Lead On
How churches stall, and how leaders get them going Wayne Schmidt (Wesleyan, 2003)
When God was bestowing gifts, my allotment of patience was severely limited. It seems I am not alone. Wayne Schmidt uses our frustration with God’s apparent slowness as a vehicle for teaching us leadership skills to use in periods of stalled church growth.
“During slow growth times wise leaders invest energy to achieve excellence.” Schmidt, pastor of Kentwood Community Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, skillfully weaves his experiences with those of Joshua to illustrate his points.
Churches stall when they do not understand God’s timing. “God sometimes moves slowly so that the things most important to Him will become the things most important to us,” Schmidt says. He is not providing a theological excuse for leadership inactivity. “God’s patience always has a redemptive purpose, but God’s patience must never be confused with human paralysis.”
Churches stall for other reasons: a loss of focus, lack of power, failure to build upon God-given victories, deception from within and without, personal limitations of leaders, unresolved conflict, and failure to plan for transition. Schmidt’s thesis is that we are to examine these reasons and use what we learn to move the church forward. We should invest our energies in deepening our commitment, strengthening our relationships, empowering our associates, and in honing our own skills.
C. Mitchell Carnell Jr., Charleston, South Carolina
The Church in Emerging Culture
Five Perspectives Leonard Sweet, ed. (Zondervan, 2003)
This book reads like a print version of television’s Politically Incorrect. Andy Crouch, Michael Horton, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Brian McLaren, and Erwin McManus—like five postmodern Niebuhrs—wrangle (albeit more politely than P.I.) over the role of the church in postmodern culture. After Leonard Sweet opens with a chapter on change, each contributor in turn makes a case. The others interrupt with objections and “amens” before the one in the hot seat gives a final rejoinder.
Re:Generation Quarterly’s Crouch criticizes postmodernism’s hyperconsumerism. McLaren, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in metro D.C., wrestles with unlearning both the methods and the messages that modernist Christians take for granted. And McManus, pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles, delivers a message (that drew more cheers than jeers) on maintaining relevance and encountering the living Christ.
For the pastor hoping for practical help, this conversation provides very little. But for the closet philosopher who enjoys swimming in deep waters, this book is an ocean of insight and good-natured controversy. One rambling sentence mentions Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Freud. Huh? But as Westminster professor Horton writes on that same page, “Remarkably fruitful discussions and debates abound in these deep waters, and I find myself among those who enjoy swimming in them.”
Drew Zahn, Stratford, Iowa
Healing the Heart of Your Church
How church leaders can break the pattern of historic corporate dysfunction Ken Quick (ChurchSmart, 2003)
In an empty building one night, I saw a figure in the darkness. It scared me silly. Turned out to be my own reflection. That’s how I felt reading this book. Quick identifies issues that confounded or escaped me in 20 years of pastoral ministry.
“What the pastor does not know about the corporate entity, what the church lay leaders and the pastor do not corporately address, can kill their vision for ministry, their church, their pastor, or all the above,” he writes.
The starting point is the heart of the leader. Quick calls us to examine our “four family relationships”: family of origin, present family, church family, God’s family. He asks if pain we feel from any of those families is reflected in our ministry.
Using biblical insights and examples from his life and ministry, Quick focuses on the task of bringing healing to a church body. With chapters on splits, pastor-abusing churches, and church-abusing pastors, Quick points us to repentance and new beginnings.
The book is both practical and insightful. If you’ve ever wondered why your ministry is the way it is, read this book.
John Beukema, Western Springs, Illinois
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