most social sector organizations, non-profits need even greater discipline – disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance, and disciplined allocation of resources.

The book is organized around five issues that need to be addressed for greatness.

These are:

Issue One – How do you define great without business metrics?
Issue Two – What is “Level 5 Leadership” in the social sector?
Issue Three – How can you get the right people on the bus?
Issue Four – How do you apply the Hedgehog Concept (attaining piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results) without a profit motive?
Issue Five – How do you use brand to build momentum?

Great societies have both great business sectors and great social sectors. With this in mind, Collins was motivated to write this book. He realized that it was not simply good enough for him to focus on a great business sector but also on a great social sector. He has done us a service.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: Greatness can be achieved in non-profit organizations too.

Managing the Nonprofit Organization by Peter Drucker

“Don’t be afraid of strengths in your organization,” writes Peter Drucker. “This is the besetting sin of people who run organizations. Of course, able people are ambitious. But you run far less risk of having able people around who want to push you out than you risk by being served by mediocrity.”

In my opinion, wisdom still oozes from Drucker’s 1990 book on nonprofit management.  Many leaders re-read at least one Drucker book a year.  If you lead a nonprofit, this is a good place to start.

It includes five major sections:

1)    The Mission Comes First: and your role as a leader;

2)    From Mission to Performance: effective strategies for marketing, innovation and fund development;

3)    Managing for Performance: how to define it; how to measure it;

4)    People and Relationships: your staff, your board, your volunteers, your community; and

5)    Developing Yourself: as a person, as an executive, as a leader.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: Managers/leaders in the non-profit sector should consider this a must read.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: It taught me to affirm my team at during staff meetings with Drucker’s reminder that “strong people always have strong weaknesses too.  Where there are peaks, there are valleys.  And no one is strong in many areas.” It takes a village!

Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout

According to author Jack Trout, either you’ve got a product or service that you can say is different, or you don’t have much at all.  In today’s global marketplace and at its lightning-fast rate of change, there’s no point in inventing and presenting a product only to sit back and hope that consumers everywhere will discover its greatness.  It’s not simply about what you or your product can do; it’s about what you do differently from everyone else.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: This relatively short book focuses on the idea that companies who don’t capitalize on the unique features of their product or service, and who don’t evolve into a unique identity will end up in the fossil layers of business failure.

Jack Trout on Strategy by Jack Trout

“A great business strategy without proper marketing will often fail in a highly competitive world.”  This is in the first few pages of Trout’s book and lays the groundwork for the rest of the chapters.  If you’ve never read anything from Jack Trout before, this is the book to start with!  Trout on Strategy is the Bible of marketing strategy.  According to Trout, strategy is all about winning and Jack Trout is all about strategy.  He presents the latest thinking on the topic:

1)    Strategy is All About Survival

2)    Strategy is All About Perceptions

3)    Strategy is All About Being Different

4)    Strategy is All About Competition

5)    Strategy is All About Specialization

6)    Strategy is All About Simplicity

7)    Strategy is All About Leadership

8)    Strategy is All About Reality

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: “A great business strategy without proper marketing will often fail in a highly competitive world.”

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze.

Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice—non-analytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are “little people,” mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It’s not just sustenance to them; it’s their self-image.

Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they’ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods–our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in–although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships.

WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK: The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten

Authors Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten operate 800-CEO-READ, a specialty business-book retailer.  Out of the countless business books they have read every year for a quarter century, they have culled 100 of the best and presented them in review format.

You get the classics, like How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, and The HP Way, by David Packard, but you also get the whimsical (Oh, the Places You’ll Go, by Dr. Seuss); historical (Never Give In, speeches by Winston Churchill); artistic (The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp); and philosophical (The Monk and the Riddle, by Komisar and Lineback).

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK: At the end of each review, the authors direct readers to other books both inside and outside The 100 Best.  Additionally, sprinkled throughout are sidebars taking the reader beyond business books, suggesting movies, novels, and even children’s books that offer equally relevant insights.

There are many books that I consider to have greatly been a part of spiritually transforming my life.  When I chose my books there were some basic criteria that I considered:

1. I didn’t list the bible, because I’m hoping you assume that that is the book that has spiritually transformed me the most.
2. They were memorable (some books are just forgettable, and these were not)
3. They didn’t have to be written this decade
4. They are ones that I recommend to everyone
5. They are leading works in their field
6. They are ones that I have read multiple times, or are back on the reading rotation to read again
7. They needed to have fundamentally shifted some area of my thinking–paradigm shifting influence
8. They transformed me spiritually (my theology, my ministry, my prayer life, my leadership, my preaching, my counseling, my pastoring, my understanding of humanity, my relationship with God, etc.)

Additionally, since I have so many recommendations, I’ve decided to break them down into the following categories: Church Growth, Theology, Christian Living, Leadership, Self-Improvement, Business, Sociology, and African-American Studies.  I will devote blog space to cover each category in subsequent posts.

Here we go:

Church Growth

African American Church Management Handbook by Floyd Flake

Highly regarded pastor Floyd Flake; his wife, co-pastor, author, Elaine Flake; and church chief financial officer Edwin Reed offer a design based on key needs in the black church, and their experience at one of the nation’s most respected and largest black churches, Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in New York.  This unique, detailed, and thorough resource for black churches of any denomination covers virtually all aspects of church management from the theoretical and theological to the practical “nuts and bolts” of church administration.  The authors include a special section offering principles for economic development, an area in which Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral has experienced extraordinary success. The African American Church Management Handbook is sure to find a permanent place on the desks of African American pastors, seminarians, and church leaders for many years to come.

Church Growth From An African American Perspective

Church Growth From An African American Perspective is a MUST READ FOR EVERY INNER-CITY PASTOR!!!

This book is Pastor Donald Hilliard’s charge to active church groups to adopt and integrate a healthy Christian/biblical model for congregation growth and development. Senior pastor of Cathedral International in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Pastor Hilliard posits the value of the three basic L’s for growth: love, lift, and liberate. The power of the church to love, lift and liberate people through the truth of the gospel will sustain and propel them to become what God intends them to be. Pastor Hilliard differentiates between healthy and unhealthy growth in a church. He advocates purposeful prayer and preaching the whole word of God, not just favorite Scriptures. He believes that people matter more than programs, and that programs exist only to meet people’s needs. At the end of each chapter of explanation there are a series of action steps that will lead to a full and healthy development of the practical dimensions of a powerful African American church. “Church Growth From and African American Perspective” has many sound principles to recommend it to all congregations.

The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren
This book forever changed my view of church growth.  The thesis of The Purpose Driven Church is that when churches think first about their health, growth is sure to follow. “If your church is healthy,” writes Rick Warren, “growth will occur naturally. Healthy, consistent growth is the result of balancing the five biblical purposes of the church.” These five purposes are to “Love the Lord with all your heart,” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Go and make disciples,” “[Baptize] them,” and “[Teach] them to obey.”  I will forever be grateful for Rick’s contribution to the Kingdom of God.

Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches by Christian Schwarz

Critics of the church growth movement have often emphasized the need for quality congregations. We should not focus on numerical growth, but rather, we should concentrate on qualitative growth.

Although it’s a bit academic, Christian Schwarz has done extensive research world-wide and found that healthy, growing churches seem to share eight quality characteristics. These characteristics are:

1. Empowering leadership
2. Gift-oriented ministry
3. Passionate spirituality
4. Functional structures
5. Inspiring worship service
6. Holistic small groups
7. Need-oriented evangelism
8. Loving relationships

Schwarz uses the illustration of a barrel with eight staves to symbolize the eight quality characteristics. The barrel can only hold water to the height of the lowest stave. So too, Schwarz argues, a church can only grow as far as their ‘Minimum factor,’ which is the lowest of the eight quality characteristics in their church. He challenges churches to resist the temptation to work on improving areas in which they already excel, for by doing this they do not increase their minimum factor or their church quality.

Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples by Thom Rainer

While The Purpose Driven Church taught me how to grow a healthy church, The Simple Church taught me what to do with the harvest.  According to Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger, the simple revolution has begun.  From the design of the iPod to the uncluttered Google home page, simple ideas are changing the world.

Simple Church clearly calls for Christians to return to the simple gospel-sharing methods of Jesus. No bells or whistles required, so to speak.  Based on case studies of four hundred American churches, authors Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger prove that the process for making disciples has quite often become too complex.  Simple churches are thriving, and they are doing so by taking these four ideas to heart: Clarity. Movement.  Alignment. Focus. Each idea is examined here, simply showing why it is time to simplify.

Seven Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley

In my humble opinion, Andy Stanley is Rick Warren 2.0!  I love Andy’s practical writing style and he understands the mind of pastors & church leaders.  Seven Practices of Effective Ministry taught me how to measure our church’s effectiveness.  There’s no scoreboard in the sanctuary, and the only plate is probably for the offering. But every church leader needs to know how to win, and every congregation needs to know when to cheer.

This insightful book speaks to every church leader who yearns for a simpler, more effective approach to ministry.  An engaging parable about one overwhelmed pastor is followed by an overview of seven successful team practices, each one developed and applied in a ministry setting. Reinforced by relevant discussion questions, these clear, easy, and strategic practices can turn any ministry into a winning team.  Like your own personal trainer, 7 Practices of Effective Ministry is an insightful guide for any leader who yearns for a simpler, more effective approach to ministry.

When God blesses a church with numerical growth, the organization can drift towards complexity.  Deliberate Simplicity taught me the principle “less is more” and how this approach to church can equip believers for eternal influence.  Church innovator Dave Browning unpacks the six elements of a new equation for church development.  These concepts—minimality, intentionality, reality, multility, velocity, and scalability—provide a realistic plan for streamlining church while maximizing impact.

Biblical Church Growth: How You Can Work with God to Build a Faithful Church by Gary McIntosh

There are many popular models for church growth based on outstanding churches led by outstanding pastors. But unfortunately, specific models are temporary and go out of style quickly.  Gary McIntosh explores the biblical principles for church growth and applies them to today’s culture.  Instead of concentrating on the ephemeral how of church growth, he focuses on the unchanging why.  McIntosh defines church growth as “all that is involved in bringing men and women who do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ into fellowship with him and into responsible church membership.” In other words, church growth is effective evangelism, not a methodology for increasing membership.

Taking Your Church to the Next Level: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Gary McIntosh

All local churches experience a predictable life cycle of growth and decline.  But if a church is on a downward trend, how can it turn around?  Taking Your Church to the Next Level explains the impact of age and size on churches and outlines the improvements that must be made at each point for a church to remain fruitful and faithful to its mission.  McIntosh deftly describes the cycles of fruitfulness and the importance of continual improvement to diminish destructive forces that keep a congregation from its mission.  Church leaders, pastors, and all who care about the church and desire to see it experience biblical growth will benefit from the sage wisdom offered in these pages.

Growth by Accident, Death by Planning: How Not to Kill a Growing Congregation by Bob Whitesel

A congregation that had been growing in numbers and spiritual vitality reaches a plateau, and then begins to decline.  Most of the time, the plateau occurs long before the church arrives at the optimum numbers of members it hoped to attract.  The real question, says Bob Whitesel, is why the church grew in the first place.  A GREAT READ!

Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement by Will Mancini

Will Mancini (founder, Auxano consulting group) believes that all churches need not be megachurches like Willowcreek (IL) or Saddleback (CA).  He helps leaders focus on their own unique cultures and congregational fingerprints.  Once churches grasp that they are one of a kind-much like galaxies, fossils, DNA, and sandbanks-they can then, Mancini writes, unleash their full potential.  The book, complete with an appendix as well as logos and icons illustrating various churches’ visionary thinking, is strengthened by numerous flow charts, diagrams, graphics, and pithy quotes.

According to some, it has the potential to unseat Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Church in popularity.  In my opinion, academic libraries will probably pass on this title for its admitted lack of supporting empirical evidence.

Which books have you read?

Did any of these books change your life?

Which ones do you want to read?

CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO

As Jonathan Crossfield explains, “These ideas are not science fiction but are just around the corner.  It shows how far things will change in just a few short years and the ramifications for consumer behaviour are massive.”  As an urban pastor who’s technically saavy, I openly ponder if pastors/church leaders will be able to lead this technically saavy generation.

How will the church (and it’s leaders) will need to change in order to be successful?  I would love to hear what you or your church is currently doing to prepare for tomorrow.

Currently, I’m reading a new book entitled The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh, and boy is it GREAT!  I’m willing to suggest this may be one of the best books I’ve read (so far) regarding leadership and change. 

Thinking about initiating a wide-scale change/transition initiative
in your church or organization?  Here are a couple of questions worth
asking before you dive in…

1. Are we STRUCTURED for change?

   Is your church or organization structured in a way that will allow the
   RIGHT PEOPLE to lead and make decisions?  If not – do not proceed past GO….do NOT collect $200!

   First things first!!

   If you’re not structured for change, it doesn’t matter how passionate or
   committed you might be to it – there will always be a chance that the
   wrong people could step in to infiltrate, hijack, or sabotage the transition.

2. Am I COMMITTED to change?

Perhaps the question should be….  "Am I committed to change – NO MATTER WHAT THE COST?" 

Am I willing to lose people?  Lose money?  Lose popularity?  Lose friendships?  Maybe even lose buildings?

Listen to me……..TRUE CHANGE is COSTLY!  There will be a cost!  And it will be painful.  It will be felt. 

There will be scars and bruises. 

Are you up for it?

Consider that question!  Because if you’re NOT fully, 100%
committed, you better think twice before diving in – for YOUR sake AND
for the sake of those who will believe in your vision and stand by
you.