Resources

Leaders are readers.  In order to grow in your spiritual life and your development as a leader, you must develop the habit of reading good books.  Here are a few to get you started on your journey.  I hope you love them as I have.

Spiritual Formation

1.  Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform Us.  Adele Ahlberg Calhoun.  Provides a comprehensive, reflective resource on the spiritual disciplines.

2. The Great Omission.  Dallas Willard.  The Great Omission is a good starting place to start to understand Wilard’s thinking.  The Great Omission is a compilation of speeches that Willard has given over the years.  A note about Willard: his speaking and his writing are sometimes vastly different in that his speeches are much more pastoral, while the writings can sometimes be philosophical.

3. Renovation of the Heart. Dallas Willard.  This is a critical text for understanding how God changes lives.  Work through it slowly, digesting the material and savoring the rich insights that Willard presents.

4.  Invitation to a Journey: A Roadmap for Spiritual Formation. Robert Mulholland.  Fantastic intro to the concept of spiritual formation.

5. Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing Christ Through Community. James C. Wilhoit. Wilhoit challenges the church to emphasize the spiritual disciplines and give greater attention to spiritual formation.

6. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation. Kenneth Boa.  This book is more of a textbook on biblical approaches to spiritual formation, but it provides a comprehensive overview of the subject.

7.  Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. Richard Foster.  In this classic work, Foster cries out for the need for “deep people” rather than superficiality we have been accustomed to in our churches.

8. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. Eugene Peterson.  In Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Peterson urges us to bring theology down into the way we live our lives.

9. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. Dallas Willard. Another helpful introduction to the spiritual disciplines.

10. Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings for Individual and Groups on the Twelve Spiritual Disciplines. Richard Foster, et al.  Readings from St. Augustine, Thomas Merton, Fredrick Buechner, Evelyn Underhill, A.W. Tozer, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas More, Martin Luther King, Jr., Amy Carmichael, Simone Weil, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hildegard of Bingen, John Milton, Dorothy Day, Leo Tolstoy, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

11. Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation. Ruth Haley Barton.  Another introduction to spiritual disciplines, different from others because of the mystical approach in which Barton approaches her subject.

Leadership

1. Leadership: Theory and Practice. Peter G. Northouse.  Northouse provides an extensive overview of the development of leadership theory over the last 120 years.  The book manages to be enlightening and an easy read, despite being a textbook.  If you want to know prominent leadership theories, and how people have historically answered the question, “What is leadership?” This book is a great starting place.

2. Leading from the Inside Out. Samuel D. Rima.  Explores the dynamics of self-leadership (emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual) in order to strengthen leadership.

3. Leadership Above the Line. Sarah Sumner.  In this book, Sumner not only identifies several types of leaders, but how these leaders can operate successfully (above the line), or unsuccessfully, motivated by personal self-interest (below the line).

4. Mentoring Leaders: Wisdom for Developing Character, Calling, and Competency. Carson Pue.  Practical advice to help develop other leaders.

5. Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership. Gary McIntosh & Sam Rima.  McIntosh and Rima address the obstacles that face leaders in churches and non-profits and provide substantial help in overcoming obstacles that can potentially impede or cripple a ministry.

6. Spiritual Leadership: Moving People on To God’s Agenda. Henry and Richard Blackaby.  Leadership from a biblical perspective.

7. Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer. Oswald Sanders.  A classic text devoted to analyzing several aspects of leadership from a biblical perspective, including qualities of a leader, the habits of a leader, and the costs of being a leader.

8. Servant Leadership. Robert Greenleaf.  Classic text that advocates a holistic approach to leadership that identifies the leader as servant rather than an autocratic leader.  Move emphasis on leadership from the leader to the followers.

9. LeadershipNext: Changing Leaders in a Changing Culture. Eddie Gibbs.  Gibbs analyzes current trends in leadership and church and proposes ways in which leaders must change their approach to leadership.

10. The Making of a Leader. Robert Clinton.  Critical book to assist in self-leadership.

11.  The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence. Bill Thrall.  Examines issues related to why people follow leaders, and the nature of how relationships influence the leadership process.

12. On Eagles Wings: An Exploration of Strength in the Midst of Weakness. Ed. Michael Parsons and David J. Cohen.  A theological and biblical analysis for Christian leaders to understand the dynamics of power and weakness.

13. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. Laurence Gonzalez.  A book that presents information on survival literature, which analyzes why people survive in difficult conditions while others perish.  A great resource for self-leadership development and reflection.

Women and Leadership

1: Living on the Boundaries: Evangelical Women, Feminism, and the Theological Academy, Nicola Hoggard Creegan and Christine D. Pohl. While this book is specifically about women in the theological academy, I found it to be a helpful resource to understand those women that find themselves in a space of liminality–that is, caught between the two worlds of leadership and conservative evangelicalism.

2: Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change, Barbara Kellerman and Deborah L. Rhode. Secular. This book contains contributions from women across a variety of disciplines to outline the progress women have made in leadership as well as strategies for effecting change in the future.

3: Through the Labyrinth: The Truth about How Women Become Leaders, Alice Eagly and Linda Carli. Secular. A seminal work on issues regarding women in the workplace. Eagly and Carli suggest that the old metaphor of a “glass ceiling” is no longer appropriate when talking about women in leadership, because women (although few) do hold prominent positions of leadership. Rather, they suggest the metaphor of a labyrinth to describe the challenges women face in becoming leaders (for example, many women “opting out” for family).

Again, like Women and Leadership, Through the Labyrinth is secular, and women in evangelical churches do face different challenges than women in the secular world, but it is still helpful because both of these books are, in essence, literature reviews drawing on the latest research on women and leadership.

4: Real Power: Stages of Personal Power in Organizations, Janet Hagberg. This book is pretty popular (much to my surprise) and proposes a new model for understanding power. She has a chapter on women and power that’s worth taking a look at. You can find my book review of Real Power in Christian Education Journal (Fall 2009).

5. Women, Ministry, and the Gospel. Mark Husbands and Timothy Larsen.  Integrative and collaborative work designed to break through the challenges of the egalitarian and complementarian debate.

6. Gifted to Lead. Nancy Beach.  Rooted in beach’s personal experiences as a leader at Willow Creek, Beach provides helpful, practical advice on how to navigate through difficult challenges unique to women evangelical leaders.

7. Changing Women, Changing Worlds: Evangelical Women in Church: Community, and Politics. Fran Porter.  Qualitative study analyzing the experiences of women evangelical leaders in Ireland.

8. Gladys Aylward: The Little Women. Gladys Aylward and Christine Hunter.  Inspiring story of a woman determined to do God’s will at any cost.

9. Men and Women in the Church. Sarah Sumner.  Seeks to forge a middle way between complementarians and egalitarians.