SPARK

If you're in to this kind of thing, I found fascinating John J. Ratey's, SPARK: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Building off neurological research of the past few decades that reveals the plasticity of the human brain (the brain can change), SPARK makes a convincing case for the radical role exercise plays in how our brains function.When grounded in the gospel, SPARK's graduate-school-type-common-sense-insights are quite helpful (both personally and pastorally), particularly the chapters on learning, stress, anxiety, depression, aging, and addiction.One reason Martyn Lloyd-Jones was a great pastor was due to his medical background. MLJ knew when to call someone on their sin and when to tell someone to take a nap or go for a hike in the hills. Pastors, SPARK could add a little MLJ to your pastoral quiver.

"In today's technology-driven, plasma-screened-in world, it's easy to forget that we are born movers--animals, in fact--because we've engineered movement right out of our lives...inactivity is killing our brains...To keep our brains at peak performance, our bodies need to work hard...The body was designed to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push our brains too. Far from being hardwired, as scientists once envisoned it, the brain is constantly being rewired."-John J. Ratey