The other day Jen and I got to meet with a few of my favorite leaders of all time…Christian Associates’ very own Linus and Sharon Morris. Needless to say, we left challenged, loved, heard, and inspired. So I went to Powell’s Books on Burnside in Portland to pick up a couple of books I’ve been wanting to read on…dun, dun, dun…leadership.
The truth is I really want to understand how leadership fits into my life…or should I say influence? (wink wink to Dr. Maxwell..I was paying attention even to the 203rd law of leadership). The idea of leadership has been tainted so much with misuse of power and selfishness (by me) that it seems a bit scary. With all the talk of organic church and simple church I’ve wondered how leadership as we’ve known it will morph…hopefully evolve…into something less. There was the CEO type of leader. Then the servant-leadership craze. The team leadership. And thanks to the Starfish and the Spider, there is power in ‘leaderlessness’ (secret, so whisper: that was only a hook to get you to buy the book…they never say that there are no leaders, they just hide and give away what they can). But I really don’t think that leaders or leadership (have you ever noticed how the word ’ship’ is tucked into the word leadership?) will ever disappear.
But anyway…I can admit that I want to be a good leader. I want to be a positive influence for others as so many have been for me. I hope that after all the screw ups I’ve made that I’m at least learning something. I don’t have a weird and self-focused idea of the concept (anymore). I just hope that if leadership ever lands on me again that I can do my best to be a good steward of it. So…I read books to prepare for when people may be fooled again…I mean…ask me to lead in some group in some way. Here are the titles of the two books that I’ve picked up:
The Making of a Leader by Dr. J. Robert Clinton (Linus recommended this to me a while ago and I’m finally going to read it)
Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, & Chaos by Tim Keel (This book just sounded good and mentioned chaos in the subtitle…that is a theme that I resonate with)
And of course you could check out my bookstore above to go see these on Amazon!
PS…I write on here too late at night.
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