All posts in What I’m Crunching

Our church is nearly one year into a pastoral transition. Our senior pastor of 33 years retired last August. The process has been both exciting and unsettling.

Serving on an 11-person transition team has given me opportunity to revisit work I’d done years ago to better understand the two biblical church offices: Elder and Deacon. This book on Deacons is well done, simple to understand, and quite comprehensive. I’d recommend it to anyone wanting a true-to-Scripture evaluation of the office of Deacon.

This book is another step toward my goal of reading one biography on every US President. It’s highly rated and I see why! Morris does an excellent job bringing out the formative factors that produced the Roosevelt most of us know as the 26th President of the United States of America.

This book has been wrecking me this week. After a tough conversation with my coach, I started digging in. I’m guilty of excessive busyness, hurrying, and expecting everyone around me to do the same. It produces a toxicity that affects every area of my life. I see that now, and I’m (unhurriedly) working to fix it.

Here are two impactful quotes:

I finished this one this week. Road trips are great for making progress on audiobooks.

Hanes has accomplished much in the world of bow-hunting. His achievements are remarkable and he has advanced the sport. His intense training (he regularly runs marathons and ultramarathons) means he outworks most others by a mile. He’s devoted to being the best bow hunter he can be.

As a piece of writing, the book is quite repetitive. I found myself asking, “How many different ways can he say the same thing?” The answer is, surprisingly many! Maybe a series of blog posts would have been adequate to get the message across. But, the book is likely allowing his message to be distributed to a wider audience.

I’m nearly halfway through this book and it produces light bulb after eureka moment after “Wow!” God wrapped me to think long-term and strategically, so the content of this book resonates deeply.