I read three books, and most of a fourth, on vacation last week. 

You can’t peck away at a Henning Mankell book. You need a big block of time so you can dive in and stay submerged until you’re done. 

So last week’s vacation started with Mankell’s “Before the Frost,” the last of the Kurt Wallander books currently available (I’ve read all the others). This one is actually billed as a “Kurt and Linda Wallander Mystery,” and daughter Linda is, in fact, the main character. 

Linda is within days of joining the police force where her father, Kurt, is an ace investigator. A murder occurs, and because of some relationships, she gets involved. It’s another excellent book. This one features some interesting religious themes.

This is the last Wallander book I have (3 other Mankell books sit on my shelf, unread). A collection of several short stories starring Wallander will be released by Vintage/Black Lizard in October, and there’s another book out there called “The Troubled Man” which I don’t think is available yet in English, and which supposedly brings the career (though not the life) of Wallander to an end. 

“Without Fail” is my fifth Lee Child book starring tough-guy Jack Reacher. These have all been tremendous books, and I think “Without Fail” may be the best (it’s between “Without Fail” and “Echo Burning”). In this book, the Secret Service invites Reacher’s help to foil a plot to assassinate the vice president. The Reacher books are pretty straightforward, with lots of action, though this one has a more intricate plot and less action than the other books. 

We have all but one (the first) of the Jack Reacher books. Pam has read all 11 of the books we own. It’ll take me a while to catch up.

Kem Meyer is the Communications Director at Granger Community Church near South Bend, Ind. It’s a fast-growing church with a laser focus on reaching lost people. A very innovative place. And Kem Meyer is a very innovative person who enjoys the cutting edge. She is doing some original (at least it seems that way) thinking about how we communicate in the church. 

I’ve been familiar with Kem for several years now. I attended her seminar at MinistryCOM 2006, heard her keynote address at MinistryCOM 2007, and attended a full-day seminar by her at Granger. And I’ve been reading her blog for several years. 

The book resembles her blog in ways–a bunch of short pieces, most of which can stand on their own. In fact, I recognized some of the content from her blog. 

In 1995, I wrote “A Plain and Simple Guide to Church Promotion” as my project in completing a Masters in Public Relations at Ball State U. I gathered absolutely everything I could find about any aspect of local church promotion–newsletters, advertising, branding, design, printing, Powerpoint, font usage, and much more. In all, over 100 individual topics. Each topic filled a single page, and I mostly just gave bullet points–simple tips, do’s and don’ts. 

Kem’s book is similar. She doesn’t go in-depth into anything, but hits a lot of different areas. If you want direction, she gives you more than enough to work with, but she doesn’t overload you. Which is part of the book’s point–that we need to make life easier for people by lessening the clutter and noise.

People today are barraged with information and choices. Kem writes, “People who live in today’s world respond in one of three ways: they become overwhelmed and shut down, they labor over whether they’re making the right decisions, or they just ignore you and move on.”

So that’s important to keep in mind as we communicate in the local church–between ourselves, and with outsiders (or, in PR-speak, with our internal and external constituencies). She emphasizes keeping it simple. Don’t complicate people’s lives. Help them sort through the clutter. And don’t add to the clutter with stuff you think is important, but which they couldn’t care less about.

That’s an overview of the book. Follow the link below for some quotes.

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