Leading with a Limp
Our group of directors read Leading with a Limp, by Dan Allender, this semester. With only a couple qualifications, I would readily recommend the book. I thought the content was very sound and, for the most part, very helpful.
The two qualifications I would give should not hinder an appreciative reading: (1) it’s written particularly toward people with either responsibilities or ambitions for explicitly recognized leadership. To some extent, of course, everyone has responsibilities and opportunities to influence others and lead (and the author recognizes as much); but the book takes leadership itself as the starting point for most of its considerations. That’s not a bad thing, just a factor.
and (2) he writes with a conversational tone, very accessible and personable; the limitation there can be that sometimes it feels like he’s jumping from one illustration to another or even from one point to another in a somewhat fragmented way. But it’s a book that can be read fairly quickly and easily, and there’s no need to try to deeply digest any one point before moving through the overall flow.
That said, Allender offers some tremendously valuable insights and fresh perspectives. The core strengths include: (1) a basic recognition that humility and glad dependence on Christ lie in the essence of health; we cannot rightly comprehend leadership apart from these recognitions of our own limitations and God’s centrality to all things. And (2) maturity is, in many ways, the goal of all leadership. I greatly appreciate these points, and I would guess that books on leadership in general usually would miss them.
The book offers more than just a recognition of those points, for sure. He includes a slightly different and very helpful look at the roles of prophet, priest, and king, for instance. He discusses character formation, communities/teams and calling in honest and Biblical ways. It would be a good book for many to read and discuss.
