There is so much more to say about leadership. I feel like if the leader can begin to just embrace those five things — set those up as mile markers and boundaries in their leadership — they're just going to further faster.

Preaching: One of the topics I particularly appreciated was the discussion of finding your core competencies and focusing there. Lots of us think we have to have our finger in everything. It's a good reminder to me to work at finding your groove. How did that take place in your ministry and how has it influenced your leadership?

Stanley: I learned all of this the hard way, even though I look back and wonder what took me so long. I am only good at a couple things in terms of skill set. I'm a good public speaker and I'm good in a meeting where everybody's in the process of trying to get all the information on the table — I'm good at looking at all the information and moving us in a direction. I don't always make the right decisions. But I've learned I'm good at recognizing a bad decision quick. It frustrates my staff but we've all agreed this is how I am. My temptation is to run down a road and about the time everybody figures out where I'm going I'm coming back saying: that is not where we're going. And they just laugh and they know that's how I make decisions. That's how I make them personally. That's how we make them corporally sometimes. Once I figured that out I realized the arenas where I need to focus are public communication, vision casting, and decision making at the highest level in the organization.

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I'm not a good event planner. I'm not a good organizer. I'm not a good team builder as far as going out and putting together a team. I'm not an extrovert — I don't even like extroverts a lot of times! I finally figured out there are certain people I don't click with and that's who it is. Part of this is a maturing thing, but looking at all of it through the grid of, "God, what have you designed me to do?"

I think where it's impacted us in ministry is very early on I just stuck with the few things that I did well. As I say in the book, when you do less you accomplish more and when you do less you allow other people to accomplish more. I think that if you talk to our leadership team — there are seven of us that are sort of the 'they' of North Pointe staff — they would tell you, "Andy lets us do what he's hired us to do." I just trust them and I know that I'm not as good as them.

I tell our staff all the time I'm not the best leader. The reason I get to lead is because I'm the best speaker, and in the church world if you're the best speaker they let you lead whether you're any good or not. I don't claim to be the best leader but I've created the space for the good leaders around me to lead. I see that with my dad. That's how my dad has always led. And I should have learned this earlier because he modeled it. He's the guy who just stays in his groove and enabled other people to fill up the vacuums.