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Marcus Buckingham: The Truth About You

When best-selling author Marcus Buckingham writes, people listen.  At least they should.  He’s one of the few “motivational speakers” with something to say besides the usual platitudes and clichés offered up by many. 

Buckingham has become something of an authority in the business world in helping people identify their strengths and weaknesses, and encouraging them to spend more time playing to their strengths than improving weaknesses. 

Buckingham’s latest, The Truth About You from Thomas Nelson, offers a condensed tool one can use to identify one’s passions and talents.  Although it’s not a thick book and can be read quickly, the real benefit will come with a slower, introspective read, taking the time to answer the questions and consider the trends.

The book includes a DVD with a short story that helps set the stage for the discovery process the book intends to take the reader down, illustrating the importance of understanding your strengths. 

This is not a book of psycho-babble.  Buckingham goes against the grain at times, throwing out conventional wisdom at times and replacing it with a common sense approach to contemporary times.  It's not an overtly Christian book, but it does help one identify their God-given talents and in so doing helps Christians learn to steward their abilties for kingdom purposes.

This is a book, admittedly, that is applicable only to a free people in a modern day society.  Indeed, in times past the vocational choices of most people were limited.  You did the job that was needed, whether you liked it or not, and whether you were any good at it or not.  But today, the choices before all of us are astounding.  We have a tremendous amount of choice in America today.  Yet many people are unhappy with their vocational choices.

Buckingham makes five points, and expounds in each of them throughout the book.  These five points summarize what Buckingham has learned over the years and is derived from his list of five things he wishes he had known when he was first getting started in his career.

Throughout the book, Buckingham elaborates on five valuable pieces of advice he wishes he had received when just starting out in life.

1) Performance is always the point
2) Your strengths aren’t what you’re good at, and your weaknesses aren’t what you’re bad at
3) When it comes to your job, the “what” always trumps the “why” and the “who”
4) You’ll never find the perfect job
5) You’ll never turn your weaknesses into strengths

Buckingham also offers insight into five statements that “sound right but aren’t:”

1) Always treat people as you would like to be treated
2) There is no “I” in team
3) You should work on your weaknesses
4) Push yourself beyond your comfort zone
5) Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness

Throughout the discussion of these topics, Buckingham offers insightful questions designed to reveal your true motivations, your true passions, your true talents.   Those that make you happy, not just successful.    Read this book, slowly, and think about the questions provided throughout the commentary.   You’ll be better equipped to evaluate job opportunities and navigate a career path once you understand the strategy and thinking behind the statements made above.

Preview the book here

Stealing from God

A year or two ago I picked up a book entitled "Worship Matters" by Bob Kauflin.  It was one of about ten books I bought while attending the National Worship Leader's Conference in Austin, TX.  I am sad to say that I had pretty much had forgotten about it and it has remained on my bookshelf since returning from the conference.

Recently I have been in a season of anxiety.  The kind of anxiety that overtakes your life and holds you captive to say the least.  The benefit of this season is that it has pushed me into the Word of God.  It has caused me to seek the Lord more passionately.  Instead of watching TV I go to our bedroom and I read scripture, I read books, I journal, and I pray.  That is my nightly practice right now.

As I was sitting in my office yesterday at the church I glanced up at my bookshelf and Worship Matters stuck out to me.  So I grabbed it and through it in my back back along with my Bible and journal.  Last night I read the first two chapters.  I could have kept reading but I was so overtaken with the content and the scripture that it caused me to fall face down and begin to pray in confession to God.  I am guilty of stealing from God. 

As my eyes read across the words it was as if I was reading my own life story.  His words could have come straight from my own personal journal.  This is what I read.

            "I started seeing a reality that dominated my life-the reality of my sinful cravings.
            My problems-emotional, physical, and otherwise-stemmed from battles within
            my heart of which I'd been largely unaware.  Yes, I wanted God to be exalted
            in my life, but another agenda was ruling my heart.  I wanted people to approve
            of me, admire me, applaud me.  To be honest, I wanted people to adore me.  I had
            an incessant passion to steal God's glory.  I was a lover of myself rather than a
            lover of God.  And it was killing me"


I could hardly believe the words I was reading.  That's it!  I am about me more than I am about Him.  I am guilty of idolatry.  I have somehow blurred the line of excellence with acceptance.  You see I am always trying to do everything with excellence.  A common phrase I use with my team is that excellence honors God and inspires people.  I believe that is true.  But our excellence must never become about anything other than Worshiping Him. 

Being on stage carries an incredible responsibility.  Let me challenge you to examine your heart, your motives, and your desires.  My prayer for you as well as for myself would be that we never steal God's glory!  We never love ourselves more than we love God.  Our entire purpose is that of directing Glory to Him.  For only He is truly worthy!

Tim Keller: The Reason for God

Great book from Tim Keller, The Reason For God, arguing that belief in God is not irrational and that the claims of Christianity are not baseless.  Excellent book for the seeker/skeptic.  From the publisher:

The End of Faith. The God Delusion. God Is Not Great. Letter to a Christian Nation. Bestseller lists are filled with doubters. But what happens when you actually doubt your doubts?

Although a vocal minority continues to attack the Christian faith, for most Americans, faith is a large part of their lives: 86 percent of Americans refer to themselves as religious, and 75 percent of all Americans consider themselves Christians. So how should they respond to these passionate, learned, and persuasive books that promote science and secularism over religion and faith? For years, Tim Keller has compiled a list of the most frequently voiced “doubts” skeptics bring to his Manhattan church. And in The Reason for God, he single-handedly dismantles each of them. Written with atheists, agnostics, and skeptics in mind, Keller also provides an intelligent platform on which true believers can stand their ground when bombarded by the backlash. The Reason for God challenges such ideology at its core and points to the true path and purpose of Christianity.

Why is there suffering in the world? How could a loving God send people to Hell? Why isn’t Christianity more inclusive? Shouldn’t the Christian God be a god of love? How can one religion be “right” and the rest “wrong”? Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God? These are just a few of the questions even ardent believers wrestle with today. In this book, Tim Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations and reasoning, and even pop culture to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity with a deep compassion for those who truly want to know the truth.

Spectacular Sins, the Sovereignty of God, and the Coddled American Church

John Piper's latest book is out, and we recently finished reading our review copy.  Entitled Spectacular Sins, the book looks at the sovereignty of God against the backdrop of massive sin.  Even though it's a thin book by most standards, the content is powerful and it is written in a conversational, easy-to-read manner similar to Don't Waste Your Life.  This may not be a thick, academic treatise but it is concise, sobering, and encouraging, easily read on an airline flight or during evening reading time over the span of a week or two.

Why write this book?  Piper explains:

I am writing this book because I think the days that are coming will demand from the followers of Christ this change in the way we look at the world.  It seems to me that Christians in the West are being coddled.  We suffer little in the name of Christ.  Therefore, we read the Bible not with a desperate hunger for the evidences of God's triumph in pain, but with a view to improving our private pleasures.

Therefore we read the Bible selectively.  We pick a text here and there to fit our felt needs.  This is like a doctor who forgets how to write prescriptions for the best antibiotics because everybody seems healthy, and he ahs spent the last decades tweaking good health with hip-hop exercise videos, unaware that pestilence is at the door.  It's like the soldier who forgets how to use his weapons because the times seem peaceful, and he has spent the last decades doing relief work and teaching the children how to play games...

People who don't like Christians are all around us.  Only a strange providence keeps out churches from being bombed.  It is only a matter of time till the reality of the rest of the world comes home.  And all the while we are called by Christ to go to them, love them, sacrifice for them, bring the gospel to them.  The Great Commission is not child's play.  It is costly.  Very costly.

The coddled Western world will sooner or later give way to great affliction.  And when it does, whose vision of God will hold? Where are Christians being prepared for great global sorrows?  Where is the Christian mind and soul being prepared for the horrors to come?  Christians in the West are weakened by wimpy worldviews.  And wimpy worldivews make wimpy Christians. God is weightless in our lives.  He is not terrifyingly magnificient.  His sovereignty is secondary (at best) to his sensitivity.

Piper knows history teaches us, and the Bible warns us, that the good times we as Americans have enjoyed are not our rights as Christians or human beings.  At some point the prosperity will diminish.  And this isn't based on sensationalized, name-that-antichrist, make-it-fit rapture theory we've all been hearing since the early 1970's.  It's life in most of the world and life throughout most of history.  Writes Piper:

I am writing this book to build a vision of God into our lives that will not let us down in the worst of times.  I mean really bad times.  Horrific times.  Who is prepared to meet the Agony that is coming?

Our worship services and our preaching too often pamper us.  They coddle.  I am not opposed to friends helping us with the daily frustrations that make us unhappy.  There is plenty of proverbial wisdom in the Bible to warrant this.  It is good.  Love does this.  I need this help.  I want it.  There is a time for everything under heaven, even pampering.  But surely the preaching of God's word must aim for more than this.

Piper notes that our felt needs are the result of our surroundings.  Most of us in the west have felt needs that do not center around survival.  They center around a soft life becoming less soft, to paraphrase, not a difficult life becoming nearly impossible.  That will change when our surroundings change.  Piper continues:

These horrors are in the Bible.  God's word.  Where is the shepherd who is preparing the saints for this kind of future?  What answer could he give to our questions?  What answer woudl fit with the upbeat entertainment mood?  Where in the west do we hear the answer: "They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death" (Rev. 12:11)?

The fact that people do not feel a need for this kind of food in their spiritual diet shoud not silence the wise and loving shepherd.  Our felt needs are about to change dramatically.  Pastors will be glad if they are ahead of the curve.  Otherwise, it may be too late.  Coddled people will not be good listeners when their world collapses.  They will be numb with confusion and rage at the God who wasn't supposed to allow this.  "If this is the way God is, why didn't you tell us?"

The aim of this book is not to meet felt needs, but to awaken needs that will soon be felt, and then to save your faith and strengthen your courage when evil prevails.  These are big, deep, weighty, strong truths.  Truths for pestilence and war and personal calamity."

The chapters that follow look at various spectacular sins and how they served God's overall purposes when on the surface it would appear to have thwarted them.  The rebellion of Satan; the fall of Adam; the pride of Babel; the sale of Joseph; the sinful origin of the Son of David; and, Judas Iscariot.

Spectacular Sins is a powerful and encouraging book that will prepare you for uncertain and difficult times, presenting a gritty and powerful gospel that stands in stark opposition to the sugary, fattening, and self-promoting versions peddled by late night television preachers.

Endorsements include Randy Pope, Chris Tomlin, Matt Chandler, Joni Eareckson Tada, Rick Holland, Miles V. Van Pelt, Darrin Patrick and Steven Childers.

Spectacular Sins: And Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ

Free Book Download | Pure Praise: A Heart-focused Bible Study on Worship

Our friend Dwayne Moore emailed us to let us know about a generous offer currently available on his blog.  For a limited time only, you can download one FREE complete copy of all nine weeks of Moore's soon-to-be-published Pure Praise: A Heart-focused Bible Study on Worship! This book contains endorsements by Darlene Zschech (Hillsong), Mark Hall (Casting Crowns), Julie Reid (Worship Leader Magazine), Rick Muchow (Saddleback), Charles Billingsley (Thomas Road), David Edwards (The Worshiper Magazine), Dr. Vernon Whaley (Liberty University), Josh Riley (Worship.com),and others.

While at the site downloading you can also pre-order the forthcoming book at 40% off suggested retail price , expected to be released by the publisher in December 2008.

Worship from the "Heart"

We are often told by the church not to trust our "feelings".  The modern church's penchant is to teach us to suppress our emotions and to distrust feelings. Live out of the facts we are told.  Trust the head, not the heart.

But if we are to follow the logic implications of that way of thinking, are we then cutting off a significant way we experience Christ and the spiritual life?  These questions are addressed in Mathew Elliot's new book, Feel.

Feel - The Power of Listening to Your Heart shares Mathew Elliot’s journey of years of intensive study.  He draws a practical map for understanding how God has created us to feel. 

• Why does God care so much about the state of our hearts and feelings?
  • How do emotions reflect the true depth and vitality of our spiritual lives?
  • How can we learn to understand our emotions and through this learn to understand ourselves?
  • How can we learn to live in and through and by our emotions?
  • How can we become vibrant and joyful Christ-followers, letting our new heart guide us
    to change our world for good?

(Read more of the review HERE)

WorshipMatters Book Winners

Here are our winners from the Bob Kauflin Worship Matters book giveaway:

• Brance Gillihan:  I own and operate a recording studio and video production company in 
  rural SouthWest Virginia. I specialize in bluegrass and acoustic  music. I serve as an elder, youth pastor, and technology coordinator  in our local PCA congregation (http://www.pulaskipresbyterian.org). I  have played in the worship band in the past, and I lead worship  whenever our pastor is out of town. My pastor, Dr. Rusty Whitener,  has also written a book about worship (he's still looking for a  publisher), called "The Worship Bridge."  I blog personally at http://brance.wordpress.com and I also blog as  the youth pastor at http://www.aleethia.com
• Phil Simpson: I work as an occupational therapist at Cabell Huntington Hospital, specializing in balance rehabilitation.  I attend Crosspoint Community Church in Huntington, WV.  Although I am not a worship leader, I am a teacher, and am very interested in the topic of worship.  I wrote a paper on how to select songs for congregational worship that was featured on Focus on the Family's Boundless webzine.   I also have created and maintain the Jeremiah Burroughs Homepage, a website devoted to the life and writings of the great Puritan preacher.  I have read Kauflin's book, and have found it to be a very challenging, devotional, instructive, and Christ-exalting work on worship-- one of the best I've ever read on the topic.  I intend to give my copy to our church's worship leader, as a ministry to him.  Thanks again for the book!
• Josh Deng:  Thanks for the book!  I am a rising 5th-year senior at Virginia Tech, and am involved with (and will lead, this coming Fall) one of 2 worship teams within VT’s InterVarsity chapter.  I got involved with my worship team freshman year playing bass, and I’ve been hooked ever since.  (Sometimes my roommate and I dream of just joining a worship band after graduation and touring around playing music…)  Thanks for the great resource, and I am sure I’ll be sharing its wisdom with my team!
• Sandra Faber:  I’ve been the Worship Coordinator at Acton Bethel Christian Reformed Church for six years now (www.actoncrc.com). We are a church of approx 300 members that is located in the small town on Acton, Ont.  (about a hour west of Toronto). The first I’d heard of Bob Kauflin was at a Worship Symposium I attended in Grand Rapids at Calvin Seminary College about 4-5 years ago. Bob led some workshops there and I really appreciated what he taught and shared regarding worship. Since then I’ve often used articles, for our Worship team devotions that he’s posted on the web for Sovereign Grace Ministries. I was very excited to hear that he was working on the book “Worship Matters” and am now very pleased to be getting a copy of the book to share with all our worship teams at Bethel. I know it will be a great tool to aid in the training of our Worship Leaders.  To lead God’s people in worship is a great privilege but also a great responsibility. God has given much insight to Bob over the years and I feel much can be learned through Bob’s written words.  All praise, honor and thanksgiving to God, for working through Bob!
• Justin Bruce: I work part time for a local Credit Union while I study for my degree; I just graduated from a local Pentecostal Bible college, and am looking forward to Seminary soon so that I can receive my Master's degree and return to this Bible college (hopefully) as a professor of Theology and Bible.  My wife and I attend a local PCA church as it is the only Reformed church in the greater Eugene/Springfield area (I know, PCA liturgical and Pentecostalism, weird combo).  Though I am not a worship leader of any congregational sort, the Lord has blessed me with the gift to write and rap; and I take seriously the call to have theologically rich, Christ centered, and gospel driven lyrics in all music written for our King.  I have actually written an article at my blog: ReforMinded (http://reforminded.blogspot.com) entitled "Let Us Beat Our Swords into Plow Shares: the Worship Wars" if it is of any interest  Thank you Worship.com, and to Bob Kauflin as well.

Thanks to all who participated, and special thanks again to Bob and to Crossway Books.

Crossroads: Navigating Your Calling and Career

Colin Creel's first book, Perspectives: A Life Guide for Twentysomethings helped younger people make decisions about life. Now, he's written a sequel entitled Crossroads: Navigating Your Calling and Career, a book that delves into the specifics of identifying your vocational calling.  Creel, the dean of junior boys at a school in Georgia, has first-hand experience with this process both in his own life and those of the students he serves.  The book blurbs by Ken Boa, Thelma Wells, Shaunti Feldhahn and Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz all recommend the book to those seeking direction in life.

If you're a college student reading this, you probably are working through the muddled waters of choosing a career and corresponding major.  Or maybe you're in high school trying to decide where to go to school.  Or, maybe you're a middle-ager who had no idea what you'd want to do with your life when you went through college and you wonder where you went wrong.  This book is for you.

Creel divides the book into two parts.  In the first half of the book, he tackles the topic of work as God intended it to be before delving into the how-to's of discerning God's call.  In the second half Creel focuses on the career aspect, taking a look at a number of critical characteristics that one must have in one's life through which God will lead them.  Throughout the book Creel posts brief stories from various leaders in ministry and business---some you have heard of, some you haven't--describing their journey to their present station in life.  This "seasoned advice" from people like Steve Arterburn, Louie Giglio, Josh McDowell, Max Lucado, Mark Price, Michael Youssef, Joey Elwood (Gotee Records) and others helps reinforce the topics tackled in the book and gives the reader a unique opportunity to hear firsthand of the surprising routes others have taken in their quest to confirm their vocational callings.

It's graduation time across America.  Consider giving this book to the high school or college student of your choice in honor of the occasion.

We were able to contact Colin and get some additional insight into the book.  Look for that interview to be posted shortly.

New Crossway Title Seeks to Minister to “People Under Pressure” Through Prayer

Maybe it’s a crime victim, someone going through a divorce, or an insomniac. A Senator or the parent of a child with an eating disorder. We all know someone who is under pressure. Most of us are under pressure ourselves.

In Prayers for People Under Pressure, you’ll find specific prayers for each of these situations and much more. Author Jonathan Aitken, once convicted of perjury, now tells the true story of his journey into prayer and invites readers to join him. What Aitken learned in the midst of political pressures, a public trial, divorce, and imprisonment, he now shares with others—namely, our desperate need for disciplined, daily prayer.

Aitken’s compelling story is impetus and fitting preface for these collected prayers, mined largely from the extensive prayer journals he kept during his trial, imprisonment, and re-introduction into society. Prayers for People Under Pressure is divided into five sections, which are based upon the helpful ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) approach to prayer. Aitken expands the traditional model to create the ACTORS method, which also contemplates “Our Relationship” with God. 

“I am extremely cautious about making suggestions to other people on how to organize their prayer life when I have so much to learn about my own,” writes Aitken in the introductory chapter. “That said, some paths of prayer signposted in these pages are well-tried and true. . . . Since direct communication with God in prayer is surely the truest path for a spiritual journey, my final prayer is that this small book may help others along that path and be for the greater glory of God.”

Visit www.crossway.org for more information.

Facing Your Final Job Review

You trudge into your supervisor’s office and sit fidgeting on the edge of the chair nearest the door. Welcome to your job review. What should you expect? Do you know how you will be evaluated or if you are prepared? There’s a coming job review that’s more significant than any you’ve faced in your career, and it takes place at the judgment seat of Christ. Many Christians don’t know what to expect there or if they can prepare for this evaluation. In Facing Your Final Job Review, noted Bible teacher Woodrow Kroll explores the reality of the judgment seat of Christ, answering the most common questions Christians have, including:

• What is the judgment seat of Christ and how will I be evaluated there?
• If works play no role in my salvation, why do they matter in terms of my eternal rewards?
• What will our eternal rewards look like, and which is the greatest among them?
• Can I lose rewards for unacceptable service?

Facing Your Final Job Review provides a thorough and biblical examination of these questions and many others. Blending narrative with Q&A, Kroll’s teaching is both enjoyable and accessible. He presents readers with this challenge: “Start at the judgment seat of Christ. Work backwards.” Let Facing Your Final Job Review show you how to live now in light of eternity.

Visit www.crossway.org or contact me for more information about Facing Your Final Job Review.