Growing in Grace: Resources, Spring 2023, Vol. 3
Quarterly mini-book reviews for Christian leaders
Spring brings renewed energy for reading. Enjoy!
Christian Leadership
Michael Bungay Stanier, The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious, and Change the Way You Lead Forever (Page Two, 2020).
Building on his 2016 hit The Coaching Habit, Bungay Stanier argues for leaders to tame their controlling monster with more listening and less telling, more questioning and less answering. His work is balanced, pointed, practical, and easily applicable.
Education
Jason Barney, Rethinking the Purpose of Education: A Critique of Bloom’s Taxonomy from a Classical Christian Perspective (Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues) (Independently Published, 2023).
What does it mean to write “classical” learning objectives? Experienced educator and administrator, Barney shows how Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues provide great goals for Christian classical lesson planning.
Understanding the Times
Isaac Adams, Talking About Race: Gospel Hope for Hard Conversations (Zondervan, 2022).
Everyone is talking about race, or intentionally not talking about race, but often not constructively. African-American pastor Isaac Adams offers a tragic fictional scenario as the jumping-off point for asking questions and analyzing divergent perspectives. To build up Christ’s multi-ethnic church, we believers need to talk honestly and biblically. This book is a useful tool to forward that end.
Discipleship
Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Zondervan Academic, 2022).
A critical theory explains and critiques a culture’s power structures. Watkin, a professor of modern history and thought, discusses the Bible’s teaching on culture and social relationships and shows the coherence of the biblical approach. Watkins also analyzes modern critical theories and shows how they prove wanting. Don’t let the long length of the book scare you: it reads easily and is worth your time and attention.
