Book Review: Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Conquering any Business Challenge

by The RevNo Comments
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=danielmroseco-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=0470947802Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Conquering any Business Challenge. It was given to me by a friend who said, “You have to read this. It’s pretty great.”I was looking forward to reading it because I had already taken the leadership style inventory that goes with the book and found out that I was a “Wildebeest”.That didn’t seem very inspiring.You can read that last comment as “I was a bit skeptical”. I have read many books on leadership. I could list them for you but, my fingers would stop working. Swanepoel, has however, brought a unique twist to the game. He identifies seven key skills that a person needs to succeed in the Serengeti of leadership.I am a pastor and so I read Swanepoel’s parable of the Serengeti through a bit of a different lens. I am not very interested in making a lot of money. What I am interested in is making an impact.A big impact.As I read I...
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Book Review: Counterfeit Gods

by The RevNo Comments
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=danielmroseco-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&asins=0525951369 Timothy Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York. His recent book Counterfeit Gods continues to cement his place as one of this generation’s leading voices in calling the church back to where it belongs. Keller, however, has the unique ability to speak to the hearts of people who do not claim follow Jesus as well. The driving question that Keller is seeking to answer comes from a description of Americans by Alexis de Tocqueville who said that Americans exhibited a, “strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants…in the midst of abundance. (x)” De Tocqueville analyzes this “strange melancholy” and comes to the conclusion that it is the result of taking an “incomplete joy of this world” and having that become the center of your life. Keller states, “That is the definition of idolatry. (xi)” He goes on to say that an idol is, “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and...
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Review: Equipped for Adventure

by The RevNo Comments
Equipped for Adventure: A Practical Guide to Short-Term Mission Trips by Scott Kirby was published in 2006 by New Hope Publishers. It is a handbook for making short-term mission trips happen. This is a holistic treatment of the process of making short-term missions a centerpiece of your church’s ministry. Kirby casts vision, answers criticisms, and then proceeds step by step through the process of planning, organizing, actuating, and following up a mission trip.I found this to be a helpful text. Kirby provides the busy minister or volunteer with a guide to make missions a reality in any context. I thought one of the most enlightening conversations in the book was in reference to partnerships. The discussion helps to provide a matrix for understanding when and with whom a partnership ought to be formed.I also found the Appendices to helpful. These provide the resources to carry out the ideas and concepts taught in the book. This is key. So many other...
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Review: Activate

by The RevNo Comments
Doug Walker passed along a book for me to check out and I thought that is was pretty helpful. So, I thought I would briefly review it here. The book is entitled Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. The authors Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas are pastors at the Journey Church in New York City. They consider themselves to be a “Church of Small Groups”. It is in this context that they have seen their church grow exponentially and powerfully.Basically, the content of the book is simple and straightforward. They give a an overview of the subject in Part One. Here they take about 70 pages to give you a fly-over of their small group system. In Part Two, Searcy and Tomas, then breakdown the system specifically and discuss how to implement the system in your church. They also provide an in depth calendar and very specific how-to’s.The text is an easy read and did not take very...
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The Blue Parakeet — A Review

by The RevNo Comments
First, Dr. McKnight and Zondervan thank you for the advance copy.–The Blue Parakeet is a text that discusses how we actually read the Bible. Dr. McKnight brings up two key ideas throughout his short work. His first organizing principle is the concept that the Bible was written in a certain period’s time and ways. The second is that we are to read the Bible alongside of tradition as opposed to through it.Dr. McKnight seeks to challenge some of the assumptions that we have regarding how we read the Bible. He begins with a discussion of his own history where people would “read the Bible and do what it says” even though as he began reading the Bible for himself he realized that they did not do all it says. This then leads to the dominant question that he seeks to answer: how do we read the Bible in our times and our ways?The book is divided into four parts, “What...
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