Below is my personal bookshelf for 2015. I have listed the books below broken down in the categories that I purposed to read in this past year. At the conclusion, I have posted a brief book review on my top three books of the year.

BIOGRAPHY

1) 41 – George Bush

2) Killing Jesus – Bill O’Riley 

3)  One Nation – Ben Carson

CHURCH/ CULTURE

4) Churchless: Understanding Today’s Unchurched and How to Connect with Them- George Barna

5) Just Do Something – Kevin DeYoung

6) What the Church Really Teaches about Homosexuality- Kevin DeYoung

LEADERSHIP

7) Leading On Empty – Wayne Cordeiro

8) Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance – Atul Gawande

9) The Leadership Handbook: 26 Critical Lessons Every Leader Needs – John Maxwell

MINISTRY

10) Sustainable Youth Ministry – Mark DeVries

11) Fish in a Tree – Lynda Hunt

PERSONAL

12) The Art of Stillness – Pico Iyer

13) Spiritual Leadership – J. Oswald Sanders

RELATIONSHIPS

14) Emotional Intelligence 2.0 – Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

15) Overcoming Emotions that Destroy: Practical help for Those Angry Feelings That Ruin Relationships- Chip Ingram

16) Praying Circles Around Your Kids – Mark Batterson

TOP 3 BOOKS OF 2015

1) Leading On Empty – Wayne Cordeiro

Tremendous read on tending to your soul. Every piece of the book was outstanding. I honed on Cordieo’s dashboard plan for his daily life. These are the things he strive to tend to on a daily/ weekly basis:

1. Faith Life
2. Marriage Life
3. Family Life
4. Office Life
5. Computer Life
6. Ministry Life
7. Financial Life
8. Social Life
9. Attitudinal Life
10. Author’s Life
11. Speaker’s Life
12. Physical Life

I think his dashboard is great. I took his idea and personalized the idea by breaking it down into an acronym of d.a.s.h.b.o.a.r.d. Instead of 12, my dashboard has 9 controls.

D.ad (Do at least one enriching thing a week with me and Rose)

A.ttitude (Helpful, encouraging, friendly, kind, thankful, flexible and patient)

S.pouse (Do at least one enriching thing a week with me and Wife)

H.ealth (Walk a minimum of 10,000 steps daily) 

B.ible (3 chapters a day, plus identify 1 observation)

O.ther (Keep my house in order)

A.uthor (Write on blog)

R.eading (1 chapter a day)

D.uty (Ministry- Tend to my ministerial responsibilities)

I encourage you to create your own dashboard to help to tend to your daily needs.

2) Praying Circles Around Your Kids – Mark Batterson

• This is an incredible companion to Batterson’s book, “The Circle Maker.” There is about 30% lap over from the original book. However, about 70% is new content of how to specifically apply prayer to your children. My wife, Bobbi, and I, instantly applied many of the prayer strategies to our daughter Rose. We created a “Prayer Checklist” for Rose and listed qualities that are prescriptive (what we desire to see) and descriptive (qualities she has that we want to encourage) that we are praying will come into fruition in her life. The second strategy we used was “Family Life Verses,” as Mark stetted, “Part of your role as prophet-historian is to know your children and know Scripture so you can train them in the way they should go.” The final strategy was to create a “Prayer Poster” of the nine qualities that we are praying for Rose so that, “the words we framed for her can begin to frame her. We want her to see herself in the light of her God-ordained identity and destiny.” 

3) Sustainable Youth Ministry – Mark DeVries

• This book could easily been titled, “Sustainable Ministry”, “Sustainable Home”, “Sustainable Schools”, “Sustainable Life”, “Sustainable ______________.” The point the author makes is in order to sustain anything worth while, you must have systems in place to do so. He talked about “Crisis of Capacity” where you can only grow to the capacity that has already been built in.  He then begins to give steps on how you can increase the capacity of your organization. This is a great read for ANYONE in leadership!