What I Read in 2022

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

John Maxwell famously said that leaders are readers. I’ve taken that to heart and become a voracious reader. 

Every year I set a goal to read a certain number of books. I’ve gone all the way to 36 but have settled between 20 to 24. This year, instead of focusing on quantity, I focused on subjects that interested me and read a few pages every day. Somehow, I still got 20 books in.

For this post, I broke the books into categories. Each book has an affiliate link to Amazon so you can easily make your list for next year. Thanks for your support!

What I read in 2022

Church Growth/Structure

This past year, I moved from Children's Pastor to Associate Pastor with a focus on Youth and NextGen ministries. Since my responsibilities have grown, I wanted to see how the greats in our generation built their churches, Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, and Craig Groeschel.

I’ve read their books before, but in my new context with years of experience now under my belt, I found great value in them with applications not just for the church, but NextGen as well.
  1. The Purpose Driven Church
  2. Deep And Wide
  3. Lead Like It Matters

Starting a New Job

Part of my move out of daily children’s ministry was starting a new job at a new church. Since this is church number 4, I really wanted to do things right and not fall back into my old habits. These two books helped me get a leg up in those first few months by setting me up for success.
  1. The First 90 Days
  2. Rookie Smarts

Pastoral Succession

Pastoral Succession is a big thing these days and only growing bigger with more and more of our Boomer pastors retiring. I wanted to learn all I could to help these transitions go well.
  1. Tsunami
  2. Next

Leadership

I’m a leadership junkie, so I couldn’t do a year without reading a few books about it. Each of these focused on personality driven leadership and emotional intelligence. It’s the new way of leading and each one had great insights.
  1. The Three Chairs
  2. Do/Lead
  3. Conversational Intelligence

Kidmin Resources

For the first time, I have a children’s pastor working for me. I started mentoring him with some books I consider to be Kidmin essentials. (We’re reading that book next). If you’re just starting out or are looking for some books to take your lead team through, these are great first steps.
  1. Stretch
  2. Lead Small (Revised)
  3. Family Ministry Essentials

Fiction

My son turned 7 this year and began a love for reading. We started reading through the Chronicles of Narnia before he went to bed. These classic kids’ tales are great, and I love them more now than ever before.
  1. The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe
  2. Prince Caspian
  3. The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
  4. The Magicians Nephew
  5. The Fantastic Mr. Fox

Sermon Resources

Now that I’m preaching weekly in Youth, I used these last two books as research for sermon series. The Case for Christ is a great apologetic book that deeply impacted my walk with Christ. While The 3 Big Questions is essential for any Youth leader with practical tips based on research from real teenagers. I highly recommend both.
  1. The Case For Christ
  2. 3 Big Questions that Change Every Teenager

What did you read this year?

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