In Pursuit of Great AND Godly Leadership

In Pursuit of Great and Godly Leadership

Continuing with the theme of Commitment this week, I wanted to share what I’ve learned from Mike Bonem’s book entitled In Pursuit of Great AND Godly Leadership: Tapping the Wisdom of the World for the Kingdom of God. Mike Bonem was a senior manager with McKinsey & Company when he transitioned to the role of Executive Pastor for West University Baptist Church in Houston—a role he held for more than 10 years.

I read his book this last summer and called him to get some career advice. How did he make the transition from the corporate world to a church staff? What advice would he have to offer someone like me? On June 27th, he encouraged me to get involved with the Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA)—an organization of mission-focused Christians who lead in today’s high-impact Christian nonprofit ministries, churches, educational institutions, and businesses. CLA moves beyond good Christian management to empower Christian leadership that’s catalytic in its transformation of people, their organizations, and ultimately the world…which sounds like a great alignment with Out of This World Leadership!

Bonem writes that our leadership should be shaped by God’s Word—which provides us with a number of leadership principles. If we settle for good results based on those principles, we fall far short of the mission to which God has called us, and we will continue to slip toward mediocrity and irrelevance. Good is indeed the enemy of both great and godly. So is God calling us to greatness? Or is great the enemy of godly?

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Encouragement Changes Everything

Encouragement Changes Everything

This week’s NIV Leadership Bible devotions focused on the leadership skill of Encouragement. In my last post, I mentioned how much I benefitted from my Dad’s encouragement. A few years back, as I was preparing for a promotion at work, I recognized that I needed to be more of an encourager at work, so I did what I generally do in that circumstance…I found a book that would help me out. At that time, I read John Maxwell’s Encouragement Changes Everything: Bless & Be Blessed.

Maxwell’s premise is that people who add value to others almost always do so intentionally. He says that because adding value to others requires a person to give of himself, and that rarely occurs by accident.

Learn more from Maxwell’s perspective and some of the leaders he points to as example Encouragers.

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