Making Room For New Ideas

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Last week I got rid of 1/3 of the books in my personal library. Books are the lifeblood of any spiritual leader, so I was pretty surprised during a recent prayer time when I felt the spirit’s nudge to “clean this place out.”

I believe it was more than an effort on God’s part to create more shelf space. I’m pretty sure it was the spirit’s prompting to take stock of the ideas that had influenced me up to this point in my journey and to begin, both literally and metaphorically, to make room for new ideas.

I approached each book in my library with one simple question: “Has this book so profoundly influenced me that I can see myself reading it 2-3 more times and sharing it with other people?” If the answer was negative, it went into the “Ebay pile.”

Here were a few things that crossed my mind as I did this:

1. Besides biblical study and language resources, which I didn’t touch, I quickly learned that I purchased two kinds of books over the years: timeless books and quick-fix how-to books. Books I’d throw in the timeless category were books like Ordering Your Private World by Gordon MacDonald and The Art of Pastoring by David Hansen; both books that continue to speak into my life years after they were written. Quick-fix how-to books all focused on the latest church fad to come down the pike.

2. The empty shelves have become symbolic for me. When Lisa came down to my office at the end of the day she looked around and said, “What happened here?” I said, “Time for something new.”

I love the feeling of emptiness around me now. It has the fresh smell of intellectual and spiritual hunger, the kind of aroma I first sensed when I started out in ministry.