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Leading with Story: Cultivating Christ-centered Leaders in a Storycentric Generation
Eighty percent of the world's people--including seventy percent of Americans--are storycentric communicators; that is, they prefer to learn and are most likely to be influenced through stories, pictures, drama, and music rather than through reading and writing. Yet more than ninety percent of Christian workers communicate through a highly literacy-based approach. This disconnect overlooks a primary method of Jesus himself in the preparation of leaders and impedes the effective cultivation of leaders in the growing global church. Through engaging stories, biblical insights, leadership research, field-tested methods, and practical models of effective leadership development, Leading with Story offers unique solutions that will inspire and challenge any who want to raise up or to be raised up as Christ-centered leaders in this storycentric generation.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 21, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 13, 2025
A difficult book to rate. The main point presented in the first few chapters was really good. Its main idea about storycentric learning was really well presented and something that’s going to stick with me.
Unfortunately the book drags on and on into a bunch of leadership theory that doesn’t add much value. That said, even though it was way too long at 300 pages and included a ton of unnecessary fluff, the second half of the book did include some solid critiques of modern leadership styles and the ways the evangelical world wrongly seeks to emulate those styles.
The author’s main point speaks to how much of the world, even in the West but especially outside the West, are story-centric learners. Yet those within the Christian faith that seek to reach people, operate very heavily and at times exclusively within an analytical ‘prove my point by making sound arguments’ mindset. The author has undertaken the worthy and difficult task of trying to ensure that global Christian leaders, especially those from non-western places and cultures, are not automatically having to be trained using this more analytical mindset that often doesn’t make any sense within their own contexts and ends up stifling growth. Overall a lot of good stuff to chew on.
Quotes:
“While the vast majority of the world’s unreached people are storycentric, an estimated 90 percent of the world’s Christian workers present the truth using expositional, analytical, abstract, logical communication. With this bias toward the presentation of truth, we expect the rest of the world to adjust to our way of communication and jump through our hoops. Moreover, we expect ministry leaders to be able to learn and to communicate in our analytical, abstract ways as well.”
“We can know the truth of God’s Word with precision and objectivity. Yet the Bible is not merely—or even primarily—a collection of objective propositions. It is a Grand Story—declaring who God is and what He has done as told through dozens of different authorial perspectives, diverse social settings, and stories. The message is multilayered, textured, and expansive. With intellectual precision we can examine the Word and fill our minds with the knowledge of the truth. And with passion in our hearts we can be filled with God-given emotion and desire. We need both eyes to see clearly.”
“While Hollywood is winning over the culture by telling better stories, Christian efforts to shape minds and hearts with reason and logic alone is akin to holding back the ocean’s tide with a plastic bucket and toy shovel. It is not enough that our reason and logic be correct and true. The succeeding generations need more than doctrine and abstract theology strung together with biblical proof texts to shape their beliefs and preserve the values we hold so dearly. Our children need to know how the biblical story relates to their own stories. They need to know the church’s 2,000-year-old story that dramatically affects their lives today. These images embedded by story form our deepest convictions, and more powerful images informed by alternate experiences touches people’s lives.”
“In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), philosopher David Hume concluded that desire rather than reason determines human behavior. He believed that it is vain to expect that any logic, divorced from the affections, will ever engage people to embrace sounder principles. Story is critical because moral decisions and behavior are not primarily a cerebral affair in which we dispassionately weigh arguments about rights and justice. Rather, most moral action resides in people’s intuitions and emotional processes.”
“Like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, much of what ministry leaders today believe and do in the realm of power and control has been borrowed, not from the Scriptures, but from surrounding secular institutions. Just as the teachers and Pharisees seated themselves in the chair of Moses (Matt 23: 1), we have confused positional power and spiritual leadership. By blending the two, we have made them appear as one and the same, only to produce a toxic concoction that has destroyed many. To save us from just such a scenario, Jesus demonstrated and advocated metaphors such as “servant,” “steward,” and “shepherd,” metaphors that formed alternative mental models for leadership as the early church was established.”
Unfortunately the book drags on and on into a bunch of leadership theory that doesn’t add much value. That said, even though it was way too long at 300 pages and included a ton of unnecessary fluff, the second half of the book did include some solid critiques of modern leadership styles and the ways the evangelical world wrongly seeks to emulate those styles.
The author’s main point speaks to how much of the world, even in the West but especially outside the West, are story-centric learners. Yet those within the Christian faith that seek to reach people, operate very heavily and at times exclusively within an analytical ‘prove my point by making sound arguments’ mindset. The author has undertaken the worthy and difficult task of trying to ensure that global Christian leaders, especially those from non-western places and cultures, are not automatically having to be trained using this more analytical mindset that often doesn’t make any sense within their own contexts and ends up stifling growth. Overall a lot of good stuff to chew on.
Quotes:
“While the vast majority of the world’s unreached people are storycentric, an estimated 90 percent of the world’s Christian workers present the truth using expositional, analytical, abstract, logical communication. With this bias toward the presentation of truth, we expect the rest of the world to adjust to our way of communication and jump through our hoops. Moreover, we expect ministry leaders to be able to learn and to communicate in our analytical, abstract ways as well.”
“We can know the truth of God’s Word with precision and objectivity. Yet the Bible is not merely—or even primarily—a collection of objective propositions. It is a Grand Story—declaring who God is and what He has done as told through dozens of different authorial perspectives, diverse social settings, and stories. The message is multilayered, textured, and expansive. With intellectual precision we can examine the Word and fill our minds with the knowledge of the truth. And with passion in our hearts we can be filled with God-given emotion and desire. We need both eyes to see clearly.”
“While Hollywood is winning over the culture by telling better stories, Christian efforts to shape minds and hearts with reason and logic alone is akin to holding back the ocean’s tide with a plastic bucket and toy shovel. It is not enough that our reason and logic be correct and true. The succeeding generations need more than doctrine and abstract theology strung together with biblical proof texts to shape their beliefs and preserve the values we hold so dearly. Our children need to know how the biblical story relates to their own stories. They need to know the church’s 2,000-year-old story that dramatically affects their lives today. These images embedded by story form our deepest convictions, and more powerful images informed by alternate experiences touches people’s lives.”
“In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), philosopher David Hume concluded that desire rather than reason determines human behavior. He believed that it is vain to expect that any logic, divorced from the affections, will ever engage people to embrace sounder principles. Story is critical because moral decisions and behavior are not primarily a cerebral affair in which we dispassionately weigh arguments about rights and justice. Rather, most moral action resides in people’s intuitions and emotional processes.”
“Like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, much of what ministry leaders today believe and do in the realm of power and control has been borrowed, not from the Scriptures, but from surrounding secular institutions. Just as the teachers and Pharisees seated themselves in the chair of Moses (Matt 23: 1), we have confused positional power and spiritual leadership. By blending the two, we have made them appear as one and the same, only to produce a toxic concoction that has destroyed many. To save us from just such a scenario, Jesus demonstrated and advocated metaphors such as “servant,” “steward,” and “shepherd,” metaphors that formed alternative mental models for leadership as the early church was established.”
October 14, 2017
Outstanding Leadership Development book
If you are looking for a leadership development book make sure you add this to your list, whether or not you are looking at it for Christian ministry or leadership in the marketplace. Whilst this book was written with storycentric leadership development in mind, the middle section on Leadership Development principles has captured a lot of theory incredibly well and I recommend it to every leader, emerging or mature. It will be fresh learning for some and a timely reminder for others. Adding this into the context on the discussion around literary societies and story centric communities adds a special depth that makes this book a special addition to the shelf of important leadership volumes every leader should have at their disposal.
If you are looking for a leadership development book make sure you add this to your list, whether or not you are looking at it for Christian ministry or leadership in the marketplace. Whilst this book was written with storycentric leadership development in mind, the middle section on Leadership Development principles has captured a lot of theory incredibly well and I recommend it to every leader, emerging or mature. It will be fresh learning for some and a timely reminder for others. Adding this into the context on the discussion around literary societies and story centric communities adds a special depth that makes this book a special addition to the shelf of important leadership volumes every leader should have at their disposal.
March 13, 2020
I was expecting a book with a focus on communication but felt it was two books - the first on the power of the narrative and the second on leadership. Both were helpful but the connection seemed to be a stretch.
September 18, 2017
I enjoyed this book. I like to tell stories and cast vision for people. This book shares ways to tell stories to draw people in. Uses stories to draw you in. That we are a story culture and the way we should talk about God is through stories. That use of facts and figures is cold and doesn’t connect with people as easily as a story.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews