What makes a leader? Ideas. Courage. Contact with great thinkers. What makes a Christian leader? Great ideas, courage, and contact with great thinkers re-shaped and shaped by the gospel.
So, I offer to you a list of my top ten books for leaders, and none of the titles of these books have the word "leader," or its buddy "leadership," in it. Some of these are overtly Christian classics; others are not. These books have the ability to swell the chest, flood the mind, and reshape how we see the world around us - and a gospel-reshaping of these great works can inspire a leader to new levels.
From the classical world, though one could choose all sorts of great works, I recommend a soaking in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, to see how the great philosopher constructed a set of ethics that shaped the Western world. Homer told the story of Odysseus and Virgil, in The Aeneid, developed what Homer began for the Roman world and handed on to all of us the power of a journey into ideas and ideals, sanctifying place and history. Dante took Homer and Virgil to the next level in his Divine Comedy, and if you follow him all the way down into the inferno, up through purgatory and then climb into the swirling glorious presence of God you will find new dimensions to life's journey.
In a post last month I raised the issue of Third Way preaching, and this is what I said:
A genuine Third Way will get beyond the Sunday morning sermon as the primary form of spiritual formation and education in a local church, and neither Belcher nor Pagitt seem to approach preaching through the lens of a larger formational program with clearly defined outcomes. A genuine Third Way will form a well-rounded and adaptable formation program that guides all sermons, all teaching, and all activities in the church. Sermons will be seen as one part of the formational ministry of the church. In other words, Third Way preaching is rooted in the overall outcomes of the church.
I'd like to address this issue this month in a weekly series of outcome-based preaching. Today's post addresses the big idea of outcome based education and how it can impact churches.
The focus shifts from what the pastor-teacher knows and what the pastor-teacher says and how the pastor-teacher performs and that the pastor-teacher informs the congregation to each person in the congregation being a learner whom the pastor is equipping for learning and living.
Evangelical pastors have flipped in the last generation. 30-40 years ago what most incited excitement was a new book by the arch-pastor and expositor, John Stott, expositing a New Testament book or a J.I. Packer book on theology. Today's evangelicals pastors are enamored with the latest book on leadership, like that morsel of an idea in the book called Tribes, or the latest book on management, or the latest fad in creativity.
These are often pastors who, if we were to ask them what is in some Old Testament book or some chapter in Ephesians, to take two soundings, would not know what we were talking about.
When good pastors or good scholars come out with insightful expositions of pastoral leadership, and stick to what the Bible says or even plumb the depths of some of the great books on pastoral leadership -- like Pope Gregory, we see almost no interest.
So let me say this: (too many) evangelical leaders have become too enamored with management skills and techniques and have neglected the nitty-gritty of soaking themselves in the great texts of the Old and the New Testament.
We need a conference, at some church, devoted to one thing: two days of exposition of key biblical texts on pastoral theology and ministry. And no one can bring up a modern management or leadership expert; and no publisher or book table present can sell anything but commentaries.
Who will host it? Who wants to know what the Bible says?
Recently we had a conversation about the pastor's time schedule, and Jim Martin, a friend, posted a comment I thought deserved a separate post. So here it is...
This is such an important concern. Working with a church can eat you
alive without the kind of boundaries talked about in the above
comments.
A couple of suggestions:
1. There is not end or completion to this work. Consequently, you must
set boundaries. You may work all day and then it is reasonable to be
home in the evenings.
2. Put all commitments on your calendar.
Appointments, children's ball games, dates with wife, coffee with a
friend. Someone asks are you busy, "Well I've got a commitment at 3:00
but I am happy to visit with you at 4:00, etc. Treat your family
commitments like any other commitment.
3. Cluster meetings, counseling
if at all possible. There are some people who just can't meet with you
during daytime working hours. I will often get together with them on
Sunday afternoon. I will also use the 2:00-4:00 for meetings. So I
might have a meeting and then fifteen minutes later meet a couple for
something that is more counseling in nature. I have done this for years
and it has really helped eliminate the need to be gone one more
evening.
4. Set your schedule by being proactive instead of being reactive. You
decide when you are going to the hospital or when you are going to
study. Some pastors will flinch at the slightest bit of criticism "Well
our last pastor was at the hospital so much that the staff knew him by
his first name." Some might hear this and think they are supposed to
immediately rush to the hospital because of a veiled criticism.
5. You
will have emergencies. There have been a number of times that I have
dropped everything that I was doing to rush to the hospital. A serious
car wreck. A massive heart attack and the person is near death. A drug
overdose. Bottom line: Be intentional and do the work. Set boundaries
and know this is right. On the other hand, try to please everyone and
do everything that everyone would like to see you do and you will end
up totally exhausted and a poor model of what it means to live a
balanced life.
I was talking to another staff member's wife and they had only been in ministry a few months. They were exhausted. Spent. She said to me: I remember your husband saying something to mine about how we need to...
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If you are working at crossing ethnic lines, or if you are frustrated with stereotypes, Eric Bryant's new book, Peppermint-Filled Piñatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love, is a book I highly recommend. And especially if you work with youth...
The good folks at YS invited me to their PIttsburgh NYWC and gave me two seminars to teach: one on how to shape the gospel and a second one about The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible ....
A pastor-friend wrote me this letter. He's asking what are the vocational temptations of a pastor. What tempts them the most as a pastor? [We're not talking here about sexual temptations, etc.] What are the major temptations of a pastor...
I make a confession: I don't like books on leadership. I'm not sure why, but I've never found the word "leadership" remotely interesting or evocative of what I do or what I think pastors do. So, when I hear that...
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. His vision is for a "whole" church -- with God, God's people, the community, and the world. This book is for pastors and by a pastor who has been there: with fragmentation and the concrete steps involved in healing and bringing back to wholeness. I really liked part two:
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