OK. I don’t know what I can say about a trilogy without ruining the first book.
A few days ago my friend mentioned the the hunger games were the top three selling books on Amazon. I checked today and saw that they are still the top three selling books. While going with the crowd is not usually a path for success in life I think it might be when looking for a good book.
The Hunger Games is compelling like water is wet. Suzanne Collins reaches out from her book in the first few pages and grabs your attention and doesn’t let go of your collar until a couple of hours later you find yourself on page 374 looking for book 2 of the trilogy.
Yesterday I was mentioning the book to a friend and a lady ahead of me turned around and said, “Isn’t the hunger games awesome.” Yes, stranger on the street, it is.
While boy meets girls is always a good start to a book, there are so many ways this storyline aligns with the current world situation. Evil government versus good citizens. (It’s very real in my neighboring Burma and Syria is killing it’s citizens as I type this) Entertainment versus serving the needs of the world around us. (This one is very real in my own heart and life) and Self Preservation versus dying to yourself and/or giving your life for the sake of others.
The Hunger Games takes place in the future in the land that was once America where the government forces each of the 12 districts to send in two kids each year in a fight to the death leaving only one victor. This is to remind the districts that the central government holds the power and each of the districts exists to serve them. Originally the story line sounded a little to gruesome and while it is definitely PG 13 it has caused me to think about how sin has impacted our world.
I encourage you to read the series with a couple of friends and talk about it.
I have always loved creative thinkers and Jay Abraham is definitely at the top of the list when it comes to creative ways to think about business and make money.
He has a couple of cool thoughts from a business perspective.
Put the need of your clients ahead of you own.
You have clients not customers.
A customer is someone who buys a commodity product or service.
A client is under the care and protection of another.
There are three ways to increase the revenue in your business:
1. Increase the number of customers.
2. Increase the average transaction price.
3. Increase the frequency of transactions.
I think that over simplifies business a little bit but probably makes things a lot less complicated for growing your business than usual. He gives multiple strategies to increase all three areas and even ideas that can lead to entirely new businesses.
His idea of bringing value to others fits in with his ideas of Joint Ventures. Creating different business opportunities where two or three businesses all derive great benefit from the partnership.
The book was written in 2000 so his chapter on internet marketing is a bit dated, (He doesn’t even mention google in his list of search engines) but the book is fool of solid marketing ideas.
As of Feb 4th you can download the book for free from here
The Iron Lance is the first in the Celtic Crusades Trilogy. I have really enjoyed Lawhead’s works after being introduced to them by a couple of friends a few years back. In fact, since my return to fiction 2 years ago I have read more of Lawhead than all other fiction authors combined. So I might be a bit biased.
While I would give it five stars the book did seem to start off a big slow and it took me at least 60 or 70 pages to really get into it. The other down side is that I felt like you could have removed 150 of the 641 pages without taking too much out of the story.
That being said, of what I have read, this is perhaps Lawhead’s best work of historical fiction in trying keep to the facts of history as we understand them and weave a great story into the mix. He shows the awful side of the Church as it existed around 1095 to 1100 and doesn’t sugar coat anything. At the same time he lifts up the Cele De as a group that tried to follow the teachings of Christ where they differed from the Church. He also shows the realistic struggles of the protagonist as moves from disdain for the church to a growing faith.
The history of the first Crusade is intriguing in itself but the characters in the The Iron Lance make it a wonderful read.
I am always amazed out how many different ways people make a living online. Though I would never use most of the income streams that the author refers to I really enjoyed the quick read and that thoughts that it stirred in me.
One of his current income streams is using Amazon FBA to deliver everything for him so that he doesn’t have to do the work and he hired an Indian at $3 an hour to manage his inventory. Genius.
Probably the hottest thing write now is building businesses that help offline businesses get more customers and Jim pushes the site that he helped develop that helps normal people do just that.
If you are looking to make income online this is a good book to get you started. It doesn’t have step by step instructions but gives you a good overview of how to get started and can help you think about what direction you would want to head.
Books on the soul are always a little bit hard for me to get through. Though I often mock 21 laws to this, 7 steps to that and 4 secrets for success in your field, I love the simplicity of the thought that there really are 21 laws, 7 steps or 4 secrets.
That said I really did enjoy the book and think it is a great read for anyone who has been in Christian leadership for 10+ years.
Ruth Haley Barton, takes the life of Moses and walks us through his leadership and walk with God. She does a great job of pulling out principles without stretching the story as told in Scripture. On a side note, I was told by a counselor that he had come up with the concepts in her book a long time ago but she had been able to market them better. 
At the end of leading people for 40 years Moses is not able to enter into the promise land. I have often that that seemed like a huge punishment for what seemed to be a small sin. Barton speaks to that in a way that made sense and also challenged me in my own life.
This part of Moses’ story does speak to the fact that when you choose the spiritual life the stakes get higher and higher. Behavior and attitudes that were good enough last year may not be good enough this year. A level of integrity that was good enough for one level of spiritual leadership disappoints others and yourself as you move into greater responsibility. There is a peace on this path and very deep rewards, but there is an even greater need to live authentically and more given over to grace. The more spiritual the destination the greater the the importance of our character and utter responsiveness to God in the journey is.
He no longer needed any role or responsibility or task to define him….And this is what I have come to see most clearly in the life of Moses: for Moses the presence of God was the Promised Land. Next to that, everything else had already paled in significance.
After both Mark and Ron made this book one of their top reads for 2011 I knew that I had to read it. I know that not even their man crushes on Steve Jobs could move it up that high in their minds if it wasn’t an intriguing read.
This book impacted me more than I expected. Getting to know the life of another always increases compassion and understanding. Job’s character flaws are well known and he didn’t seem to care that much about them other than a little regret in quiet moments of reflection. As I longed for Job’s to know Jesus towards the end of the book it caused me to reflect on the lives of many others around me and how there is still the opportunity to tell them of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
One of the things that came out over and over was Job’s ability to get people to do things that they thought were impossible and over and over in his career people were able to meet seemingly impossible goals.
A paraphrase of Job’s thinking, “Act like you can do something and it will work. Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume you are.”
Job’s obviously made a dent in our world in a huge way. When Apple’s iTV comes out in 2012 millions more will be impacted by his desire to bring simplicity and peace to technology.
I did walk away from the book encouraged to live a life without regrets and pursue the things that God has before me wholeheartedly.
James 1 comes to mind. “The sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; It’s blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business.”
Great by Choice was a great choice for my first business book of the year. I really have enjoyed Jim Collins books, the perennial best seller Good to Great and Built to Last have influenced much of my thinking in regards to leadership and business. If you are planning on leading others there is much food for thought in Great by Choice.
One of their findings that meshed with Good to Great was the other side of a Level 5 leader. The Level five leader is someone who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will. In Great by Choice they highlighted the idea of intense professional will, that they had the discipline to stick to what was working and the paranoia to change if they needed to. At the same time they did not change without empirical data to tell that that was the right thing to do.
The study was done of companies that beat the average in their market by 10X earnings based on stock market prices.
Fanatic discipline: 10Xers display extreme consistency of action-consistency with values, goals, performance standards, and methods. They are utterly relentless, monomaniacal, unbending in their focus on their quests.
he signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change; the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency
Some of their more intriguing findings are that the very best companies actually take less risks than their average counterparts. They take calculated risks based on empirical data and are not swayed by others.
The old adage says it is better to be lucky than good. Collins and his team have found that while that may be true it is far better to be great than lucky. When you are great you are able to take the good and bad events and turn them into positive things for your company.
Leaders are often expected to meet huge challenges and our heroes are often people that are able to bring about positive change, I think F. Scott Fitzgerald would agree.
One should…be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald
pg 29 So this is a book of stories. The things that transform us, especially us “postmoderns,” are people and experiences. Political ideologies and religious doctrines just aren’t very compelling, even if they’re true. And stories disarm us. They make us laugh and cry. It’s hard to disagree with a story, much less split a church or kill people over one. And certainly no hurts others with the passion of those who it in the name of God, and it’s usually over ideologies and doctrines, not stories. Besides, people seem to loosen up after a good story. I think that’s why Jesus told so many stories.–stories about ordinary first-century Mediterranean life, stories of widows and orphans, debts and wages, workers and landlords, courts and banquets.
pg 63 At the beginning of their living with the homeless in Philly:
Later that same week another group of folks brought donations by St. Ed’s — the mafia. With he media jumping on the story, the mafia cam by and gave bikes to each of the kids, turkeys to each of family, and thousands of dollars to the organization. I thought to myself, I guess God can use the mafia, but I would like God to use the church.
Many younger writers share of hating the church they grew up in. Part of it is personality, but I don’t like negative talk. Partially it’s because it’s hard to hear people demean the bride of Christ knowing that a collection of imperfect people is going to be an imperfect gathering. Shane begins there but doesn’t dwell on it. In fact he says this: pg 64
At that moment we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.
I have had the same thought in Cambodia. There are many Christians at work there but there are many more who are not motivated by the love of Christ who are just there to help. I know that God can use anyone I just wish the presence of his body was greater in a place like Cambodia where the need is so great.
pg 71
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament. ~ Soren Kierkegaard.
One of the intriguing aspects of the book was Shane’s experience with Mother Teresa. He wrote her while in college asking if he could come for a summer. He didn’t receive a response so he continue to hound all the nuns he knew and that they knew until he was given her personal number and she invited him to come over. I often want to do great things. One of the quotes from Mother Teresa was,
“We can do no great things, just small things with great love. it is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.”
pg 167 “The best things to do with the best things in life is to give them away.”
pg 254. Whenever someone tells me they have rejected God, I say, “Tell me about the God you’ve rejected.” And as they describe a God of condemnation, of laws and lightening bolts, of frowning grey-haired people and boring meetings, I usually confess, “I too have rejected that God.”
Over all I really enjoyed the book. There were moments when I was glad I was alone in the cafe I was reading the book as I was moved to tears by the accounts of love that he got to be a part of. I was nervous reading a book with an endorsement by Rob Bell but really enjoyed it and was left with some questions to think about and dialogue with others over.
Is capitalism bad?
He often rails against capitalism to me that’s kind of like railing against sex because some people rape kids. In a sinful world there are going to be people who misuse the gifts God gives us. I do want to wrestle with my thoughts on capitalism though.
Other questions:
Is there value in pursuing renewable energy on a personal level?
Does capital punishment teach that some are beyond redemption?
Should we always be against war?
Shane is a pacifist and why we all agree that war is hell on earth and is often used for evil my thought is if we were all pacifists the Axis powers would still be ruling the world and we’d all live under dictators. Still we probably should fight harder for peace then we do. Not sure what to do with this one.
Great stories, Great thoughts, Great Questions. Light on doctrine, heavy on trying to live out an authentic Christian life.
