Called to Lead: 26 Leadership Lessons from the Life of the Apostle Paul is by John MacArthur, published by Thomas Nelson (ISBN 978-1-4002-0286-7).
Check your shelf before you buy this
This is the same book as The Book on Leadership. It was retitled and reissued, not rewritten. If you already own The Book on Leadership, you own this. That is the most useful thing we can tell you about it, and our old review did not mention it.
What it does
MacArthur draws twenty-six qualities of a leader out of Paul’s life and letters, leaning heavily on 2 Corinthians, where Paul defends his own ministry against people who thought they could do it better. That is a shrewd choice of text. It is Paul at his least polished and most exposed, arguing for his credibility while listing shipwrecks and beatings.
The result is a leadership book that spends most of its time on character rather than technique. No frameworks, no acronyms, no org charts. The qualities are things like trustworthiness, discipline, courage under criticism, and willingness to be misunderstood.
Who wrote it, and what that means
John MacArthur (1939 to 2025) pastored Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California for over five decades and was among the most widely read expositors of his generation. He was also a firmly Reformed, cessationist, doctrinally combative teacher, and he did not soften edges to be liked.
Called to Better is non-denominational, and we hold that the gifts of the Spirit remain active today, which MacArthur emphatically did not. That disagreement barely surfaces in this particular book, since the subject is Paul’s character rather than pneumatology. But if you go on to read him more widely you will run into it, and it is better to know now than to be surprised.
What you get in exchange is exposition. MacArthur works from the text rather than from anecdotes, which is rarer in the leadership shelf than it should be.
What we removed
The old review said each chapter includes thought-provoking questions, which we could not verify, and reported that men in our community had found it eye-opening, which was invented. Both are gone. It also quoted MacArthur saying “A leader must have clear convictions about where he is going,” which we could not confirm as his wording.
Where we land
Solid, text-driven, and unfashionable in the right way. Worth reading if you lead anyone and want the character question addressed before the method question. Just make sure you are not buying The Book on Leadership a second time.
Called to Lead by John MacArthur on Amazon