Leadership books are worthless. At least that’s what I continued to tell myself most of the way through college, grad-school, and throughout the first 10 years of ministry. They were always the books that everyone pined over, drooled on and referenced at every corner with the goal of helping you take the world by storm. I very much loathed and despised this genre of book and instead chose to skim, push through, or simply ignore them all together.
My thinking on the subject was simple: what does leadership really have to do with pastoring? How is learning business models of leadership really going to make me a better pastor? The church world and the business world are two completely different spheres that narrowly intersect… why waste my time? For many those questions may seem asinine whereas for others its a perfectly valid line of questioning. Today I have moved from one sphere to the other and for the (perhaps) the very first time, I completely understand why pastors seek after these books and strive to understand the issue/subject of leadership.
As a church planter, despite all the assessments, all the training, all of my previous 10 years of experience combined in a variety of settings and roles, never have I felt more unsure and incapable of leading a group of people to start something new than I do on this journey. The questions that keep me up at night are: How do I maintain this momentum (as small as it may be)?; How do I lead our staff team to create the cultural environment that’s only alive in my mind?; How do I balance all these plates that are spinning overhead?; How do I not lose my mind?! So, I have found myself turning not only to my coaches and mentors for advice but diving headlong into leadership books such as Seth Godin’s Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us and Tom Rath & Barry Conchie’s book Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow or Alan Roxburgh’s The Missional Leader. In the pages of leadership books, both far and wide, I have discovered my own reasoning for seeking the wisdom within (and perhaps the reasoning for why so many others clamor after them as well).
I have found they provide me (as an uncertain, confused, sometimes desperate leader) a security blanket to fall back on for ideas, strategies and even a zone of ideological bliss when I don’t know where else to turn. This genre of book has become the leaders version of self-help. (Now obviously this is a gross generalization, and many leaders turn to a few a year not in desperation or self-help but as ways of tweaking and improving their skill.) Whether you agree or disagree with how the leader uses this genre, one thing that’s not debatable: it’s not going to change anytime soon.
As I continue to struggle through, wrestle with and strive to lead a “start-up” church I’m quite certain I will be visiting and re-visiting the leadership section of the bookstore multiple times in the coming years for any wisdom that can help make this dream a reality.
