Leaders on Leadership
One can see why a person might not pick up Leaders on Leadership on first glance. There are a good number of business books on the topic, and it could well be difficult to understand the mix of business and biblical thinking. But this product lives up to the promises of the subtitle. It is a good offer of Wisdom, Advice and Encouragement on the Art of Leading God's People.
I particularly liked the playful and life-connected nature of the book. It's filled with easy to appreciate stories about how the editor and the contributors, each incredible leaders in various spiritual communities, both express their viewpoints and demonstrate how they work through reflections and interactions with everyday people, some of whom are followers and others probably not even religious. Barna himself proudly encourages this tactic from the beginning by pulling on sports stories and other personal experiences. This surely encourages the other writers to stay on message and keep their versions approachable through the journey.
Who couldn't like a book that states right up front, "If you agree with all that is in this book, you are not reading carefully enough. Leaders are independent thinkers and must know when to agree with ideas and to disagree with ideas, and the purpose of the book is to reflect this reality"? It's Barna's way of inviting readers to think as they read and come to whatever conclusions...
His business is about research and he uses it well. He intensively studies the reality of faith and religion and the church experience in the country and shows why it isn't working as well as it should -- which is why better leaders are needed -- leaders who take their motivation from religion and augment it with smart organizational elements.
It's this part of Barna's style and knowledge that protects him even when he offers profound and controversial ideas. He believes very confidently that America's churches are dying. And that's because they don't have the kind of leadership that is needed and even expected by God himself. He says in his introduction that God sends us leaders, and He sends them all the time. Which means that He thinks leadership is so important that we need to learn to get it right, especially within the institutions that reflect His greater purposes. Because Barna knows this is controversial, he clarifies his comments by adding that he's talking about the operational elements of the churches, not the theological aspects. As he then points out, people don't usually live on the theoretical level where holiness and righteousness reside. Instead, they live in the practical and that's what is needed when…
