Tuesday, July 2, 2013

NIV Leadership Bible: Leading by The Book - By Zondervan



A leader faces decisions and consequences (good or bad) almost on a minute-to-minute basis, in fact we all do no matter what status we have and the NIV Leadership Bible attempts to guide the reader into making Godly and wise decisions. The bible it self is well made and beautifully organized. Beautiful cover, great sized print, but unfortunately the publishers chose to leave out red lettering for Jesus, something I value.

The “leadership” part of the bible is organized into 52 weeks, with each week being structured around a particular skill (week 1: Long-range planning; week 2: Structure/ Organization; etc.). Each week is further divided into a 5-day outline always introducing the skill, e.g. long-range planning, and who God is, who I am, how it works, and what I do. Essentially this is a daily devotional (for 5 days of the week), which talks about the skill and perhaps a character that portrayed that specific character or a story in which it is seen.

The readings/devotionals are really a quick read, some a minute or 2, others a tad bit longer, but in my opinion do not have to much depth or anything profound to say. Sure there are some days which contain more substance then others but in general I did not walk away having learnt anything new. The real substance of the daily devotionals, for me anyway, was not reading what the authors had to say any particular day but sitting meditating and trying to apply what I just read for myself in my daily life – but to be perfectly honest though this bible makes it easier to do this because it lists the skills for you, it is in no way necessary and if one sits and mediates and tries to apply scriptures to their daily life anyway then they probably wont come up with anything new reading the daily devotionals in this bible.

There are other aspects of the bible which are nice such as character profiles, which relate to leadership in some way, introductions to each book in the bible, which are also more about the leadership skills that are found in the book then a thorough introduction of the books. As well as “insights” boxes all throughout the bible which are small blurbs here and there discussing a skill or personal development issue relating to a verse or passage in scripture, something I found of zero value to me personally.

Again though these features are nice, they are put there to show leadership skills and qualities, not for a thorough and in depth look at character profiles and introductions to each book – there are study bibles meant for that. So for the purpose that this bible is a leadership bible I say it attempts to do the job well, it brings in as much opportunities as possible to talk about leadership skills and qualities, I just feel a lot of it lacks substance. These are my personal opinions and statements, I given this bible for my honest review of it.

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