Bill Hybels’ latest book is a compilation of short axioms on leadership. The book contains 76 proverbial sayings punctuated by personal stories and examples from Willow Creek Community Church. The proverbs cover vision and strategy, teamwork and communication, activity and assessment, and personal integrity.

Bill Hybels’ latest book is a compilation of short axioms on leadership. The book contains 76 proverbial sayings punctuated by personal stories and examples from Willow Creek Community Church. The proverbs cover vision and strategy, teamwork and communication, activity and assessment, and personal integrity.

Hybels writing style is direct and punchy. He regularly calls his readers to change and just as often highlights areas where he has changed over the years. He gives a full view of his ministry and his growth as a leader. He describes experiences from his job as a youth pastor over 30 years ago to those from the most recent Willow Creek Association Leadership Summit. While he admits that he has made mistakes along the way, he’s still excited to see what great things God has done and will do through him.

Hybels’ advice is very broad in nature. Practical and simple tips, like “arrive early or not at all,” stand alone. Others, like “The Dangers of Incrementalism” and “You’re Always in a Season,” are more subtle and highlight his experience in running a church. A few axioms may be more overtly pragmatic than some pastors will be comfortable with, such as “Hire Tens” and “Give Me an A, B, or C.”

The book’s greatest asset and greatest weakness are one and the same: the strength of Bill Hybels’ beliefs and personality. Hybels is committed to getting things done for God’s kingdom and passionate about effective leadership. He believes in continuous improvement so that God’s kingdom is advanced. His passion and clarity bring the book to life and will inspire the reader. However, his personality is sometimes hard to swallow. The book’s message of effective leadership is so forcefully and repeatedly stated that other God-honoring leadership skills are lost beneath its shadow. The paramount nature of Hybels’ effectiveness message is demonstrated in his relationship to the staff members at Willow Creek. He refers to staff members as “direct reports,” holds discussions about their “win rates,” threatens that “bad stuff will definitely go down” if directives are ignored, and advises using a “mole system” to check the stories of ministry leaders.

Lastly, Hybels is harsh on ideas that don’t mesh with his leadership style. In his most biblically questionable chapter, “The Bias Toward Action,” he admonishes that we all should be people of action and surround ourselves with “activist types.” He presents Jesus as “the epitome of action-orientation” and says that Christ took Peter into his ministry because Peter had passed “the bias toward action test” at their first meeting. After hammering in the message that “Jesus was looking for an action oriented guy,” Hybels uses a straw man for comparison: “And of this I am certain: what we are trying to build—the local church, the hope of the world—will not get built by hammock-swinging, pipe-smoking, video-watching, sleepy types.”

Christ did call his followers to action. His last words contain commands to go, make, baptize, and teach. But there’s potential danger in this over-emphasis on action. Remember it was Mary, not Martha, who was praised—for sitting at Jesus’ feet instead of taking action in the kitchen.