Leaders on Leadership by Barna: Book Review & Key Insights
This paper reviews George Barna's edited volume Leaders on Leadership: Wisdom, Advice and Encouragement on the Art of Leading God's People. The review examines how Barna and his contributors blend biblical principles with practical organizational thinking to argue that America's churches are in decline due to inadequate leadership. Three chapters receive particular attention: Kenneth O. Gangel's exploration of administrative gifts in scripture, Gene Getz's principles of spiritually mature leadership, and Doug Murren's model of the leader as a change agent. The reviewer praises the book's research-grounded approach and accessible storytelling while noting a tendency toward self-promotion as its primary weakness.
- Overview and First Impressions: Initial reaction and the book's accessible tone
- Barna's Core Argument: Research, Faith, and Failing Churches: Research-grounded thesis on church leadership decline
- Leadership as a Biblical and Organizational Journey: Chapter structure and leadership teaming argument
- Three Chapters That Illuminate the Book's Themes: Gangel, Getz, and Murren chapters analyzed in depth
- Final Assessment: One significant weakness noted: self-promotion
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What makes this paper effective
- The review balances genuine enthusiasm for the book's strengths with a clear-eyed critique, lending credibility to its praise and making the single flaw feel earned rather than perfunctory.
- Selecting three specific chapters to analyze in depth grounds the evaluation in textual evidence rather than vague impressions, giving readers a reliable sense of the book's range.
- The reviewer connects Barna's research methodology to his credibility as a religious commentator, showing an understanding of how authorial authority functions in nonfiction writing.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates selective close reading as a review strategy: rather than summarizing every chapter, the writer identifies three representative sections and unpacks each one's contribution to the book's central argument. This technique shows evaluative judgment — the ability to decide what is most illustrative — while keeping the review focused and substantive.
Structure breakdown
The review opens with an overall impression and tone-setting judgment, then moves to Barna's thesis and methodology, then to the book's chapter-by-chapter logic, then to three extended chapter summaries, and closes with a brief but honest critique. This classic book-review arc — hook, argument, evidence, evaluation — is efficiently executed in a compact essay format appropriate for the undergraduate level.
Overview and First Impressions
One can see why a reader might pass over Leaders on Leadership at first glance. There are a great many business books on the topic, and the mix of business and biblical thinking could easily seem unclear or unappealing. But this volume lives up to the promises of its subtitle: it is a genuine offering of Wisdom, Advice and Encouragement on the Art of Leading God's People.
What stands out immediately is the playful, life-connected nature of the book. It is filled with approachable stories in which the editor and contributors — each remarkable leaders within various spiritual communities — share their viewpoints and demonstrate how they work through reflections and interactions with everyday people, some of whom are followers and others who may not be religious at all. George Barna himself sets this tone from the beginning by drawing on sports stories and personal experiences, which encourages the other writers to remain accessible and relatable throughout.
It is also hard not to appreciate a book that states plainly from the outset: "If you agree with all that is in this book, you are not reading carefully enough." Leaders, the text argues, are independent thinkers who must know when to agree with ideas and when to challenge them. This is Barna's way of inviting readers to think critically as they read and arrive at whatever conclusions work best for their own search for what makes a good leader.
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