Our Garden of Books

Have you seen our beautiful display windows at our PCBC Library this month? They were designed to get you thinking about springtime. Thanks to our creative designer, Jan Landrum.

The kids’ window is titled, “Fluttering Through Books.” It features an amazing array of books about butterflies. Front and center is Live Forgiven, by Dr. Jeff Warren, with its monarch butterfly on the cover. We hope kids will be curious about butterflies, bees, birds, and all sorts of interesting topics.



Nothing makes us happier than to see children read one book after another, whether it’s the preschoolers who come here each week for Story Time, the families who check out armloads of books each week, or the older youngsters who come back week after week to get something new to devour.

Our other window is titled, “Grow Your Mind.” It has a charming garden theme, with gardening tools and gloves, plus the little markers you’d put in a row of vegetables in your garden. When we were choosing books to put in the display, we tried to come up with an eclectic sampling. We were almost surprised at the variety of topics we had right here in our collection.



But isn’t that what a good library provides?  Patrons can come into the PCBC Library and just wander around, browsing the shelves, discovering all the titles and topics they never explored before. Even within a relatively narrow topic, Theology (the 200s), there are commentaries on the Bible, devotionals, books about dealing with life’s vicissitudes, raising children or spouses, and so on. There’s always a new surprise at the end of the book shelf.

For our Book of the Week, we chose a gorgeous children’s book, Growing Vegetable Soup, written and illustrated by Lois Ehlert. Just 30 pages, it has all the basics of planting and tending a garden, plus cooking vegetable soup. The words are large and few (our best recommendation for the preschool set) and the colors and drawings are actually mouth-watering.

The message, told so colorfully with our window displays, is that we can all flutter through books and grow our minds. We hope you’re inspired, and we hope you’ll come visit our garden of books in the PCBC Library.

Transforming Dallas

Hopefully, you have already signed up for Transform Dallas this Saturday, April 16. If not, go do it right now. We’ll wait. Click here to sign up.

Are you back? Great. Hope to see you at one of the zillions of work sites this Saturday.

 
Transform Dallas promises a number of benefits to those who serve as well as to those whom we serve. We’ll be cleaning and spiffing, playing and feeding, even sewing and writing and walking and praying. In thousands of ways, we will be sharing the love of Christ through practical service and warm compassion.

For many of us, this service day is a welcome opportunity to get up close and personal with people from other cultures and backgrounds. Everyone agrees that we learn from these experiences and we gain more than we give.

This year, Transform Dallas brings together volunteers from other churches (and businesses, too) to work together on the various projects. That means you may be working with friends from your Connect group, but you may find yourself shoulder to shoulder with folks from a crosstown church.

We recently read the book More Than Equals by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice. Our copy is the second edition, a 2000 update to the 1993 original. Spencer Perkins, a black man raised in segregated Mississippi, and Chris Rice, a Vermont Yankee, came together in the early 1980s through the Voice of Calvary mission in Jackson, Mississippi. More Than Equals tells their backstories, their remarkable friendship as “yokefellows,” and their passionate commitment to Christ’s call for racial reconciliation.



It’s a powerful book with a compelling message. One of the major points it makes is the importance of deliberately seeking out Christian brothers and sisters of a different racial background to know them as friends. Chris and Spencer’s experience is between black and white; they also commend connecting with people of Asian or Hispanic origins.

Transform Dallas, pairing up Christians from all kinds and colors of churches, lets people take steps in the right direction. We hope it’s just the first of many, many steps toward racial reconciliation.
Have fun serving the Kingdom on Transform Dallas Day. Then come back and check out More Than Equals.

To Sell Is Human--and Christian

We came across a 2014 article in the Washington Post about a summer reading list from college admissions counselors. The list of 40 books was broken into sections for parents, for students, and for everyone.

Most of the titles look pretty practical (The College Admissions Mystique, by Bill Mayher; Going Geek: what every smart kid (and every smart parent) should know about college admission, by John Carpenter). There were a few less obvious titles, such as The Unlikely Disciple, by Kevin Roose or David & Goliath: underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants, by Malcolm Gladwell.

But the one that caught our eye, in the “For Everyone” section, was To Sell Is Human, by Daniel H. Pink.

To Sell Is Human was recommended to our PCBC Library by one of our patrons. More accurately, our patron, who is a sales manager for a large company, came to see if we had the book, and since we didn’t have it, we ordered it. We are proud that our book collection is dynamic. We are continually adding books to meet the interests and requests of our patrons. Nothing pleases us more than to find great books that we can share with our entire patron community.

TBH, we order books our patrons recommend with a certain amount of trepidation. We stay on the alert for books that might not fit into our collection or might adhere to our selection and gift policy.

Just to be sure we weren’t bringing in a book we would regret, we read To Sell Is Human ourselves. We are glad we bought the book and we recommend it.

To Sell Is Human has a subtitle, The surprising truth about moving others. It is essentially a book about sales, although it quickly establishes that “sales” has changed profoundly in the last couple of decades. More important, it argues, “Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.” Pink updates “sales” with the term “move others.”

Part one of the book explains the changes in society and information technology that have revolutionized selling. Part two describes the new ABCs of selling: attunement, buoyancy, and clarity. Part three may be the most interesting of all. Pink lays out an overview of the pragmatic aspects of selling: Pitch, Improvise and Serve. He starts with tips on the Pitch, “the ability to distill one’s point to its persuasive essence.” Pink moves on to Improvise, with three essential rules: Hear offers. Say “Yes and.” Make your partner look good.

Finally, Pink delves into the essential principle of Serve. “Sales and non-sales selling are ultimately about service….a broader, deeper, and more transcendent definition of service—improving others’ lives and, in turn, improving the world.”

At this point, we began trying to figure out if Daniel Pink is a Christian. Because his chapter on service sure sounds like it takes its cue from the Gospels.

Instead of “upselling,” Pink challenges people to “upserve.” “Upserving means doing more for the other person than he expects or you initially intended, taking the extra steps that transform a mundane interaction into a memorable experience,” Pink writes.  “And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:40-42).

Or, says Pink, “…the wisest and most ethical way to move others is to proceed with humility and gratitude.” “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26).

Pink concludes that at every opportunity to move someone, we should be able to answer these two questions affirmatively: “If the person you’re selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began?” “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

What a great philosophy. What a great (Christian) worldview. And what a great book. Come check it out: To Sell Is Human.

We Love: Book Brunch

Did we mention that our fourth Book Brunch with the ladies at Concord Baptist Church is on April 2? That’s just couple of days from now.

This one will be at Concord, so all of us PCBC folks get the privilege of motoring down scenic I35 and Highway 67 to visit their beautiful church. Of course, some of us were at Concord on Palm Sunday for the Pulpit Swap of Pastors Carter and Warren. Any time we visit Concord, it’s a treat.

We love this event. What’s not to love? Friendly ladies, splendid food, fun and games, a chance to talk about books we’ve read with other bibliophiles. Each time we get together, we see the friendly faces of women whose companionship we enjoyed at past Book Brunces. We also see new faces of women who’ve heard about what we are doing and are eager to join in.

If you’re reading this and you think you’d like to come but you haven’t had a chance to read one of our books, come anyway. Book Brunch is about much more than literature. Our real purpose is to get to know one another, to share some of our experiences and viewpoints and to go home knowing we’ve made some new friends.

We call this “building bridges,” or “breaking down barriers.” It’s a crucial step toward racial reconciliation. And Book Brunch is just the start of this joint effort between Concord and PCBC. We have organized four other activities under the aegis of Faithfully Yours. Some of us will meet between Book Brunch gatherings in very small groups to discuss other books. We are planning some fun social outings (not everyone is crazy about books, you know). We are going to show up together for service projects, starting with Transform Dallas on April 16. We are praying for one another, and for our mutual purpose of racial reconciliation.

Already, women from other churches have come to Book Brunch, and we couldn’t be more excited. Our vision is to have a huge network of sisters in Christ who are deeply committed to racial reconciliation. We take Christ at His word when He said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

Come to Book Brunch! If you can’t come, pray for Book Brunch. Because Book Brunch is about more than brunch or books. It’s about love.