Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos (emersion: Emergent...

Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos (emersion: Emergent Village ... | Tim Keel | MUST READ

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	Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos (emersion: Emergent Village ... Tim Keel Baker Books, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

As our culture shifts from modern to postmodern, pastors and church leaders are finding that old, rigid church leadership systems and structures no longer seem to work. Church leaders are searching for and discovering new, creative ways of leading--emphasizing intuition, creativity, narrative, and an embrace of the chaos and tension of our time. Tim Keel, pastor of a thriving emergent church and a rising leader in the emergent church movement, offers a thought-provoking yet practical exploration of this new style he calls Intuitive Leadership. His fresh approach will be welcomed by pastors and lay leaders interested in the emergent conversation and how Christian mission should look in our rapidly changing culture.

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What we have been waiting for

If you have been going around in the Postmodern conversation for any amount of time, or are at all curious about the "Emergent Church", or are feeling like you keep stubbing the big toe of your faith, here is some real help. And do not let the title keep any one from reading. This is not just one more dry book on leadership. It is for you. Tim Keel brilliantly (please accept the praise Mr. Keel) weaves history, scripture, experience, and culture into something truly inspiring and useful to those with an eye on things to come. Or even on things that have been. I cheered out loud more than a few times as my heart was being reclaimed by Jesus. So many connections were made with the loose ends of my faith. And not in the form of easy answers, but with the asking of better questions. Did I mention that this is a brilliant work? The bottom line is that this is most likely the most important and engaging book i have read to date. And if in fact you are in a position of leadership, ( as I am ) this is a catalyst for honest growth that you will look a long time to better, or even equal for that matter. I could go on but instead will plead with you to trust your intuition..... it is as good as you would hope.

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MUST READ

This book is a must read, and a must own! I am NOT an emergent village participant, and have NO plans on being one. I am a church planter, however, and this book has it! It is amazing, even if you are not an emergent follower, EVERY pastor should have this book of leadership in their library, and they should reference it often!

Great Book

This was much more than just a book about leadership. It was a book about the postmodern approach as well as an encouragement that faith does not and should not just be of the mind but also of the heart.

a completely different book on leadership

wow. tim keel has written a leadership book that, well, isn't like others. i suppose i could put it in the same kind of category -- roughly -- as max depree's books (leadership jazz, and leadership is an art), in that tim doesn't prescribe a method, or give 5 or 10 or 21 irrefutable laws. instead, he brings his artist's perspective to the role of the leader, spending the biggest portion of his page real estate talking about cultural discernment.

killer stuff, really. when tim suggests, in the subtitle, that the kind of leadership we should embrace is one of narrative, metaphor and chaos... well, let's just say he clearly lives these three words out on the pages of this exceptional book.

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Leadership in the postmodern world

AUTHOR: "I am a full-on mutt" writes Keel of himself. The product of mixed spiritual heritage (Methodist, Baptist, Evangelical Presbyterian, Benedictines), Keel recognizes the deep influences these (and other) "deeply and widely different streams of the Christian tradition" have had on his spiritual formation. Keel serves as the founding pastor of Jacob's Well, and serves on the Board of Emergent Village. Keel's writings resonate with a Hauerwasian flavor, reflecting his early fascination with narratives of all kinds. He seeks to illustrate rather than explicate, and seems at ease with the chaotic currents of post-modernity.

THESIS OF THE BOOK: There are no leadership silver bullets. Today's effective leader will influence followers in the context of narratives (biblical, national, ethnic, familial, individual, etc.), embracing the tensions of intuition, creativity, and chaos to follow the Holy Spirit wherever He leads.

PART 1 ("Entering Story") uses stories to demonstrate the validity and need for a narrative paradigm. Keel paints a succinct history of the enlightenment, modernity and post-modernity, asserting that even the assertion that we have no story is really a story. Narrating his story and that of Jacob's Well, Keel asserts that we have "failed to engage God, ourselves, and our world faithfully for the sake of the gospel" by failing to live a truthful narrative.

PART 2 ("Engaging Context") explores the radical engagements of faithful, communal discipleship: the contextual, theological and structural aspects of using intuition, creativity and chaos. Using another's approach can leech God from ministry. Instead we must follow God's lead.

PART 3 ("Embracing Possibility") encourages us to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit by allowing "life to grow naturally out of the environment in which it exists" rather than by imitating the latest fad or best practices from a mega church. This goal can best be achieved from a posture of learning, joy, vulnerability, availability and surrender while listening to God.

Keel reflects my dissatisfaction with the "Acts 2 church," as if such a church were possible today simply by reinstituting the forms and rules of the First Century AD. He notes that the church in that form did not last, being replaced by new, vibrant and different forms of church, all of them authentic. "[We] observe barely contained chaos as churches faithfully seek to keep pace with the life exploding under and around them." Keel also brings systems thinking into the mix, noting that easy fixes just do not work. We need to apply what seem like chaotic solutions that "pull us (me) out of our (my) comfort zones and into the world around us (me) in a radically engaged way."

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reviews: page 1, 2

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