How to Be Present in an Absent World: A Leader's Guide to Showing Up, Paying Attention, and Becoming Fully Human

by Daniel Montgomery, Eboni Webb (With), Kenny Silva (With)

Take Ownership of Your Life in Every Area of Influence

 

Many people today feel overworked, overbooked, and burned out. They long for purposeful and meaningful lives. We're plugged into every social network we can find, yet we feel more disconnected than ever. And in our most honest moments, we can't help but look in the mirror and ask: How long can I keep this up? Montgomery, Webb, and Silva believe the pain we experience as leaders is a function of absence--living disconnected from our true selves and lacking deep, meaningful relationships with others. The remedy lies in rediscovering what it means to be truly present as a leader by embracing our humanity and extending it to those we lead.

 

How to Be Present in an Absent World is a guide for cultivating a self-awareness that empowers you to take ownership of your life in every area of influence. It provides a biblical way to handle the daily pressures of life without denying, escaping, or outrunning the present, past, or future. Montgomery and his coauthors, Webb and Silva, equip you with the kind of self-understanding that allows you to overcome obstacles--whether in your church, in your job, or in your family--that were previously discouraging and seemingly insurmountable.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2020

About the author

Daniel Montgomery is founding pastor of Sojourn Community Church, a multi-site congregation with three campuses in Louisville, Kentucky and one in New Albany, Indiana. Sojourn began in 2000 with about sixty people and has grown into a community of nearly four thousand. Daniel now serves Sojourn as pastor of teaching, leadership, and church planting. He has served on a leadership task force for the Southern Baptist Convention and on the board of directors for the Acts 29 church planting network. In 2011, Daniel cofounded the Sojourn Network to multiply churches in North America and beyond. He is the coauthor of Faith-Mapping (Crossway, 2013).

Reviews

[Mark Youngkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another Christian "leadership" book that is only incidentally about leadership. It's of a piece with Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, by Pete Scazzero, only not as incisive as Scazzero. Daniel Montgomery writes well enough, and there are good insights here. It's worth your time unless you are a leader looking for a book that will develop your leadership skills. In that case, keep looking.

[Wendy C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pithy and geared towards leaders. I have found other books that seemed to bring out the state of being present better but given the audience and context, I can see the need to introduce presence from an angle for it to be heard