While all of these are genuine concerns, they are not your greatest struggle. It is not an external force, but an internal one; one that lies within you and threatens all that you hope to accomplish. Jim Molloy reveals the worst enemy of leadership in “Every Leader’s Everest.”

What is this force that threatens to derail your effectiveness, your legacy, and maybe your entire life? It is insecurity. It is the result of fear, and just as fear has some home in every person’s life, so does insecurity. It cannot be destroyed for it will never be eliminated, but insecurity can be dominated, defeated.

“Everest” is not a generic book about leadership. It is a book about spiritual leadership, especially ministry-related leadership. However, anyone that struggles with insecurity, whether at home or work, alone or in groups of people, will benefit from Jim’s book.

One might think that the key to defeating insecurity is becoming more sure of ourselves. While we can identify insecurity in our lives and try to restructure our lives to avoid and combat it, only the supernatural power of God defeats insecurity in our lives. Insecurity is often a result of deficiencies in our understanding of and faith in God. “…insecurity is not defeated by becoming surer about our leadership but rather by beings absolutely sure about God” (12).

Jim identifies many ways that people are overtaken by insecurity. In many cases, we don’t even realize that we are insecure, but the carnage of insecurity lie all around us. Insecurity can be cause by pain, the gifts God gives to us for ministry, and unresolved personal issues. One particularly interesting chapter gives life to insecurity as Jim describes various personas overtaken by it.

The latter section of the book deals with re-scripting our hearts and minds. Too often we can receive what others think about us, our gifts and our ministry. Instead we must reprogram ourselves with what God says about these things. Later chapters visit these new Life Scripts in order to feed the truth into us.

Here are some of my favorite lines from “Every Leader’s Everest”:

• Insecurity is fear. Unhealthy fear is always the result of a lie.
• Security knows that being “free from fear” is an illusion.
• If one’s path into leadership is void of obstacles, chances are that the path didn’t lead anywhere significant. Without challenges, the reward of arriving at the destination isn’t as sweet.
• …leadership without hope is weakened because leaders live in the hope that things will change.
• You can still find God in the midst of unanswered questions. You just have to accept that you will never have all the answers.
• If you are arrogant, everyone knows it. Most are just too gracious to tell you.
• Do you need leadership or does leadership need you?
• If we refuse to explore and acknowledge our proneness to specific issues, we condemn ourselves to the mercy of pride and arrogance.
• Do things because they matter to God, not because they get you noticed.
• If you did all the things you could do, you would drive yourself crazy.
• If you only judge your worth by your measure of your economy, you will be insecure.
• …it is always better to be detested by your courage than esteemed for following the crowd.

Jim uses personal experiences, stories and humor to relate the important truth that we are susceptible to insecurity. It lurks within each one of us. But with God’s help we can overcome it, and we can climb “Every Leader’s Everest.”

You can find out more about Jim Molloy, Life Scripts, and more at his website, www.leaderscripts.com.

Now that we have found Christ, what do you think we should be doing? What do you believe is the most important task we can spend our lives, our new lives?

Pastor Ronnie Floyd reminds us what that task is in “Our Last Great Hope.” And if it has been a while since you heard the message, his passionate plea to recommit yourself to fulfilling it is a must read.

What is the task? It is to fulfill the Great Commission. Jesus didn’t tell us to get better at quoting Scripture, sharing our personal thoughts on the internet, or even to pool our resources to meet the physical needs of society. Jesus said, “Go and make disciples.”

This book came at the perfect time as I focus my own studies on evangelism and looking for a way to communicate its importance and value in the lives of our congregation. Floyd’s book both challenged and inspired me, confirming what I already felt was God’s growing call to share the Gospel and inspire others to do the same. This book will do that for you.

Here are some of my personal highlights from the book:

• To know Christ is to love Him; to love Him is to share Him.
• The Christian who is apathetic about the Great Commission is the one who is not walking at Jesus’ speed, who has fallen far behind, or who is wandering somewhere in the woods.
• [In one section he thinks about the first responders and rescue workers at the World Trade Center on 9/11...] What if the news cameras had shown them rubbernecking as the buildings burned, as people leaped from ninety floors above? What if the rescue workers had been casual spectators rather than courageous heroes? And I thought, What does God see when He looks at me? at my church? at the Christians of this world? We’re just a vast number of Planet Earth rescue workers with our hands in our pockets, gawking as the earth goes up in flames.
• I must own the Great Commission personally, I must come to a place where it is unthinkable for me to leave the work to others, to hire it done.
• The Great Commission is mine. It was made for me, and me for it. I can imagine life without it no more than I can imagine life without my head. I am responsible. I am accountable.

The final chapters in this book were the only difficult portion for me to read. After all of the stimulating reading about the need for sharing the Gospel, Floyd spends some time to encourage Christians to finance evangelism. It is a helpful section, yet I found it to be a bit of a buzz killer. But the truth of his point rings clear: How much would you pay to see everyone you know in Heaven, along with those touched by missionaries, and to see every physical need on the planet met?

“Our Last Great Hope” was a great read and I highly recommend it to every Christian. In fact, it should be required reading.

Don’t get me wrong, if something that your church does works and has great results year after year, it may only need the occasional tweak to keep it effective. But many of us are repeat offenders. We repeat, repeat, repeat, and we keep on doing repeating, with no end in sight, just like this run-on sentence, and with no results, because we are just plain stuck.

If you think you might be stuck or if you’re are confident that you are, there is hope for you. Tony Morgan just released the second installment in The Leisure Suit Series of free e-books: “Hanging Up the Leisure Suit.”

The book is an easy, short read, so I do not want to spoil too much here. It’s packed with helpful information and direct challenges. The first issue helped us recognize if we are stuck. This issue gives us a plan to get unstuck, and it deals a lot with systems. Here are some of the thoughts that grabbed me as I read it.

We have to mind the gap between the knowledge of our vision statements. “It’s possible for everyone to know the vision but still not have any clue what they’re supposed to do to help make the vision become reality. So how do you “mind the gap”? By focusing on specific strategies and systems that are established to accomplish the vision.”

It’s important to have systems. Systems are biblical, with examples all over the Old and New Testaments of their use and effectiveness.

Tony spends a lot of time consulting churches and helping them become more effective. He gives us a free first lesson when he talks about six key elements of a healthy organization.

Anyone who has taught Sunday School or Bible studies or preached for a decent amount of time will tell you that it seems like their message falls on deaf ears. Sometimes we forget that teaching alone will not effect life change. We need to have other systems in place that help people put to action what they have learned from teaching. “Remember, your message has the potential to shift thinking. Your systems have the potential to shift behaviors.”

Another great part of this resource is that it comes with discussion questions for each chapter of the book.

* * *

My personal plan for The Leisure Suit Series is to take my church leadership through each issue of this series, talking about it month after month. We’re a 80+ year old organization with a lot of history. But in the last 10 to 20 years it has seen great decline. I came to this church 14 months ago, I knew in my heart that God has something great in store for these people and this community. I appreciate that someone else wants to help us go forward as much as we want, and is willing to put something like this in our hands to get unstuck.

You can get your copy of “Hanging Up the Leisure Suit” and other resources from Tony Morgan’s website: www.tonymorganlive.com.

Tony Morgan serves on the leadership team of West Ridge Church near Atlanta. He’s also a strategist, writer, speaker and consultant who helps churches get unstuck and have a bigger impact. More important, he has a passion for people. He’s all about helping people meet Jesus and take steps in their faith.