The Spiritual Life of a Leader: A God-Centered Leadership Style is Boyd Bailey’s book on carrying your faith into the job of managing people. Harvest House published it in August 2021.
It is a workplace book, and the old review missed that
This page previously framed the book as a remedy for spiritual apathy and a lackluster prayer life. That is not its subject.
Bailey is writing about work. Bearing spiritual fruit in your workplace, serving the people who report to you, developing other leaders, and holding a Christian character in an environment that is often not Christian at all. Whole sections deal with running honest self-assessment on your weaknesses and with the specific temptations that come to people in charge.
That is a narrower and more useful book than the one described here before. If you manage people, it is aimed at you. If you were hoping for a general devotional, this is not it.
Who Boyd Bailey is
He founded Wisdom Hunters, an Atlanta ministry producing daily devotional writing, and cofounded Ministry Ventures, where he and his team have coached more than a thousand leaders on board development, administration, and fundraising. So the background is nonprofit and ministry leadership rather than corporate management, which shapes what the book is good at.
The material on character, motive, and the quiet temptations of authority is the strong part. Where a reader in a large secular company might want more is on the harder mechanics: managing out a poor performer, surviving a political organization, holding your convictions when the cost is your job. Bailey gestures at working faithfully in a secular environment, but the depth is in the interior life rather than the tactics.
What we removed
A short quotation attributed to Bailey, and an endorsement attributed to a named reviewer called Amber D. Thompson. Neither could be verified and both are gone. A paragraph about the reactions of men “in our community” was invented and has been deleted.
The old page also referred to study guide questions. We could not confirm those exist in this edition, so we are not repeating the claim. Check the preview if a group format matters to you.
Worth pairing with something
One honest limitation. Books in the Christian leadership category tend to be strong on who you should be and thin on what you should do on Tuesday, and this one leans that way. It will make you think carefully about your motives. It will not teach you to run a difficult performance conversation.
Read it for the first thing and get the second somewhere else. The combination is more useful than either alone, and a man who only ever reads the character books can end up with excellent intentions and a badly run team.
Who should read it
Anyone leading people who suspects the job is changing him and wants to check. Ministry leaders and nonprofit directors will find it fits their world closely. Managers in secular companies will get real value from the character material and will need to supply their own translation for the rest.