Once again, this month, I did a lot of reading. As a
reminder…I was challenged by a gentleman at the school where I’ll be starting
class this fall to read an hour each day. He said it would help me get in the
groove of studying and learning if I read for work starting now. I read seven
books in June, and this first one in today's lineup was actually the final one from that month. It was
recommended to me by my friend, Jodi, who sent me a robust list of books she
learned from when she worked with the hospitality teams at her church.
I’ve
loved most of her recommendations, but this one wasn’t one of my favorites. The
book is called Setting
the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by
Danny Meyer. Danny has made a (wonderful) career of establishing restaurants in
New York City, including Shake Shack. Most of his restaurants are high end, and
perhaps that was part of my disconnect with this book: I’m not high end! (Ha!)
I told
Ryan that there were pockets of pages throughout the book that really stuck out
to me. I underlined several things and found some great nuggets to take into my
work in church hospitality. But parts of it didn’t apply to me because the
chasm between restaurant hospitality and church hospitality can be wide. And
there were extended sections of the book that just felt like long bits of
storytelling and name dropping. (Except when you don’t know the names, it’s not
as impressive.)
Danny
really has done a great job of learning how to go above and beyond to learn the
kind of staff he needs and how to motivate them to represent his brand. And
he’s done an amazing job of going above and beyond to treat his customers well.
I did learn much from him on that. But I actually fell asleep multiple times
reading the memoir-feel side of the book.
If you
work in customer service and can get around the long, high-end restaurant
stories, I think you’ll find some great nuggets in this book. I just wish it
would have been about 1/3 the length and skipped straight to the parts that
were actually about the transforming power of hospitality.
The
first book I actually read in July was a delightful read that I finished in two
days flat. It’s called Now
and Not Yet by Ruth Chou Simons. It was just released last year,
and because I follow Ruth on Instagram, I’d read a bit about it in recent
months. I had it on my wish list, but because it was so new, the price was on
the higher end of things, so I hadn’t bought it yet. And guess what? I found
a copy in a thrift shop a few weeks ago.
I was
so happy! It had been marked up by the original reader, and that was a little
bit distracting for me, but it was so worth it. What a treasure of a book! Ruth
is about my age, married, a mom of six, and ministers through art and writing.
This book is written for those who ache to live a life that isn’t their current
reality. Maybe one day it will be. Maybe it won’t. But either way, it’s not present-day
life, and that makes it hard.
Ruth’s
words are full of encouragement to understand that God has bigger, broader
priorities than doling out neat, tidy lives to us, and that we can live fully
by trying to live well in our present-day circumstances, even if we’re praying
for change. She saturates her words with examples from Scripture of people who
lived well in the now while waiting for the not-yet.
Ruth
poses fantastic, thought-provoking questions throughout the book, and I did a
lot of chewing on her words. I’ll be doing even more of it in the days to come.
I wish I would have purchased this book for myself when I was in the waiting
season for my job. I want to think it would have helped me wait more
productively. But I’m so glad to have read it now. I’ve already shared its
words with friends, on social media, and with a group I spoke to at church.
If
you’re in a season of waiting, I highly recommend this one! She can’t fix the
dilemma, but she can urge you to wait well in the Lord!
When
Ryan and I helped lead GriefShare this past spring, one of the ladies in the
group recommended a book called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the
Grace of Lament. I wrote the title on my TBR list and was delighted to find
a nearly-new copy at Half Price Books not long after that. Beside it was
another book by the same author, called Waiting Isn’t a Waste. I decided
to buy them both, and after I finished Now and Not Yet, I decided to
keep the waiting theme going and read Mark Vroegop’s book Waiting
Isn’t a Waste.
Fun
fact: Mark is a pastor in Indianapolis, so it felt a bit like reading a home
crowd book! Let me skip straight to this, though: this book was
transformational for me. I don’t often sling that word around with books. Many
books impact me. This book was transformational. I absolutely wish I would have
had it earlier in my life, because I think it would have transformed my heart.
Waiting
– for anything – isn’t the most fun any of us have in life. It’s true for me,
and I’m guessing that is a fairly universal perspective. Mark doesn’t pretend
to be above that in his own life. But he writes about how to shift our
perspective away from viewing waiting as a surprise or something to endure with
irritation and to instead recognize it as the common happening it is and to
approach it as an chance to allow God to shape us.
Mark
points to places in Scripture that show us waiting is commanded by God and has
consistently been part of how He chooses to work in this world and through His
people. We would do ourselves a tremendous favor by learning how to wait
actively and well.
There
aren’t a ton of books I read that I immediately want to gift to everyone and
lead a group through in a study, but this one is just such a book. And if you
are thinking, oh I’m not in a waiting season right now, so I’m exempt, I
disagree! One of the specific points he makes in the book is that we would do
ourselves a tremendous favor by learning to wait well before we are in a season
of waiting. So this book really is for everyone.
(PS –
it’s just over 100 pages and SUPER easy to read. Even if you hate reading, you
can do this.)
On the
heels of reading Mark Vroegop’s book on waiting, I went on to read Dark
Clouds, Deep Mercy, his book on Discovering the Grace of
Lament.
This
book wasn’t as wowing to me as the book on waiting, but I fully imagine it’s
because I’m not walking the road of grief right now. (And I’m grateful for the
respite from it for this season.) But the book IS powerful because it’s not
just a “book about grief.” It’s a book that explores how the Bible teaches
believers to lament, and how it has a deep purpose. Throughout the
entire book, cover to cover, he comments on dozens of things that lament is.
“Lament
is how you live between the poles of a hard life and trusting in God’s
sovereignty…Lament is how we bring our sorrow to God…Lament is how Christians
grieve…Lament is how we learn important truths about God and our world…Lament
is a prayer…Lament is a path to praise…” On and on he writes about the many
things that comprise lament.
Mark
also writes about how we have been conditioned to avoid true lament. Funerals
are more commonly called celebrations of life, and while it’s good to celebrate
lives well lived, those services miss out on giving family and friends a space
to lament the loss and sorrow.
I found
this book powerfully helpful for me in the work I do - and I've already gifted a copy to a friend! - but I will also be coming
back to it the next time I walk through grief. The idea of grieving in the way
the Bible teaches is something I want to weave into my life.
Another
leadership book recommended to me by my friend Jodi was Creating
Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney
by Lee Cockerell. Until he retired, Lee was the Executive Vice President of
Operations for Disney and was/is instrumental in the teaching for the Disney
Institute, which guides organizations in increasing effective customer service.
I was
nervous about this book because I had shared the titles of my entire TBR list
with a friend, and she read this one early on and didn’t like it. But guess
what? I loved it! I don’t know why we differed, as we often feel similarly
about books we’ve both read, but I was just grateful I enjoyed it.
Throughout
the book, Lee generously shares about what it means to be a good leader, and
how that differs from being a manager or even a professional. I also
appreciated that he explained that in his life, good leadership was learned,
not a natural inclination. He writes vulnerably about how his hot temper in his
younger years made him a terrifying leader and how his wife encouraged him to
examine and change his ways, and he did.
He
gives really practical examples about how to care for your people, train them,
learn from them, be accessible to them (yet balance your personal life),
encourage them, and celebrate them. He shares real-world examples from his
career, first in hotel management and then at Disney, and from organizations he
has coached along the way.
While
there isn’t anything faith-based about this book (and I didn’t expect there to
be), many of the “common sense” approaches he teaches are very much in line
with what Scripture teaches, even if that isn’t how he suggests them.
I will
be keeping and referring to this book quite often and am glad I read it. It
felt like a classroom experience condensed into a book, which was quite helpful
to me.
Our
church used to have a dedicated library space, and in the layout of our new
church, we won’t have the same type of book-holding layout. The church family
was invited to adopt books that won’t be going back into a library room, and I
found a few treasures in the mix!
One was
Lysa TerKeurst’s book Made
to Crave. It’s not a new book, but I’d never read it. (It was
published in 2010, for a frame of reference.) I wanted to read it because one
of my health coaches mentioned it was a great book on helping to transform the
mind away from unhealthy eating cycles and toward things the Lord and the work
He has for me to do.
If you
aren’t familiar with her, Lysa TerKeurst is a pretty popular author and speaker
in Christian circuits, and she’s had some hard battles that she has faced
publicly along the way, including her husband’s infidelity and their subsequent
divorce. This book was written while she was still married to him, and she does
mention him in the book, FYI.
This
book is focused on the truth that isn’t stated very often: cravings aren’t bad,
wrong, or sinful. God created us to experience them. The problem enters when we
choose to fulfill them with things that aren’t actually fulfilling in the
long-term. I appreciated her insights and found them timely for where I am in
my own journey.
One
thing I loved about the book is how saturated it is in Scripture, and I
actually went through my Bible and flagged the verses she mentioned so I can
read through them in moments when my heart is tempted to run toward cookies and
ice cream, when those things aren’t really what I need most.
Lysa is
quick and careful to say it’s not a typical diet book, but rather an outline of
the principles she leaned on as she went through a health-gaining journey. She
worked with a nutritionist and had friends keeping her accountable, but she
also had to learn to replace lies and triggers of her life with truths from the
Lord to help her not just reach her goals, but stay with them long-term.
(That’s the part I feel like most people don’t talk about…how to keep goals in
sight.)
Another
book I found and snagged from the library books at church? First
Impressions: Creating WOW Experiences in Your Church. The author,
Mark L. Waltz, was on staff at an Indiana church when he wrote this book
(though per the internet, he’s not part of that staff currently.)
The
book is old in book years – written in 2005. The core teachings are still solid
and meaningful, but I did smile quite often at his illustration stories –
talking about the blessings of MapQuest printouts and explaining this new thing
called WiFi. (NOTE: I saw on Amazon that there was a revised version of this
book published in 2013, so perhaps some of those issues have been resolved.)
When
Mark worked at the large church in Indiana, he oversaw the First Impressions
team and used his experiences in that realm to share with other churches. The
book offers practical tips for churches of all sizes to create a clear vision
for greeters, ushers, and other hospitality team members and then provide
training to empower those people to do their jobs well.
While
the book is heavily focused on welcoming first-time guests, he does a good job
of writing about ways to serve ALL those in the church every week. I underlined
and starred many of his points to implement in conversations with our
hospitality crew at church! He covered everything from looking for loopholes in
current offerings to behind-the-scenes operations to reading between the lines
when meeting people as they walk through the door. I’m excited to slowly, over
time, implement what I’ve learned from this book!
Another
book I picked up from the library was Becoming
a Woman Who Listens to God by Sharon Jaynes. I remember Lynne
liking Sharon’s work when we were doing Mid-Morning, so I decided to
give it a try. The book was published back in 2004, and like the last book I
read, there were enough real-world, real-time examples in it to date it a bit,
but I didn’t find it overwhelmingly distracting.
Sharon
is a writer and speaker who has had a powerful ministry over the last 30ish
years. She ministers primarily to women and this book – as the title says
openly – is for women, encouraging them to listen for God’s voice in their
daily lives.
She
uses a lot of personal examples in her writing, and I don’t mind that, but I
know over the years, ministry styles have encouraged writers and speakers to
rely less heavily on their own experiences and stories and more heavily on Scripture
itself. It’s personal preference, of course, but if a lot of personal stories
bother you, know that this book is full of them.
I found
a handful of nuggets to underline and return to, and I’m thankful for that. As
I wrap up my summer of projects and enter into school this fall, I want my mind
trained on a listening stance to make sure I am truly hearing God and following
the direction He wants me to take.
It may
not have been my most favorite book of the month, but I did enjoy it and found
some good things tucked inside.
My
final book for July (at least I thought) was Building
a Discipling Culture by Mike Breen. This was another book I
found in the church library, and I grabbed it because one of my tasks for this
fall is to put in place some new small groups/growth groups/discipleship
groups. (Note: Per Amazon, there are also newer editions of this book.)
Though
Ryan and I have both participated in and led small groups in the past, and I
feel comfortable with them, I know there is always room to learn, so I was
excited to glean information from this book.
The
good news is…I did just that! The book is heavy on explanations for leaders,
and I felt both challenged and affirmed in my own leadership in what I read!
The bad news is…this book is very specific about the type of group
culture it teaches, and it doesn’t match up with what we are doing at our
church at this time.
What
the book teaches isn’t bad or wrong. It’s just not what we’re looking for right
now. Maybe one day, we’ll try the huddle communities as outlined in the book,
but it won’t be our plan for this fall.
Even
so, I underlined many things that are relevant to where we are right now, and
they’re things I can come back to as I try to lead and encourage the leaders
within our church!
And
then I squeezed in one more! Thom S. Rainer’s book I Am a Church Member was another find from the church library, and at
only 79 pages, I was able to read it in less than an hour.
I know
church membership is a hot-button topic for many people. Some don’t like the
idea of committing to a particular congregation or denomination and others can’t
imagine NOT committing.
I’ve
been a church member since high school and have become a full, covenant member
with nearly every church I’ve attended as an adult. For me (and the same is
true for Ryan), church membership is an expression to the congregation and to
the Lord that we are committed to actively serving, supporting, and worshiping
among the people at the particular church where we seek membership.
I
appreciated Thom’s approach to church membership in this book, because he didn’t
come in from any denominational standpoint. He simply came with examples from
Scripture that explain what it means to be a member of a church. It means we
serve those we worship with. We live in unity. We love them. We pray for them.
We can all learn from that, regardless of our denominational affiliation.
The
book is obviously short and very easy to read, and I’m hanging onto it, because
I want to refer to it if I ever have a conversation where someone has questions
about what it means to be a church member!
