Next Generation Leadership Community

Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals

Cindi Haworth

Christianity Today posted an article called The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.

"People and movements can be defined by the books they read and remember.

The time it takes to read and digest a book requires us to engage someone else's ideas with more seriousness than almost any other activity. So it is with some trepidation that we present this list.

These are books that have shaped evangelicalism as we see it today—not an evangelicalism we wish and hope for. Books that have been published since World War II—not every book in the history of Christianity. Books that over the last 50 years have altered the way American evangelicals pray, gather, talk, and reach out—not books that merely entertained.We asked dozens of evangelical leaders for their suggestions, and they sent in their nominations. Then we vigorously debated as a staff as we ranked the 50 books. (We're still debating.)"

Check out the book list. Link.

A Leader’s Legacy - Book Review

Linda Stanley

A Leader’s Legacy
by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner
Jossey-Bass publishers

Topic – exactly what the title says
Reading time: Quick – one airplane trip (a couple of hours to destination and back)

I just finished reading this one. Different than their last work, The Leadership Challenge, this work is a compilation of 22 essays on leadership. The essays are grouped into 4 categories: Significance, Relationships, Aspirations, and Courage. The authors consider a different leadership issue in each essay. My favorite essays were “It’s Not Just the Leader’s Vision” and “Failure Is Always an Option.” This is a great book to pass along to colleagues, protégés, family members and even those people who may be a bit challenging to work with at times (to put it diplomatically).

Here are a few excerpts from the book:

In the essay “It’s Not Just the Leader’s Vision,” the authors write:

What people really want to hear is not the leader’s vision. They want to hear about their own aspirations. They want to hear how their dreams will come true and their hopes will be fulfilled. They want to see themselves in the picture of the future that the leader is painting. The very best leaders understand that their key task is inspiring a shared vision, not selling their own idiosyncratic view of the world.

Maybe your constituents don’t tell you this quite so directly. Maybe they don’t tell you this at all. But we’re quite certain that very few adults like to be told in so many words, “Here is where we’re going, so get on board with it.” …most adults don’t like being told where to go and what to do. They want to feel part of the process.

In “Failure Is Always an Option,” they write:

“Failure is not an option,” we said, “is one of the dumbest cliches ever uttered. It ranks right up there with ‘get it right the first time,’ another well-intended nostrum that just encourages people to play it safe.”

Telling people that failure is not an option is just plain nonsense. Failure is always an option. In real life, when we’re trying to do something we’ve never done before, we virtually never get it right the first time. And if we do, it’s sheer luck. …In real life, failure is always an option.

The authors continue with a real life illustration from the great basketball legend, Michael Jordan.

Jordan once observed, “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

James E. West, research professor at Johns Hopkins University, who has secured fifty domestic and more than two hundred foreign patents. “I think I’ve had more failures than successes, but I don’t see the failures as mistakes because I always learned something from those experiences. I see them as having not achieved the initial goal, nothing more than that.”

The last chapter sums it up as the authors write that a leader’s legacy is in the making every day; that in leading we must also learn to serve, to teach, to sacrifice, to remain open to feedback, and most importantly, to never assume that leaders can go it alone. It takes courage to lead.

The last couple of paragraphs were some of the most encouraging written words I’ve read in a while:

Legacies aren’t the result of wishful thinking. They are the result of determined doing. The legacy you leave is the life you lead…It’s the sum of everything you do that matters, not one large bequest at the end of your tenure…the most important leadership actions are the ones you take today.

You just never know whose life you might touch. You just never know what change you might initiate and what impact you might have. You just never know when that critical moment might come. What you do know is that you can make a difference. You can leave this world better than you found it.

An Overview on Getting Things Done

Cindi Haworth

I found this blog entry, GTD on Wiki, on Pastorshack.net on the book, Getting Things Done. They direct you to a summary available for the book on Wikipedia - Link. If you have heard about the book and wondered what GTD is all about, it is a good overiew. If you have never heard of it, it introduces a time management method that might be helpful.

More Book Reviews

Linda Stanley

Blue Like Jazz – Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
By Donald Miller

Am I the last person to read this? It is as the title says. Miller’s sometimes non-linear style makes for interesting reading – a lot like reading someone’s personal journal. He struggles with issues of self-addiction (to use his words) and what it means to him to be truly committed to a faith community. We read about the people and friends that intersect Miller’s life and their conversations on life, love and faith. I like this book because Miller lays it out there openly and honestly that it’s OK to have doubts and to struggle with one’s faith, or the lack thereof. People are broken and messed up, and mostly doing the best they can and God still loves and forgives them anyway. And Christians are right in there, in the mix with everybody else.

The Devil and Miss Prym
By Paulo Coelho (Brazilian author)

Described as “a novel of temptation,” this novel centers on the age old question of whether or not human beings are good or evil. The storyline involves a small, remote village where every day is just like the day before. A mysterious stranger arrives one day with a bag of gold and a bizarre challenge for the entire village. Will the people accept the stranger’s challenge and reap the financial rewards or do the right thing and resist?

This one is a quick read and somewhat predictable. Sub-plots include whether or not the “heroine” decides to take a risk and change her life, political maneuvering, fear, greed and revenge that grips the heart of the stranger as well as the people in the village. 

Book Reviews

Linda Stanley

Book Reviews:

The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs by Madeleine Albright – great read on the topic of government and faith and the implications for our world today.

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris – don’t bother – it’s a personal rant by Harris on everything he could think of that’s wrong with religion.

Through Painted Deserts: Light, God and Beauty on the Open Road by Donald Miller – fun read – road trip memoir about 3 months that Miller and a friend spent crossing the country in a broken down VW van and their adventures along the way. Includes everything from hiking the Grand Canyon trails to a midnight game of night golf with another buddy (only guys would think this was fun).

A History of God: The 4000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong – complex and enlightening. Traces the origin and evolution of all 3 faith traditions. Sometimes difficult to follow since the author goes into great detail to explain all the sects and sub-sects of each tradition.

Survey Results on Barna’s Revolution

Linda Stanley

Recently Leadership Network asked readers of its Advance e-publication to respond to an online survey designed to determine whether or not readers agreed with George Barna’s latest findings concerning the American church in his book, Revolution: Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary.

The results are in and are posted on the Leadership Network website as a free download – Link.

Additional discussion about Barna’s Revolution findings can be found on the Monday Morning Insight blog, authored by Todd Rhoades. Following is an excerpt from the MMI April 24, 2006 post.

5 out of 6 Americans Agree: I Can Grow Spiritually WITHOUT the Church

A new study has some alarming news for the church:  Less than 20 percent of American adults believe participation in a congregation is critical to spiritual growth, and just as few agree that participation in a church community will help them reach their full potential spiritually.

Is this not a wake up call for church leaders everywhere to realize that traditional church alone as we've known it is not going to be the most successful model for reaching the lost?

Here's the bottom line, it's actually two-fold:

1.  The world, even when they are searching and longing for spiritual growth, isn't even looking to the church as a possibility for that growth.  Four out of five (according to this survey) don't view the church as a valuable source for spiritual growth.  The church has lost it's salt.  Quite frankly, 80% just don't believe the church (as they know it) to be valuable to them in any way other than weddings and funerals.

2.  The church (those who attend church as a whole) has a diminished view of what being a part of the church can/will do for them.  A growing percentage of those still involved in the church disagree that being a part of the church can help them reach their full spiritual potential. This matches other studies that show an increasing percentage of Christians who feel they are spiritually fit while not involved in any local church.

So... what do we do about this trend?  Do we continue to do church as usual?  Do we continue to reach out to the 1 in 5 that still think the church has some credibility in spiritual matters (while virtually ignoring the other 4 out of 5)?  Or do we try a different approach?

Click here for the rest of this article - Link.

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5 Innovative Ideas

Linda Stanley

Going through the reading pile on my desk recently, I came across an interesting article in the May/June issue of Rev Magazine (page 79) that references Robert Sutton and this Fast Company article (January 2002), adapted slightly by Rev Magazine for the church. Unfortunately, the Rev Magazine back issue article is not available online. 

If you want to track down Robert Sutton’s book, it’s titled Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining.

5 INNOVATIVE IDEAS

[In the know] Have you ever wished people would see your church as innovative, creative, even a little edgy when it comes to how you "do church"?

Robert Sutton, professor of management science and engineering at Stanford, notes that if you want to fill a company with great ideas, you need to welcome weird people. Rev. has taken Sutton's five weird ideas for companies and very loosely adapted them to the church.

Weird Idea 1: Surround yourself with people who don't really care how things are "supposed to be done" or "how they've always been done." Then, add to the mix people who understand how to promote creative ideas.

Weird Idea 2: Seek out interesting people who have gifts and skills you don't think your church needs right now - and might not ever need. Ask them how they can help you; you might be surprised.

Weird Idea 3: As new people come into your church, take the opportunity to learn something new. Ask them about problems you can't seem to solve. Then actually listen to their ideas.

Weird Idea 4: Rather than teaching people new to your church (and even to Christianity) about your church history and doctrine, have the newcomers tell you and other old-timers what they think church and living the Christian life is about. Get ready to hear some new perspectives!

Weird Idea 5: Let people battle a little. Certainly, you want to be praying for ultimate unity, but encourage people to speak up with their ideas before you reach final decisions.

The Super Bowl, Church and Jim Collins on Greatness

Linda Stanley

Writing this on the eve of the Super Bowl, I think it’s fair to say that most Americans consider the two Super Bowl teams to be great, playing in the greatest game of the year for the purpose of determining which team is the greatest American football team of the year. After all, it’s the Super Bowl and good teams don’t make it to the Super Bowl, only great teams do. If you’re reading this, you probably have a mental list of churches you consider to be great churches. Along with your “great churches” list, you also know of some good churches that almost made your “great churches” list but not quite. So what’s the point of this rather bad analogy?

I’ve been reading again and this time it’s Jim Collins’ monograph, Good to Great and the Social Sectors – Why Business Thinking is Not the Answer. In the author’s note, Collins writes that he first intended to include this work as a new chapter in a subsequent edition of Good to Great, an excellent book co-authored by Collins in October 2001, but changed his mind and decided to publish it as a stand alone piece. You’ll get more out of the monograph if you’ve read Good to Great. 

I thought when I started reading this that I would flag the important points with those little colored, stick on flags so that I could easily summarize and enumerate them later. Soon almost every page had one or two or even three colored, stick on flags. Yes, it’s that good. Collins includes five issues that form the framework of this issue. I’m not going to re-write Collins’ work here. You can read and the entire monograph is only 35 pages long, but I do want to share just one point that jumped off the page at me as I read.

“Results, results, results!” Bob Buford, the founder of Leadership Network, is all about results. He wants to ensure that the investments made by our organization into Kingdom building bring results. Should be simple enough - just add up all the metrics and that will give you the results. But how do you do that in a nonprofit organization or in a church? Not so simple after all. Collins writes that we need to be most concerned with the outputs achieved by our organizations. We’ve protested that we don’t produce widgets, therefore how can we measure intangibles and evaluate our success or the lack thereof; i.e., results?

When we “nonprofits” protest that our metrics are intangible and qualitative rather than tangible and quantitative, Collins writes that this is beside the point.

It doesn’t really matter whether you can quantify your results. What matters is that you rigorously assemble evidence – quantitative or qualitative – to track your progress. If the evidence is primarily qualitative, think like a trial lawyer assembling the combined body of evidence. If the evidence is primarily quantitative, then think of yourself as a laboratory scientist assembling and assessing the data. 

Collins writes that all indicators or metrics are flawed whether one considers the business or the social sector.

What matters is not finding the perfect indicator, but settling upon a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results, and then tracking your trajectory with rigor…Have you established a baseline? Are you improving? If not, why not? How can you improve even faster toward your audacious goals? …No matter how much you have achieved, you will always be merely good relative to what you can become.

Now this brings us to the greatness factor. Quoting Collins again, “Greatness is an inherently dynamic process, not an end point. The moment you think of yourself as great, your slide toward mediocrity will have already begun.”

Metrics and results tie into Collins’ Hedgehog Concept which is to clarify how to produce the best long-term results and exercise the rigorous discipline to hold everyone involved in the effort accountable for the outputs achieved. This is greatly over-simplifying Collins’ Hedgehog Concept and certainly doesn’t do it the justice it deserves. That’s why you should get your own copy of the monograph and read it for yourself. As Collins writes in the first few pages, “it’s not about business versus social sectors, it’s about what separates great from good.”

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline. ---Jim Collins

Well, it’s past midnight now and I need to turn in. Tomorrow is a full day – Super Bowl Sunday!  The schedule includes church (of course it’s a great church) and peeling off all those little colored flags, preparing for next week’s staff meetings, a few housekeeping items (or not), and of course, the big game. Oh man, I love the Super Bowl. This year, the Rolling Stones (???) will perform (believe me, no one wants to see a wardrobe malfunction on one of those guys) and it’s the only television program that I actually plan to watch the commercials. What an excuse to eat food that is definitely not diet-friendly – I don’t care what diet you’re on. The two greatest American football teams of the year are playing in the greatest American football game of the year. Guess I’d better do my homework and find out which two teams are playing…

Click here obtain a copy of Good to Great and the Social Sectors – Why Business Thinking is Not the Answer.