Enchantment-cover

Enchantment:  the art of changing hearts, minds, and actions by Guy Kawasaki is a practical book about turning an everyday business transaction into an enchanting encounter.  He describes enchantment as transforming situations into meaningful encounters, converting hostility into civility, and changing skeptics into believers.  Although this is a secular book, this sounds like the mission of the church.  Kawasaki’s former job title was the “Chief Evangelist of Apple” so you can see the connection.

 

The book contains basic life principles such as, “Everyone is better than you at something.”  If you really believe that statement then you see others differently and respect the contribution they can make.  Solid business principles are also presented as he provides a synopsis of a Harvard Business Review article entitled, “12 Things Good Bosses Believe”.

 

The book also provides a number of thought provoking quotations – here are two of my favorite ones:

 

Priority is a function of context – Stephen Covey

 

The plural of “anecdote” is not data – Ben Goldacre

 

Kawasaki presents a number of principles that you realize are true such as the Dopeler effect which is the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.  We have experienced this phenomena but perhaps have never considered the reasons behind our decisions.

 

Enchantment is not a word that we use to describe church services.  The world however, sees enchantment as something special, captivating, and exciting.  Should this not be true of the church?  We have the greatest message ever revealed – God became man in the person of Jesus Christ and He wants people to experience that truth!  When Jesus came to a gathering it was a special event,

 

They were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.  Mark 1:22

 

Why should Disney be known as enchanting and the church be perceived as boring?  The church should be the most captivating and encouraging place the world as ever seen.  If you want some practical tips how to relate to the world around you then you may want to check out Enchantment.