Title: Spiritual Leadership
Author: J. Oswald Sanders
Summary
Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders is one of the most comprehensive leadership books I have seen. Sanders uses twenty-two chapters to cover almost every leadership category imaginable. The topics include reading, the cost of leadership, delegation, learning from Jesus, and more.
Interesting Pieces
In chapter 3, Sanders points out that Jesus lead by becoming a servant. He uses the prophetic passage of Isaiah 42 to talk about Jesus’s servant leadership.
On page 27, the author defines leadership as, “the ability of one person to influence others to follow his or her lead.
Sanders lays out 7 qualities of a leader on page 31: avoid getting swamped in detail, not be petty, not be pompous, know how to select people to fit the task, trust others to do a job without the leader’s meddling, be capable of clear decisions and inspire confidence.
The author provides a bullet list of questions on pages 36-37. These questions can be used as a self-evaluation, or they can be used as a method to have another person evaluate your leadership.
On page 150, Sanders encourages leaders to choose young, qualified leaders to train up, but also acknowledges, “God will see that that person receives the necessary disciplines for effective service.”
The author discusses the leader and popularity on page 155. He points out that most every leader desires to be liked by people, but popularity can come at too high a price. Jesus even said, “woe unto you when all men speak well of you.”
Review
As I stated earlier, this is one of the most comprehensive books on leadership that I have read. This book would be great to walk through as a mentor/mentee relationship or two peers. I read this book on my own and immediately thought it would be a great tool to use when mentoring a young leader. There are twenty two chapters, and if two people were meeting every other week, the book would take them roughly a year to go through.
Where to Buy
You can purchase Spiritual Leadership from Thriftbooks or Amazon. I personally used the 1994 version for this review, and it looks like the prices vary based on the edition and where you purchase, more so than most books that I have reviewed.
