Books @ Leadership Network

News from Leadership Network Publishing

It’s only January 29^th, but Leadership Network publications are starting with a strong year. Here are a few announcements from our publishing division.

I. Leadership Network Innovation Series Book Wins ECPA Best Cover – Large Publisher Category.

In September, Deliberate Simplicity received this honor, which normally rewards flair and extravagance, for "simplicity" and understatement. How appropriate, and what a significant reminder to all of us that the message of Dave Browning’s book is calling us to reexamine our methods and motives of ministry. RELATED BLOG POST

II. Dave Gibbon’s The Monkey and The Fish Wins Awards from Christianity Today and Leadership magazines. 

The Monkey and The Fish received one of ten Golden Canon awards, selected by a diverse group of more than 100 pastors and leaders. Winners fall into one of two categories: The Leader's Outer Life, and The Leader's Inner Life. READ MORE

Gibbons’ book is given an Award of Merit in the category of Church/Pastoral Leadreship. From 472 titles submitted by 72 publishers, Christianity Today's editors selected finalists in each of 10 categories, and our expert judges went to work discovering the best of the bunch from 2009. Here are the 12 winners (including two ties) and 11 notables that best shed light on the people, events, and ideas that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission, with comments from the judges. READ MORE

III. Leadership Network Partners with Exponential and Zondervan in New Book Series

Leadership Network has teamed up with Exponential and Zondervan to create the Exponential Series. Books in the new series will tell the reproducing church story, celebrate the diversity of models and approaches God is using to reproduce healthy congregations, and to highlight the innovative practices of healthy reproducing churches. The series will launch at Exponential with the release of AND: The Gathered and the Scattered Church by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, and Exponential: How You and Your Friends Can Start a Missional Church Movement by Dave and Jon Ferguson.

 

IV. Best Year Ever for Leadership Network Book Sales

In a less than healthy publishing economy Leadership Network is happy to announce that 2009 saw the greatest book sales in its publishing history. Leadership Network partners with both Jossey-Bass and Zondervan in producing 12-15 new titles each year that deal with effectively reaching the growing numbers of people who seek God but are yet to know Him. Books in our series address issues such as enabling effective leadership, encouraging life-changing service, building authentic community, creating Kingdom-centered impact, and engaging cultural and demographic realities. The Innovation Series books are about real leaders, in real churches doing real ministry. Each story features transferable principles and provides guidance on how the reader can apply these principles within their own ministry context.

Learn more at www.leadnet.org/books

  

Terrific Biography of Rick Warren

I don’t read many books cover to cover, but Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren by former U.S. News and World Report religion editor Jeffery L. Sheler was so engaging and informative that I read every word – 336 pages, including 8 fascinating pages of photos.

Rick was one of the early pioneers in the use of the Internet, so the websites are quite rich at Saddleback Church and especially at Pastors.com, which includes a year of free sermons and the free “Rick Warren’s Ministry Toolbox” newsletter. Plus he’s been all over the mainstream media, such as a 3/29/04 cover article in Time magazine, and with increased media presence in more recent years. A Google search easily turns up a month of reading material about him.

So what’s new to write about the man Christianity Today calls “America's most prominent pastor” and other media have called “the most influential evangelical in America”? Sheler was able to obtain something that no other writer has accomplished until now: Rick Warren’s personal cooperation and thus a new degree of access to his family, close associates, and other sources of information. Over two years of research Sheler went to California, Texas, and Rwanda. He met in Rick and Kay Warren’s home, attended Saddleback Church, and observed Rick in both public and private meetings. Yet Rick did not edit or approve any of the book’s content, and so Prophet of Purpose is not an official or authorized biography.

I learned a lot from the book. The chapters on his childhood, youth and college years – including his and Kay’s turbulent early years of marriage – helped me understand some of the major influences on who he is today. He faced many challenges, from depression to a rare fainting disorder.

I was especially interested in those patterns that I would describe as innovations in ministry:

- Dreaming that his new congregation could quickly become a large-attendance church. The expectation and pattern when he launched Saddleback in 1980, based on other southern California churches in his denomination, was for him to develop a congregation of 50. (Indeed, attendance at Saddleback according to the book, reached 900 at year 5, and 2,000 at year 8.)

- Developing Saddleback as a church for the unchurched, and involving new believers quickly in ministry. This approach was quite unusual for most churches, opening Rick to a lot of criticism especially when he chose not to include the word “Baptist” in the church name.

- Moving to a role where he is both pastor and leader. This approach to church was a learning experience for him personally. In the church’s opening years, it was also a challenge for the people from Crescent Baptist Church, the Southern Baptist congregation in nearby Anaheim that sent people and money to help Saddleback get launched.

- Marketing of the book Purpose Driven Life through church-sponsored 40-day campaigns. It helped the book go viral, selling 20 million copies in its first 24 months, and remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for 188 weeks.

- Going public about the “tons of money” (his term) he made from Purpose Driven Life, including how he’s committed not to change his lifestyle and instead to give away 90% of his income.

I’m not a Rick Warren expert, but I have studied and learned from his ministry for years, interacting with him personally on several occasions. (In fact, Rick just wrote the foreword to a book Ed Stetzer and I co-authored named Viral Churches, slated for 4/10 release). I found Prophet of Purpose to be quite accurate including the half dozen event narratives where I happened to have been present or in some way associated.

More important, I felt the author caught Rick Warren’s heartbeat. Time magazine thinks Rick is influential because of his politics. Many pastors admire Rick for developing new curriculums and discipleship systems. As Rick voiced in a World magazine interview, “People don’t understand that I am fundamentally, foremost an evangelist. It’s what I care about. I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about political correctness, I don’t care about what established groups want me to do. I care about getting people into heaven.” In a surprisingly sympathetic way, Sheler brought out those passions. Sheler agrees, as he writes online in his personal comments about why he wrote the book: “While I count myself a Warren admirer, I am first and foremost a journalist with a passion for truth.” While Rick Warren and Saddleback are understandably avoiding comment on the book, it’s hard to imagine a more suitable writer – an award winning national journalist with strong research skills who himself has been part of a wide range of churches, and thus understands and even appreciates the culture of Rick Warren’s world.

There also is a website related to the book, www.prophetofpurpose.com, which includes free sample chapters and other relevant material.

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 21 books on various aspects of church health and innovation. His recent “Leadership Network” books blogs include Picking the Best Graphic to Tell Your Story Well, What We’re Reading at Leadership Network, The Soviet Plot to Kill God, Hard Times for Publishers but Great Times for Readers, Migration and Churches in Europe, The Worst Moment in Most Church Services, Excellent Resources for Church-Based Grants, Multi-Site Church Roadtrip Released Today, Holy Mavericks, Don’t Let This Book Cover Fool You, Turning Your Idea into a Book and Do White Churches Hold Others in Cultural Captivity?

Picking the Best Graphic to Tell Your Story Well

I’m continually looking at information about church leaders and trying to figure out the best way to present it visually. “Should I use a pie chart, a bar graph, a line graph or something really specialized like a Venn diagram?” Too often I don’t have a clear path to what kind of graphic will communicate best.

This just-released book by expert Dona M. Wong, Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, has some very helpful answers. With over 500 illustrations to accompany its text, it both shows and explains. In many sections, it uses its left-hand page to show the wrong or unhelpful approach, and to explain why. The right-hand page is the better approach, with commentary on why. 

Sample learnings:

* In general pie charts are for simple data with only a few numbers and which adds up to the equivalent of 100%.  Line or bar charts do better for complex data.

* In pie charts start your biggest slice at the 12:00 position going clockwise. Place your second biggest slice at 12:00 going counterclockwise. Thus least important data goes in the 6pm to 9pm slot. Why? That's how the eye typically goes and the brain understands best. Don't exceed 5 slices; if you need more slices, use a segmented bar (rather than a pie within a pie) to show a breakdown of the fifth slice – see illustration at left. 

* Vertical bar charts are easier to understand than horizontal ones. If bars are not all the same color, go light to dark (see illustration at right of zebra colors, which should be avoided). If you are making one point, put that bar in one color or shade and all the rest in another color. 

* For bar charts (whether horizontal or vertical) the bar width should be roughly twice the length of the space between the bars.

* In line charts with multiple lines, use four lines maximum with the main line in a different color.

* Always build zero baseline into charts in order to represent proportionality appropriately.

* When you do have a long list or table of horizontal bars, label the data points flush right and use thin rules to separate the bars in groups of 3-5. See illustrations at right, poor and better. 

Warren Bird, Ph.D., is Research Director at Leadership Network, and co-author of 21 books on various aspects of church health and innovation. His recent “Leadership Network” books blogs include What We’re Reading at Leadership Network, The Soviet Plot to Kill God, Hard Times for Publishers but Great Times for Readers, Migration and Churches in Europe, The Worst Moment in Most Church Services, Excellent Resources for Church-Based Grants, Multi-Site Church Roadtrip Released Today, Holy Mavericks, Don’t Let This Book Cover Fool You, Turning Your Idea into a Book and Do White Churches Hold Others in Cultural Captivity?