What I’m Crunching — January 18, 2026
This book is WAY out of print, but was given to me by a leader at SonSet Solutions. He met Mildred Rice and became friends with her while doing ministry.
Rice was a missionary in China for many years and this book documents many of the lessons she learned.
What I’m Crunching — January 11, 2026
I finished this one and thoroughly enjoyed it.
The lessons here were immediately relevant in my own church and I was able to share insights from the book at our annual leadership retreat this past weekend. Specifically, that every church should intentionally evaluate the spaces, scope, and sequence of their discipleship ministries and always be improving.
I wholeheartedly endorse this book, even if it’s a little repetitive in places.
What I’m Crunching — January 4, 2026
This was a Christmas present from my sister and her husband; my favorite Christmas gift this year!
I’m enjoying J.T. English’s take on the importance of deep discipleship. He laments the recent decades of over-emphasis on small group community in western churches, to the exclusion of rigorous, serious study of God’s word.
I agree with him: both community (small groups) and rigorous study of God’s word are necessary for disciples of Jesus Christ to grow.
What I’m Crunching — December 28, 2025
This was a fast read, and generally enjoyable. A few things about it stood out:
– Pullman uses a variety of lesser-seen words in his writing. I often long-pressed on words to see their definition in my Kindle app while reading. I enjoyed this; I love learning new words!
– It’s another female-lead-character novel, which is fine, but I didn’t realize how this one would be geared more toward young adults. This meant that the characters were a bit more immature and the dialogue used expressions and idioms more connected to young people. Perfectly acceptable if you’re a young adult, but it didn’t connect well with me.
– I found myself not being surprised by the direction of the plot; in several cases, it was quite predictable.
I don’t expect I’ll continue on to the next book in the series.
What I’m Crunching — December 21, 2025
Book I’m Reading The Golden Compass This is the first volume of the seminal “His Dark Materials” series written by Philip Pullman. The series title comes from Paradise Lost where John Milton wrote: “Into this wild AbyssThe womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave—Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,But all these in their […]