Lessons in Leadership

With Lessons in Leadership fifty respected Christian leaders share their wisdom from a lifetime of ministry. Whether you are currently training for ministry, have recently entered into a leadership role, or are looking for fresh insights on life and ministry, you will greatly benefit from the insightful counsel of these pastors, ministry leaders, and professors.

From the Introduction to the print edition:

Why another book on leadership? Hasn’t this topic been more than adequately addressed by both secular and sacred writers over the past three decades? What more could possibly be said without merely rehearsing the familiar?

As a faculty member and administrator at a seminary that exists to prepare evangelical ministry leaders, I am constantly seeking out texts and other resources that might help me contribute to the task of leadership development. As a result, dozens of books on leadership sit on my shelves. But there is one type of book that I have been unable to find, namely, a volume comprised of wisdom acquired “on the job” by a variety of respected evangelical leaders. For while some elements of leadership theory and practice can be learned in a classroom, other dynamics of leadership can best—perhaps only—be learned through “real life” interactions between leaders and those they are seeking to lead. I knew there would be significant interest in what lessons effective Christian leaders have learned in the school of life. But how might that wisdom be compiled and made accessible to others who will succeed them as the next generation of ministry leaders? Pursuing the answer to that question has led to this volume.

I began by developing a list of more than one hundred evangelical ministry leaders who I felt had something distinctive and important to share about leadership effectiveness. I sought to include representatives of the diversity found in contemporary evangelicalism...

I then sent invitations to this pool of potential contributors, asking them to consider prayerfully submitting a letter of response to the question: “What have you learned about ministry leadership that you wished you had learned earlier?” I asked them to imagine that queslion being posed by a person who was either preparing for leadership or who had just assumed that role. I suggested a potential response of approximately 1,500 words that could either develop a single topic in some depth or address a variety of topics more briefly.