Recently, I heard about a group called Leaders Book Summaries. They summarize books for busy leaders. The group was started by Dave Frederick.  Dave is a pastor who believes in the church and leadership. He knows that your time is very limited so he reviews a couple of books every month and then sends subscribers helpful 10-20 page summaries.  He also provides 2-page super summaries.

Dave’s team makes it easy for you to stay relevant and up-to-date in a timely manner. Leaders Book Summaries also helps you stop wasting time reading marginal books. Instead, they carefully sort through page after page of content to ensure that you receive the most beneficial information from each book.

Dave issues thirty (30) summaries of leadership books each year.  The books are written by secular and religious authors. Recent examples include…

• Integrity by Henry Cloud
• Talent is Never Enough by John Maxwell
• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni
• On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

A subscription is only about $6 a month (cheaper if you pay for an entire year in advance). For the price of three hard-back books, you can receive 30 high quality book summaries.

Leaders Book Summaries is currently offering a free one-month trial for our blog readers. Save time and money as you grow your leadership skills!

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This is a sponsored post from Leaders Book Summaries, one of my ministry partners on TonyMorganLive.com

This made me chuckle. But thanks to everyone who has purchased the new Kindle version of Developing a Theology of Leadership.

It’s been downloaded and viewed over 24,000 times, and now it’s available as an easy download for anyone with a Kindle or using the Kindle app on their tablets, phones or computers. For those of you who have Amazon Prime memberships, you can borrow it for free. Otherwise, it’s only $2.99 to download the eBook.

Like my other eBooks, this will take you about 20 minutes to read. It includes discussion questions to process with your team. The sections hit these topics:

• Building a Leadership Theology Foundation
• Servant Leadership
• Empowerment
• Character
• Putting It into Action

If you’re looking for a good resource to read and discuss with your staff or volunteer leadership team, this may be a great place to start the new year. I hope you’ll download a copy and share this with a friend.

I recently finished reading We Are All Weird by Seth Godin. Here are some of the highlights from my reading:

• “The epic battle of our generation is between the status quo of mass and the never-ceasing tide of weird.”
• “The ability to reach and change those around you has been changed forever by the connections of the Internet and the fact that anyone, anywhere can publish to the world.”
• “When you don’t feel alone, it’s easier to be weird, which sort of flies in the face of our expectation that the weird individual is also a loner.”
• “If you persist in trying to be all things to all people, you will fail. The only alternative, then, is to be something important to a few people.” (Tony’s note: We need focused vision and strategy.)
• “If you cater to the normal, you will disappoint the weird. And as the world gets weirder, that’s a dumb strategy.”
• “Deep down, many of us enjoy doing what other people are doing. This is why fashion works. Why there are pop songs. Why every company in the Fortune 500 uses similar HR policies. It feels good to be part of the herd.”
• “Why are we puzzled that in a world filled with change, a static, history-based approach is not working out so well?” (Tony’s note: Think about traditional discipleship models in the church.)
• “Whenever significant weirdness shows up in society, defenders of the status quo speak up to decry the immorality of it.”
• “Intentionally pitting people against one another to generate a mass audience is dangerous self-indulgence, because inevitably the tactic is used again to further split the group.” (Tony’s note: Think “church splits” when you read that.)

These are just a handful of the highlights. Here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to read more of We Are All Weird…which, by the way, we are.

New FREE eBook Available Today: How to Get Unstuck

Big news today! We’re launching the second eBook in the Leisure Suit series. This one is called Hanging Up the Leisure Suit: How to Get Unstuck. Among other things, this resource includes strategies and practical steps for:

• making the necessary changes to get different results
• bridging the gap between vision and execution
• following God’s blueprint for fulfilling his purposes
• avoiding over-reliance on teaching to produce change, and
• creating healthy systems in your church

Like my previous eBooks, this one is FREE. (You can share it with your teammates.) It’s short. (You won’t have to invest much time reading it.) It includes exercises and discussion questions. (My goal is for you to have healthy conversations that lead to positive change.) And, you’ll get to start those conversations immediately–no need to visit the bookstore or wait for the Amazon box to show up on your doorstep. (Do people still read hardback books?)

[Read the entire article.]

Have you developed a theology of leadership?

Today is the official launch of my new eBook, Developing a Theology of Leadership. Amazingly, the stats indicate over 1,300 people have already read it since I leaked out the link before the weekend. I’m hoping you’ll find this resource helpful as you begin to consider who you are as a leader.

This eBook is based on a series of articles I wrote about two years ago. Thanks to the help of Ben Stroup, we’ve refreshed the content and added some new features to help you take your next steps in your leadership.

What I love about this and the next few resources I’m about ready to release is that you can’t just read them and put them on a shelf. (They’re eBooks. That would literally be impossible.) Aside from that, each eBook includes a discussion guide for you to begin a conversation with your ministry team. I’ve also included some recommended steps to take the content and “put it into action.” I’m challenging you to do that. Remember, teaching (or reading) shifts thinking, but systems shift behaviors.

[Read the entire article.]

TONY: What prompted you to write Sons of Grace?

MARK: Massive conversion. For 30 years of my life I’d turned off the switch to God. I was successful; my resume spanned from PepsiCo to VP of Marketing of Half.com which we sold to eBay for $300 million. I was author of the book Buzzmarketing and was a sought-after marketing speaker travelling to Europe, the Middle East and middle America.

But Thanksgiving 2007, I realized I had no purpose. I was self absorbed; self centered. I realized I had treated my family and wife pretty poorly for most of my married life. My life had to have more meaning, and when I looked deep inside my life, it was empty of many things.

Around the same time, a friend of mine had asked me if I wanted to attend a men’s spiritual group which met about an hour before we met each week. I was scared to death. I was skeptical of everything religious…perhaps afraid of anything that might replace numero uno (me at the time). But I knew for many years, though, that some kind of faith awaited me.

So Friday mornings, I showed up. Fifteen to twenty men from contractors to multi-millionaires shared openly about the baggage in their lives while reflecting on a passage from the Gospel. I was so removed from Christianity, I didn’t know that the Gospel was the first four books of the New Testament. I was so lost, but I could relate to these honest and flawed men, because I was flawed in so many ways.

I showed up, I stayed, I shared. Then a Marine approached me, knowing that I had written the book Buzzmarketing, and asked how to write a book. We talked, and it quickly evolved into a compilation book where ten tough, flawed men would write their own chapter of how they pushed God away, wreaked havoc and eventually embraced God — finding a peace never experienced before. It took three years from start to finish.

TONY: This seems to be a departure from your previous writings. Aren’t you supposed to be the guy that helps businesses with their online marketing?

MARK: Yes. When you reached out to me five years ago, I was dumbfounded that church leaders would be using the principles of Buzzmarketing. I knew I was destined to write that first book, and glad it helped a wide spectrum of people, even though I wasn’t walking with the Lord then.

I was destined to write and compile this second book too. I think God wanted me to scrimmage with the first book — too many things fell in my path to call them coincidence.

TONY: Can you give us some examples of the other stories included in your new book?

MARK: There’s a motorcycle gang member of 20 years, currently serving a 50 year murder sentence in prison—he turned himself into the authorities to become a pastor in prison after he heard the Lord speak to him. There’s a former Mafia associate. A stage-four cancer patient. A father who lost his son and who is going through many questions and anger. A former heroin addict now a pastor. A regular guy who had three people die on him in a year — sending him into a black hole of drugs and alcohol for 11 years. But they all found faith.

TONY: I have a lot of church leaders who follow my writing; however, I believe real ministry happens outside the church. Do you agree?

MARK: Yes indeed. Honestly, I was so far removed from the Lord that I couldn’t identify with him in any way. He raised people from the dead, cured the blind. I couldn’t relate to Him, but I could relate to flawed men just as complicated and flawed as me. I found them outside the church.

The Lord was so far above me I couldn’t come close to him. I needed flawed guys already walking with the Lord because they were at my level. We have pastors and priests come to the group periodically and they’ve told me this is a unique but important vehicle for men healing.

TONY: What’s next for you in your life mission?

MARK: Trying to figure out God’s plan is sometimes pretty hard, so I’ve learned to accept while trying to keep an eye out for the signs. Number one is to try and be a better father and husband (and I stumble). I think number two is to help guys who’d never dream of walking with God, take a walk. Hoping that combining my marketing skills with Sons of Grace is why this has all happened. Here to serve.

Interested in reading these stories of grace? You can pick up Mark’s new book on Kindle by using my Amazon link.

• “We’re now addicted to meetings that insulate us from the work we ought to be doing.”
• “When’s the last time any one of us made a game-changing decision that made our hearts race?”
• “I can think of no single great innovation that has ever happened without the presence of opposition.”
• “Regularly interrupting the day to bring our best minds together to focus on the urgent makes it impossible for these people to spend their focused energy on what’s actually important.”
• “Peter Drucker tells us that meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. We either meet or work. We can’t do both at the same time.”
• “Meetings need to be less like the endless commercial breaks during a football game, and more like pit stops at the Daytona 500.”
• “Meetings have become a tool to delay decisions. They have become our default stalling tactic.”
• “We must structure the Modern Meeting so that bold decisions happen often and quickly, and those decisions are converted into movement that leads our organization forward—fearlessly.”
• “Modern Meetings can’t exist without a decision to support. Not a question to discuss—a decision.”
• “I believe that just about anyone is capable of participating productively in a brainstorming session, but with one important caveat: the closer the topic is to the work you do all day, the worse you will perform.”
• “Group decision making often leads to a culture of compromise.”

I don’t necessarily buy into all the principles discussed in the book. For example, I’m not sure what I think about every decision happening outside the context of a team meeting. However, I think this is a good read for anyone who is responsible for organizing and leading people to reassess the effectiveness of meetings.

Here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to pick up a copy to read and discuss with your team.