I am having our summer interns read ten books in ten weeks, and in today’s video I am going to share what they are, why I chose them, and how it is going so far. They have already finished the first three books, and they are into their fourth this week. I wanted them to feel the accomplishment of conquering over three thousand pages of reading this summer. That is an average of three hundred pages per week. Hi, church. Welcome back. I am coming to you in my brown corduroy today with another big list of books, and only one of these, I think, is in our resource desk. I did that because Bible college students are going to be reading a lot of good theology books already, so I wanted to share some other books that might stretch them in other areas of God’s truth, even when that truth is not coming from a Christian source. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. I have given a more elaborate disclaimer in other videos: these are not wholesale endorsements of everything these authors say or stand for. The only perfect book is the Word of God. This is the main book we read, and this is the book I read the most, but I have been challenged by many of these secular authors before. Sometimes they are more passionate than even some Christians, and I am challenged by that. They will put Christians to shame. That drives me not only to want to better myself, but also to find out, “Okay, if they are finding out something about the mind of God, what is the scriptural source for what they are talking about?” For example, if it is a secular book on productivity, I want to find out what the Christian view of productivity is, and take their practical thoughts and find out from the Word of God what God has to say about our work and our productivity.
The Intern Manual and Honorable Mentions
Before we even get into the books, this was our intern orientation manual, and we will hit a couple of honorable mentions that did not make the actual cut for them, and then we will get to their list of ten books. This intern manual is just a welcome note, a daily schedule, a meal schedule, getting them connected to our Google calendars, how to share the space, that kind of thing. At the back here is a list of their reading schedule. Within the first two days, I mean, they landed on Tuesday, and they had a book due on Thursday. They were supposed to have their first book completed, so this laid it out for them on day one. I gave them a little bit of a heads-up before they got here, so they were expecting this. They are allowed to listen to audio, and I will count that as having completed the book, but I am encouraging them not to just skim, but to actually finish the book. I talked about that on their very first day with us. So that was our intern manual. This is a book I wrote several years ago, I think in 2015, and I am working on a tenth anniversary edition of it right now. I do not have it completed yet, but this was the first three years of intern notes from when I was running the internship as an associate pastor. I would meet with them and write up the notes, so it is more or less a compilation of emails on the topics we covered over three years of training our interns. The interns often will read this. It is not the most exciting read; it is not even the best book ever, and that is one of the reasons I want to redo it. But they had finished that before they got here. That, however, did not make the list of ten books. Another one is a book called Why We Sleep. This is really, really fascinating. If a book changes your life, it is worth the twenty dollars you spent on it, and if this book changes a little bit about the way you sleep, I consider that fifteen or twenty dollars well spent. It goes into the science of sleep, why it is so good for us, and how much it affects us: your thinking, your health, your attitude, and all of that. It is a really, really well-researched, super interesting book on sleep, but it did not make the cut this year. It is just an honorable mention. Another one is a book called Essentialism, by Greg McKeown. This is a book about ruthlessly saying no, only saying yes to the things that will move the needle. This is from a business sense. He is asking, “What is the purpose of your life? Now go do only those things that will move the needle on the purpose of your life.” But as a Christian, I took this and said, “Man, there are so many things we give our lives to that are so nonessential.” We heard that word around COVID a lot. But here is a framework for thinking about your life with the big picture in mind, the 50,000-foot level in mind, and as a Christian I was challenged by that. Then there is a series of books I heard a lot about from a popular YouTuber, by Austin Kleon: Keep Going, Show Your Work, and Steal Like an Artist. There are a lot of great little tidbits and tips in here. They are short little books, a lot of pages if you read the entire trilogy, but each page is very short and very small. Show Your Work is good for avoiding perfectionism, just saying, “Let’s throw this out there and see what sticks, see what happens.” Steal Like an Artist is about borrowing from everything everywhere. Keep Going is just what the title says: keep going, put your nose to the grindstone, and head after it. Again, these are secular books, but they are good for Christians who are always trying something new and never finishing anything. They were a good challenge to me in a lot of the creative work we do with the interns. Those were just the honorable mentions.
The Treasure Principle
Now I want to talk about the ten books our interns are going to be reading this summer. This first one is the one that is in the resource desk at our church. At our resource desk, we always put a little disclaimer in with all the books we sell. We just sell them for the price we paid for them, but we would not agree with all of them, so we have a little two-sided bookmark we include. Maybe I will do another video on the bookmarks themselves one day. The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn: again, he is not a Baptist, but he is real close. He is not exactly in line with where we are as a church, but his principles on giving in here are great. It is just a thin little book, and a great little thought from the verse about the man who finds a treasure, sells all that he has, and buys the field so that he can gain the treasure. He does not waste anything in his life when he gives it up for something greater in the future. That is the principle; that is the treasure principle. It deals with tithing, it deals with grace giving, it deals with every aspect of our material things, examining them in light of eternity. This is just a really good, approachable, small book on giving that I have found really, really helpful for people. He has a much bigger book on giving, four or five hundred pages or so, but I like The Treasure Principle for its accessibility.
Getting Things Done and Ordering Your Private World
Next is Getting Things Done. For the interns this was good, because a lot of their internship deals with projects. Our system is Trello. We put projects on there, and we have daily staff meetings about the little projects they are working on. Getting Things Done is all about capturing everything coming at you: not trying to store it up in your mind, but actually writing it down, getting it out of your mind, putting it into a system you can trust, and then working that system, whatever it is. Maybe it is a calendar, maybe a task list, maybe a project list for the future, maybe a reference list you will go back to someday when you are back in Bible college, but not here. The GTD system, the Getting Things Done system, is just so good. I use the first two steps in particular, capturing and organizing. I do not follow it to a T, but I have found it very, very helpful as a framework for going through church work, with as much as we have to do. So Getting Things Done is great. This next one, Ordering Your Private World, we just finished with a big discussion this morning. We had about a thirty-minute discussion, not even necessarily about whether they liked the book or not; that is not really what I am going for. I wanted to see if it hit them anywhere. There are a lot of good principles in the first nine or so chapters, and they both said those were good principles, but it was once it finally got to that garden analogy, that point of, “Okay, yes, you have been dealing with the inner man, but what does that actually mean?” Finally, about chapter 10, it starts to really hit home, starts to really sink in, starts to really show that who you are as a person is made up basically entirely of the inner you. There are a lot of different ways you can develop your inner self that nobody else will ever see, and if you do not do that, they only see the crumble and fall years later. But if you do take care of the inner man, your spiritual walk with God, that will set you up for the rest of your life. So this is about the development of your character, written from kind of a grandfatherly perspective. Again, it is not from a Christian of the same stripe as us, so to speak, but it is a good, helpful look at exactly what the title says, ordering your private world. I thought that was really, really helpful, and the interns found it extremely helpful as well.
Unbroken and How to Talk to Anyone
Next, I have mentioned this book in a previous video, but I wanted to bring it up again: Unbroken. There are a couple of movies on this that do not even come close to the book. This gets to the heart of Louis Zamperini, his feelings, his emotions. The author was able to interview him many times before he passed away and had all the research documents from World War II. This is an incredible story; this is probably my favorite book. It has several places with some language in it, as he recounts some of the war traumas he went through, but there are about five major stories through his life. He was an Olympic athlete, and he was on track to break the four-minute mile, and then he has this incredible survival story at sea, and then he is taken to a prisoner-of-war camp, and then he has this incredible ending. You have got to read this book. It is one of those that, once you start it, you cannot put it down. At least that is how it was for us. Just some gut-wrenching… oh, man. This is my favorite book right here, so I think you will enjoy that. Next, and our interns have not gotten to this one just yet, but I thought it would be good for the summer: you never know what interns you might have or what they might need to carry on a conversation. With our internship, we have them go to our church members’ houses for meals, so they will have conversations with a whole bunch of people all the time. We are always encouraging them to go out and make conversation, to put themselves out there, to go minister to people, not just stand in the background and wait for somebody to come to them, but to go initiate conversations. So, this book by Leil Lowndes, How to Talk to Anyone. I have read this one as well as her business version of it, and I just love the quick little tips and tricks she has. There are just so many memorable little phrases throughout, easy, catchy little slogans for all her tips and tricks. It is things like “come-you-nication”: when you communicate, make sure it is about you, not me. There are all these little rhyming jingles throughout, and there are ninety-two of them. So if you pick up one or two of them, this book is worth it if it helps you communicate with people. How to Talk to Anyone, by Leil Lowndes, is a wonderful, wonderful little book. I think you would enjoy that.
Extreme Ownership and Do Hard Things
Next is a book called Extreme Ownership. It has been out probably about ten years now, by a Navy SEAL. It tells a Navy SEAL story, and then from that story he pulls out a leadership principle. I love anybody who is an expert in any field. I appreciate and respect the level of effort it took to get them where they are, and especially the Navy SEALs, for the amount of mental and physical strength they push themselves through. It seems that often translates into civilian life really, really well, because of how much resilience they have. If they could beat this training, this BUD/S training, and become a Navy SEAL, they have the mentality that they can do anything. Now, I have known Christians who do not have the grit and drive that a secular Navy SEAL has, and we have the Holy Spirit in us. So I am challenged by these guys, these guys who wake up early in the morning and get after it. They are doing it for money, and we have something so much greater than that, and frankly, many Christians are very, very lazy with their own lives. So I appreciate anybody who is further along than me in this area of discipline, and especially in this area of leadership. He is constantly pushing junior leadership in this book, trying to train others, help others, empower others. In the position I am in, I am trying to help the interns own the areas they are in charge of. Whether they are mowing the lawns or cleaning the buildings, they are not just doing it for me, not just doing it because a task list told them to, but they are owning that area because they love the church. They love what it can do, what this project is connected to. So Extreme Ownership is just a really good, helpful mindset shift when you are approaching any task. That is a real good one. Next is Do Hard Things, by Alex and Brett Harris. These are young men who wrote this book in their teen years while they were, well, challenging themselves to do hard things, so this is really good. They are not teens anymore, but they have curated this online forum and this group of young people who want to get out there and do not want to settle for being mediocre, do not want to settle for the teenage stereotypes that they are no good for anything, that they are just lazy, they are just dumb. They said, “No, we want to break those stereotypes and do hard things. We want to challenge ourselves.” So they worked on a political campaign. They just put themselves out there to try something hard, and I appreciated that grit and that spirit. They are Christians. They are trying to use the platform God has given them to reach souls for Christ. Again, they are not exactly on the same page as us; they would be a little more evangelical than we would be, but I appreciate that what they are doing is producing some good results, and I appreciate the message of the book. I gave this book to our high school graduates this year and encouraged them to read it. So Do Hard Things will be a good one for our interns to read, challenging them to do exactly that, do hard things.
Make Time and TED Talks
Next is a productivity book called Make Time, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. This is probably my least favorite of the ten books here, and yet it was one of those books that had just enough little nuggets throughout that it was like, “Okay, that is worth recommending.” There are enough things in there for us as Christians, if we are called to redeem the time because the days are evil. I realize that can mean this era, but also the individual chronology of time, the individual seconds God has given to us. We can redeem that time as well. We all have the same amount of time, but we do not all use it the same. So the theology of productivity for a Christian, even taken from a secular book, is that, man, we are using our time. We do not want to waste our time. We want to use our time for God’s glory, so that even if I eat or drink, I can do that to God’s glory, with the right perspective. I do not want to waste those seconds. I do not want to just entertain my time away, and increasingly our culture is getting more and more entertainment-driven, and I do not like that. So we want to redeem the time. We want to make time and focus on what matters every day. I like that it focuses on, “Look, you have these daily tasks, but how are those tasks actually affecting the goals you have set in your life?” For us, those goals are the glory of God. Those are eternal goals, the 50,000-foot level. But for us it is also saying, “Where is this going to take me in three years, five years, twenty years?” I like that he gets people to think beyond just today, so for that reason it is a good, helpful, practical book. Next is probably one of the most underrated books on public speaking I have ever seen. I never hear it recommended. I hardly ever see it advertised anywhere, but it has been one of the best books on public speaking I have ever finished: TED Talks. It is by, I think, the president of TED at the time; I do not know if he still is. This is about preparing for a TED Talk, which is roughly a seventeen-minute presentation on whatever topic interests you or whatever topic you are an expert in. A couple of things really stuck out to me. One of them was the preparation, the preparation that goes into every single TED Talk. He gives the example of those who prepared and rehearsed their talk ten times, and he said they sounded more natural than the ones who did it just two or three times. You would think that if you rehearse something ten times, you would start to sound like a robot by the tenth time, but he said it becomes less robotic the more you rehearse, because you are so familiar with it that you can be very, very natural when you are talking about it. So TED Talks is just good for public speaking, good for preachers. This will be the second-to-last book the young people who are interns read this summer, and I think it will really, really help them and give them some great practical tips as they go into a preaching ministry.
The Power of Habit
And finally, The Power of Habit. If you have been around this kind of book at all, you have probably already read it. Many people have been promoting it for the past ten years; we have the tenth anniversary edition. The Power of Habit is about the brain studies on what it takes to form habits. The very first time you do something, it is very unnatural. It is very difficult to do. You do not like it; you are just not used to it. But the second time you do it, you have seen the ropes. You understand how it happens. You know how to do the job, where to put your hands, how to think. The third, and fourth, and fifth, and tenth time you do something, it becomes second nature, until it becomes a habit and you do not even think about it anymore. That is a way God has designed our brains to make it easier to perform regular tasks. You are not concentrating so much on one thing anymore. Whatever fires together, wires together. So if something triggers something you want, and you act on it, the more times you see that trigger and act on it, the more it becomes a habit. That can be a bad habit or a good habit. What I think this book is so good for, for Christians, is developing good habits and overcoming bad habits: figuring out, “What is the trigger that makes me want this bad thing, and how can I either avoid the trigger, or, when I see the trigger, what can I do instead of this action that is a sin or some problem in my life? What habit, what action, can I change in order to get a new outcome?” So I just appreciated the framework of this book. There is another book, Atomic Habits, that is equally popular and came out around the same time. I read them both at the same time, but I chose this one because I think it had slightly better stories throughout, stories of gambling and stories of food habits. Again, it is a secular book, but if you can take it from a Christian’s perspective and say, “You know what? There are some bad habits I need to change, and some good habits I need to instill in their place,” then I think it would be a big help to you. So that is all ten books, ten books in ten weeks this summer, and by the time they get all the way through this summer, they will have completed these. If you have any other questions about our internship, and maybe I will do a future video about how we break down our internship, let me know in the comments below, or if you are in the church, just come up and ask me, and I will try to answer any of those questions and let you know how we are doing our internship this summer. I will see you in the next video. God bless you.
