At Linden Grove Ministries, we celebrate good reading and listening. Here are five more leadership-rich titles to help you survive the groundhog-predicted additional weeks of winter.

For many of us, reading more is a resolution we make each New Year. Maybe these titles will inspire you this winter as you build your 2022 reading habit.

Christmas is fast approaching: it’s time to choose this year’s Advent devotional. Choices abound. Some are centuries old; others with a 2021 publication date. Some last only until December 24/ 25: others continue through Epiphany. Some trace the Christmas story; others focus on the Incarnation. Some are for groups; others are for personal study. The point is: We await Christmas in many ways.

What do you pick up to read when your life has been shattered, when your 26-year old wife and mother of your 6-month old son has suffered a debilitating stroke, survived a 16-hour operation to save her life, and you are now sitting by her comatose body in the ICU? For Jay Wolf, the answer was the Book of Job. As he read, Jay was reminded that God provides healing hope. 

When we misunderstand the cultures that birthed the Scriptures (whether Bronze Age, Mesopotamia or late first century Rome), we often also misunderstand the Scriptures themselves. In Priscilla, Prof. Ben Witherington of Asbury Theological Seminary helps us understand not only the Early Church leader Priscilla (of Priscilla and Aquila fame) but also the world in which she served. Witherington accomplishes this through the medium of good historical fiction—verifiable facts inside believable fictional narrative. To bolster narrative choices, Witherington’s book includes relevant illustrations, including archaeological photographs and Latin and Greek translations. Priscilla demonstrates that history is engaging, its details and explanations clarifying, and its perspectives and concerns relevant.

Although he is a prolific writer, an internationally known leader, and a popular podcaster, Craig Groeschel found the success of his newest book surprising. Having garnered an Amazon five-star rating with over 3300 reviews, Winning the War in Your Mind speaks strongly about the why, what, and how of taking (as the Apostle Paul writes) “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5b, ESV). The power of Winning the War comes from its meshing of vulnerability and practicality. Groeschel, the pastor of Life.Church (multi-site megachurch and source of the YouVersion app), discusses how dryness and depression threatened to shipwreck his focus and ministry. Discovering that long-held, erroneous thought-patterns were stifling both his progress and his hope, Groeschel looked for and found a pathway back to his joy-filled self.

Too often we lack backstories about our heroes and heroines: instead, they seem to arrive grown, as in the ancient myth where Venus escapes fully-formed from Zeus’ head. But biblical theology teaches us that heroic qualities mature in the soil of everyday life, in the learning to say “no” to self and “yes” to God within a world of frustration and failure, hope and dream.