I kept hearing about Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm by Mark Sayers on different blogs and at different conferences and then a leader I respect said it was the best leadership book he’d ever read. I decided at that point, it was time to pick it up.
I was not disappointed.
One thing you will notice quickly, it is unlike any other leadership book out there. It has history, stories, art and a lot of soul in it.
The point of the book of the book is to show how leadership has changed, how culture has changed and what leadership looks like moving forward. I am thankful as Sayers points out, we are moving away from deconstruction in our leadership and culture and moving towards rebuilding. I’m hopeful Christians get this idea as many leaders seem to be behind the times and keep talking about deconstructing.
Here are a few things that jumped out:
- Leaders are men and women who can influence a group of people toward a common goal. Their leverage comes from their ability to envision, communicate, and embody a better future. They see something wrong and want to change it. Yet for a group to be motivated they must come to some level of disillusionment with the status quo; they need motivation to change. The difficulty for those of us who are called into leadership in this era, in a society of the spectacle riddled with passive spectatorship and intermittent distraction, is made increasingly difficult.
- Before we can lead others out of the culture of illusions, our illusions must die.
- For leadership to be awoken, the modern myth that, like Nemo, we can hide away from the storms of life in comfort must be cast aside.
- Our understanding of leadership is markedly shaped by the myth of the hero, the idea that through sheer effort and determination we can reshape reality. The myth of the hero tells us that dynamic, charismatic, and glorious individuals can heal cultures through their personal guile, skill, and glory.
- The age of the image has created a whole industry that specializes in managing the public perceptions of leaders.
- As leaders, influencers, and creatives, we all have dreams. Would we be satisfied if God made those dreams come true but we received no personal recognition?
- Without realizing it, leaders can paint their own dysfunction over churches, ministries, and mission fields. All too easily, the effort to preach the gospel becomes about appeasing fears and insecurities, turning leadership into a tool used to primarily gain a sense of personal meaning.
- Emptiness seeks out thrills and excitement to escape the mundane. When this happens in Christian circles, churches recast mission, ministry, and leadership as adventures.
- Christian leadership is a strange beast. In its truest form it runs counter to almost everything the world has taught us: To create ourselves by accumulating riches, experiences, and relationships, and, most importantly, to broadcast them to the audience that will mirror back to us the messages we wish to hear.
- At its heart, biblical faith is a creed of the antihero. It is the story of men and women who come to the end of themselves and must discover God.
- Leaders do not avoid the storm when it comes, instead they step into the storm and discover the one who comes in the storm.
- Biblical leadership is so much more than just leading people. The biblical leader is a symbol who lives at the intersection of God’s breaking into history, into life. The leader can never be distant from God, His word, or the world.
- Those who avoid God’s holy storms fail to feel their pain, but they also fail to grow.
- It is easier to reimagine church structure than it is to reimagine what it means to live a life fully devoted to God in modern culture.