Review of The Leader’s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation
The Leader’s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation. 2nd ed. By Jim Herrington, Trisha Taylor, R. Robert Creech. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2020, 978-1-5409-6052-8. 234 pp., $25.00.
Reviewer: Gary L. Shultz Jr., First Baptist Church, Tallahassee, FL
Preachers are leaders. To stand in front of a congregation and open the Word of God, calling on people to believe, repent, and conform their lives to God’s vision instead of their own is to lead. Pastors are called to lead in a number of different ways, but nowhere is their leadership more evident, and more impactful, than in the pulpit. Therefore, any book that equips pastors to be better leaders will impact their preaching, even if leading through preaching is not the primary focus of the book.
The Leader’s Journey is not a book on preaching, but if its instruction on pastoral leadership is put into practice, it will benefit the pastor’s preaching as well. The purpose of The Leader’s Journey is to offer a practical pathway for becoming a better congregational leader by helping leaders understand themselves, the groups they lead, and the discipleship processes that actually lead to personal and congregational change. The authors define effective leaders as those who have “the capacity to know and do the right things” (1). Their conviction, based on their shared experiences in different contexts of helping equip pastors to lead (seminary professor, pastoral counselor, and leader of a leadership-training organization), is that while knowing the right thing to do is common, actually knowing how to do the right thing when faced with the typical challenges and stresses of pastoral ministry is much less common. They aim not to offer another book of leadership techniques and strategies, but an understanding of human relationships and how best to engage in those relationships for effective leadership.
The authors’ understanding of leadership is rooted in Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory, which the authors explain and apply from a Christian perspective. Bowen understood human behavior in light of “living systems,” and believed changing behavior required an understanding of those systems. Building on his work, the authors organize The Leader’s Journey into four sections. The first is “The Call to Transformation,” which includes chapters on the problems pastors regularly face, the call to personal transformation, and the elements of experiencing this transformation. To illustrate the path the authors are calling pastors to follow, this section includes an examination of the life of Jesus from a systems perspective, and how he always knew and knew how to do the right thing despite the pressures he faced. The second section focuses on leading living systems, introducing the basic concepts of systems thinking and how to put those principles into practice within a congregation. The third section helps leaders understand their family backgrounds and the impact their families have on how they lead. The last section of the book then focuses on the role of discipleship in transformation and leadership, with chapters on spiritual disciplines, the Spirit’s transforming processes, and how to approach family systems theory from an explicitly biblical perspective. Helpful questions for self-assessment are found at the end of each chapter, and the book ends with three appendices designed to help the reader put the principles they have just read into practice.
Just as essential as a preacher’s content is a preacher’s character and relationship with their congregation, and it is in these areas where The Leader’s Journey will be most helpful to the preacher. The authors offer a solid psychological basis for personal transformation as well as clear biblical instruction that enables personal transformation. Written at an introductory level and drawing on authors as varied as Edwin Friedman and Dallas Willard, the book explains and applies a number of concepts such as systems thinking, emotional triangles, and chronic anxiety, which are all pertinent both to the pastor’s personal life and to life within a congregation. Potential sermon applications for helping congregations resolve conflict and work through times of crisis from the conflict can also be found throughout the book. While not a book one would look to for homiletical instruction, it is certainly a book that would benefit any preacher’s ministry.
