Top Ten Quotes: Empowering Leadership
This summer and fall, a few of us on our team are reading Michael Fletcher’s Empowering Leadership: How a Leadership Development Culture Builds Better Leaders Faster. I’ve found it to be a helpful, encouraging book that dishes out a healthy amount of both why and what.
In the why, Fletcher rallies us to remember that God has designed each believer with a gift to steward, and as leaders, it’s our job to equip them to use that gift for the work of the ministry. In the what, he goes into a great amount of detail on their own church’s leadership development pipeline. If you are starting from scratch, it’s a good model to shoot for. But if you already have a solid plan in place, it’ll serve you well as a good pick-and-choose idea generator.
Here are my top ten favorite quotes:
- God didn’t send people to build the church. He sent the church to build people.
- …being willing is a more valuable attribute than being ready.
- …if you lead people with an open hand, the people you lead will do everything they can to stay in your hand. But if you lead them with a closed fist, they will do everything they can to get out of your hand.
- A culture is not a culture until it manifests itself in our actions or in a set of behaviors that are unique to us.
- Promoting people to places of prominence in the local church…before they are fully assimilated in the culture can be dangerous for the organization, especially if the individual is a strong leader. Why? Because they carry a culture too.
- When culture comes only from the leader, people watch and listen with an air of skepticism.
- In culture building, consistency is king even if it feels boring.
- …real authority is derived from a person’s character.
- [on motives in inviting others to serve] …are we truly building people for the sake of the people so they can become all that God is calling them to be, or are we using this idea as a method to draw people into local church volunteerism so we can fulfill our own calling and vision?
- …doers respond to need and leaders respond to vision.
Order Empowering Leadership
See all posts in the Top Ten Quotes series.
See all the Top Ten Quotes books on Amazon:
Disclaimer: FTC watchdogs will probably want you to know that the authors represented did not ask for this endorsement, nor did they provide me with free swag in order to do so (unless specifically mentioned otherwise). I’m just a really satisfied customer who wants to let you know where you can get some great products. So there. Further, if you order a resource from a link on any “Top Ten Quotes” page, I may receive a small affiliate commission from Amazon. If that bugs you, feel free to bypass my link and buy from a vendor of your choice. But still: buy it. I only promote books that have benefitted me and that I believe will benefit you.
