Posts Tagged "Larry Shallenberger"
LEAD THE WAY GOD MADE YOU by LARRY SHALLENBERGER (a Dad in the Middle Review)
When Larry Shallenberger announced several months ago that he was planning on doing a book blog tour to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his book, I eagerly signed up. I don’t know Larry personally, but I do follow his comments on Twitter and read his blog, so I kind of feel like I know him even if he doesn’t follow me on Twitter. 🙂 Based on that presumption of relationship, and the generally laid back nature of people in children’s ministry, I will refer to him as Larry throughout this review.
Anyhow, I knew that regardless of what the book was about, Larry’ has a great sense of humor and an easy to read writing style, so I knew reading his book wouldn’t be a complete waste of time. That said, when I found out the topic of the book was leadership, I got just a little bit leery. It’s not that I don’t like reading about leadership or being a leader. I actually do, but the world has plenty of books on leadership, and I have read a bunch of them. It seems the everybody who has ever been a boss or started a ministry or had people report to them has taken it upon themselves to write a book on leadership. After a while, they all just seem to say the same thing – do it my way and you’ll be OK, and it ultimately all runs together into a fuzzy blurry haze in my head. Besides that, I already have a group of people whose writings, podcasts, etc. on topic of leadership I devour. They include people like Andy Stanley, Jim Wideman, and others who I have grown to trust in this area and have learned a lot from. With all due respect to Larry, I wasn’t sure what he could offer that hadn’t either already heard or wasn’t getting from some of the other resources I was reviewing.
There’s an old, slightly cliché, saying that “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” I agree in principal, and Larry’s book turned out to be a prime example of this for me and another reason I try not to let pre-conceived notions totally guide what I choose to read. Now, I’ve never recommended that someone not read this book, but if it hadn’t been for this blog tour, I’m not sure I ever would have read it either. Had that happened, I would have missed out.
Read More