Courageous Leadership: Field-Tested Strategy for the 360° Leader - Softcover

Hybels, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310495954 ISBN 13: 9780310495956

Publisher: Zondervan, 2012

Synopsis

The book you hold resonates with this conviction: that leaders such as you have the potential to be the most influential forces on planet Earth. Yours is the staggering responsibility and the matchless privilege of rallying believers and mobilizing their spiritual gifts in order to help people who are far from God become fully devoted followers of Christ. Life transformation and the eternal destinies of real people depend on the redemptive message entrusted to the local church. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to lead your church effectively so God’s message of hope can change the world? Then this book is for you. Courageous Leadership is Bill Hybels’ magnum opus, a book far too important to be written before its time. Only now, after nearly thirty years leading his own church from a handful of people with a burning vision into a globe-spanning kingdom force—only after almost three decades of victories and setbacks, of praying hard and risking big—is Hybels ready at last to share the lessons he has learned, and continues to learn, about Christian leadership. Too much is at stake for you not to maximize your spiritual gift of leadership, insists Hybels. In this passionate, powerful book, he unpacks the tools, tasks, and challenges of your calling. You’ll discover the power of vision and how to turn it into action. You’ll gain frontline insights for developing a kingdom dream team, discovering your leadership style, developing other leaders, making decisions, walking with God, embracing change, staying your God-given course, and much, much more. Drawing on his own richly varied life experiences, Hybels fleshes out vital principles with riveting firsthand stories. This is far more than another book on leadership strategies and techniques. You’ll find those topics in here, to be sure. But beyond them, you’ll find the very essence of one of today’s foremost Christian leaders—his fervent commitment to evangelism and discipleship and his zeal to inspire fellow church leaders even as he seeks to keep growing as a leader himself. If unchurched people matter to you . . . if you love seeing believers serve passionately with their spiritual gifts . . . if God’s heartbeat for the church is your heartbeat as well . . . then this book is a must. Courageous Leadership will convince you to lead with all your might, all your skill, and all your faith. And it will give you the tools to do just that.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Ten days after the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers, I stood at Ground Zero and tried to take in the aftermath of one horrific day.

The thoughts of that made me cry out to God, No way! There’s just no way evil can be that deep and that dark! But strangely, while the ashes smoldered around me, and the grief of it overwhelmed me, a profound hope rose in my heart--the local church is the hope of the world.

There were many people and organizations helping out after the disaster. But a work of a deeper kind was happening behind the scenes in downtown Manhattan. The most important work of all was being done by pastors and church members, volunteers of churches, ordinary Christ followers. They were in the middle of all the misery, addressing the concerns of the soul.

It was happening 24 hours a day. That was the untold media story. So many other organizations met the external needs of people, but it was the church that reached out to care for the inner needs of their fellow human beings. The church became the physicians for the souls of people. That experience underscored, yet again, the convictions that have been forming in Bill Hybels for the past 30 years--that the church has an unique mission to fulfill on planet Earth. And that the future of our society depends on whether or not church leaders understand that and focus the vision of local churches accordingly.

Where Bill’s heart beats the fastest is with leaders in local churches. He believes to the core of his being that local church leaders have the potential to be the most influential force in the world. If they "get it," churches will be the redemption centers for change that Jesus imagined them being.

So that’s Bill’s hope--that the spiritual gift of leadership will come alive in churches everywhere and, as a result, the church will become the force in the world against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.

About the Author

Bill Hybels is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and chairman of the board for the Willow Creek Association. The bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Leadership Axioms, Holy Discontent, Just Walk Across the Room, The Volunteer Revolution, and Courageous Leadership, and classics such as Too Busy Not to Pray and Becoming a Contagious Christian, Hybels is known worldwide as an expert in training Christian leaders to transform individuals and their communities through the local church. He and his wife, Lynne, have two adult children and two grandsons, Henry and Mac.

Edition details

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0310495954
• ISBN 13: 9780310495956
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288