by Dr. James Pingel
Listed below are some books I’ve read recently which I found to be of great value with my own School of Education team and in my personal/professional life.
“How many Thanksgivings do you have left?” Arthur Books poses this poignant question, and so many others, in his excellent book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life (2022).
Health and wellness have been in the news a lot lately, and this work will provide the Lutheran administrator—particularly those of you who are in the “second half of life”—plenty to consider. Brooks notes how too many leaders today find themselves on the “hedonic treadmill”—where one needs constant success hits just to not feel like a failure. Does this sound or feel like you or someone you know?
Brooks dives deep on many aspects of connection—with yourself, others, and God. For example, he demonstrates the best way to deeply connect with someone is not through strengths and worldly successes (he calls these barriers to human connections), but through your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. People are actually drawn to failure and vulnerability because they make you more relatable. Humility allows you to relax and not worry about being exposed as less than people think you are. To share your weaknesses without caring what others think about you, according to Brooks, is a “superpower.”
Brooks book may make you feel uncomfortable about your own work ethic and inability to get away from administrative work. Brooks asks:
1) Do you fail to reserve part of your energy for loved ones after work and stop working only when you are a “desiccated husk” of a human being?
2) Do you sneak around to work?
3) Does it make you anxious and unhappy when someone—such as your spouse—suggests you take a week away from work for activities with loved ones, even when nothing in your work is unusually pressing?
Brooks’ work will make you reflect upon the joy that can come from living and leading with purpose—and doing it in a healthy, sustainable way. There are a lot of health and wellness works you can choose, but this was one of the more wholistic and uplifting ones I’ve read recently.
Much like an effective and compelling artist has an eye for “white space,” Juliet Funt’s A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work asserts that you need to put more “white space” in your life in order for your health, wellness, creativity, and leadership to flourish. According to Funt, “white space” is “freed time in the day to think (and breath, and ponder, and plan, and create).” Effective and productive leaders must take a pause each and every day. This is hard to do, of course, in our era of busyness and in our “Culture of Insatiability.”
Funt asserts that balanced people work harder, perform better in teams, take less sick leave, and have sharper decision-making capabilities. Balanced people don’t aspire for perfection. They treat balance like the stock market, aware that it goes up and down, and that it doesn’t pay to fret about the fluctuations. They rightly believe they have permission to enjoy their lives and have their white space.
Funt’s work is full of great anecdotes and research. For example, she points out that the number of self-described “very happy” people in the United States peaked in 1957, when the size of an average house was nine hundred square feet. She also notes the immense professional benefits of a vacation. Her research indicates that for every ten hours of vacation, employees year-end performance ratings increase by eight percent. Two-thirds of workers report that after a vacation they feel more creative and productive. Those who take vacations also have stronger bonds with their coworkers and more loyalty to the company. Funt emphasizes that you don’t have to wait for that weeklong vacation to a national park to reap the benefits. Daily minivacations are helpful and healthy to take too!
Lutheran administrations will appreciate and find it interesting what Funt has to say about the pressures of social conformity to work hard (“performative busyness”), email shadows (don’t look at your emails on vacation even for a minute!), and 2D versus 3D communication.
What my faculty book club members found most intriguing, however, is Funt’s analysis and unpacking of “the four thieves of time” which plague so many of us. These four thieves are:
1) How our drive (good thing) can turn into overdrive (bad);
2) How excellence (good) can become perfectionism (bad);
3) How information (good) can morph into overload (bad); and
4) How activity (good) can translate into frenzy (bad).
As a final bonus, in her last chapter, “Life Beyond Work: Don’t Miss the Ride,” Funt masterfully and movingly takes all of her findings in the workplace and applies them to the home. After reading the chapter, you will be motivated anew to live a more balanced life for the sake of your loved ones.
You and your faculty will benefit greatly by examining A Minute to Think—and you’ll want more than a minute to talk about her findings and how they can apply to your vocations in ministry and at home. This was one my favorite and most meaningful reads in 2022.
Betsy DeVos, the former Education Secretary in the Trump Administration, has written a book that anyone who serves in private or parochial education should read. Don’t worry—it’s not a political tome or manifesto, though she certainly does talk about some of the political headwinds she faced in trying to reform public school agendas and promote educational freedom. Instead she makes a strong case that our current educational system is irredeemable in many aspects, and that it will take courageous leadership and thick skin to bring substantive change.
DeVos reveals that USA spends more per student on education with the exceptions of Luxembourg, Austria, and Norway. Yet our country ranks 37th in math, 13th in reading, and 18th in science. She asks: How would we feel if our economy was 37th in the world? Or if our athletes didn’t make the top ten in any Olympic sport?
Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child makes a strong case for school choice, something Lutheran administrators already know. “Education,” she asserts, “is the least disrupted industry in America,” and suffers from the “tyranny of the average.” Think about it: schools are focused on students’ grade point average; curriculum is designed to be taught to the average student. When Devos notes that “the current model of American education was created, not just to treat all children the same, but to make all children the same,” we know that in Lutheran schools have a distinct advantage. After all, we teach about a Creator God who knows each of our students by name, and our students learn that God has special, unique callings and plans for each one of them.
Devos suggests that schools focus more on “unbundling” instead of “bundling” curriculum. Unbundled education looks at classes, venues, and learning in pieces that can be mixed and matched to best meet an individual’s student needs.
Horace Mann, creator of America’s industrial-style public education system, once wrote: “We who are in engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.” Lutheran schools have a different view. It’s not about “our cause,” but teaching the way, the truth, and the life. And our students are not our hostages, but special children of God and disciples of Christ. By God’s grace, we are called to teach them “a more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12:31).
I’m a diehard Green Bay Packer fan. Thus, it’s not pleasurable to lift up anything about the Dallas Cowboys or anyone not named Tony Dorsett, Danny White, or Tom Landry (I did like the 1980s Cowboys when my Packers went 4-12 every year!). However, Jimmy Johnson’s Swagger is a fun read for any football fan as well as for anyone interested in how to build a team. Johnson’s eye and systematic approach for drafting and recruiting talent only reminds the Lutheran administrator how important it is to hire and retain talented, missional, and dedicated teachers. And Johnson’s obsession with the Pygmalion Effect comes through in numerous chapters in the book. It’s a good reminder to set the bar high—for yourself, your team, your students, and your school community. Or as Jesus exhorts, “to whom much was given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12:48).
There have been a lot of gifted athletes who have played sport. There are certain ones, however, whom I consider athletic “freaks”—individuals blessed by God with athletic gifts which very few people have ever possessed. On my Mount Rushmore of “freakish” athletes would be head busts of Nolan Ryan, Usain Bolt, Serena Williams, and Steve Buuck. (Okay, just seeing if you were paying attention and have read this far. Of course, my fourth is Bo Jackson). There are too many tales and anecdotes to share with you in this review, but The Last Folk Hero is a fascinating read about a truly unique athlete. More importantly, as you read about Bo Jackson, you are reminded how sports and athletic accomplishments are fleeting, that there is a real person behind the athletic persona, and that all that really matters in life (at the end of it) is one’s relationship with Jesus Christ. Folk heroes come and go. Jesus is forever.
Jim Pingel currently serves as the Dean of Education at Concordia University Wisconsin and Ann Arbor and Assistant Director of ALSS. He can be reached at james.pingel@cuw.edu.