A thought leader who I really respect, Mark Riddle, just wrote an ebook a few weeks ago titled, “Redeeming Leadership: Shoulder Pads.” If you’ve ever sat in one of Mark’s seminars at a youth ministry conference and vibed with what he taught, then you’ll really appreciate this ebook. In fact, I heard Mark’s voice in my head the whole time while reading it. (Yeah, kinda freaky, but also kinda cool.)

What’s the book about? Here’s the Amazon review I wrote back in March:

Most church leaders deal with the issue of congregation members who expect the paid staff to serve them, provide services, and direct programs. For the most part, the congregation members are involved, but they’re serving the youth pastor in his ministry or the children’s director in her ministry rather than taking responsibility for THEIR ministry. Things like this happen because somewhere along the line the team player removed his or her shoulder pads and placed them on the paid staff member. Unfortunately, the staff member accepts them because “this is what I get paid to do” and before long, it’s a church of people with unrealistic expectations who also share no ownership in the outcomes.

Mark’s little book addresses issues like this and more as he talks about how we can discover our role in misplacing responsibility because church staff members do it, too. He also addresses how we can begin to give back misplaced responsibility that’s been delegated to us.

Mark also provides discussion questions, both for each of us personally to wrestle through and for us a church staff to discuss together as a group. The questions are great for helping us contextualize Mark’s concepts and principles, but I’m hoping for a part 2 of this book where some of these principles are expounded on in more detail, especially as it relates to helping our churches make the shift from consumerism and entitlement to ownership and empowerment.

Definitely worth reading!

For today only, you can download Mark’s ebook on Amazon totally FREE! Hopefully you read this in time to snag it! It’s a quick, short little ebook that will only take you an hour or two to read, but it packs a lot of punch.

If you’re like me and don’t have a Kindle, you can do what I did and download the Kindle app for your phone or computer and read it there.

Read it, then comment below and let me know what you think. A lot of what Mark shares really resonates with me and I’m sure it will with you, too.

Posted on May 3, 2012