I really enjoyed reading Church Marketing 101 by Richard Reising. As a believer with a marketing background, he lays out the basics of what marketing is. What challenged me is his thesis is that everything you do and don’t do is part of your marketing strategy. Even if you are anti-marketing because you feel there’s no place for that in the church, everything we do is communicating something about our church. The issue is, will we decide what we want to communicate? I highly recommend the book to Pastors who want to reach their communities (which should be all of … Read More

Seth Mnookin, author of Feeding the Monster quoted my review of his book on his blog. There should be a name for this. I reviewed his book, then he posted the review on his blog. Now I’m referencing his post of my review in this post. Is there a name for such things? Either way, here’s the link if you want to read it. If you’re a baseball fan, I think you’ll really enjoy this book. If you’re a Red Sox fan, which puts you into a totally different breed of baseball fan, you’ll love it! By the way, he … Read More

Every year, I like to read a couple of fun, non-ministry related books. I just finished Feeding the Monster by Seth Mnookin. The book chronicles the recent history of the Red Sox, focusing on 2001 to the present. The book is about the people that got together and brought in the right people to eventually lead the Red Sox to their first World Series victory in 86 years. After reading this, I walked away reflecting on 3 values that the team sees as part of its’ success: #1 – Promote from Within – Growing up in Boston, the Red Sox … Read More

Honestly, after finishing Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by D.A. Carson my first thought was, “This book could have been 100 pages shorter!” They book was good and I think for the most part it was a fair assessment of the people they featured in the book. I think Carson did a good job of trying to find some common ground with the various people involved in Emergent. I think the title of the book is unfortunate because “The Emerging Church” is very broad and many within it do not wish to be linked to Emergent in any way. … Read More

I know I’ll surely be stoned for this, but I’ve never read anything by John Piper except his book on fasting. So here’s my question: If I were to pick up a Piper book or two, which would you recommend I read first?