It’s no secret — organizations must have leaders in order to accomplish their mission. However, as I work with churches across the country, the development of leaders seems to be a huge challenge every one is facing these days. That’s why I’m excited about this new eBook from Mac Lake. Until now, it’s been difficult to recommend specific resources for churches to help with leadership development. In Building a Leadership Development Culture, Mac addresses the core issues of this challenge and gives practical steps to help you and your organization begin building many reproducing leaders.

Many leaders are paralyzed by the seemingly impossible challenge of building new leaders.  In this book, you will find practical ideas that can be implemented right away to help you start building a culture of leadership development in your team, department or organization.  If you implement the strategy provided in this resource, the leadership landscape of your organization can look drastically different 12 months from now.

Here’s the truth: Leaders develop leaders. It’s not enough to depend on conferences for leadership development. It’s time to challenge leaders to get their hands dirty once again in raising up new leaders. When an organization learns how to reproduce leaders, it will impact their growth and health for generations. Don’t settle for a one-generation run of ministry. God has a bigger vision for you and your church. Real leaders leave a legacy of new leaders.

Building a Leadership Development Culture is available through Leadia. Leadia is a new venture from the Leadership Network that provides resources to leaders through an integrated media experience. If you have an iPad or iPhone, you can download the app then purchase Mac’s resource on leadership development.

I also have a couple of FREE copies to give away to TonyMorganLive.com readers. To win one of those copies, just leave a comment on this article. Again, you need to have an iPad or iPhone in order to access the resource. I’ll select the winners tomorrow evening.

UPDATE: The winners have been selected and notified by email. Thanks for participating!

John Maxwell

Yesterday, John Maxwell’s newest book, The Five Levels of Leadership, was released. I caught up with John a few days ago and asked him several questions about the book. Here’s our interview. Check out the opportunity to win a free copy at the end of the article.

TONY: What prompted you to write The Five Levels of Leadership?

JOHN: In the early 1980s, I hit a wall in my productivity as a leader. I realized I needed to shift from leading followers to developing leaders. Since leadership is influence, this got me thinking about the nature of influence. What emerged from that study is what I called the 5 Levels of Influence (later renamed 5 Levels of Leadership). And I began using it to help others understand how influence works and begin developing themselves as leaders.

In almost 30 years of teaching 5 Levels of Leadership, it gradually became my most requested lesson. And that demand prompted me to go back and really dig into it, to see if it could be expanded into a book. To my delight, I realized that there was plenty of content, and I could’ve written more about it than I did.

TONY: I know that Jim Collins wrote about “Level 5″ leadership in Good to Great. What did Jim get wrong on this topic?

JOHN: I don’t think he got anything wrong. It’s just a different way of looking at leaders. His level 5 hierarchy is very different from my 5 Levels of Leadership. What he’s really talking about is five levels of contribution or individual growth. And he focuses mostly on his Level 5, but doesn’t really go into the other levels at all. His levels are also not sequential. Bottom line: I think Jim and I just happened to use the same terminology, but it’s a different perspective on the subject.

My 5 levels is not only a picture of leadership, but also the process of how leadership works: How a leader starts with a Position, then has to gain Permission to lead by developing relationships. Then they have to achieve Productivity by getting results with the team. That earns them the credibility to begin People Development so others can reach their potential. Finally, at Level 5, the Pinnacle, they develop leaders who develop leaders.

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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?)

Again, I’m grateful for the partnership with Church Community Builder. Because of their very generous contribution to Engage Burkina, this entire series will be delivered to you for free.

My primary mission in life is to help leaders and churches have a bigger impact. I don’t want you to be stuck. I’m praying this eBook helps you take your next steps in your leadership and in your ministry.

And don’t be stingy. Share this with a friend so they can experience it too.

In a couple of weeks, I will be releasing my newest eBook. It’s called Hanging Up the Leisure Suit: How to Get Unstuck. It’s the second in a series of eBooks I’m releasing this year to help churches get unstuck. The first one, The Leisure Suit Trap: 8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck, is available as a free download.

I’d like to give some of you the opportunity to read the eBook before everyone else gets it. I’m looking for 100 bloggers who will read the eBook and then post a review the week of October 3. If you’d like to participate, leave a comment on this post. Act quickly. The last time I did something like this, the 100 copies were claimed in about 30 minutes.

For the rest of you, stay tuned for more details about this resource in the coming weeks. I’m really looking forward to the conversations this eBook is going to generate.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who has responded. I’ve closed the preview requests. Watch for the release the week of October 3.

My friend Jon Acuff from Stuff Christians Like recently released a new book called Quitter. Though the book is written to encourage and challenge people who are experiencing a gap between their day job and their dream job, I think the principles can apply to anyone who is looking to find their purpose and take their next steps. Quitter offers some great insights. The bonus is that you also get Jon’s excellent writing and humor.

Here are the highlights from my reading:

• “Quitting a job doesn’t jump-start a dream because dreams take planning, purpose and progress to succeed.”
• “‘Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity.’ It’s true, and the opportunity to quit your job will always be there. The real question is whether you’ve prepared.”
• “You don’t ask the bottomless, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ but instead, ‘What have I done in my life that I loved doing?’”
• “Quit perfect. It’s an unnecessary obstacle. Chase the idea of your dream being better finished at 90 percent than perfect and not pursued.”
• “You have the perfect amount of time each day for the things that matter most. The key is spending time on those things.”
• “I don’t think any of the information in this book works without applying hustle to it.”
• “Hustle isn’t just doing the things you love all the time. Hustle is doing the things you don’t enjoy sometimes to earn the right to do the things you love.”
• “Do more of the things you love and less of the things you like.”
• “Pitting your dream against someone else’s is a fantastic way to get discouraged and depressed. Nothing good comes from measuring your dream against your competition.”
• “If I say yes to this opportunity and am successful at it, what will be the long-term outcome?”
• “The reward of getting really good at something less significant than your real dream is that you get to do it more often. That’s not a reward; that’s a punishment.”

The new book Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication releases today. I joined over 60 other contributors to share my thoughts on how we can improve communications in the church. You’ll find my contribution on how to improve your marketing without spending any money in the very last section of the book.

• Here’s an overview and sample from the book.
• Here’s a list of all the contributors including many of my friends.
• Here’s my Amazon link to purchase the book.

The following is a guest post from Ben Stroup. Ben has produced my first four eBooks and is working with me on the fifth one releasing in October.

Fifty thousand views of anything is significant. eBooks have become a popular noun used today. There are two types of eBooks. One is simply an electronic rendering of a book on the shelf. The others is a much shorter (approximately 5,000 words) piece designed to provide a concentrated infusion of new ideas into an already existing conversation to accomplish a specific, predetermined goal. In Tony’s situation, our strategy on the first four eBooks (and the next three that will complete the Leisure Suit series) was the latter rather than the former. Rather than pontificating, I want to offer some learning points others can apply to their own contexts, scenarios, and and circumstances.

1. Writing is communication. Communication at its very core begins with clearly articulating what you want to say and successfully sharing that message in a way that ensures the intended recipients heard the message exactly as you wanted them to. If we are going to be great at this, then we have to become an advocate for the people we are trying to reach. It’s the only way we can ensure what we write, say, etc. is even relevant to the conversation.

Tony fiercely protects his digital real estate which results in a high degree of trust among those who are paying attention. He often says “no” to avoid clutter and distraction. If we are going to be successful communicators, we must act on behalf of and in the best interest of those we are trying to reach.

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Dr. Henry Cloud spoke at this year’s Leadership Summit. His talk was based on his recent book Necessary Ending: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward. After hearing Cloud’s message at the Summit, I finished reading the book. It has so impacted my thinking about leadership and life that I’m going to incorporate it into my future coaching networks, and we’re going to read it together as a staff team at the Carterville campus.

Here are some quotes from my reading that grabbed my attention:

• “They have realized that their success depends on having the time and energy resources to go deep with a few relationships, and they have to end the wish to go deep with everyone, as it leads to skimming the surface with almost everyone.”
• “Failing well means ending something that is not working and choosing to do something else better.”
• “If your map says that you are responsible for other adults as if they were your children, then something is wrong with your map, and no doubt some well-needed endings are not taking place.”
• “There is a difference between helping someone who is disabled, incapable, or otherwise infirm versus helping someone who is resisting growing up and taking care of what every adult (or child, for that matter) has to be responsible for: herself or himself. When you find yourself in any way paying for someone else’s responsibilities, not only are you stuck with a delayed ending, but you are probably harming that person.”
• “Make the concept of endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, so you expect and look for them instead of seeing them as a problem.”
• “In the absence of real, objective reasons to think that more time is going to help, it is probably time for some type of necessary ending.” (more…)

With the help of Ben Stroup, I released my first eBook four months ago. I wanted to prove to myself that there was a better way to publish and distribute content. Since then, I’ve released three more eBooks in partnership with great organizations like Catalyst, Exponential, Leadership Network and Church Community Builder.

Yesterday was a key milestone. At some point during the day, we passed through 50,000 views for the four eBooks. I just wanted to thank you for reading, sharing and engaging a conversation around these resources.

I’m already working on the next eBook that will be released in October. It’ll be the second installment in the “Leisure Suit” series. The Leisure Suit Trap was all about why churches are stuck. The new eBook will offer practical steps to help churches get unstuck.

Since all these resources are FREE, you may want to download and share them with your teammates or friends. (btw… Hopefully they’re both teammates and friends.)

Thanks, again, for helping me help you get your church unstuck so that it can have a bigger impact!

I recently connected with Dave Ferguson, Lead Pastor and Spiritual Entrepreneur with Community Christian Church and the NewThing Network, to talk with him about his new book. Dave co-authored On the Verge with Alan Hirsch. Here’s my interview with Dave:

TONY: What prompted you to write On the Verge?

DAVE: On The Verge was written in response to an urgency that both Alan and I felt that the church in North America is at a tipping point of moving in one of two very different directions: either towards extinction in this generation or a missional movement. While these are two distinctly different directions there are indicators of both possibilities. The shrinking percentage (18%) of the population that regularly attends church that would lead us to think that the North American church will go the way of Australia (10%) and Europe (2%-5%).

On the other hand there are also signs of movement. We are now starting more new churches than we are closing in United States. In addition, Alan and I were working with a dozen mega multi-site churches who are among the most influential and “successful” churches in the U.S (in the book we refer to them as Future Travelers) that were all making shifts from being primarily attractional to also being missional and sending churches. These indicators gave us great hope that that North American church is on the verge of an apostolic movement.

TONY: Though I highly respect both you and Alan, I wouldn’t expect the two of you to write a book together. How did that partnership come together?

DAVE: I read Alan’s Forgotten Ways when it first came out and thought it was one of the best books on the church that I had read in several years. So, when we invited him to speak at the Exponential Conference I took advantage of it and met him for breakfast. Despite the fact that Alan was a huge advocate of the missional-incarnational approach to church and a critic of the attractional mega church, I think he could see that what we were doing through Community and NewThing was not building a kingdom of our own, but catalyzing a movement. We hit it off immediately. Who I represent (mega, multi-site, church planting) and whom Alan’s represents (missional-incarnational) create the “both/and” thinking that we advocate in the On The Verge. We believe the best church of the future will be extraordinarily attractive because it is sent into the world to serve the world and love the world back to God. It really is our love for the church and the mission of Jesus that has brought us together.

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