Leadership

Review: Formed to Lead

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Cover image of "Formed to Lead" by Jason Jensen

Formed to Lead

Formed to Lead, Jason Jensen. InterVarsity Press | Formatio (ISBN:9781514009901) 2025.

Summary: Through reflection on Luke 1-4, proposes a vision of leadership rooted in formation of character and spiritual discernment.

I’ve noticed that for the most part, those who read books on spiritual formation tend not to read books on leadership. Likewise, readers of leadership books are often not big readers of spiritual formation books. Jason Jensen believes there is ample evidence for the error of compartmentalizing these two things. Sometimes, it may be spiritually deep individuals who do not know how to lead others. But more often, it is evident in the moral failures of gifted and prominent Christian leaders. Rarely does their leadership failure for lack of leadership ability or training. More often it is a failure related to pride, a defect of character, or a lack of integrity, thinking lies and deception can accomplish the work of God.

Jensen has reflected deeply on Luke 1-4, the chapters that describe the formative period of Jesus life. He begins with Luke’s vision of leadership integrity, expressed in the Magnificat and the birth narrative. It is a vision of humility and bold faith in response to the Spirit’s initiative. Out of this emerges spiritual discernment. Thus, Jensen introduces us to themes that will recur in his study. Here we see those who surrounded Jesus reflecting these qualities

Having laid this groundwork, Jensen reflects on other formative experiences. In Luke 3, he considers how the word comes in the wilderness. He explores both our wilderness experiences, and how sought solitude to listen to God may form us. Sometimes, the “wilderness” of our context, particularly when we are out of our depth reveals blind spots and self-sufficiency. Wilderness humbles us, making us more aware of those on the margins.

The wilderness is also the site of Jesus baptism. Specifically, God affirms three important things in baptism: identity as God’s son or daughter, affection as the beloved of God, and God’s pleasure upon the baptized. For Jensen, baptism is also associated strongly with rest or sabbath. In sabbath, we cease doing to allow God to remind us of our identity, and his affection and pleasure upon us. Thus, we work and lead on other days out of this rest and restoration. Finally, for Jesus wilderness is the place of testing both in the abstinence from food and in resistance to the adversary’s warfare. His reflections upon and use of scripture confirms the power of the word that came in the wilderness, and the Spirit who filled him as he entered the wilderness. So it is that he emerges in the Spirit’s power to face illness, demons, and opposition.

Thus, the Spirit’s empowering of Jesus tested character results in spiritual authority. Jensen notes that spiritual authority is integrity, not charisma; love, not authoritarianism; and holiness, not pragmatism. As Jesus spoke from Isaiah 61:1-3, he shared prophecy that shaped his sense of call. Jensen likens calling for us to pilgrimage, in which we learn to attend to the markers along the way. We discern through repentance, intimacy with God, character formation, and the everyday journey of faith. He describes discernment as a “roundabout” way, commending the labyrinth as a practice in which we experience that “roundaboutness.”

Finally, leadership is about dependence and dying. Prayer is to leadership as breathing is to life. We both encounter God in devotion and commit those we lead to God in intercession. Leadership is also a rehearsal of our death. The shadow of death was upon the ministries of both John and Jesus. We live in the realization that we have already died in baptism and are not our own and our hope and consolation is in God alone.

Jensen interleaves his reflections with formational practices and group discussion guides. Rather than either an introspective book for individuals or a how to book of leadership, he gives us a book showing the ways God forms the character of Jesus in us so that he might work the ministry and mission of Jesus through us. This is leadership both rooted in godly character and empowered by God’s Spirit. It is leadership marked by integrity, love, and holiness. May God use this book to raise up such leaders!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Lead Boldly

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Cover image for "Lead Boldly" by Martin Luther King, Jr. with Robert F. Smith

Lead Boldly, Martin Luther King, Jr with Robert F. Smith (Foreword by Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King). HarperCollins Leadership (ISBN: 9781400244102) 2025.

Summary: Leadership principles from seven speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and how they may be integrated into a leadership journey.

The speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr are among the most significant in the history of American oratory. Their lasting value is reflected in the reading of these speeches and how they continue to inspire striving for the Beloved Community, the realization of “the dream”, and the pursuit of our nation’s highest ideals.

This work explores seven of those speeches. Some are familiar, such as the “Dream” speech, the Letter from Birmingham Jail, and “I See the Promised Land,” given in Memphis the night before his assassination. Others are less familiar but no no important. “Justice without Violence” was given at Brandeis University in 1957. In it, King laid out his principles for non-violence and his vision of the Beloved Community. “The Other America,” given at Stanford in 1967 describes the two Americas and also links the civil rights struggle to our nation’s involvement in Vietnam. “The Three Evils of Society,” given in Chicago in 1967, highlight the struggle for economic justice and the evils of racism, materialism, and poverty. Finally, his address to the American Jewish Congress in 1958 extends an invitation to allied action for civil rights that many Jewish leaders accepted.

A reflection by Robert F. Smith follows each speech. Smith is an investor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He relates his own experiences to each of King’s themes. He recounts his family’s cross-country pilgrimage to the March on Washington in 1963. Smith reflects on the Beloved Community and the horrible assault on the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa in 1921. He had family there. In response to King’s speech on the two Americas, he recounts his own experience of the differences between himself and white students. Finally, a number of reflections include descriptions of leadership lessons and opportunities Smith has had to practice them.

Another feature of the book is a concluding question for readers to ponder. For example, after the “Dream” speech he asks, “What part of King’s mission resonates most with you? How has persistence and overcoming played a role in your own march?”

Lastly, the book is printed on high quality paper, includes a number of photographs, and a readable font size. It is equally suitable for a reception area in an office or a coffee table. However, it is also suitable for a discussion group. Likewise, it is a great introduction to King’s important speeches. Smith’s reflections challenge us to “walk the talk.” Finally, I think it would make a great graduation gift for a high school or college student.

In an era that is erasing the work of civil rights leaders, it is important to read King’s words afresh. We haven’t yet realized the dream. We still have two Americas. And we are far from the Beloved Community. Likewise, today’s “resistance” needs to understand the philosophy and practice of nonviolent direct action. This is an inspirational book with substance.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: Leadership or Servanthood?

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Leadership or Servanthood?, Hwa Yung. Carlisle: Langham Global Library, 2021.

Summary: Contends that, contrary to our focus on developing or training leaders, Jesus was concerned with the formation of servants.

Almost everywhere you turn in Christian circles, (including the organization in which I work) you come across discussions of the urgency of developing leaders and various efforts to “train” leaders. Years ago I heard a lead pastor of a large megachurch speak of how people love being lead well. This pastor later was forced to step down from his position for moral irregularities. And this is a story we hear with nauseating regularity.

The author of this work challenges this focus on leadership. He notes the sparing use of the term in scripture (often negatively) and how the words used for those in roles of oversight largely were terms that might be translated “servant” or “slave,” often translated as “minister.” It is not that there were not people serving in leadership capacities, but that they understood their work in the light of Christ as servant.

The author contends that this is not “servant leadership,”: as has been popularized, because this still centers leadership. He would contend, rather for “leader servants” He notes the work of Jim Collins in Good to Great describing the Level 5 leader as a good description of the kind of leader servant of which he is speaking. In contrast, Christian leaders are often self-promoting, even while they lack spiritual and theological depth.

Yung discusses the matter of authority, differentiating moral, institutional, and spiritual authority. The latter comes, in the case of Jesus, out of his entire submission to the Father. Yung then develops the biblical case for submission as the basis of spiritual authority for leading servants, and how crucial this is for ministry with true spiritual power. This submission includes submission to scripture, to God’s voice in conscience, prayer, conviction, and prophetic word, as well as submission to those placed over us.

The joy of submission is to be utterly secure in the love of the Father. Yung spends a couple chapters on this. He highlights the protection and provision of those who call God “Abba, Father”: we may pray freely, boldly, and simply, we need not be anxious, we are heirs of the kingdom, and needn’t fear anything. This security also means we may uncover our deepest wounds, and experience over time the healing of our memories.

This security leads to an unself-consciousness that allows the leader to serve with humility: doing the lowly but needful things, appreciating the contributions of others, while being self-effacing. Other qualities that characterize humble leaders are compassion, faithfulness, and sacrifice. All of this arises through a process of transformation as we move from self-sufficiency to submission as God breaks and remakes us.

In the conclusion of the work, Yung asks if all are leaders, as servants. He allows for the distinctiveness of gifts, that some may serve as organizers or administrators. Not all have these gifts but all may aim for serving. Above all, in submission to Christ, all should seek to serve in his authority, enabling us to be effective wherever we are called.

This book comes as a breath of fresh air, challenging Western leadership models that have so often been patterned after worldly values. As a Malaysian, he comes as a voice from outside, raising important questions of how we read fleshy leadership into scripture rather than following the pattern of Jesus the submissive servant who comes with spiritual authority. He challenges us to the harder work of character transformation rather than picking up a few leadership skills.

There has been a great exodus from ministry, indeed from Western churches, in recent years. Perhaps with the need to raise up a new generation of servant-shepherds, it is time to re-think how they are first recognized and then prepared. Do we call those who have proven themselves in humble service to God’s people? Do we look for those whose lives are already marked by the spiritual authority of submission to the Father? Yung’s book comes at an important inflection point, a time where the old paradigms of leadership have failed.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Together in Ministry

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Together in Ministry, Rob Dixon (Foreword by Ruth Haley Barton). Downers Grove: IVP Academic/Missio Alliance, 2021.

Summary: A field research-based approach to mixed-gender ministry collaboration identifying ten attributes for healthy partnerships.

Rob Dixon is a field ministry director who works closely with a number of female ministry colleagues in a collegiate ministry (in the interest of full disclosure, we work with the same ministry in different parts of the country). I welcome this book because it models and articulates the conditions for healthy mixed gender collaborations in a time of so much relational brokenness, patriarchy, and abuse in the church. Rob casts of vision of what many of us are experiencing in male-female partnerships where no one has to step back but all of us are encouraging each other in the pursuit of God’s mission.

Dixon introduces this by discussing that this has always been God’s intent. He, as others, observes that the “helper” God gives Adam in the form of Eve is an ezer, and far from implying subordination is the term most often used of God as our helper, and God is hardly subordinate to us! It can be argued that the Samaritan woman is Jesus’s first partner in mission, even before the disciples in bearing witness and gathering her village to hear Jesus. And we see a pattern of prominent women who work alongside men in the New Testament. Dixon then lays out his research methodology, which consisted of quantitative measures, interviews with roughly 60 people using an appreciative inquiry approach, as well as participant observation.

Out of his research he identified ten attributes that he clustered in three clusters:

The Inner Life Cluster:

An Authentic learners posture. This involves a mutual commitment to humility, to extend grace, to submit to one another, and curiosity.

Shared Convictions of Gender Equality. This consists of a shared biblical interpretation, an understanding that the Bible advocates full and equal partnership, and that collaborators treat this as a matter of conviction rather than as a pragmatic value.

Awareness of Gender Brokenness. Partners in mission are growing in self-awareness including sexual brokenness, undervaluing of female colleagues, and gender bias.

Community Culture Cluster:

Vision for Freely Shared Power: Rather than the control of power by men, there is a reciprocity between men and women, each affirming and advocating the other, reflected in equitable sharing of responsibilities.

Differences for the Sake of Mission: A recognition that we are equal but different, and that difference ought to be deployed in ways that advance mission, but that individual differences should be appreciated apart from gender stereotypes.

Value for Holistic Friendships: Healthy partnerships involve presence in each other’s lives beyond ministry situations–with families and as part of a community.

Corporate Sensitivity to Adverse Gender Dynamics: Recognizing and intentionally addressing the social dynamics in organizations that often favor men, excluding, discounting, blocking or putting at career risk, the women in an organization.

Intentional Practices Cluster:

Abundant Communication: This involves both quantity and quality and also is enhanced by regular debriefs of conversations.

Contextualized Boundaries: This chapter discussed “The Billy Graham Rule,” how this has not worked, how women have been hurt, and developing boundaries that allow for honest conversations of what is wise for each rooted in self-knowledge, what is situationally wise and, rather than a rigid rule, an understanding of the contexts where men and women can work with good boundaries with each other.

Public Affirmation and Modeling: The importance of leaders modeling their commitments to partnerships, celebrating publicly the work of each other, and good examples, and deliberately assessing how well up-front and other forms of leadership are shared.

Dixon devotes a chapter to each of these attributes discussing research findings about the attribute, the attribute in scripture, benefits of the attribute, barriers to implementing the attribute, and practical steps to develop the attribute. I found Dixon’s identification of barriers and practical steps especially helpful. I thought the taxonomy of sixteen different adverse gender dynamics in organizations especially significant–I think I’ve seen all of them and been guilty of contributing to or benefiting from more than a few! If I were Dixon, I think I might have figured out a way to cover the material on contextualized boundaries earlier, since I think many who read this book are thinking about that. But it kept me reading (or I suppose I could have skipped ahead!). Each chapter concludes with questions that groups working on ministry together can use to process and begin to implement these attributes in their communities.

One other element of this work that I appreciated was the missional focus of the discussion. So often, ministry situations I’ve witnessed are turned in on each other and it is easy to see how ministry partnerships may turn unhealthy. Dixon’s premise is that we have a mission given us by Christ in the world that is “all hands,” requiring the hands of men and women together. I so appreciate Dixon’s approach throughout, his own humility about mistakes, and the consistent effort to move from what is problematic in mixed-gender ministry to the opportunities for both people and ministries to flourish. We need more such voices and models.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Lead Like It Matters to God

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Lead Like It Matters to God, Richard Sterns. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021.

Summary: In contrast to many leadership books that outline steps to success, describes what it is like to give value-shaped leadership in both for profit and non-profit settings.

No question. Good leadership is a gift to any organization or political entity. Richard Sterns, out of his Christian faith, takes a different approach from many other leadership books. His focus is not on skills or “steps to success.” Sterns should know from work at Gillette and CEO experiences at Parker Brothers, Lenox, and World Vision. He contends that what matters most are the values that shape one’s leadership. After introducing this approach, Sterns devotes a chapter each to seventeen different values.

Beside values you might expect like excellence, vision, courage, self-awareness, and perseverance, Sterns includes values you might not associate with executive leadership. These include sacrifice, love, humility, integrity, generosity, forgiveness, balance, humor, encouragement and listening. He begins with surrender, describing his own painful experience of getting fired twice in a two year period and spending fourteen months unemployed. He describes this period of being “benched” by God as one that convinced him that God wanted his Mondays through Saturdays and not just his Sunday, a life of daily surrender. Likewise, he describes the value of trust, particularly trust in God, as one that enables leading in the face of adversity with calm.

Even typical corporate values like excellence are re-shaped by Sterns’ Christian commitments. He states that “excellence means that we will always strive to use the gifts and abilities that God has given us to the fullest extent possible.” He believes “good outcomes do not lead to excellence; excellence leads to good outcome” (italics in original). He argues for love for the workers in an organization, no matter the title.

One of the endearing things about this book is that Sterns not only values humor but he is practices it, usually laughing at himself. He illustrates humility with his experience of plugging up and surreptitiously plungering his private executive toilet on his first day as CEO at Lenox and describes the “shroud of Turin” he left on a glass window he mistook for a door as he rushed to a meeting with the governor of Tennessee, arriving bloody nosed, quipping, “You should see the other guy.”

He speaks compellingly of the power of encouragement by contrasting two bosses, the one who told him he had no marketing talent, while the second kept encouraging him and giving him stretch assignments that affirmed his confidence. He credits the second boss with grooming him for his first CEO position. He argues for corporate and personal matters, describing the time he was his angriest at World Vision, and it all had to do with pumpkin seeds. And in his description of the balanced leader, he notes the role of reading in the lives of great leaders. I might quibble with some of his examples though–while Harry Truman and Warren Buffett strike me as balanced and sensible, I’m not sure about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk–all of whom are great readers.

The book concludes with a challenge for Christians to take God to work and offers several closing stories of the unseen acts of faithfulness through which God works, including the child sponsored by a couple through World Vision who became the sixth archbishop of the Anglican church in Kenya. I would commend this book to every aspiring leader. For all the reasons above, it is both substantive and engaging. Note the values that you want to cultivate more deeply in your leadership and get to work. If Sterns is right, it all matters to God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Longing For Revival

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Longing for Revival

Longing for Revival, James Choung and Ryan Pfeifer. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Summary: A practical work on revival that begins with defining what it is and why we ought hope for it; second, what it means to experience revival; and third, what it means to lead in a time of revival.

The word “revival” conjures up all sorts of associations from “revival meetings” to the “sawdust trail” of frontier revivals, to the experience and writing of Jonathan Edwards in New England. For me, it recalled the Jesus Movement, of which I was a part during my high school years. Spontaneously, throughout the U.S., there was a movement of God that resulted in a great turning to Christ of many in the youth culture of the day. Many of us are still following Christ fifty years later, and particularly, in this time of turmoil, and in this time of declining numbers in many churches and the exodus of many youth, we long to see something like this again. But dare we believe for such things?

The two authors of this book, a current and a former campus staff minister with InterVarsity/USA (the organization in which I am also employed, in the interests of full disclosure), write about their own journeys of moving from a holy discontent with the status quo to a breakthrough faith that believes God and begins to experience revival, both personally, and by the power of God, in ministry. They begin with a definition of revival that has been accepted within InterVarsity circles as our working definition of what we mean by revival:

A season of breakthroughs
in word, deed, and power
that ushers in a new normal
of kingdom experience and fruitfulness

They then unpack this definition, noting the importance of “season,” the significance of having word, deed, and power with love at the center, of new normals, for example, where it is the expected reality to see people regularly come to faith, and where the nearness of the kingdom, the presence and rule of Jesus is apparent. This is followed by several chapters tracing the breakthrough U curve: beginning with holy discontent, there is an initial descent to untested faith, then a descent into crucified hope, where our own dreams and expectations die, a crisis of faith where we hit bottom, the revival of hope, not in our own dreams but in God and his capacity to lead us into a new season, followed by breakthrough faith enabling one to minister in word, deed, and power in the confidence of who we know God to be.

The writers then lay out four steps in the experience of revival, exploring how we live in faithful expectancy, yet look for a work only God can do. They walk us through consecration, the setting of ourselves apart to God, to long for more of his presence in our lives; calling, using the example of Peter stepping out of the boat, hearing the Lord’s invitation, obeying in faith, and experiencing the Lord lifting up, as we pursue something new and audacious; contending in prayer and fasting, not to earn something through our spiritual efforts but learning to persist and not give up until we see God act in power; and finally, character, particularly the humility that guards us by reminding us that it is not about us but about Christ, keeping us from being derailed personally, and in leadership.

Choung and Pfeiffer assume that many of those reading this will be leaders. They emphasize the importance that leaders don’t keep the work of leading revival to themselves but have an “all play” mentality. Choung talks about an experience of speaking at a retreat where he desperately wanted to give a call to faith, but agreed to let student leaders do this in small groups, resulting in twenty-seven non-Christians out of thirty-one coming to faith and students who had never invited a student to believe seeing their friends respond. We often oppose planning and the mysterious powerful work of God. These writers explore how the two may walk hand in hand and enhance each other. They offer five questions to guide groups in communal discernment, crucial to groups moving together united in head, heart, and action:

  1. Is it biblical?
  2. What did you hear in prayer?
  3. What if fear wasn’t involved?
  4. Does it produce the fruit of the Spirit?
  5. What does the Christian community say about it?

Finally the authors cast a vision for a revival that is about kingdom building, not empire building. It is not about our organization or church, or national power. It is about the advance of the rule in Jesus moving out from ourselves to our community, our region, our nation, to the world.

Pardon some autobiography. After my experiences of the Jesus movement and my college years, I began working with InterVarsity. As I moved into leadership and to a new city in the early 1980’s I became involved in the Concert of Prayer movement, an effort to seek God’s reviving work. For a time it appeared to gain momentum until I saw many Christians (and perhaps myself) swept up in the Reagan revolution and the hopes of Christian influence in politics. Later, I found myself in a place of disillusion, both that God hadn’t brought the revival for which I hoped and that instead, I witnessed a church increasingly captive to partisan politics rather than the kingdom of Jesus. For most of the time since, I think I opted for the “faithfulness” which settles for the subnormal rather than the new normal of revival. I invested in students and faculty, saw some come to faith, and built and led teams that planted new ministries. But I stopped believing in revival, even though I longed for it, all the more as I’ve witnessed the unraveling of the social and political fabric of our country, and the ravages not only on body but on spirit of this pandemic.

In early January, the national staff of InterVarsity gathered in Orlando, the title of this book serving as our theme (we all were given copies of it). During a day of prayer and fasting, I became aware of how I had surrendered to despairing of revival and made a decision to dare to believe again, to be a “watchman” in prayer waiting for the dawn. I felt God breaking the hard cynicism that had encrusted my heart over thirty-some years.

This book showed me that what happened back in the 1980’s was the death of my own hopes. It gives me hope that God wants to do something new. It also challenges me to the expectant work of consecration, calling, contending, and character. I believe that the only hope for our campuses and our country and our world is not a vaccine, it is not electing or re-electing a president, but the revival of which these authors speak. If you share that conviction, I believe this book will both engender hope and offer practical direction to turn your holy discontent into breakthrough faith.