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Preaching is leadership.
It is not just a way of exercising leadership. It is leadership. If we believe that God communicates to his people through his Word as it is preached, then the very act of preaching is a means by which God leads his people.
Michael Quicke, Professor of Preaching and Communication at Northern Seminary (Lombard, IL), has long been concerned about the unnecessary divorce between preaching studies and leadership studies. This book, a sort of sequel to his previous book 360-Degree Preaching, is an attempt to bring his previous emphasis upon a wholistic view of preaching to the subject of leadership in the local church. The result is very welcome.
The first section of the book speaks theoretically to the “critical relationship between preaching and leading.” The second section addresses practical concerns related to the “making of the preacher/leader” and the process involved in leading through our preaching.
With respect to the relationship between preaching and leading, Quicke writes, “Leadership left to its own devices can lose spiritual footing in several ways. Separation from preaching increases the dangers of leadership degenerating into humanistic advice, becoming devoid of the Holy Spirit, empty of spiritual understanding, and predisposed to puffed up pride (62).” Yet, preaching needs leadership just as much. “Without understanding leadership, preaching becomes woolly in its piety, naive in its application, and guilty on all counts of thin-bloodedness. Leadership brings much-needed realism and knowledge in the preaching task. Preaching urgently needs to learn from leadership about critical issues such as change, conflict, the need for intentionality, and understanding process. (65)”
For his leadership theory, Quicke draws heavily on the work of Jim Herrington, Mike Bonem, and James H. Furr, in their book Leading Congregational Change. This process of congregational transformation utilizes eight stages:
According to Quicke, in this process every sermon matters. “I believe that all the stages of change process belong within the preaching task. Urgency, values, mission, vision, implementation, and alignment are not to be smuggled in like illegal aliens into the sermon-making process or treated as some trendy twenty-first-century fashion that has no biblical place. No, these leadership concepts should be recognized as legal residents that have always been there and are vital to the full-blooded process of preaching/leading (165).”
Quicke’s move to show how preaching supports the work of strategic leadership is the strength of the book. For many, this book will supplement other readings down in both fields. For others, this will be a healthy stimulant to a broader course of reading and thinking in both homiletics and leadership studies.
This was a marriage long awaited. We all ought to be grateful that Michael Quicke has tied the knot.