Growing Edge
July 1, 1997
Barna without the Numbers
The popular statistician explores the much-debated subject of leadership.
If you are in the 83.9 percent of pastors who have read 70.1 percent of George Barna's other works, you will want to read 100 percent of his most recent book. But this time, you won't have to take a crash course in demographics. Leaders on Leadership (Regal, $18.99, 316 pp.) is Barna without the numbers. In this book, he moves from statistician to post-game interviewer; he asks winning coaches and players to tell why and how they made the decisions that determined the outcome of the game. Barna writes only two chapters; the rest are written by popular leaders such as Gene Getz, Leighton Ford, H. B. London, Jack Hayford, Wallace Erickson, Hans Finzel, and Doug Murren. Barna writes that the numbers he has been collecting convince him "the American church is dying due to a lack of strong leadership." He then explains why the church is facing a leadership crisis and how this is the mother of all crises. Perhaps the key issue that determines how you read this book is whether you buy Barna's premise that the American church is dying. Spending years collecting data from religious leaders and organizations must be depressing. It's a little like tracking patients in an oncologist's office; you hear stories only of dying, none of birth. For Barna to project the depressing nature of his work onto the American church may be presumptuous. Obviously the church in America is not what it should be; but a suggestion that it is dying seems an overstatement. If evidences of a living church are the stories of changed lives and examples of people willing to give up affluent, tax-deductible lifestyles to minister to the inner city, then maybe Barna's ...
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