Being Constrained Doesn’t Mean Having to be Stuck

My post on the Center for Healthy Churches website

One of the most significant “leadership” books I’ve read in the last couple of years is A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations into Advantages and Why It’s Everyone’s Business (Wiley, 2016).  Adam Morgan and Mark Braden have given us a gift: a beautifully-crafted book which is creative, wise, and practical.

Morgan and Braden claim that “we sit at a nexus between an abundance of possibilities on one hand, and the reality of scarcities on the other” (p. 4). Every church leader I know would say “Amen” to that statement.  Our restless and questing culture is open in surprising ways to the good news of God’s justice, peace, mercy, and love, especially when the people who give voice to that news embody it in the authentic practices of community life. At the same time, churches wrestle with perceived scarcity of human and financial resources, of creativity and innovation, and of willingness to take risks and venture change.  This scarcity is the source of constraints. . . .  (more)