Another great asset from the guys who brought us 37signals. Sometimes I think I only want to be a full time project manager in order to use all of their tools, all of the time! It was great to get into the head of the writers and get some background to their products and why they do the things they do. This book has also inspired me to read more of Jason Fried’s work in the magazine INC. Thanks Frances for the subscription.

Although I really enjoyed this book, I will say that where I think they were coming from and where they say they are coming from are 2 different places. I would say that this is a reflective piece on the development of 37signals and in hindsight they are telling us what has worked for them, but they speak from a place that sounds like they planned to do it this way (in some way) from day one. I really agree with what they have done and how they have organized themselves, and in fact it has allowed me to sort through the course load in my Project Management program right now and all the info in the PMBOK. The information overload I have received was overwhelming at times, but now I am inspired to create my own stream and it has made the program more enjoyable. However, the proverbial chip on Jason’s shoulder at times was a little much, but maybe that’s my Canadianisms coming out.

If you are looking for a book that inspires you to get work done and to run a clean streamlined office, system, team, or business I highly recommend this book. For my CP rating I give it a 4.5/5.

I decided to get back into the spiritual reading world again after a hiatus from those “types” of books. When I first picked up this book it was in the shadow of quite a bit of controversy in the twitter world. Even some mainstreamers in the evangelical world were writing off Rob Bell for his words in this book as no longer “part of the fold” so to speak. Greg Boyd makes a great point on this here.

All I want to say about this book is that it was inspiring and said a lot of things that not only I have been thinking about, but I know other “doubting Christians” have been thinking for a long time. And even though some might argue that this books encouragement toward questioning and its suggestion of new answers might be “unhealthy” or a threat to Christianity, I believe that this is a hopeful book that makes God bigger than perhaps we have viewed Him as in our current Christian faith circles.

And to those who find this book threatening I would just like to say that it is important for many of us to reflect on how accurate you believe you are concerning your accuracy of your theology. Don’t hear me wrong, I appreciate critical readings, and feel free to read this book critically, but if you read it and if it doesn’t agree with your church or your personal theology try to remember that we are all trying to figure it out and do not have it all together all of the time. To read this with that in mind, might give more life to your reading. I can appreciate those that want to find the “final” answer, but I guess in my mind (right now) that doesn’t seem to be the point.

One thing that I appreciated from Rob’s book that I would like to share here is that Rob looks at the many different views of atonement in Chapter 5 and makes a great point that many of the explanations provided by the writers in the Bible (and thus interpretations from others since) were ways to describe the life eternal and not to point to one final theory. We would do well to embrace more theories in order to expand on the richness of the gospel itself. This in turn makes God bigger to me, not smaller. I think we would all be amazed how many of those theories we embrace even though most evangelical Christians say they only embrace the substitution theory.

I think this is an important book and give 5/5 on my CP scale.