{"id":11,"date":"2008-11-04T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T00:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2008\/11\/leadership.html"},"modified":"2008-11-04T00:20:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T00:20:00","slug":"leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/11\/leadership.html","title":{"rendered":"Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 a church has a leadership conference, I roll my eyes. Perhaps it sounds too corporate or managed or technique-ish … yes, that’s it. Too much of what I hear sounds like techniques. As for my own, admittedly unformed, ideas, I see “leadership” as a “charism” or gift. And then something happened …<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nFirst, Ruth Tucker wrote a book on leadership, sent me the ms and asked
\nme to “blurb” it. I said something like this, “This is the first book
\non leadership I’ve read and I like it because it deconstructs
\nleadership chat.”  (Ruth’s book is not out yet.)<\/p>\n

Second, Nancy Beach wrote a book on leadership (Gifted to Lead: The Art of Leading As a Woman in the Church<\/a>\"\"
\n)  — Kris read it and
\nsaid, “You need to read this and blog about it.” I did but asked Alice
\nShirey to blog about it. Which she did and did well.<\/p>\n

Third, Nancy Ortberg writes a book on leadership and gives it a great
\ntitle: Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership<\/a>\"\"
\n. Maybe it was because I’ve
\nalways found some thrill in stretching a rubber band and shooting the
\nthing across the room — the sort of thing that makes for a good stunt
\nduring mind-numbing faculty meetings.<\/p>\n

Now I have to admit this: Nancy Ortberg’s book … I couldn’t put it
\ndown. Read it from cover to cover. Great stories; wit on top of wit.
\nMore importantly: wisdom. Down-home, experienced-shaped, honest to
\ngoodness wisdom. Which is to say, this isn’t about techniques. It’s
\nabout hard work, about relationships, about learning from doing, about
\nhope in action, and about team work.<\/p>\n

Yes, three books about leadership by women. I’ll leave it to others,
\nthose who know leadership books better, to tell us if women have
\na unique angle on the questions. What I will say is that these are
\nthree books by three leaders, three women leaders, and I like what they say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 a church has a leadership conference, I roll my eyes. Perhaps it sounds too corporate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastoring-and-leading"],"yoast_head":"\nLeadership - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/11\/leadership.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leadership - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I make a confession: I don’t like books on leadership. 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