Bob Adams, Digital Engagement Leader at Auxano, joins Bryan for a discussion about books and the power of disciplined reading.

Breakthrough ideas with Bob:

• Reading becomes caught more than taught, a practice handed down generation to generation.
• Reading will help you learn critical thinking skills. Critical thinking skills are an essential part of leadership.
• Then a seminary professor, Al Mohler, always talked about critical thinking and reading in leadership terms.
• Leadership, at its very core it about critical thinking… reading, whether it’s from books or magazines, even online browsing, it is going to be the foundation of critical thinking.
• Why reading is so essential in the life of a church leader
• An expert on reading books and helping others read books well.
• Pastors have big libraries. But I would venture to say their libraries are full of books they haven’t read or haven’t read cover to cover.
• The original idea of SUMS was to produce a book summary that was a summary. We do author-based permission about 2,000, 2,500 words.
• Book reading happens in one of four ways: elementary, inspectional, analytical, or syntopical.
• Elementary reading is reading for what the book says. You’re not getting very deep into it. It is what it is.
• Elementary reading forms the fundamental level of reading.
• Inspectional reading is reading by answering the question, “What is the book about?”
• Inspectional reading seeks to understand more about what’s behind the whole theme or concept.
• Analytical reading is reading by answering the question, “What does the book mean?”
• Analytical reading always involves asking questions and taking notes.
• In analytical reading, you’re having a conversation with the author.
• Analytical reading usually happens in the kind of books that you come back to again and again over the years.
• Syntopical reading is reading that examines how a particular book compares with other books about the same topic.

Listen to the full podcast here ->