Kevin Stilley

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Leadership and Management Book Recommendations

Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has recommended the following books on Christian Leadership and Management.  What do you think of his suggestions?  What would you add to his list?

Anthony, Michael J. The Effective Church Board: A Handbook for Mentoring and Training Servant Leaders. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993.

Anderson, Leith. A Church for the 21st Century. Minneapolis: Bethany, 1992.

Barna, George, ed. Leaders On Leadership. The Leading Edge Series. Ventura, CA: Regal, 1997.

Drucker, F. Peter. 1996. The Effective Executive. New York: Harper, 1967.

________. Managing the Non-corporate Organization. New York: Harper, 1990.

________. Managing for the Future: the 1990’s and Beyond. New York: Dutton, 1992.

Finzel, Hans. The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make. Wheaton: Victor, 1994.

Gangel, Kenneth O. Feeding and Leading. Wheaton: Victor, 1989.

________. Team Leadership in Christian Ministry. Chicago: Moody, 1997.

Hersey, Paul, Kenneth H. Blanchard, and Dewey E. Johnson. Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Hesselbein, Frances, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard, ed. The Leader of the Future. Drucker Foundation Future Series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.

________., ed. The Organization of the Future. Drucker Foundation Future Series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.

Hesselbein, Frances, Marshall Goldsmith, Richard Beckhard, and Richard F. Schubert, ed. The Community of the Future. Drucker Foundation Future Series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

Maxwell, John C. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.

Miller, Michael D. Kingdom Leadership: A Call to Christ-Centered Leadership. Nashville: Convention Press, 1996.

Mims, Gene. Kingdom Principles for Church Growth. Nashville: Convention Press, 1994.

Schultz, Glen. Kingdom Education. Nashville: LifeWay, 1998.

Shelley, Marshall, ed. Leading Your Church Through Conflict and Resolution. Library of Leadership Development. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1997.

________., ed. Renewing Your Church Through Vision and Planning. Library of Leadership Development. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1997.

Tidwell, Charles A. The Educational Ministry of a Church: A Comprehensive Model for Students and Ministers. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996.

Westing, Harold J. Church Staff Handbook: How to Build an Effective Ministry Team. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1997.

Williams, Dennis E., and Kenneth O. Gangel. Volunteers for Today’s Church: How to Recruit and Retain Workers. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993.

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Power Corrupts – Select Quotes

Power Corrupts

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Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
~ Edward Abbey

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
~ Lord Acton

My opinion is, and always has been, that absolute power intoxicates alike despots, monarchs, aristocrats, and democrats and jacobins and sans culottes.
~ John Adams

Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
~ John Adams

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
~ David Brin

The Christian’s goal is not power, but justice. We are to seek to make the institutions of power just, without being corrupted by the process necessary to do this.
~ Charles Colson

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?
~ George Deacon

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance and suspicion are the fruits of weakness.
~ Eric Hoffer, in The Ordeal of Courage

I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.
~ Elia Kazan

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
~ John F. Kennedy

Power – Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it rocks absolutely, too.
~ Larry Kerston

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
~ John F. Lehman, Jr.

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
~ Abraham Lincoln

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.
~ William Pitt

Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it.
~ Plato

Politicians cannot be pure, by definition. Their motives are always mixed. Ambition, power, public adulation, always figure in somehow. Means get confused with ends.
~ Robert Reich, in Locked in the Cabinet. NY: Vintage, 1997, page 10.

Power does not corrupt men; but fools, if they get into a position of power, corrupt it.
~ George Bernard Shaw

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
~ Harry Shearer

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps the fear of the loss of power.
~ John Steinbeck

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
~ Adlai Stevenson

Rule your desires lest your desires rule you.
~ Publius Syrus

Too much liberty corrupts us all.
~ Terence

All Hollywood corrupts; and absolute Hollywood corrupts absolutely.
~ Edmund Wilson

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Conservative vs. Libertarian

Expelled: A Review

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Search For A Great President

Who were the truly great Presidents in the history of the United States? And how does one measure true greatness when it come to this position? After all, there have only been 44 men who have held this unique position, and they are spread across more than 200 years so it is in many ways very difficult to compare them.

In 1996 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. did poll ranking of the presidents using thirty-two experts (most academics). They did not include the two presidents who died shortly after taking office (James Garfield and William Henry Harrison). The following are the results, as reported by John Maxwell Hamilton in Casanova Was A Book Lover.

GREAT PRESIDENTS– George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt

NEAR GREAT PRESIDENTS

— Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman

UPPER AVERAGE PRESIDENTS

— John Adams, Monroe, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson

LOWER AVERAGE PRESIDENTS

— James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William H. Taft, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton

BELOW AVERAGE PRESIDENTS

— John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge

FAILURES

— Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon

I am curious, what do you think makes a successful President of the United States? What changes would you make to the evaluations above?

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Storytelling / Narrative – select quotes

narrative

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Story is the primary way we impart what really matters to the next generation. Stories have the potential to embody biblical and theological content in ways that sink into the imagination, take root, and grow.
~ Sarah Arthur, in The God-Hungry Imagination: The Art of Storytelling for Postmodern Youth Ministry

Stories are the natural soul food for children, their native air and vital breath….Let me tell the stories and I care not who writes the textbooks.
~ G. Stanley Hall

People are being changed by their media. In order to speak to changed people, the Church must speak in changed ways. Preaching must adopt a new kind of language–a language of narrative and emotion.
~ Richard Jensen, in Thinking In Story

The language of logical argument, of proofs, is the language of the limited self we know and can manipulate. But the language of parable and poetry, of storytelling, moves from the imprisoned language of the provable into the freed language of what I must, for lack of another word, continue to call faith. For me this involves trust not in “the gods” but in God.
~ Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet (NY: HarperCollins, 1972), page 194.

Storytelling is powerful because it has the ability to touch human beings at the most personal level. While facts are viewed from the lens of a microscope, stories are viewed from the lens of the soul. Stories address us on every level. They speak to the mind, the body, the emotions, the spirit, and the will. In a story a person can identify with situations he or she has never been in. The individual’s imagination is unlocked to drea what was previously unimaginable.
~ Mark Miller in Experiential Storytelling: (Re) Discovering Narrative to Communicate God’s Message

Stories are designed to embody–in their characters, plots, and imagery–patterns and relationships that nurture a part of the mind that’s unreachable in more direct ways, thus increasing our understanding and breadth of vision, in addition to fostering our ability to think critically. Stories activate the right side of the brain much more than… reading normal prose. The right side of the brain provides “context,” the essential function of putting together the different components of experience. The left side provides the “text,” or the pieces themselves.
~ Robert Ornstein, in a 2002 Library of Congress lecture

Story is the most natural way of enlarging and deepening our sense of reality, and then enlisting us as participants in it.  Stories open doors to areas or aspects of life that we didn’t know were there, or had quit noticing…. Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
~ Eugene Peterson, in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
~ Muriel Rukeyser

If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Our lives as human beings are made up of stories that have shaped, or are shaping, who we are. The story of the Bible has the power to make sense of all the other stories of your life. When it is internalized and it becomes your story, it gives meaning in the midst of meaninglessness and value in the midst of worthlessness. Yoru personal story will find grounding in creation, guidance in crises, re-formation in redemption, and direction in its destination. People become Christians when their own stories merge with, and are understood in the light of, God’s story.
~ Preben Vang and Terry Carter, in Telling God’s Story: The Biblical Narrative from Beginning to End

God created man because He loves good stories.
~ Elie Wiesel

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Book Cover

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Bill Gates – select quotes

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Digital reading will completely take over. It’s lightweight and it’s fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning.
– in Time magazine

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Lao Tzu – select quotes

Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Silence is a source of great strength.

To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, “We did it ourselves!”

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

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John Maxwell – select quotes

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.

All Leadership is influence.

At any time I am one step from stupid.

Encouragement is the oxygen of the soul.

If a person doesn’t govern his temper, his temper will govern him.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.

The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.

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Half Full or Half Empty?

Consider the following account,

“… one study had college students form two lines, go into rooms with people pouring water into glasses. In one room the experimenters said “Please drink this half full glass of water.” In the other room, “Please drink this half empty glass of water.” Of course, the glasses contained exactly the same amount of water.

“Now comes the interesting part. The groups then entered another room where they were asked if they wanted more water. Yup, no half full or half empty just would you like more water.

“Anyone want to guess the outcome? I’ll bet most of you were right. The “half empty” contingent was thirstier than the “half full” folks.” (Source: Sylvia Lafair)

Do you think that there is anything that leaders can gain from this study when it comes to communication strategy?

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