Short and simple, yet insightful.

Nouwen warns of the temptations inherent in Christian leadership and recommends prayer, confession, and theological reflection as essential disciplines for leaders.

Read this as the staff read for Bentonville and…. The last two chapters man. These quotes speak for themselves!

“The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God's love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God's Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.”

“What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.”

“I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence as you anticipate the new century.”

I loved this book! It is very short and doesn’t waste words. Nouwen is so genuine. An excellent book on leadership and really for anyone.

This short book of Henri Nouwen is a piece of gold. His three points of reflections on the devil’s temptations, namely the temptations to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful, are succinct and insightful.

Worth pondering over and practicing.

"I leave you with the image of the leader with outstretched hands, who chooses a life of downward mobility. It is the image of the praying leader, the vulnerable leader, and the trusting leader. May that image fill your hearts with hope, courage, and confidence as you anticipate the new century."

This lil book has a lot of epic things to say about the Christian life and spiritual leadership.

Aside from the weird formating and interesting illustrations, this was awesome!

I'm hoping to go back through in the future and highlight passages.

I think I agreed with the theology and everything? But a deeper dive would be good to do before I say so 100 percent.


Super encouraging words!

This was an okay book, 2.5 stars I'd give it. It started off with me bracing myself to roll my eyes because my last outing with Henri Nouwen went pretty horribly (see my Life of the Beloved review). After getting over my initial trepidation, I actually got my hopes up that this book would be a catalyst for some deep soul work after reading a very thought-provoking and challenging chapter! Unfortunately, the next chapter put a damper on that hope, and for the most part a lot of my issues with Nouwen's style did end up rearing their flowery, unclear, well-intentioned-but-ultimately-unhelpful-and-impractical heads. Nothing in the book made me want to rage-quit it or need to take breaks this time, so that was a plus. Even still, there were just too many passages where Nouwen would triumphantly make a claim like he thought he had just proved or revealed something amazing that left me wanting. Also, he's not a researcher and doesn't claim to be, but he kind of pretends to be. He made sweeping generalizations about the state of affairs of the church and leadership that were clearly his own personal experience and then go on to state something to effect of, "So you see, the Christian leader of the future must become like such and such." Dude, your generalization wasn't even (in my experience) generally true! An example of a similar problem is when he asserts that "the original meaning of theology was union with God in prayer." Uh....WHAT?! Unless everything I or anyone I've ever talked to has been lied to about the way words and etymology work, that's not at all the original meaning of "God-study." You can't (or shouldn't) just be making things up to make your point, even if it does match your flowery, unclear, well-intentioned-but-ultimately-unhelpful-and-impractical aesthetic.

Anyways, I'm giving it 1 star for not saying anything so profoundly unhelpful/borderline heretical that it made me want to rage-quit too often, 1 star for the really good chapter that got my hopes up, and .5 stars for the scattering of good thoughts in the other chapters. Also, it was a super quick and easy read, so that's a plus too.


I'm writing this review off of my memory of the book, so I may come back and edit this later.

3.5

3/3 of my punishment books

You know what, this was pretty good!!

Do I think my father heeds this man’s advice? Not really.

Do I dislike the phrase Christian leadership because of my past with that phrasing? Absolutely, but this man was a priest so he can say it.

I try to read this yearly - and something different jumps out at me every time. After a year of struggle this quote is haunting takeaway:

“Powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are readymade to follow him wherever he guides them, always trusting that, with him, they will find life and find it abundantly.”

Easy and beautiful read. Quite relevant to Christian leadership of today.

This is just a brief (one hour) reflection written because Nouwen was asked to speak about Christian leadership "in the Twenty-First Century."

It's a puzzling assignment given to a priest who lived in a community of people with disabilities for the last decade of his life (he got the assignment about year 3 of that decade).

I related to the author because the book is about caring for people over other agendas, and it is focused on Jesus, using the two stories of the temptation of Christ and Jesus reinstating Peter by asking "Do you love me?" Rightly, Nouwen points out that Jesus passed by a lot of what we call leadership today, and love and mercy were key to all His interactions.

On the one hand, I found the book a little frustrating. When I was younger, I would have embraced the point of this book as a justification for my lack of leadership -- "I'm just busy loving and taking care of people." That's a core part of Christian sanctification, but if you are called to lead, you have responsibilities that if neglected will harm either the people you love or exclude people that should have been served. At a key time in my life I kept asking people what it is to be a leader and many Christians were unable to answer that question, yet I could see that where a Christian leader actually led, more ministry occurred. Not just activity, but ministry.

More occurred, for one thing, because a leader "equips" people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up (Ephesians 4:12). Jesus equiped His disciples for works of service and look what happened! Nouwen doesn't deal with some key parts of Christian leadership.

On the other hand, Nouwen's experience is a true antidote to the tendency to define leadership in terms the world can understand. I've seen groups of Christians "leading" with their strategies, long range plans, and statistical analysis that leaves everything truly "Jesus" out -- in fact, they weren't into the Word and didn't take a lot of time for prayer. Nouwen embraces being "irrelevant" by the world's standards while being sure to follow Jesus. It may not be leadership in all its fullness, but it helps keep a Christian from the very leadership that Jesus forbad His people when He said, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves." (Luke 22:25-26)

I love the image Nouwen paints in this book - a leader who goes against the grain of culture, full of humility, always pointing back to Christ. A high challenge and one I will be seeking throughout life as I lead and serve!

I read this for a course and admittedly against my will. It starts off a little slow, but there were multiple points throughout the book where I had to stop and admire his ability to articulate things I've always thought, point out things I'd never see, and challenge me in ways I hadn't expected.