Organizational Leadership: Foundations and Practices for Christians is a university textbook. IVP Academic published it in 2014, it runs 286 pages, and it is edited by three academics: Jack Burns of Whitworth University, John R. Shoup of California Baptist University, and Donald C. Simmons Jr. of Dakota Wesleyan University.
An earlier version of this review presented it as a guide to biblical money principles, budgeting, tithing, and building wealth, and filed it under Finance. That was wrong from top to bottom. The book is not about personal finance. It appears one of its five practice chapters is titled financial stewardship, and the rest of that review was built out of nothing.
What the book actually does
It has two halves. The first traces where modern management and leadership theory came from, and sets that history against a theological account of what leadership is for. The second works through five practices: communication, negotiation, decision making, financial stewardship, and personal development.
The financial stewardship chapter is about organizational budgets and resource decisions, the kind a department head or a nonprofit director makes. It is not about your household budget or your giving.
The audience is students in a Christian leadership program and practitioners running organizations. It is written accordingly, with the apparatus of a textbook.
Is it good at what it is?
By the standards of its category, yes. It has been reviewed in academic journals and used as a course text, and the attempt to put leadership theory and theology in the same room rather than alternating between them is the reason it gets assigned.
The multiple editor format means the chapters vary. Some are sharper than others and the voice shifts. That is normal for an edited volume and it is worth knowing before you start.
It costs around twenty five dollars, which is textbook pricing for something you are unlikely to read cover to cover by choice.
Worth your time?
Yes, if you lead an organization, a ministry, or a department and you want a serious framework rather than airport leadership paperbacks. It will make you think about why you do what you do.
No, for almost everyone else. If you came here from a search about Christian money management, this is not remotely the book, and no part of the old review describing budgeting tools or teaching on tithing was accurate.
Organizational Leadership on Amazon