Coming on the heels of his excellent book 360-Degree Preaching, Michael Quicke has extended his thoughts to deal with the issue of leadership, which he sees as closely related to preaching in pastoral life. In 360-Degree Leadership (Baker), Quicke encourages pastors to “rediscover leadership through preaching.”

Quicke believes that preaching and leadership are closely related in the life of the pastor. Preachers are inevitably placed in roles of leadership because of the nature of their calling. He argues that “Christian leadership belongs to preaching and preaching belongs to leadership because God’s preachers are inevitably also his leaders.”

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He says preachers lead because, “By Holy Spirit power, their preaching of God’s Word should exercise leadership by envisioning, confronting, encouraging, stretching, releasing, and uniting the people of God to live out his will.”

Yet in the face of increasing demands for congregations for dynamic leadership, “vision casting” and such, Quicke believes that many seasoned pastors are bewildered by new expectations. He quotes one veteran pastor who lamented, “Several of my lay leaders expect me to be more like their Christian heroes they see on TV, or whose books they read. To be strong and visionary. But I honestly do not know how. I thought God was calling me to preach and pastor. But it doesn’t seem to be enough.” To such pastors, Quicke offers the assurance that “it is enough when such pastors rediscover how preaching leads.”

In the early portion of the book, Quicke details the lack of connection between preaching and leadership in most of the books on effective church leadership, even at a time when such materials are flooding into the marketplace. He notes that much of the literature seems to prefer the term “teaching” to “preaching.”

Using the term “thin-blooded preaching” to describe proclamation that is short on vision – that “tells out good news of salvation but neglects the richness of God’s vision for saved people – Quicke offers ten characteristics of such preaching:

• Individualistic
• Aimed at head or heart but rarely both together
• Spineless theology (“Often Unitarian in practice, it acts as though there is no living Christ interceding and empowering, and no Holy Spirit bringing hearing and conviction.”)
• Generic application
• Avoids conflict
• Low compliance
• Absence of process issues (“Pallid preaching leaves visions and strategic changes for others to talk about.”
• Solo role
• Cowardice (“Thin-blooded preaching plays safe, maintaining rather than initiating, concentrating on personal issues of faith rather than on organizational outcomes of faith.”)
• Missionally defective

In contrast to this “thin-blooded variety,” Quicke then proceeds to call for “full-blooded preaching that is corporate, holistic, Trinitarian, specific in application, realistic about conflict, urges commitment, does justice to process issues, collaborates, is courageous, and is missionally effective.”