Tim Casteel

Thoughts on Leadership and College Ministry

Tim Casteel

Turning Drowning Students into Christ-Centered Laborers

By

I don’t want to lead with Cru anymore – I just need to focus on self-care and my mental health.

– upperclassman student leader
Photo by Ian on Unsplash

On the college campus, with increasing frequency, we’re seeing upperclassmen leaders in our ministry struggling to keep their heads above water. Unable to personally thrive, they are completely unable to love and serve others. These are not average students – these are Bible study leaders who we’ve been discipling for a couple years.

Author and pastor Mark Sayers explains this same phenomena in his church in Australia:

“Thirty years ago we thought about people coming into a church and we had an assumption that they’ve got some basic functionality in their lives. Then we realised there’s a group who were coming in who were broken — maybe they had substance abuse, mental health challenges. But now I’d say it’s overwhelming — 90 per cent of people coming in need formation…Many struggle to have a conversation and they’re overwhelmed with social anxiety. So I think there’s a place for the Church to offer formational life skills, as part of the discipleship journey. It’s almost like we get to help people rebuild from the bottom up.”

We’ve long had the luxury of assuming students were coming into college with basic adult functionality and we could start with spiritual disciplines and quickly move to a missional lifestyle. Unfortunately that is often no longer the case.

For the last couple years, on our campus we have begun to focus on helping freshmen develop these formational life skills.

Sayers’s book Reappearing Church lays out three levels of formation:

  1. FORMING PATTERNS align us with the reality of how humans and God’s world work- learning the importance of diligence, of matching our words and actions, of integrating into our lives the values of delaying gratification for greater goals and being responsible for the consequences of our actions.
  2. DISCIPLESHIP PATTERNS align us with God’s kingdom, creating habits and disciplines in our lives that shape us for God’s kingdom, shaping us into Christlikeness and Christlike community.
  3. INFLUENCING PATTERNS align us with God’s mission in the world, forming within us patterns that spread the presence of God into the whole world. These patterns take us beyond ourselves, reconnecting us with our mandate to spread God’s presence in the world.

We’ve adapted Sayers ideas into a pyramid of formation: personal, spiritual and missional. 

Like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I believe these three are sequential: the foundational needs must be met before progressing to a higher level. If a student feels like they are drowning personally it is difficult to establish spiritual disciplines and there is no way they can focus on others and live on mission. It does little good to talk about sharing the gospel with their classmates if their personal life is chaotic and exhausting, they’re not sleeping enough, spending 10 hours a day on screens, and experiencing crippling social anxiety. You’re adding weight to a crumbling foundation.

“The number one enemy of Christian spiritual formation today is exhaustion.” 

The Good and Beautiful God- James Bryan Smith

Selfish self-care vs self-discipline leading to sacrificial service

This is not to say that they have to only work on (and perfect) the first level of personal formation before they can progress. As Tara Isabella Burton observed in her book Strange Rites, “because the work of ‘self-care’ is never complete, care for the other is never quite justified.”  

This is not a self-care that terminates on one’s self. Godly personal formation cannot end on itself. It is going somewhere. It is Godward and others-focused self-discipline. 

If we don’t help students build some personal disciplines they will remain trapped in a self-centered world of never-ending self-care. Starting with personal formation is a compassionate lifeline to a drowning student to get their head above water so they can care for ‘the other’. 

I firmly believe God uses the weak and weary as his chief ambassadors of the gospel, “to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (II Corinthians 4:7) But I believe some basic personal habits can quickly help students move from anxious and overwhelmed to growing and able to serve.

Matt Perman in his productivity book What’s Best Next asserts that “our ability to spend undistracted time with friends and family” and to sacrificially serve others around us “depends largely upon a skill that goes underneath all of those things and makes them all possible – knowing how to manage ourselves.” Personal discipline “amplifies our ability to do good.”

Glorifying God by doing good is what we were created to do (Ephesian 2:10; Titus 2:14). A Godward life focused on others is the heart of personal formation. We train ourselves to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions”, to “live self-controlled and godly lives” in order to “devote ourselves to good works” (Titus 2:12; 3:8)

This Godward, others-focused purpose turns self-care into worshipful self-discipline. It is an hour-by-hour presenting of our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. This IS how we worship God. By letting his Word form and transform us (Romans 12:1-2) in order to serve others. 

The foundation of all our doing: we have value that is given not earned.

We live in an Achievement Society where we only have worth if we are getting things done. Our common modern ailments – anxiety, exhaustion, boredom, and despair – are all rooted in our inability to rest, to not work. And harder still: to not feel guilty when we’re not working.

“Be at rest – and know that I am God” is the antidote.

Here is the core truth that undergirds all of our formation: we have value that is given not earned.

The power for our personal, spiritual and missional formation “comes from realizing that, through faith in the gospel, we are accepted by God in Christ apart from what we do.” Matt Perman

Our inability to accept grace is at the root of our need to perform and achieve. Philosopher and University of Münster professor (1950-1976), Josef Peiper, in his book Leisure, the Basis of Culture, explains- 

Our modern “over-emphasis on effort appears to be this: that man mistrusts everything that is without effort; that in good conscience he can own only what he himself has reached through painful effort; that he refuses to let himself be given anything.” 

This stands in direct contradiction to our acceptance in Christ as “something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved.” Dr. Pieper.

Ironically, we have to learn to rest and not-do before we can learn to work hard for the glory of God. Only a person at rest, secure in the grace of God, can progress to spiritual and missional formation.

This is the logical progression of the great New Testament passages that call us to do good works: Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 2:11-14 and 3:3-7; Romans 12:1-2. Grace (not-doing) leads to a zeal to do good works. We have value that is given not earned. Therefore we can “spend and be spent” for others.

The format: three weeks- cycling through the three levels 

On our campus we have started to meet with small groups of emerging freshmen leaders for three weekly sessions, cycling through the three levels: personal, spiritual and missional formation. It’s almost too late to tack this on to discipleship with upperclassmen.

These freshmen are already in Bible studies, and some are beginning to be discipled by student leaders. We typically start these three week sessions in late fall or early spring (as we begin to see who the emerging freshmen leaders are). My female co-leader and I challenge 10-15 students each and meet with them with the main goal of helping them develop basic-functioning life skills.
The hope is that this will produce juniors/seniors who are emotionally healthy, whole, Christ-centered laborers (for the rest of their lives!).

So far, we’ve (my co-leader, Samantha Barnes, and I) developed two sets of three:

Feel free to copy and paste and improve!

They’re still a work in progress – the first three are better than the second three (though 2.1 might be the best!).

For the personal formation level, what other topics would you want to cover?

Here’s a list of re-formation topics I’d like to develop:

  • From total work to true rest
    • A “non-anxious presence” in the Achievement Society; rejecting the treadmill of achievement.
  • From performing to being formed
    • From self rule to Christ is King
  • From self-Care to self-discipline for the purpose of loving God and others
  • From individualistic freedom to committed community 
  • From I-tired to We-tired (moving toward community when you’re tired, instead of isolating)
  • From passivity to agency (Phil 4:8 – Dealing with anxiety or things we can’t control)
  • From enslavement-to-desires to freedom in the Rule of Christ
  • From distraction to depth
  • From pleasure to self-denying, sacrificial service
  • From “frantic busyness and chronic distraction–to a life of restfulness and wonder.” (Buchanan – The Rest of God)

My Top Books of 2020

By

I love when others take the time to share their book recs (and brief write-ups so I can see if the book interests me). So in the spirit of Do Unto Others…

I’d highly recommend all of these books listed below. They’re all good. I’ve ranked them (so you can read the best first!) and put them in categories to make it easier to find something you want to read- whether it’s growing in your faith, reading for fun (fiction!), learning more about Race, or reading to to understand our chaotic world.

Overall, here’s the Top Dozen Books I read in 2020:

  1. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self – Carl Trueman
  2. Gentle and Lowly – Dane Ortlund
  3. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity–and Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose
  4. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation – James K.A. Smith
  5. Leisure: The Basis of Culture – Josef Pieper
  6. Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World - Tara Isabella Burton
  7. Black Rednecks and White Liberals – Thomas Sowell
  8. The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath – Mark Buchanan
  9. The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois
  10. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads – Tim Wu
  11. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport
  12. A Secular Age – Charles Taylor

And here they are, ranked in order of amazing-ness, by genre (all links are to my full Goodreads review).

Christian Devotional Books

  1. Gentle and Lowly - Dane Ortlund
    • Definitely the book I recommended the most in 2020. Very accessible yet incredibly deep. An instant Christian classic.
    • “This book is written…for those whose Christian lives feel like constantly running up a descending escalator.
    • Matthew 11 tells us explicitly who qualifies for fellowship with Jesus: “all who labor and are heavy laden.
    • You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come.”
  2. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation – James K.A. Smith
    • Still chewing on this book because it’s so counter to my nature. Smith argues that we are not thinking things. We are primarily desiring, worshipping things. So the way to change is not through information. But by re-forming our desires through new habits. And I think he’s right.
  3. The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath – Mark Buchanan –
    • I read this book in January pre-quarantine and it prepared me for the chaos of 2020. Really helped me understand Sabbath. Sabbath is not something we do when we’ve finished our to-do list. “Sabbath is a reprieve from what you ought to do, even though the list of oughts is infinitely long and never done…at the heart of worship is rest–a stopping from all work, all worry, all scheming, all fleeing–to stand amazed and thankful before God and his work. There can be no real worship without true rest.”
  4. Inexpressible: Hesed and the Mystery of God’s Lovingkindness – Michael Card –
    • Inexpressible is the kind of book where you get more than you bargained for. Michael Card is full of wisdom, and profoundly understands the Bible. So you learn about Hesed, but in the process you learn to better read the Bible (which is my favorite kind of book).
  5. The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ – James Bryan Smith
  6. Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission as Strangers in our Own Land – Elliot Clark
  7. Is the Bible Good for Women? – Wendy Alsup
  8. Another Gospel – Alisa Childers
    • Would have been higher if I liked apologetics. And if she would have not been so focused on critiquing progressive ‘christians’. It’s the most accessible, succinct apologetics book I’ve read (but I rarely read on apologetics!).

Understanding the Times 

(once again this year, this was my favorite category!)

  1. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self – Carl Trueman
    • This is not an easy read. Trueman traces the philosophical roots that made the phrase “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” a normal phrase in 2020. One of Trueman’s great gifts to us as readers is taking very dense philosophical writings and explaining them simply: Writers/thinkers like Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Marcuse and Freud. “Put simply (or as simply as possible, given that this is Hegel and Marx)…”
    • “Understanding the times is a precondition of responding appropriately to the times. And understanding the times requires a knowledge of the history that has led up to the present.”
  2. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity–and Why This Harms Everybody – Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
    • Two atheists (who are pro gay rights) fear that Theory is destroying Western Civilization. Theory cannot build up, it can only tear down: “Equal access to rubble is not a worthy goal.”
    • This relatively concise book covers a lot of ground re Theory: Gender, Queer, Critical Race, Post-Colonialism, Ableism, and the shift from individual rights to identity groups. The authors do an admirable job explaining the intentionally cryptic writing of Theory (one of the beliefs of Theory is that embedded in language are unjust power structures, and therefore language itself is suspect and should be queered (made fluid and incoherent))
    • Theory= THE truth that cannot be argued with. A metanarrative that denies all metanarratives. A radical skepticism that assumes power inequality.
    • After reading, I feel like I finally have a grasp on things like the distinction between Sex/Gender/Sexual Orientation.
  3. Leisure: The Basis of Culture – Josef Pieper
    • Published in 1948, Leisure could not be any more relevant to the “Achievement Society” of 2020.
    • Leisure is the best kind of book – brief, dense but accessible, a secular academic work but deeply religious, and packed with gold. I mean, TS Eliot wrote the introduction. You know it’s gonna be profound.
    • True leisure is the antidote to what ails our “total work” world (where we only have worth if we are getting things done). Our common experience as moderns – boredom, anxiety, exhaustion, and despair – are all rooted in the “absence of leisure, for only someone who has lost the spiritual power to be at leisure can be bored. And then Despair, the sister of Restlessness, rears its hideous head.”
    • “Be at leisure – and know that I am God” is the antidote.
  4. Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World – Tara Isabella Burton
    • A friend of mine put it well: Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self explains how we got to now. Strange Rites vividly depicts what now looks like. A deep dive into the non-spiritual ‘religions’ of 2020 – LGBTQ, Wiccan, fitness groups, fandoms, incels, etc.
    • Lesslie Newbigin prophetically wrote in the 1980’s:
      • [There is no such thing as] “a secular society in which…there are no commonly acknowledged norms. Human nature abhors a vacuum. The shrine does not remain empty. If the one true image, Jesus Christ, is not there, an idol will take its place.”
    • Strange Rites enumerates the many American idols that have taken the place of traditional religion.
    • Written before the chaos of 2020, Burton predicted two likely candidates to become the predominant American secular ‘religions’:
      • Social Justice
      • Right Wing White Supremacy
  5. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads – Tim Wu
    • Such a helpful and enjoyable book. A surprisingly spiritual, deep (though not difficult) read. 
    • Tim Wu really is a remarkable writer- not only giving a very readable “how we got to now” history of the attention economy (advertising/marketing and the rapid progression of radio–>TV–>smartphones) but also digging deeper into the Faustian bargain we strike in all the “free” apps we use. Wu builds a case that the Attention Merchants are not evil, but they do control you.
    • The best and brightest minds in America are spending billions seeking to gain more of our attention. They do not have your best interests in mind. No one will legislate the Attention Merchants. We each must choose to take back control of our attention. 
    • “As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. We are at risk, without quite fully realizing it, of living lives that are less our own than we imagine.”
  6. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport
    • “Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.”
    • “The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.”
  7. A Secular Age – Charles Taylor
    • A sprawling epic of 900 dense pages that explains how we got from a world in 1500 where belief in God was all but inevitable to 2000 where belief in God is unlikely. This is what I call a Source book. A fountainhead book from which hundreds of other books flow. Worth trudging through, even if much goes over your head. I’d recommend reading How (Not) to Be Secular by James KA Smith first. Then read A Secular Age. Then read Disruptive Witness by Alan Noble and Our Secular Age. How Not To will give you the framework needed to understand and digest Taylor’s massive tome. Disruptive and Our Secular will help you apply it (and, especially if you are Protestant, to interpret it).
  8. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World – Cal Newport
    • Digital Minimalism was written to help us find a way “to be fully human.” The main obstacle= our phones. Super helpful book.
  9. How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor – James KA Smith
    • A brilliant distillation of Taylor’s A Secular Age. But if you’re looking for the SparkNotes to A Secular Age, keep looking.
    • This is not a light read. Here’s a sample sentence: “In other words, hermeneutic phenomenology’s critique of foundationalism and correspondence theories of truth should also underwrite a critique of closed spin.”
    • Thanks James KA. I know EXACTLY what you mean.😂
    • Usually when someone write “in other words” you’re about to get a more understandable version…
  10. How to Reach the West Again: Six Essential Elements of a Missionary Encounter – Tim Keller
    • So much wisdom in this short little book. Worth reading if only for the footnotes – to see which books have been most helpful to Keller in understanding the collapse of Western Civilization and the decline of American Christianity.
  11. Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm – Mark Sayers
  12. Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents – Rod Dreher
    • Dreher is a bit Chicken Little “the sky is falling!” for my tastes. But I did find his logic compelling as he sounds the alarm re progressive Orwellian speech control. This book (and Jordan Peterson!) made me want to read and understand Gulag Archipelago. To understand totalitarianism and understand what might be happening in our country. Whether you think Twitter et al were justified in silencing right wing insurrectionists, Dreher’s book predicted the danger of tech corporations controlling free speech (and raises the alarm re a surveillance state). Most helpfully, he highlights the faith and courage of Christians from Eastern Europe.
  13. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life – Nir Eyal
    • Nir Eyal wrote the book on how to make apps that suck up all your time. Literally, Eyal wrote the book used by Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.
    • So Eyal wrote the antidote, Indistractable, to help us fight back against the distraction of our phones, a superpower Eyal calls the “the most important skill for the twenty-first century.”
    • Indistractable is surprisingly spiritual. Eyal spends the first 1/5th of the book digging into the question: “Why are we perpetually restless and unsatisfied?”
    • “In the future, there will be two kinds of people in the world: those who let their attention and lives be controlled and coerced by others and those who proudly call themselves ‘indistractable.”
    • “Being indistractable means striving to do what you say you will do. If you care about your work, your family, and your physical and mental well-being, you must learn how to become indistractable.”
  14. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics – Ross Douthat
  15. Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age – Tony Reinke
    • A deep dive into how images effect us spiritually.
    • Some good insights on boredom and our zero-sum attention. “We are creatures shaped by what grabs our attention — and what we give our attention to becomes our… reality. We become like what we watch.”

Race

  1. The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois
    • Written around the turn of the century (early 1900’s), it is heart-breaking that this book is just as relevant as the day it was written: “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”
    • Brilliantly insightful and gut-punchingly honest:
      • “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife…He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
  2. Black Rednecks and White Liberals – Thomas Sowell
    • I’m guessing this book is controversial. But two things that stood out:
      • Why did Slavery, an accepted reality in EVERY civilization since the beginning of recorded history, disappear in a matter of 100 years? The ability to see slavery as evil could only could be found in Christianity. And it was the might of the British navy that forced other cultures to see things their way: “It was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery.”
      • He believes it a debilitating message to “treat the history of blacks as the history of white people’s treatment of blacks”.
  3. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope – Esau McCaulley
    • A hopeful and insightful book. Particularly helpful: McCaulley shows how conservative black theologians have felt stuck between liberal white/black churches (that are talking about issues that matter to black people) and conservative white churches (that have good theology but totally ignore black issues).
    • Worth reading alone for the chapters on “The Bible and Black Anger” and Slavery
  4. The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism – Jemar Tisby
    • I’ve read 40 books on racism/justice and this book might move to the top of the list as the first book I’d recommend reading to begin to understand racism in the American church.
    • Tisby achieves the admirable feat of synthesizing 400 years of history (and thorough Doctoral research) into a very readable 200 pages.
    • Despite the negative picture (which I think is right, and needed) I appreciate Tisby’s obvious love for the church. “My concern for the church and for the well-being of its people motivates my exploration of Christian complicity in racism. The goal is to build up the body of Christ by ‘speaking the truth in love,’ even if that truth comes at the price of pain.”
  5. Being Latino in Christ: Finding Wholeness in Your Ethnic Identity – Orlando Crespo
    • Beneficial for any ethnicity to learn from (like me: I’m a middle aged white man). Hopeful and honest.
    • The “Ethnic Identity/Assimilation Grid” alone is worth the price of the book! VERY helpful, especially for ethnic minorities (or anyone that cares about ethnic minorities).
    • I appreciate Crespo’s balance between giving attention to understanding our ethnicity “without falling into idolatry of ethnicity.”
  6. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl – Harriet Ann Jacobs
    • The brutal autobiography of a slave girl in the 1800’s.
  7. The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best – Irwyn L. Ince Jr.
    • Deeply theological.
  8. Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery – Mark Charles
    • Charles, a Native American, pens a scathing critique of white American Evangelicalism. I disagreed with a lot in this book. But I always appreciate unfiltered truth and honesty.

NonFiction

  1. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams – Matthew Walker M.D.
    • Fascinating. Partly because we still understand so little about sleep. And partly because what we DO know is that sleep is a “remarkable Swiss Army knife of health and wellness.”
    • Sleep helps you in ALL areas of life: physically (athletes who sleep more, perform better), emotionally (sleeping is like a free counseling appointment every night as your brain is washed with soothing hormones, helping you cope with the stress/trauma of the day), and mentally (cognitive ability is directly tied to amount of sleep).
    • “There does not seem to be one major organ within the body, or process within the brain, that isn’t optimally enhanced by sleep (and detrimentally impaired when we don’t get enough).
  2. Gulag Archipelago (abridged) - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
    • Gulag is worth reading for Solzhenitsyn’s insights into the roots of evil. It’s essentially a 500 page meditation on evil. Where does it come from? How do we prevent the Gulag-kind-of-evil that makes Hitler’s concentration camps pale in comparison?
  3. The Body: A Guide for Occupants – Bill Bryson
    • “Most of the best technology on earth is right here inside us.” Bryson makes learning fun. A fascinating tour through the wonder of the human body and medical history (which leads me to worship, even if the author is staunchly atheist).
    • “Until 1900 you had a less than 50% chance of a doctor helping you rather than hurting you.”
  4. Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory – Peter Hessler
    • Fun way to learn about a rapidly modernizing China. Hessler is a great storyteller.
  5. The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
    • The best short book I’ve read on finances and investing. VERY helpful and concise.
  6. The 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene
    • How to murder, steal, and lie your way to the top. No hyperbole. The positive role models set forth are admirable folks like Mao Zedong (who likely killed more people than Hitler) and Empress Wu (who smothered her own baby to frame/kill her nemesis and ascend to the throne).
    • 5 stars for fascinating stories, great writing, and often-brilliant psychological insight.
    • 1 star for evilness.
  7. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
    • Maybe the most horrifying book I’ve ever read. Perhaps eclipsing the concentration camps or Gulags, the Rape of Nanking was pure evil. Like Gulag, this book is “a personal exploration into the shadow side of human nature.” I’ve been to the Nanking Massacre Museum a couple times, so this book was especially poignant.
  8. Rich Dad, Poor Dad – Robert T. Kiyosaki
    • A few nuggets of gold in this classic investing/personal finance book.
  9. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life – Scott Adams
    • A very uneven book- brilliant practical wisdom on how to succeed, mixed with bizarre beliefs (“The Secret”-esque Affirmations- “if you believe it, it will happen”; we are all holograms created by aliens, etc), cheap shots at religion, and 100% wrong views on human nature (happiness comes from being rich and famous and consuming feel good entertainment- at all costs: avoid depressing books/movies – Adams would NOT like my book list!). 
    • But it’s the most fun you’ll have while learning about leadership and success!
  10. A Prayer for Orion: A Son’s Addiction and a Mother’s Love – Katherine James
  11. The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 – Garrett M. Graff
  12. Flu: The Story Of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It – Gina Kolata

Fiction

  1. The Death of Ivan Ilych – Leo Tolstoy
    • What a depressing, profoundly moving little book. Tolstoy is so gifted at articulating the inexpressible, in this case: the inner thoughts and swirling turmoil of a dying man. 
    • We are all a rock dropping from the sky, increasing in speed, hurling toward an impact with the earth.
    • So how should we then live?
  2. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
    • This is the first Dickens book that I’ve read and I’m joining the Dickens fan club. Such a clever, talented writer. I really think he’s going to be big someday!
    • Incredible plot, scores of memorable characters, and full of great moral truths and justice. Such a deep meditation on the value of loyal friends over the empty pursuit of worldly gain. Incredible virtuous characters to emulate and foolish characters to learn by.
    • And one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read.
  3. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
    • Many consider it the greatest novel of all time. Not for the faint of heart. Full of amazing writing. But parts of it are a slog…
    • I rarely will underline as I read fiction books but I underlined 100 different passages in Anna Karenina- mostly because of the beauty of the prose, sometimes because Tolstoy articulated so well something I’ve felt but never seen put to words.
  4. The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) – J.R.R. Tolkien
    • Read this with two of my boys. Such fun.
  5. The Devil – Leo Tolstoy
    • Another short story – on the power of lust to destroy a life.
  6. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
    • Not the easiest book to read. The writing is wooden (the opposite of Dickens/Tolstoy) and difficult to follow (I would read the Spark notes after most chapters to make sure I understood what was happening!).
    • But the plot is incredible and moving. Its themes have been constantly on my mind since I’ve been reading it- the devouring effects of hidden sin, the pharisaical hypocrisy of the self righteous, the humility and empathy that stems from an awareness of your own sin.
  7. The Stranger – Albert Camus
    • Helped me understand Existentialism, one of THE predominant modern beliefs (and the message behind Pixar’s new movie Soul). Such a depressing worldview/book.
    • “Since God does not exist and man dies, everything is permissible. One experience is as good as another; the important thing is simply to acquire as many as possible…all values collapse”
    • I can’t think of a better summary of Instagram in 2020: life is found in acquiring as many as experiences as possible.
  8. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
  9. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne (bit of a slog – but worth it, to read a sci-fi classic)
  10. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  11. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Would love to hear from you – what were your favorite books you read in 2020?

What if there’s no fall? College ministry on an empty campus

By

How do you plan for a fall of ministry with the looming possibility of no college students on campus?

Let’s talk about:

  1. What we know right now
  2. What we can do about it

What we Know Right Now

One thing is for certain, a LOT is going to change over the summer in the world of Higher Ed. Here’s what we know right now in late April 2020:

  • There’s a good chance the fall will be online
    • The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a very helpful List of Colleges’ Plans for Reopening in the Fall
    • As of mid-May, the California State University system, the largest in the country, has said it will conduct most classes online.
    • May 19 Update: Notre Dame and South Carolina announced similar plans: forgoing fall break and ending their semester before Thanksgiving. Notre dame will also start the fall 2 weeks early.
    • On the flip side – Purdue University, on Tuesday, April 21, said they intend to bring students back to campus in August”. University of Oklahoma declared on April 24: “after careful deliberation, our intention is to return to in-person educational operations by this fall.” And Baylor‘s President on April 27: “We intend to safely resume in-person teaching, learning and residential life for the fall 2020 semester” though she adds: “we are not planning for a ‘normal start’ of the fall semester, given the lack of a treatment protocol or vaccine for COVID-19.”
      • April 30 Update: almost all of the schools announcing this week are moving toward reopening campuses for Fall 2020. In my neck of the woods: OU, Baylor, Texas Tech and Texas A&M.
      • Texas Tech added some interesting insight: ““Strategies for fall instruction will involve a blend of online and face-to-face classes for some students. We need to recognize that campus life will be different when we return in the fall. We are developing several ways to reduce the density of groups in our student facilities, large lecture-based classrooms, and our popular campus areas. These same plans extend to… athletics.”
      • Despite the sudden shift toward optimistic predictions, I think we should be wary and prepare for the worst:
        • Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College bluntly tweeted: “No one wants to say the simple truth: College campuses are the perfect breeding ground for COVID-19.”
        • Jeff Selingo, an expert on college admissions, pulls back the curtain re Higher Ed’s sudden optimism: “With every survey of would-be students and current students (or parents) showing the potential of big enrollment shifts (staying closer to home, for instance) or big declines (taking a year off), institutions are getting nervous about the fall. That’s why we’re seeing so many announcements now about what the fall will look like–with most institutions saying they intend to be back on campus.”
          • In other words – they can’t afford to lose more students/$$ and are just trying to stop the hemorrhaging (its financially better for them to declare “we’ll be open” and change course later, if needed).
    • West Virginia is looking at three options for the fall:
      1. “on-campus instruction with social distancing measures in place;
      2. delayed arrival on campus with partial online instruction; or
      3. online instruction for the fall semester.”
    • UCF released the scenarios they’re preparing for. The worst case – no students on campus until Fall 2021.
  • Many universities are facing catastrophic financial losses, some will not survive. 
    • The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports that the University of Wisconsin estimated “it will lose $170 million in the spring semester alone from refunding room, dining, and parking fees to students…The pandemic has put unprecedented stress on colleges and their leaders.” The University of Michigan anticipates losses of up to one billion dollars.
    • “It’s not a question of whether institutions will be forced to permanently close, it’s how many.” Brown University President Christina Paxson in the New York Times
    • The President of Arizona State with great imagery: [we are] “a battleship in heavy seas, 40-foot waves. The entire front end of this battleship is under the wave [but] we’re doing okay. But…there are now rogue 100-foot waves out there: A loss of international students, a loss of out-of-state student revenue, a decrease in the investment from the state legislature.”
    • If you work with the admin at your university, this is a great time to show care and compassion.
  • The fall on campus could be interrupted at any moment.
    • “Even if the virus does appear to be contained enough for a regular move-in day in August, a new outbreak in October or November could dictate a repeat of the scrambles of March.” – Chronicle of Higher Ed (Singapore is a notable example right now of a country that had Covid under control and is now experiencing a second, worse outbreak.)
  • There will likely be smaller Freshman Classes
    • “20-25% of high-school seniors tell pollsters they are likely to defer admission for a year or go to school part-time (source)”
  • Study abroad will likely be cancelled (Fulbright cancelled already)
  • We will have dramatically less International Students
    • UCF’s best case scenario (above) has zero new international students – from my understanding any international students already in the U.S. can attend. But even in best case scenario there will be hardly any international students on campus in the fall.
    • Update: in a survey released in mid-May: “colleges said less than 10 percent of their international students had left the country and gone home. The rest remained either on campus or somewhere else in the United States. It suggests that most current international students should be able to make it to campus in the fall, or at least they don’t face greater impediments to returning than domestic students do.”

What we can do about it

  • Delay planning for the fall. We typically plan for the fall in early May before staff leave for summer assignments. This year we’ve pencilled planing in for June 8-10. Our university chancellor said they’d likely announce their fall plans in early June. No use making a ton of detailed plans in May if they’re going to be irrelevant.
  • Start making contingency plans for no students on campus in the fall.
    • Carey Nieuwhof has great insight on leading during a pandemic:
      • “In non-crisis conditions, your methods may have a 6 month to 5-year shelf life.  In a crisis, your methods can expire in minutes or days. 
      • The model is temporary, but the mission is eternal. The mission is sharing the Gospel, the method was in-person gatherings.
      • The agile leader doesn’t have all the answers. He or she is simply committed to continually asking questions. Agile leaders are willing to continually sacrifice methods to advance the mission.”
    • Unless you’re at Cal State Fullerton, I don’t think it’s worth making real specific plans. But it’s worth putting down some initial sketches:
      • How will you meet freshmen?
      • If things open for a month or two, can you bring your leaders together for an on-site retreat/conference/short summer mission?
      • What will we do if campus opens up then has to shut again in October because of a new outbreak?
        • Practical suggestion- make sure any deposits for Fall Retreat, meeting spaces, Winter Conference are refundable.
      • Even if students ARE on campus, what if we can’t have meetings > 10 people?
      • Andy Crouch is recommending pastors ask “how we will accomplish our mission if no gatherings of >100 are allowed for at least a year.” This would rule out most Fall Retreats and all Winter Conferences.
      • Even if we can have large meetings, should we?
        • This is a question we will need to ask for the next 2 years. The perception from the community/public could be “that large Christian gatherings are putting public health at risk.” We might need to be prepared to
          1. only have small groups or
          2. be ready for the massively bad PR
        • Religious events composed a good number of the “superspreading events” (SSEs) scientists are tracking. “When do COVID-19 SSEs happen? Based on the list I’ve assembled, the short answer is: Wherever and whenever people are up in each other’s faces, laughing, shouting, cheering, sobbing, singing, greeting, and praying…[They all] involved the same type of behaviour: extended, close-range, face-to-face conversation–typically in crowded, socially animated spaces.” That sounds a bit like college ministry.
      • The Aspen Group has a free pdf for churches of additional questions to think through post-quarantine ministry that might be helpful for staff planning. A couple of them:
        • What new ways of doing ministry that we adopted during the pandemic should carry over into the future of our church?
        • How will social distancing practices change the way people gather and interact within our building [weekly meeting]?
  • Stay Informed – a few resources to stay informed (so you can make educated decisions):
    • The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a constantly updating site: Live Updates: Latest News on Coronavirus and Higher Education
    • This Freakonomics podcast is enormously insightful- a peak behind the curtain re what Presidents of universities are thinking re Fall 2020: What Will College Look Like in the Fall (and Beyond)?
    • Follow Jeff Selingo and Lindsay Ellis on Twitter – daily updates from experts on coronavirus related decisions in Higher Ed.
    • Follow Andy Crouch on Twitter – he’s consistently been the most wise Christian voice re leading in the pandemic
    • Subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education – this is what college presidents and Deans are reading every morning as they make policy decisions. In this time of uncertainty, it’s probably worth the $119 annual subscription.
  • Trust God
    • This global pandemic reminds us that we don’t control much. The primary way we express our trust in God is prayer. We can make contingency plans, stay up to date, and pray.
    • “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom. 11:33)
    • Paul says that as worship. And we can too.
    • I love this from John Piper in his (free!) book Coronavirus and Christ:
      • “We may think the coronavirus outbreak is a setback for world missions. I doubt it. God’s ways often include apparent setbacks that result in great advances.
      • Even pandemics will serve to complete the Great Commission.”

What is your team doing re planning for contingencies?

Top 10 Books on Technology

By

I read about things that bother me, that I can’t quite figure out. When I was in college I read 20+ books on dating (I never quite figured it out)!

Over the last decade, one particular issue has plagued me and pushed me to read – why does the iPhone exert such a gravitational pull on me? And what is that doing to me/us spiritually?

These are the 10 Books on Technology that were the most helpful for me (in order of helpfulness).

1) The Next Story by Tim Challies

This book changed my life. When I read this in 2011 I was very addicted to this new technology called an iPhone.

The key to loosening its hold – trying to understand the “why.” What was I looking for in constantly checking my phone?

For me it was Informationism. Informationism is “a non-discerning vacuous faith in the collection and dissemination of information as a route to…personal happiness” (can any other Enneagram 5s relate??).

Major takeaways:

Distraction is the biggest threat to my walk with God. “Distraction is the enemy of deep thinking.” A distracted life is a shallow life.

I believe that more information is what I need. When in fact, “More information may lead to less wisdom.” I need to take in less information and seek more wisdom.

The two chapters on distraction and the flood of information are worth the price of the book.

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

2) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Written in 1985, Amusing could not be more relevant to our modern world and humankind’s endless appetite for distraction. Postman has an incredible ability to make sense of vast amounts of history- to explain how (and why) we got to now, especially as it relates to technology.

Postman explains so much of our world- how technology affects our ability to think, and the resulting effects: anxiety and outrage (instead of reasoned discourse).

Postman puts into words what many of us feel — the glut of information causes anxiety, incoherence, and impotence. In the place of meaning, technology gives us amusement. 

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

3) The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains — Nicholas Carr

The Shallows is pretty dated (pre Instagram!) but, nonetheless, is packed with relevant wisdom and insight.

It’s worth the price of the book for Carr’s insights on how we learn: how our brains retain information and are reprogrammed, comparing it to filling a bathtub with a thimble.

“When we read a book, the information faucet provides a steady drip, which we can transfer, thimbleful by thimbleful, into long-term memory & forge the rich associations essential to the creation of schemas [complex, “thick” understanding].

Technology’s “frequent interruptions”, on the other hand, “scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious”.

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

4) iGen by Dr. Jean Twenge

Researcher and professor Dr. Jean Twenge has done extensive research on this generation of college students and found that there is just one activity that is significantly correlated with anxiety, loneliness, and depression: Screen Time (and girls are more affected by this than boys).

This book seems to be THE go-to book on GenZ that other books reference (it’s definitely my favorite that I’ve read re understanding this generation).

“There is a simple, free way to improve mental health: put down the phone, and do something else.”

5) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

In our distracted age, book readers almost possess superhuman ability- the ability to think deeply.

The classic dystopian book Fahrenheit 451 illustrates the devastating effects and societal breakdown caused by the rise of technology and decline of reading.

But it ends with a tiny glimmer of hope: a small band of apocalypse survivors, huddled around a fire quoting memorized books (including Bible passages!). They are the hope of the world.

Aside from Harry Potter, this is my favorite fiction book.

6) Disruptive Witness by Alan Noble

“To be a follower of Christ in the early twenty-first century requires a way of being in the world that resists being sucked into the numbing glare of [our phones].”

Alan Noble is the first I’ve seen to address both phones and secularism, applying Taylor’s A Secular Age to the digital age.

“distraction & secularism…perpetuate each other: we long for distraction in part because we are terrified of living in a meaningless world, & we struggle to discover a satisfying sense of fullness in the world because we’re constantly distracted”

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

7) The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch

Practical tips:

This short little book is practical and profound.

  • We wake up before our devices do, and they “go to bed” before we do.
  • We aim for “no screens before double digits” at school and at home (no devices before age 10).
  • Car time is conversation time.
  • Spouses have one another’s passwords, and parents have total access to children’s devices.

8) 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke

This is actually the first book I recommend to college students because it’s an easy read and applicable to a wide range of phone-addictions.

Wasn’t as helpful for me personally, but it seems to have the broadest appeal/application.

9) Indistractable by Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal wrote the book on how to make apps that suck up all your time. Literally, Eyal wrote the book used by Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

Eyal wrote Indistractable to help us fight back against the distraction of our phones, a superpower Eyal calls the “the most important skill for the twenty-first century.”

For a secular book, Indistractable is surprisingly spiritual. Eyal spends the first 1/5th of the book digging into the question: “Why are we perpetually restless and unsatisfied?”

Our phones don’t distract us- we look to numb pain by looking at our phones. Ouch.

10) Competing Spectacles by Tony Reinke

A deep dive into how images effect us spiritually.

Some good insights on boredom and our zero-sum attention. “We are creatures shaped by what grabs our attention – and what we give our attention to becomes our… reality. We become like what we watch.”

Top 10 Books of the 2010s

By

The 2010s were for me the decade I learned to love reading. In 2015 I decided I wanted to read more – I read 17 books. The next year 52. In 2017, 100. And 100 again in 2018. In 2019 I wanted to read less and synthesize more, so I read 67.

Of the close to 400 books I read this decade, these are the 10 best. Or I should say – these 10 books changed my life in the 2010’s. They’re ranked in order of impact on my life. Because one thing I like more than reading, is sharing life-changing books with others!

1) The Next Story by Tim Challies

Of all the books on this list, this one probably changed me the most. When I read this in 2011 I was very addicted to this new technology called an iPhone.

The key to loosening its hold – trying to understand the “why.” What was I looking for in constantly checking my phone?

For me it was Informationism. Informationism is “a non-discerning vacuous faith in the collection and dissemination of information as a route to…personal happiness.” If I just read one more blog post on marriage, parenting, ministry…THAT would be the key that solves everything (can any other Enneagram 5s relate?).

Major takeaways:

Distraction is the biggest threat to my walk with God. “Distraction is the enemy of deep thinking.” A distracted life is a shallow life.

I believe that more information is what I need. When in fact, “More information may lead to less wisdom.” I need to take in less information and seek more wisdom.

“We need to devote more time to less things.”

The two chapters on distraction and the flood of information are worth the price of the book.

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

2) 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

No one has shaped my thinking more in the past few years than Jordan Peterson. In 12 Rules, Peterson is essentially asking – “How can one live the good life?” Though not a Christian, Jordan Peterson gets so much right. SO much. In his words:

  • We all fall short of the glory of God
  • We have missed the mark because of original sin
  • And the goal is to get back to walking with God
  • What do we do with our falling short?
  • Dr. Peterson’s answer is “grow the hell up.” He is unable to see grace.

The foreword by Dr. Norman Doidge ends on this intriguing note: “Perhaps, as unfamiliar and strange as it sounds, in the deepest part of our psyche, we all want to be judged.”

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

3) The Epidemic by Robert Shaw M.D.

This is my favorite parenting book. As I spent much of the 2010’s parenting our 5 kids, this book was incredibly helpful. It’s not a Christian book but it provides a framework for parenting that is very helpful. A few key concepts:

  • Ages 1-4 are foundational
  • Children crave firm, consistent boundaries (they want to know what is permissible).
  • A child’s world must not revolve around themselves (they need to hear no in order to develop empathy and to learn to think of others first).
  • “There is almost no normal situation in which you should be asking your child’s permission” (ending sentences with “OK?”).
  • The key is always choosing to engage- to follow through on what you said you were going to do (and not ignore small disobedience). Even when you’re exhausted, if you said, “if you do that one more time I’m gonna_____” then if they do it one more time you must follow through.

4) The Harry Potter Series by JK Rowling

Besides being my all-time favorite work of fiction, this series, more than anything else, made me a reader.

I started reading it out of a combination of wanting to keep up with what my kids were reading (and loving!) and my wife encouraging me that I would really like it. I discovered something – reading is fun! Before reading Harry Potter, I hadn’t read a fiction book in over 15 years. I thought it was a waste of time. I’d read an occasional leadership or devotional book. But I was not a reader. 

Takeaway- the way to be a reader is to read what you want to, and slowly work your way into more challenging books!

5) Atomic Habits by James Clear

A major key to life is “to emphasize any single moment less and the accumulation of moments more.”

Few things have shaped my learning this decade more than the idea of habit: we are what we repeatedly do. I could have also listed The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Power of Habit is more stories and the “why” behind habits. Atomic habits gives very practical ways to make small changes that will yield big results.

“If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, [just] follow the curve of tiny gains/losses…how your daily choices will compound 10 years down the line. Are you spending less than you earn each month? Are you reading books & learning something new each day?”

6) The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

Maybe more than any other secular book, Paradox of Choice gets to the heart of our current malaise.

“As a culture we are enamored of freedom, self-determination, & variety, & we are reluctant to give up any of our options. But clinging tenaciously to all the choices available to us contributes to bad decisions, to anxiety, stress, & dissatisfaction–even to clinical depression.”

“If unrestricted freedom can impede pursuit of what we value most then it may be that some restrictions make everyone better off. If ‘constraint’ sometimes affords liberation while ‘freedom’ affords enslavement then we’d be wise to seek out some measure of appropriate constraint”

5 keys:

  1. We’d be better off embracing voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.
  2. We’d be better off seeking what’s “good enough” instead of seeking the best
  3. We’d be better off lowering our expectations about the results of decisions
  4. We would be better off if the decisions we made were nonreversible.
  5. We would be better off if we paid less attention to what others around us were doing.

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

7) Reappearing Church by Mark Sayers

Mark Sayers brings much needed HOPE to the dismal realities of our modern world. His most helpful insight: times of crisis are actually opportunities for God to move in revival.

Sayers combines a broad understanding of modern times with a historical pattern of how revivals happen.

He thinks we are time is primed for revival: “history shows it’s precisely at moments like this–when the church appears to be sliding into unalterable decline, when culture is shaken by upheaval, when the world globalizes, opening up new frontiers & fostering chaos/change–that God moves again”

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

8) Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions by Russell Brand

Recovery is a vulgar, brutally honest, modern day Ecclesiastes; with Brand, a self-described “half-wit King Solomon”.

Drugs, alcohol, sex, fame, fortune- Brand tried it all and found it wanting. Brilliantly insightful into the human condition and very helpful re how to escape the bondage of desire.

Almost daily, I find myself thinking about the wisdom in this book. Especially his “Step 1” (from Alcoholics Anonymous): I am “powerless over this and my life has become unmanageable.”
Fair warning: LOTS of cuss words!

“Counterintuitively, in our culture of individualism and self-centred valour, it is by surrendering that we can begin to succeed. It is by ‘admitting that we have no power’ that we can begin the process of accessing all the power we will ever need.Where I have found this program most rewarding and yet most challenging is in the way that it has unravelled my unquestioned faith that I was the centre of the universe and that the purpose of my life was to fulfill my drives…Can I now accept there is a power greater than me at work in this cosmos? I don’t have to ally with it yet, all I have to do is accept that my thoughts and I are not the apex of human experience.” 

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

9) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Written in 1985, Amusing could not be more relevant to our modern world and humankind’s endless appetite for distraction. Postman has an incredible ability to make sense of vast amounts of history- to explain how (and why) we got to now, especially as it relates to technology.

Postman explains so much of our world- how technology affects our ability to think, and the resulting effects: anxiety and outrage (instead of reasoned discourse).

Postman puts into words what many of us feel — the glut of information causes anxiety, incoherence, and impotence. In the place of meaning, technology gives us amusement. 

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

10) The Next Evangelicalism — Soong-Chan Rah

Dr. Rah makes a compelling case that the future of Christianity in America rests on the shoulders of immigrants and ethnic minority leaders (owing much to their “liminality”- ability to move fluidly in between cultures). He opened my eyes to the work God is doing in our country and around the world (along with the book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South). A few key takeaways:

“Unless [churches/parachurches] see growth among the ethnic minority population within their [congregation] they will experience steady decline.”

“Contrary to popular opinion, the church is not dying in America; it is alive and well, but it is alive & well among the immigrant & ethnic minority communities”

The flood of immigrants in the past few decades has been a God-ordained action to save the American church.

You can read my full GoodReads review here.

Honorable Mention: For the Love of God by DA Carson

Not a traditional book – more so a Bible reading plan/devo. But truly life changing. I’ve read the Bible using Carson’s plan/devo for each of the last 5 years. NOTHING has changed my life more than consistently reading through the Bible. And Carson’s devo/plan was the key to making that a reality in my life.

I’d love to hear from you – what books changed your life in the last decade?