Mistakes Leaders Make by Dave Kraft

Dave Kraft is a long-time Navigators leader. He writes about the fictional Christ Community Church and uses a series of stories about the pastors and lay leaders of the church to illustrate several important mistakes leaders of churches might make. Though the people are fictionalized, they are based on actual people that Kraft has experience with, and I suspect a number of people he knows might look at the stories and say "He's taking about me!" In other words, they seem to be composites, but the problems they have are all too real.

Lots of minor mistakes happen all the time and gross sin would be an easy target, but Kraft focuses on those mistakes that (1) cause effectiveness in ministry to be seriously diminished and (2) may not all be looked on as mistakes by the mistake-maker or even the onlooker. For example, what looks like peacekeeping can actually be failure to confront people or to provide appropriate direction and stick to it. What looks to one like a drive to complete the task of ministry and grow the church can actually be prideful indulgence in overwork, lack of delegation and people development, and desire to please man rather than God. His first mistake--wait, that sounds wrong. The first mistake he expounds is putting ministry before the love of Jesus. These are the kinds of "respectable" mistakes (to borrow Jerry Bridges term) that people may laud rather than condemn.

Kraft provides 10 common mistakes with examples and resolutions (sometimes too simple! One hard-to-confront person moves away and saves the other leaders from dealing with him!)

The book is geared toward pastors. I found it useful as an elder, and would recommend it for Sessions to read together. It's brief  (about 100 pages) and broad enough that most churches probably deal with one or more of the mistakes he enumerates. He also gives a list of other mistakes that he wants to write about further, just in case he never gets to complete that book.

This the the second book I've read this year from the RE:LIT series (the first was Gospel-Centered Discipleship). I bought this from a Crossway promotion and will definitely hang onto it. Though some of the specifics will change, the mistakes are timeless.