Leading with a Limp

I have been reading Leading with a Limp by Dan Allender of late. Embarrassingly, I received it as a gift - like everyone on my team - from my director back in February. I still haven't finished it.

I could say it got neglected as our family came back from that time and suddenly we were into two months of packing, cleaning, selling, buying, closing, moving out, living in friends' basements and cabins, closing again, moving in, fixing problems, going to Korea ....

Hey maybe I do have an excuse for not reading this... though I know I read other books in the Spring and Summer. Maybe it was the color of the cover.

But then I heard Dan Allender this summer and bought and read another of his books and so I picked back up this gift last month that had been gathering dust on the shelve. Even now as I read it I find myself needing more time to mull things over and I have started and finished several other books in between starting Leading with a Limp.

This morning on the bus to work, I started reading chapter 9, "Worn to the Nub: the Exhaustion and Disillusionment that introduce True Hope". I think I still in the exhaustion and disillusionment part of the chapter but I read a quote that really hit home to me...

"The leader who doesn't feel pressed to the wall often is not involved in a work that is advancing sufficiently against the forces of darkness. But the burned-out leader has allowed the intensity and exhaustion of his calling to take away the pleasure of hope. Every leader is desperately in need of hope, but two factors entangle us: unlimited need and expanding opportunity. And those factors do their best to extinguish hope."

Maybe this would be some good stuff to share with STINT Leaders (of course focusing on the hope.) It's Wednesday and I need to do my weekly post over there.