Reading for Enrichment: Find This Book and Read It! (Part 9)

By Marshall Hayden

 

It”s great advice! “Read broadly” we have been told. It will enrich your life, your thinking, and your preaching. It”s true. But until retirement came, the stack of interesting books””purchased but unread””just kept getting taller. Now there is the fine advantage of carrying a little electronic thingamajig, rather than a bag or briefcase full of books. Maybe you will start taking that good advice earlier than I did. You may be like our remarkable friend, Roy Lawson, whose reviews you read on the pages of Christian Standard. He is not yet retired. Well, twice retired, but unable to stay that way. And he reads””broadly.

Finally this year I have read (reread in some cases) Pilgrim”s Progress, A Panorama of the Short Story, Oliver Twist, The Screwtape Letters, and The House of the Seven Gables, along with George Buttrick”s thick book Prayer, and Robert Richardson”s thicker two-volume work Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. Oh, yes, I also enjoyed Glen Wheeler”s quicker A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Retirement Home. And there have been some other things that preachers more regularly read. I”m richer than I was this time last year.

For those still serving in vocational ministry, especially senior ministers, who have read a lot about leadership, let me just mention a category of books I wish I had read three or four decades ago. Curt Coffman”s Follow This Path (a huge body of Gallup organization information), Patrick Lencioni”s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and Steven Sample”s A Contrarian”s Guide to Leadership say some things about building, supporting, investing in, caring about, trusting, and being available to your team (hear “staff)” that would have helped me leave a greater contribution to a few congregations, the brotherhood, and the kingdom.

 

Marshall Hayden is a retired minister and a member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee.