Against Nothingness

Warren W. Wiersbe.  On Being a Leader for God . Baker Books, 2011. 144 pgs.  I have posted quotes from Warren Wiersbe  before . Here is a man experienced in ministry, having served for over 60 years, offering his advice on being a leader for God. Wiersbe begins his book by defining leadership: "Christian leaders are people who, by faith, willingly use their character, abilities, authority, and opportunities to serve others and to help them reach their fullest potential, to their benefit, the benefit of the organization, and the glory of God." He then spends the rest of the book exploring each part of this definition in detail.  I have long been a fan of On Being a Servant of God  by Wiersbe. It is one of the books I try to give to people starting out in ministry and I make all of my interns read it. I was pleased to find that this companion volume, which compliments Servant  without repeating it, will be going on that same list. Wiersbe offers ...

Larry Osborne, Sticky Teams . Zondervan, 2010. 221 pgs.  Another blog tour is here, thanks to the good people over at  http://engagingchurchblog.com/  for allowing me to be a part of this.  Sticky Teams is a book on pastoral leadership which covers the three key relationship areas all pastors must deal with: staff, elders, and congregation.  Osborne begins by making a strong case for the importance of unity, and then moves through three sections: Removing roadblocks, getting everyone on the same page, and keeping everyone on the same page.  His focus is not on passing on his particular model for doing church, instead he puts his energy into laying out the principles behind his models.  This book was excellent.  Osborne's insights are practical, focused, clear, and important.  He offers good, usable, advice for pastors in any position, however the book is clearly focused on the senior pastor's position.  I found his sections on gu...

Patrick Lencioni. The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their employees). Jossey-Bass, 2007. 272 pgs Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team . Jossey-Bass, 2002. 227 pgs. Two books in one review? I know, shocking! But, in this case, I think it is appropriate. Patrick Lencioni is quite a successful author, publishing 8 unique books, and several spin-offs from those as well, and many of which have been best-sellers at various times. Before I get into these two books specifically, I need to say a few words about business/leadership/management books in general. There are thousands, if not more, business/leadership/management books available. Most of them promise basically the same things: fix problems at work, make you more efficient/effective/money, help your company do better, etc. There are many different ways this is approached, some more helpful than others (in my opinion), and I am not going to go into detail in either explanation or critique....

Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. New York: Seabury Books, 2007. 260pgs Introduction: I'm pretty sure this isn't a trend, but here is my second book review and it happens to be of another work published posthumously. Friedman was working on this book when he died in 1996. Three years later, it was published privately (what of it there is, including an introduction, epilogue, 5 completed chapters and 3 incomplete chapters. Apparently this is the entire book in outline, but not in the content of each chapter). In 2007 it was published on a larger, public, scale. Summary: In this book, Friedman argues that the current lack of leadership in America is a symptom of the regressive emotional processes reigning in our culture. To do this, Friedman compares modern day America to Medieval Europe before the renaissance, arguing that despite our technological advances we are in much the same place now as then. The positive assertion whi...