KINDLE Servant Leaders

I finished two leadership books on my flights home from the LCMS National Youth Gathering in New Orleans last Wednesday. I love that feeling—especially because I loved both books. I will review “Mudhouse Sabbath” today and will review “Leadership and Self Deception” after I’ve tried to live out its principles for a month or so.

The author of this short, sweet and very helpful book is Lauren F. Winner. She is a young Jewish woman who converted to Christianity seven years before she wrote the book and misses the spiritual rhythms of her Jewish roots:

Still I miss Jewish ways. I miss the rhythms and routines that drew the sacred down into the everyday. I miss Sabbaths on which I actually rested…I miss the work these practices effected between me and God.

She explores 10 practices from the Jewish faith that can have new and helpful application for Christians. These include:

• Candle-lighting
• Doorposts
• Aging
• Hospitality
• Mourning

…and of course, Sabbath.

KINDLE Servant Leader Practice 16:

Embrace Sabbath Living

Eagerly worship, partake in Holy Communion, and nurture additional behaviors which foster spiritual renewal & rest.

Winner’s book has a winsome way of leading the reader into new and joyful ways of embracing Sabbath living. The name of the book comes from the Mudhouse Coffee Shop where Winner now spends her Sunday (Sabbath) afternoons journaling, reading her Bible and praying. For each of the ten practices, Winner does a lovely job of painting the Old Testament picture of that practice before applying it to a Christian life. I was drawn in and intrigued with each one and that background shed new and helpful light on my own hopes to do a better job on KINDLE Servant Leader Practice 16. I really recommend it.

Thanks to Jim Haack, Dean of the KINDLE for Recent Grads in September 2010 for giving me the heads up about this book!