Leadership Re: Vision
Jim Seybert
Tyndale House Publishers
softcover, 208 pages, $13.99
978-1-414-32225-4

Consultant Seybert offers biblically based business principles in Leadership Re: Vision. Intended for believing supervisors and business owners, the book begins with a careful distinction between leadership and management: the former an adherence to existing rules, while the latter involves knowing when the organization needs to revise.

Each chapter opens with a Scripture passage that demonstrates some counterintuitive business advice—avoid goal-setting, share meals with employees and encourage tinkering with successful practices, to name a few. Seybert then demonstrates how each axiom was true in biblical times and remains true today.

Seybert concludes by positing that God is the ultimate rule-breaker, entering the world through the womb of a virgin to redefine His own laws. For Christian professionals, Leadership Re:Vision offers an insightful viewpoint on what it means to lead.

Revisiting the concept of the Sabbath is the central focus of the newest release in the “The Ancient Practices Series,” Sabbath, by Dan Allender (978-0-849-90107-2, Thomas Nelson). The author, president of Seattle’s Mars Hill Graduate School, contends that many modern Christians have misconceptions about what he says should be a “day of delight.”

“There is a notion that the Sabbath is no longer part of our spiritual practices because we have the Lord’s Day,” he told Christian Retailing.
“I ask people, ‘How many commandments can you think of’? (If you pass over the Sabbath), well, then, you’re saying there are now only nine.”

Allender believes the Sabbath commandment is the “swing hinge” commandment between our focus on God and our focus on others: “Without it, there’s not a focus between allowing God to be God and our relationships with others.”

Former San Quentin inmate shares tools discovered during hard time

Bill Dallas, a former real estate developer, documents his five-year sentence at one of the country’s most notorious maximum security prisons in Lessons From San Quentin: Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned in Prison.

Although the book, co-written with George Barna, recounts Dallas’ own story of landing in prison after being charged with grand theft embezzlement, it is just as much about the Christians he encountered behind bars, men who have faced their worst struggles and lived to tell about it.

“What intrigued me (about writing this book) was not to do so much on the Bill Dallas story, but to focus on these men of faith in prison and the lessons I learned, so that’s what got me excited about doing it,” he said. “I don’t want to say it’s a tribute to them, but the faith they live is amazing.”

Patrick Morley, author of the best-seller The Man in the Mirror (Zondervan), targets pastors dealing with men’s ministry challenges and opportunities in Pastoring Men: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why It Matters Now More Than Ever (978-0-802-47553-4, $19.99, Moody Publishers), releasing this month.

The book includes personal stories, point-by-point plans for implementation and statistics to drive home the need for focused men’s ministry in the local church.

Author charges ‘slander’ as researchers misidentify nominal Christians

Reformed theologian and author John Piper defends biblical salvation from modern interpretations and affirms the sacredness of the term “born again” in Finally Alive.

Piper told Christian Retailing that, although there wasn’t a precise moment of inspiration, he felt “a prompting” as he preached through the book of Romans in his church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis.