Growing Leaders: Reflections on leadership, life and Jesus

Growing Leaders: Reflections on leadership, life and Jesus

Author : James Lawrence
£10.99

New edition of the BRF bestseller with over 20,000 copies sold

How do we keep growing as a leader? And how do we ensure others around us grow in their leadership?



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Title Growing Leaders: Reflections on leadership, life and Jesus
Author James Lawrence
Description

How do we keep growing as a leader? And how do we ensure others around us grow in their leadership?

These twin themes run throughout this book, exploring the joys and challenges of leading at a time when we need Christians to lead well wherever they are.

Such leadership is always about more than just skills. It includes a clearer sense of call, growth in Christlike character, an ability to lead well with others and, at heart, a deepening relationship with God. This book offer practical ideas and insights into how to grow as this sort of leader.

The book contains twelve chapters, in six sections, plus a resources section:

Part 1: Engage with today's context

Part 2: Know you're chosen

Part 3: Discern God's call

Part 4: Develop Christlike character

Part 5: Cultivate core competencies

Part 6: Lead in communities 

First published in 2004.

 

Details
  • Product code: 9780857468888
  • Published: 20 March 2020
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • Dimensions: 130mm wide and 198mm high

How do we keep growing as a leader? And how do we ensure others around us grow in their leadership?

These twin themes run throughout this book, exploring the joys and challenges of leading at a time when we need Christians to lead well wherever they are.

Such leadership is always about more than just skills. It includes a clearer sense of call, growth in Christlike character, an ability to lead well with others and, at heart, a deepening relationship with God. This book offer practical ideas and insights into how to grow as this sort of leader.

The book contains twelve chapters, in six sections, plus a resources section:

Part 1: Engage with today's context

Part 2: Know you're chosen

Part 3: Discern God's call

Part 4: Develop Christlike character

Part 5: Cultivate core competencies

Part 6: Lead in communities 

First published in 2004.

 

James Lawrence is CPAS’s Director for Arrow. He is an ordained Anglican minister and has been a core member of Springboard, the evangelism initiative. He is author of Growing Leaders (BRF, 2004), Lost for Words (BRF, 1999) and Men: The challenge of change (CPAS,1997).

 

Transforming Ministry (winter 2020). Review by Veronica Bright

The subtitle of this new edition could be ‘How to understand your vicar’, but it is so much more than that. ‘Growing Leaders’ is for every Christian who leads in any way – whether you are a teacher, a parent or an ordained minister, whether you are a leader or helper in a playgroup, a youth group, or a chorister. We live in a changing world and are part of a changing church. Our primary responsibilities are to be followers of Jesus and to keep growing. This book is a detailed exposition of how we can all become better leaders. It is very readable, but not a book to hurry through. Lawrence gives advice from his own experience, and bravely exposes his own shortcomings in order to help us address ours. We are encouraged as flawed human beings to be the best we can be, knowing that we live with God’s perpetual forgiveness. Whatever kind of leader you are now, I urge you to take time to read this book.

Reviewed by Veronica Bright

The Salvationist, April 2020. Review by Major Mal Davies (Editor-in-Chief)

In 1992 US pastor Leighton Ford founded a training and mentoring course for Christian leaders that became referred to as the Arrow Leadership Programme. It is a worldwide and well-respected course in which leaders of all denominations, including The Salvation Army, have participated.

 In the UK it is administered by CPAS (Church Pastoral Aid Society) and its leadership principal is Anglican minister and writer James Lawrence. This book – a key text in the Arrow course – was first released in 2004 and has now been fully revised and updated.

 The book focuses on two simple questions. How do we grow effective leaders for today’s Church? And how do we help Christian leaders safeguard and grow their faith? Early in the book, Lawrence reflects on the need for yet another book on Christian leadership and ‘how much our leadership thinking is genuinely from a reflection on the Scriptures and how much is simply a baptising of secular theories within the Church’. While he recognises we can learn much about leadership from the corporate world, he says there is much we can glean directly from Scripture and, even more directly, from observing the life of Jesus.

 What unfolds is a book with clear theological aims to explore the call to leadership, the character of a leader, the skills required for leadership and the attitude of a leader – all based on observations from the life of Christ. One core teaching, for example, is that ‘the first priority of every Christian leader is not to be a leader but to be a follower’, as the author expands on the notion of servant leadership.

 While some readers will see elements of the International Doctrine Council book Servants Together and others will see hints of Major Peter McGuigan’s The Leadership Of Jesus, this new edition of Growing Leaders offers a broader theological reflection on the leadership of Jesus, especially in relation to the call and character required to lead in Christian ministry. This is a thoughtful and well-written book, especially helpful for those who feel God may be calling them to lead.

Reviewed by Major Mal Davies (Editor-in-Chief)

 

 

A comprehensive, practical and very readable analysis of the art of leadership.
J John

The most thoughtful, rigorous and engaging study of Christian leadership that I have read.
Jill Garrett, former MD of Gallup UK and Director of Caret Consulting

Biblically solid and organisationally aware, rich in resources and practical help.
Leighton Ford, founder of the Arrow Leadership Programme

He combines the latest research and literature with an understanding of church leadership and won't let either run away from scripture.
Hugh Palmer, Christ Church, Fulwood

 

'Pure gold! A treasure trove of practical wisdom for leaders and those who aspire to be leaders. I wish this book had been written twenty years ago.'
Ian Parkinson, Vicar in Marple, and Co-ordinator the New Wine Network in the North West.

 

From Church of England Newspaper 13 August 2004
This is a superb book on leadership. It is easily one of the best, if not the best, book on the subject I have ever read.

James Lawrence is the Director of the Arrow Training Programme run by the Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS). He has also been a core member of Springboard. He has been meeting and interacting with and helping ministers of all denominations, but particularly Anglican ones, for many years. He has great insight and understands what it is like to run a busy parish or church agency.

The book has 12 chapters divided into six sections.
In the first section, Lawrence looks at leadership today. 'One of the chief characteristics of healthy, growing churches is leadership,' he writes. 'It isn't the only mark of a healthy church, but a vital one. 'It is with that concern that he then develops the marks of growing leaders - they know they are chosen, they discern God's call, they develop Christ-like character, they cultivate competence (his largest section), and they lead in the community.

Each of these areas are explored in a humble, practical and scriptural manner. The result is a highly readable, very challenging, but extremely helpful book, especially for pressurised leaders. There is a whole chapter on 'Living in the Red Zone' which every minister, Bishop and Archdeacon in the Church of England ought to read! Why? Because 'within churches the character of the minister is often reflected in the life of the congregation' - and if the minister is in danger of not coping well, what of the church?

This is a book to own, not borrow. It needs to be read a chapter at a time with the opportunity to reflect on what Lawrence is saying, and to wrestle with his arguments, and search scripture afresh. This is not a book to scan and forget, but a book to enable you to cope with the future. He writes, 'Today I spoke on the phone with a 37 year-old minister. 'James, I don't know how I am going to survive. I am working 12 to 14-hour days. I don't see my family enough, and I feel constantly on the edge of burn-out. I don't feel trained for the job I do and I don't know where to get help. I'm wearing so many hats. The church is growing, exciting things are happening, but if I look down the road of the next 30 years I know I am not going to make it.' ' If you are in this ministers shoes, with the help of this book, you might!
Reviewed by Peter Brierley, Executive Director, Christian Research

From Christian Herald, 05 June 2004
By coincidence I was reading this book on a train while travelling to a conference in which the main theme was training leaders. This is clearly an idea whose time has come. James Lawrence is to be commended for making this contribution to the process.

Growing Leaders is comprehensive, accessible and realistic. The book covers a huge amount of ground. Its six sections deal with issues like defining leadership in the context of God's choice and call and considering how leaders can be developed to operate more effectively in their relationship to others.

I appreciated the mix of biblical reflection, personal anecdote and practical application. This mix helps to keep the book readable and relevant. Also welcome is the author's honesty concerning his own struggles and mistakes. The realism of these sections reminds the reader that failure need not be final, but can be an opportunity for growth and change.
Reviewed by John Woods