The Leadership Paradox (From Loren Cunningham)

Rating:
Summary: Transforming Your Mind
Review: Aside from the Bible, this book has had the greatest impact on how I view Christian leadership. It goes straight to the best example, Jesus Christ, and explains what it was in Him that made such a lasting impact on humankind. It not only challenges the reader to transform their whole way of thinking about leadership, but it also inspires them to become more like Jesus. It's a book you can read over and over again and keep walking away with something new.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and balanced book
Review: I thought this book was an excellent and balanced book. It is easy to read and was profound. Well worth reading - I have read it 3 or 4 times now.

Rating:
Summary: True Leadership at it's best
Review: Thankfully, Gunderson avoids writing another tome on the three pitfalls of leadership, wealth, women and glory and strikes at the heart of what it means to be a servant leader. The book is based around ten core servant leader principles.

It is an easy read, but a profound one. Denny points to the failure of church leadership to put into practice the teaching and example of servant leadership left to us by Jesus. For instance, his observation of how pastors quickly form a pecking order as being in direct violation of the biblical injunction not to show favoritism. This was not an isolated insight. In each chapter Denny takes the gloves off to point you the glaring contradictions between what occurs in church leadership and the teaching of Jesus.

This book is not without fault. Denny does not address his experience in the collapse of North Seattle Christian Center under the weight of the unbiblical Discipleship Movement of the 1970s. That experience colors every page of this book.

He does not understand leadership, again and again he defines leadership in terms of position and title. Leadership, as John Maxwell says, is influence: nothing more, nothing less. Those who influence for good or ill, are leaders whether they have a title or not. Positional leadership is the lowest level of leadership.

His logic is flawed. He commits the informal fallacy of building a straw man. A straw man is an argument that bears little resemblance to reality, but can be readily knocked down. Let me give you two examples: The hierarchal chart of a typical denomination found on page 27, pray tell, where does this structure exist? It doesnt. Yes, we tend to want to establish a hierarchy, but it is seldom that simple. Another straw man is the argument that Bible colleges and seminaries teach an authoritarian model of leadership. He fails here in two points. First, most Bible colleges dont teach leadership at all, authoritarian or otherwise. Second, the majority who do, more often than not teach the enabler model of passive, indirect leadership.

There is no such thing as a leadership vacuum. There is no such thing a team leadership without a leader (cf. Chapter Ten). Even in the business community where team leadership is extensively used, there is always a leader. The facilitator (enabler) model of leadership has proven to be a failure. Leaders lead.

Nevertheless, the book was helpful. It reminded me again of the various ways we can exclude people, seek after self-glory and dominate others without realizing what we are doing. The chapter on tolerance and acceptance was a revelation. In this age of political correctness, it is must reading for every Christian.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Thankfully, Gunderson avoids writing another tome on the three pitfalls of leadership, wealth, women and glory and strikes at the heart of what it means to be a servant leader. The book is based around ten core servant leader principles.

It is an easy read, but a profound one. Denny points to the failure of church leadership to put into practice the teaching and example of servant leadership left to us by Jesus. For instance, his observation of how pastors quickly form a pecking order as being in direct violation of the biblical injunction not to show favoritism. This was not an isolated insight. In each chapter Denny takes the gloves off to point you the glaring contradictions between what occurs in church leadership and the teaching of Jesus.

This book is not without fault. Denny does not address his experience in the collapse of North Seattle Christian Center under the weight of the unbiblical Discipleship Movement of the 1970s. That experience colors every page of this book.

He does not understand leadership, again and again he defines leadership in terms of position and title. Leadership, as John Maxwell says, is influence: nothing more, nothing less. Those who influence for good or ill, are leaders whether they have a title or not. Positional leadership is the lowest level of leadership.

His logic is flawed. He commits the informal fallacy of building a straw man. A straw man is an argument that bears little resemblance to reality, but can be readily knocked down. Let me give you two examples: The hierarchal chart of a typical denomination found on page 27, pray tell, where does this structure exist? It doesnt. Yes, we tend to want to establish a hierarchy, but it is seldom that simple. Another straw man is the argument that Bible colleges and seminaries teach an authoritarian model of leadership. He fails here in two points. First, most Bible colleges dont teach leadership at all, authoritarian or otherwise. Second, the majority who do, more often than not teach the enabler model of passive, indirect leadership.

There is no such thing as a leadership vacuum. There is no such thing a team leadership without a leader (cf. Chapter Ten). Even in the business community where team leadership is extensively used, there is always a leader. The facilitator (enabler) model of leadership has proven to be a failure. Leaders lead.

Nevertheless, the book was helpful. It reminded me again of the various ways we can exclude people, seek after self-glory and dominate others without realizing what we are doing. The chapter on tolerance and acceptance was a revelation. In this age of political correctness, it is must reading for every Christian.

Rating:
Summary: True Leadership at it's best
Review: This book deals with concepts that are forgotten but very much real. If our leaders today would exhibit the attributes and values put forth in this book, our institutions and country would be much more successful in the everyday affairs. In a "me first"world we are losing sight of the value of true servant leadership.