I highly endorse this book as the authoritative source to navigate and filter all of your personal and business financial decisions through. It has received high acclaim and consumer acceptance since its release in 2005. The book features over 90 simple to use electronic calculators to assist in maximizing the saving and earning power of your complete financial portfolio. Also, it’s an outstanding purchase investment for the purchase price of $39.99. This price is less than half what a complete financial resource book like this would cost normally. It can be compared to current financial instruction and direction books from widely known Christian market authors and speakers like Dave Ramsey and Crown Financial Ministries. The purpose of this phenomenal book is to empower Christians worldwide in becoming victors over the financial resources that God has entrusted them with.

When it comes to personal finance instruction dedicated to reaching the masses with easy to understand and apply financial concepts and examples, Bill’s expertise and knowledge delivers strongly. Additionally, Bill is a contributing financial columnist to CBN.com with multiple articles to his credit.

Here are some other notable benefits of Making Money Work: A Christian Guide For Personal Finance from:
http://www.Making MoneyWork.us

1. Saves you time, money and work in analyzing personal financial decisions from 8th grade throughout your lifetime.
2. Helps you to get organized with your personal finances
and to keep you organized.
3. The book contains a wealth of information to help you
make wiser financial decisions. It contains over 200 easy-to-
understand illustrations.
4. The book is based on Biblical principles to help you
become a better steward of God’s resources.
5. The software contains over 90 easy-to-use electronic
calculators and worksheets to simplify your personal financial
decision making process.
6. It is a great educational tool.
7. It is unique in scope and application.
8. It is an incredible value for the purchase price of $39.99.

After hearing much about this book over the last year I finally picked it up and I am glad I did. Often for me there are books that I read where the author puts words to things I have intuitively sensed or thought about myself or what I see around me. Why Men Hate Going to Church was one of those books.

There is a huge gender gap in churches in the US today, in fact this is true around the world. The question that Murrow asks is, Why and what can we do about it. He sets out to help the reader understand what it is about our churches that actually drives men away. And as he progresses through the book the list of reasons grows astronomically.

Essentially, his argument is that the church has become feminized. That is, the church is a place where the average woman can feel quite comfortable because it is set up for her success. While, at the same time, most churches are set up for men to fail through incompetence (it’s a woman’s world). From the ways churches function to the way that conflict is dealt with, most churches cater to women. In fact, in studies sited, men who found art and religion important were more likely to have an effeminate outlook on life, that is they responded to the survey more like women.

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After finishing up The Art of Innovation: Lesson in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm I must say this might have been the best book, of its kind, that I have read this year. I was truly blown away about the process of innovation described that comes directly out of IDEO’s playbook.

If you’re unfamiliar with IDEA, formally, I guarantee you not unfamiliar with their design innovations. Having designed products from Apple to Microsoft, from Office Furniture to Medical Equipment, it seems difficult you have not run across one of their product designs. In fact if you have used a computer then you have surely used a mouse that began in their studio, having developed both the original single button design for Apple and a later 2 button design for Microsoft.

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I found my reading of John Moore’s Tribal Knowledge extremely rewarding. There were so many good thoughts in the book that seem to apply directly to ministry applications (find some of those here). So many in fact, it’s almost hard to know where to begin.

The book is broken into three main sections: brand(ing), customer experiences, workplace. With 47 chapters in a book only a little over 200 pages you can see how each would be quick snippets of knowledge from the Starbucks play book.

What is interesting about the Tribal Knowledge described in the book is that they are the result of creating a certain kind of cultural ethos and less about selling a commodity. Even in the company mantra the hope is to change the way people drink and appreciate coffee. For Starbucks, then, profits are a by-product of developing and implementing this cultural ethos.

Because they are committed to developing a certain kind of cultural ethos everything is an intentional process for them. I was surprised to learn that this went as far as the color schemes in their stores, which represent different phases of the coffee bean development. (And silly me just thought it looked cool.)

It’s this kind of intentionality that has a lot to teach us who are in ministry. What if instead of haphazard piecemeal processes and projects we developed a heightened intentionality to our ministry? What if we were intentional about creating a certain kind of cultural ethos in our local churches that would permeate our communities and bring certain (positive) images to mind when someone thought of the church? What if we were intentional about doing what we do best - becoming the best at something? (A phrase that comes to mind, though I’m not sure of its source but its surely not original to me, is that when everything is important nothing is important.)

Continue reading ‘Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom From the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture’

I just finished Randy Newman’s Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did. The book’s title isn’t a question, as if Newman is somehow questioning whether followers of Jesus should take part in evangelism. It’s, in a sense, a type of evangelism or a kind of way to engage people in spiritual conversations. And I think it is an excellent treatment of the subject. I think I appreciated it so much because it’s my hope to grow in my ability to ask the kinds of probing questions Jesus did. He was a master at asking great questions and I want to become like that.

If there are issues that cause greater frustration, guilt, and shame for the Jesus follower than evangelism I’d love to know what they are. How many well meaning Jesus followers have been put to shame because they know they aren’t doing all they could to introduce people to the One whom they follow? I know I’m in that group. In some ways reading this book was painful because I become more aware of how often I fail in this area.

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