Customer Reviews

Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos (mersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

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It's been a long time since I read a book that I couldn't put down... And the book was most likely a work of fiction. But this one is most certainly real stuff, as non-fiction as you can get. And even though I'm not a church leader, per se, something about Intuitive Leadership - Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor & Chaos, the latest literary endeavor by Jacob's Well Church pastor and Emergent Village co-founder, Tim Keel drew me in, bound my imagination, and wouldn't let me go until I turned the last page. Keel's experience, not only as a pastor and teacher, but as an artist, allowed him to effortlessly create a dialog that is as flowing and natural as it is compelling. This is a narrative that was forged as much by limber fingers dancing lightly (and sometimes very heavily) on the keyboard of a laptop computer as it was by dipping brush after brush into a multitude of jars of pigment. Keel's words leapt off of each page as if he were sitting right in front of me, narrating the very text that I was reading.

Read the entire review here:

http://sense-datum.org/tim/archive/2007/11/28/book_review_intuitive_leadersh/tim_samoff__weblog

How do we serve each other in such a broken world?
How do we "live Jesus" in the midst of so much suffering, uncertainty, and confusion?

Like a good friend who's spent some time further up the trail, Tim Keel shows us what intuitive leadership looks like, helping pastors and other leaders (and the rest of us) understand how to grow communities of faith.

There's a lot of insight here about our own heritage and how it sometimes prevents the very ministry we're trying to achieve. Well worth reading!

Meanwhile, in a world increasingly shaped by story-telling and metaphor, Keel shows us how to embrace meaning, deploy justice, and live faith.

Dr. David Frisbie
The Center for Marriage & Family Studies
Author of Raising Great Kids on Your Own: A Guide and Companion for Every Single Parent

Tim delivers a clear, well-researched, crisply written articulation of the changing landscape our environment and how it relates to engaging with God in our time. It is a very personal story which provides great insight to his church, Jacob's Well. This is a great read for anyone interested in learning more about how modern Church history has shaped a lot of our understanding of the gospel.

wow. tim keel has written a leadership book that, well, isn't like others. i suppose i could put it in the same kind of category -- roughly -- as max depree's books (leadership jazz, and leadership is an art), in that tim doesn't prescribe a method, or give 5 or 10 or 21 irrefutable laws. instead, he brings his artist's perspective to the role of the leader, spending the biggest portion of his page real estate talking about cultural discernment.

killer stuff, really. when tim suggests, in the subtitle, that the kind of leadership we should embrace is one of narrative, metaphor and chaos... well, let's just say he clearly lives these three words out on the pages of this exceptional book.

This was much more than just a book about leadership. It was a book about the postmodern approach as well as an encouragement that faith does not and should not just be of the mind but also of the heart.

This book is a must read, and a must own! I am NOT an emergent village participant, and have NO plans on being one. I am a church planter, however, and this book has it! It is amazing, even if you are not an emergent follower, EVERY pastor should have this book of leadership in their library, and they should reference it often!

AUTHOR: "I am a full-on mutt" writes Keel of himself. The product of mixed spiritual heritage (Methodist, Baptist, Evangelical Presbyterian, Benedictines), Keel recognizes the deep influences these (and other) "deeply and widely different streams of the Christian tradition" have had on his spiritual formation. Keel serves as the founding pastor of Jacob's Well, and serves on the Board of Emergent Village. Keel's writings resonate with a Hauerwasian flavor, reflecting his early fascination with narratives of all kinds. He seeks to illustrate rather than explicate, and seems at ease with the chaotic currents of post-modernity.

THESIS OF THE BOOK: There are no leadership silver bullets. Today's effective leader will influence followers in the context of narratives (biblical, national, ethnic, familial, individual, etc.), embracing the tensions of intuition, creativity, and chaos to follow the Holy Spirit wherever He leads.

PART 1 ("Entering Story") uses stories to demonstrate the validity and need for a narrative paradigm. Keel paints a succinct history of the enlightenment, modernity and post-modernity, asserting that even the assertion that we have no story is really a story. Narrating his story and that of Jacob's Well, Keel asserts that we have "failed to engage God, ourselves, and our world faithfully for the sake of the gospel" by failing to live a truthful narrative.

PART 2 ("Engaging Context") explores the radical engagements of faithful, communal discipleship: the contextual, theological and structural aspects of using intuition, creativity and chaos. Using another's approach can leech God from ministry. Instead we must follow God's lead.

PART 3 ("Embracing Possibility") encourages us to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit by allowing "life to grow naturally out of the environment in which it exists" rather than by imitating the latest fad or best practices from a mega church. This goal can best be achieved from a posture of learning, joy, vulnerability, availability and surrender while listening to God.

Keel reflects my dissatisfaction with the "Acts 2 church," as if such a church were possible today simply by reinstituting the forms and rules of the First Century AD. He notes that the church in that form did not last, being replaced by new, vibrant and different forms of church, all of them authentic. "[We] observe barely contained chaos as churches faithfully seek to keep pace with the life exploding under and around them." Keel also brings systems thinking into the mix, noting that easy fixes just do not work. We need to apply what seem like chaotic solutions that "pull us (me) out of our (my) comfort zones and into the world around us (me) in a radically engaged way."

Keel explores his experience with ministry and pastoring a church. He shares his journey of working in various church and parachurch arenas and how he came to lead a church called Jacob's Well, a church in the "emerging" category. Keel touches on about all of the themes often highlighted in the emerging church writing market. He writes about our stories and God's story and discovering how God wants to lead us into ministry and community with one another.

Keel provides an overview of the changes in recent church history and the need for churches to transition from modern to postmodern. This is where "intuitive leadership" comes in. Keel encourages readers to give up trying to find the right model of church or best success story to adopt or imitate and to follow the Spirit into doing what God is calling one to do.

Keel really doesn't define intuitive leadership until the final chapter when he references Gaven de Becker's book "The Gift of Fear," one of the best books I've read, and Malcom Gladwell's "Blink." I would recommend reading the final chapter first. I'm not sure why Keel didn't start with this chapter. Although, the book is mostly his story of trying to be led by the Spirit, which is I think what he means by intuitive leadership to some extent.

This quote from the book sums up its message:

"God is alive and at work in you, your community, and your context. Our world is filled with possibility because of who God is and what he is doing in creation. God longs for our participation with him, and at the same time God is on the move. Jesus said, "Folow me" and he meant it. He is going somewhere, and if we are to keep pace, we must follow. That means we must move. I can't give you any answers. All I can do is propse some postures--ways of positioning ourselves that allow us a greater chance of catching God at work among us."

The rest of the book is an elaboration on that philosophy, which I totally agree with.

I was confused by one text in which Keel writes that we need to "intuit what is going on and learn to respond in ways that have integrity," and then a few lines later he writes that "the ways we will need to respond will be counterintuitive" So is it intuitive leadership or counterintuitive leadership?

Keel draws on many of the main sources for the emerging church writers, Grenz, Brueggeman, Merton, Willimon, Haurwas, etc. So this book is a good introduction ot emerging church for those unfamiliar. I think it is a good book for people on the verge of leading ministry or wondering what's happening with churches.