Life Here and There

I’ve just finished reading through a “40-day spiritual game plan for men” called Life in the Zone (aff link) written by Kyle Rote and Joe Pettigrew. I thoroughly enjoyed moving through the content and believe we need more books written like this one for men in a world where books seem to be overwhelmingly written and marketed for women’s tastes and personalities.

Here’s my review from Amazon’s site…

Christianity rarely caters to the needs of men well. It seems to some men that worship is just too touchie-feelie and emotional for our masculine senses. That’s why I love Rote and Pettigrew’s book. It’s a 40 day game-plan for men that covers some of the best essential subjects for men in a language men can certainly understand and relate to.

This book is relationship-focused, but not overtly so. It’s well-structured, easy to follow and read, and has a great format within each chapter. Men tend to like bold headlines instead of miles of type, so the way each chapter is broken up into doable principles and real life examples for the world of sports is perfect.

And as for its spiritual and theological content? It’s dead on. I didn’t detect the presence of any fluff, but rather hard-hitting truth communicated in a non-threatening, but still challenging tone.

Personally, I didn’t use it as intended – a 40 days in a row plan – but would instead consume multiple chapters at a time. I can wholeheartedly recommend this one!

Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership by Tim Irwin is one of the most frightening books I’ve ever read… and if you’re in leadership, you should buy it and be frightened by it as well!

Irwin does a masterful job of presenting a comprehensive take on the subject of failure. Irwin lays the groundwork by speaking of the qualities that prevent derailment that should be a part of every leader’s life. Thomas Nelson’s description of the book puts it this way…

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I’ve recently finished reading through this neat little gift book, The Gift of Psalms. I’ve thumbed through dozens of similar gift books and quite frankly, usually think of them as think slices of sentimentalism with no real substance, wrapped in leather and foil and sold to the highest bidder. This book, however, is a cut above the rest.

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I just finished reading Building Your Leadership Resume: Developing the Legacy that Will Outlast You (aff) by Johnny Hunt. Here’s the bottom line… I feel like I’ve sat at at a table in a coffee shop with one of America’s great Pastors as he’s filled me with word upon word of great advice!

The book is forty short chapters in length, each one centering around a different aspect of the Pastor’s leadership (and any leader, for that matter). He deals with the huge heart issues as well as the day-to-day tasks and productivity issues. Rather than try to summarize all of the chapters, I thought I’d pass along the things I’m inspired to do more and better now that I’ve read this book:

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