Staff Reading Cohort

Our staff team is going to begin a read­ing pro­gram togeth­er. We’re pick­ing our books now, and I thought some of you might be inter­est­ed in the guide­lines we’re using. I sort of made these up and mod­i­fied them based on the feed­back I received.

Fre­quen­cy
Let’s start off with a book every two months. This will give us plen­ty of time to pur­sue our own read­ing with­out short­chang­ing our staff reads. We can always adjust the time lat­er if we need to.

Selec­tion
We make our list up two full cycles in advance (one whole year). We each get to pro­pose 4 books, and then we each rank the result­ing list of 12. We tal­ly the votes using an inter­net script (Con­dorcet method for any vot­ing geeks out there). The top six books win. We’ll decide the order in which the win­ners will be read infor­mal­ly, try­ing to alter­nate old­er books with new­er books.

Guide­lines

1. We have to pro­pose books that we have not read yet. Don’t pick some­thing you loved and think it will be good for every­one else. The point of this exer­cise is per­son­al growth.
2. Hav­ing said that, it’s okay if some­one else pro­pos­es a book that you have already read and the team selects it. In that case, you don’t have to reread it–skimming will do.
3. Don’t try to impress any­one. No need to pick aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy or any­thing like that–unless you real­ly want to read it.
4. Let’s try to alter­nate between new books and books old­er than we are. This isn’t a rigid rule, but an aspi­ra­tion.
5. Fresh­ness is good when we’re talk­ing about some­thing based on research, and age is good when we’re talk­ing about some­thing based on reflec­tion. If you want us to think about sci­ence or cul­ture get a new book. If you want us to think about God or life get an old­er book. Unless you real­ly don’t want to–these are guide­lines and not rules. 😉
6. The books can be about any­thing, but let’s keep fic­tion to a min­i­mum.
7. Noth­ing over 500 pages with­out first clear­ing it with every­one else.
8. Noth­ing over $30 with­out clear­ing it first with every­one else.
9. If you want, you can pro­pose mul­ti­ple short books as a sin­gle rec­om­men­da­tion (less than 200 pages total).

After Read­ing
Fol­low­ing the read­ing of the book, by a spec­i­fied dead­line, the choos­er will com­pose a few (3–5) ques­tions for group dis­cus­sion either in per­son, over the phone or online.

Any­way, it’s not too ele­gant but it looks as though it will serve us well. We’ve each made our sug­ges­tions and here’s the list we’re going to be vot­ing on:

• The Nico­machean Ethics by Aris­to­tle
• Prayer by George But­trick
• Good to Great and the Social Sec­tors: A Mono­graph to Accom­pa­ny Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Col­lege of the Over­whelmed: The Cam­pus Men­tal Health Cri­sis and What to Do About It by Richard D. Kadi­son and There­sa Foy DiGeron­i­mo
• The Five Dys­func­tions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Cre­ative Min­istry by Hen­ri Nouwen
• In the Name of Jesus by Hen­ri Nouwen
• Pensees by Blaise Pas­cal
• Eat This Book: A Con­ver­sa­tion in the Art of Spir­i­tu­al Read­ing by Eugene Peter­son
• Spur­geon’s Lec­tures to My Stu­dents by Charles Spur­geon
• The Oth­er Six Days: Voca­tion, Work, and Min­istry in Bib­li­cal Per­spec­tive by R. Paul Stevens
• Mar­gin by Richard Swen­son

Once we have the results I’ll let you know what we wind up read­ing.