I’ve noticed that the word resources gets a lot of play in several ways these days:

1 - The financial ‘resource.’

2 - The educational ‘resource.’

3 - The people ‘resource.’

And on…

In our ministry we spend a lot of time thinking about how to navigate through with the financial resources we have and how to even increase said resources to do more ministry. It’s not so difficult to figure out that the level of resources your possess is equivalent to the amount of ministry you can do. It just is what it is, like any business really.

People resources are THE MOST IMPORTANT. And I am constantly hoping that I am a blessing to people and never treat anyone as someone to be used for a purpose. However, I do believe every person does have talents and giftings and it kills me when they don’t put them into action. 

Sometimes, though, people ask me about educational resources, so I thought I might touch on some of these:

There are categories even for these resources but for this little note, I’d like to talk books and without getting too in depth here are some of those resources that I access. (Or books that have been priming the pump the last few months)

I have been on an N.T. Wright reading frenzy. Reading books I’ve read before and new ones that I hadn’t yet read:

Some in particular:

Surprised by Hope

Simply Christian

After You Believe

Following Jesus

The Challenge of Jesus

These are five very easy to read, yet very excellent books.

Exponential by Dave & Jon Ferguson - if you’ve been wondering how to start a discipleship movement, this is it.

Thriving Through Ministry Conflict - Osterhaus, Jurkowski and Hahn - shout out to my friend Todd Hahn who is one of the coauthors of this book, but I loved it, as much as you can love a book about dealing with conflict, actually it is still on my desk.

Rework - Fried & Hansson - maybe the best book on business since I read Guy Kawasaki’s, Reality Check

Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code - Chand - I just got this and read it. It was extremely timely for me as I’ve been working through some issues that this book brought much clarity to.

Answers to Prayer - George Muller - this is an old book that is RICH in lessons of faith from a guy who is just straight up honest about the stuff he’s facing. I LOVE THIS BOOK.

Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of our Daily Choices - Clawson - this book is good to quite good and is helpful in taking a look at some the marketplace decisions we make everyday and how those decisions impact so much than we realize. It was an eye opener for me.

The Year of Living Like Jesus - Dobson - this was a great book full of Ed Dobson’s humorous wrestling with really living like Jesus lived. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Well this is just a short list of pretty much just ministry related books I’ve read. I’ll come back sometime soon and post again about some non-ministry related books I’ve read. There’s some good stuff out there that deserves sharing as well, I’m just out of time for now.