So for the next few days, I want to do a kind of book review/summary of Andy Crouch’s great new book “Strong and Weak.”
If you’re not familiar with Crouch, he’s the Executive editor of Christianity Today, and the author of a couple of other great books “Playing God” and “Culture Making.” And if that doesn’t impress you, than maybe the fact that Lacrae wrote about him in a song lyric will.
He’s one of my favorite authors and thinkers out there right now, and I highly recommend his new book. It’s a short read, and it’s packed with great insight for what it means to be in a leadership role as a Christian.
Now I know some of you might be thinking. “Great another book on leadership. Just what the world needs.”
I get it. I’m not a huge fan of leadership books either, but I loved this one, and I think if you’ve been called into any kind of leadership role in your life, this is a terrific resource for you.
Crouch’s basic premise is that leadership is a paradox that requires both power and vulnerability. And that the default temptation of humanity is to emphasize one and neglect the other. It can be that we pursue power without vulnerability and become a tyrant, or we can (in the name of humility) emphasize vulnerability and neglect the God-given power that we’ve been given to help others around us flourish.
Here’s how Crouch puts it:
I used to think that what we feared was vulnerability—the “weak” part of the paradox. But in the course of writing this book and talking with many others about the paradox of flourishing, I’ve realized that we fear authority too. The truth is that we are afraid of both sides of the paradox of flourishing—and we especially fear to combine them in the only way that really leads to real life, for ourselves and others.