I have a love/hate relationship with leadership books. Most of them give all sorts of interesting tips and tricks for doing something that you want to do. Most deal with cosmetic issues. What most leadership books don’t do is to evaluate underlying assumptions and issues that cause us to think about why we do what we do.

That’s why I appreciated the honest evaluation of Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksy in their book “Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading.”

One of the central claims that Heifetz and Linsky make is that leadership can be a dangerous undertaking when leaders confuse how they need to react to a set of problems. Leaders, they say, face two main kinds of problems. The first are technical problems. These are issues that can be solved by the leader by applying procedures or tools that are readily available. These are issues such as cutting budgets, streamlining processes, firing people, and the like. The second kind are adaptive challenges.

They say:

“Without learning new ways–changing attitudes, values, and behaviors–people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in the new environment. The sustainability of change depends on having the people with the problem internalize the change itself” (p. 13).

In other words, they require people to be able to adapt and make changes in themselves in order to address and meet the need of the issue.

Note the danger when leaders try to apply the wrong solutions, though:

“When people look to authorities for easy answers to adaptive challenges, they end up with disfunction. They expect the person in charge to know what to do, and under the weight of that responsibility, those in authority frequently end up faking it or disappointing people, or they get spit out of the system in the belief that a new “leader” will solve the problem” (p. 14).

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You’ve probably heard the word “postmodernism” before, but have probably wondered what it meant. Or perhaps you’ve heard of this thing called the emerging church. Ring a bell? A lot is being written these days about how to reach postmodern people, but are the conclusions actually biblical?

James A.K. Smith, author of Who’s Afraid Of Postmodernism, takes a stab at identifying what postmodernism is actually about, and makes some recommendations for the church.

But first let’s take a step back.

Postmodernism, generally speaking, is a philosophical idea that says that there is no such thing as absolute truth. It’s a reaction to the modern age that was fueled by the philosophies of Rene Descartes in the 1600′s and later in the French revolution, that taught that everything should be examined through the filter of reason. If you can prove it through observation and empirical study, then it exists.

Around the time of the 1960′s or so, some French philosophers began to articulate a new worldview. A worldview that was aversive to this modernistic approach. Specifically, these philosophers were Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Michel Foucault.

Let me take them one at a time to briefly explain what they taught, and then elaborate on what James Smith recommends for the church as a result.

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There are few things as controversial, in many circles, as church organization. It’s because many denominations associate how they’re organized with religious or spiritual principles. And they associate modifying the polity (form of organization) as spiritual heresy.

I was glad John Kaiser took the challenge, though, in this book, “Winning on Purpose: How to Organize Congregations to Succeed in Their Mission.”

Allow me to give you the executive summary of the book.

The problem with many churches and organizations is that they’re organized based upon control rather than trust. For example, in many churches, there is a church board that is comprised of ministry leaders. The pastor usually chairs this board that sometimes meets once a month. If a particular ministry leader wants to do something for his ministry, he brings it to the board, who then votes up or down on it. If a pastor thinks that something needs to be done, he usually brings it to this same board for “approval.” If the board accepts it, it moves forward. If not, the idea dies.

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So in this last post on my coaching process, I wanted to outline the books that we covered in our second year.

A few days ago I finished reading Zero to Sixty, the latest book by Pastor Bob Franquiz. The subtitle tells what the book is about: 60 principles and practices for leading a growing church.

This book is above all, practical. It has sixty bite-sized chapters that are usually about two pages in length. This is useful because you can quickly jump in and out and get something out of it.

He divides the book into four main sections:

I. Leadership Strategies
II. Staffing Strategies
III. Ministry Strategies
IV. Personal Development Strategies

The most useful section for me was the leadership strategies section. I thought the other chapters had useful information, but I felt as if it’s information that I’ve heard before in other areas. It’s greatest usefulness is that it puts all these principles together in one book. If you’re familiar with Nelson Searcy and his books and resources, you’ll notice some similarities. That didn’t come as a surprise, though. Bob Franquiz has been a coaching student of Nelson Searcy. If you’re not familiar with Nelson Searcy, than this is a good primer for putting all these principles together and walking you through how to implement them.

Overall, I thought it was a useful read on dealing with the practical sides of ministry.

I just started reading a new book called Zero to Sixty, which I’m really enjoying. It’s written by Bob Franquiz, lead pastor at Calvary Fellowship in Miami (a fast growing church running about 1,000 in attendance).

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself in three and a half years of full time ministry it’s this: i’m not a theologian or a philosopher. I’m a mechanic.