Just a quick note: I'm very fond of this series, but this particular book needs a warning attached. There is, in the early chapters, a horrific scene involving rape. I can understand how it's used in the plot development, but I greatly regret that this scene is in this book.

I just skip those pages when I read this book, but even the vague memory of that scene gives me the willies. That is the reason for my 2 star rating, else it would be 4 star.

This book is dreadful. Although it has the occasional useful story, it is mostly filled with painfully trite comments and a dozens of off-colour jokes.

Many of those jokes I would be embarassed to tell friends, much less to tell a congregation from the pulpit!

And what do you do with nasty lines like "Never have anything 'your way'; have everything 'Yahweh'"? Sigh.

This book was really discouraging to us, and unnecessarily so. Not recommended.

Terrible theology from poor scriptural inference.

Terrible theology from weak scriptural inference.

My wife and I were fairly fond (if occasionally confused) by Mason's earlier book "The Mystery of Marriage."

However, this book is dreadful. And discarded.

My wife and I haven't finished this yet, but for the most part we've enjoyed the book. It's a bit light, but makes enough useful points to be worth reading.

Another book my wife and I found terrible. I'm afraid it's been a while, so I don't remember why we disliked it, but it's again one of the few books we discarded without finishing.

My wife and I really disliked this book. We found it grossly stereotyped, with such exaggerated caricatures of men and women (especially men) that it in fact excused outrageous behaviour in husbands because, grunt, grunt, we're men.

This is one of the few marriage books we ever abandoned and discarded without finishing.

Any book that quotes C. Peter Wagner is already on my poor side. However, this book has sufficient reasons to dislike it. He draws a few interesting points, which are basically buried in a ridiculous number of self-defined terms and grossly over-structured descriptions of how all leaders develop.

Besides, he likes Peter Wagner. :-)

My favourite Nouwen book (which isn't saying very much, I'm afraid). It's a sweet, humble meditation on Christian leadership. His Scriptural support is not strong, but the basic direction of the book is biblical.

As one seminary prof used to say, "Good sermon, poor text."

I didn't like this book. I found it worldly, man-centered and almost utterly devoid of biblical foundation. Hybels draws more leadership inspiration from Jack Welch (CEO of GE) then from Jesus Christ (Chief Shepherd and Lord of lords).

This vague book draws much on the experiences and teaching of, amongst others, Agnus Sanford. If you've ever read her book "The Healing Light", you'll know that this warm, caring woman was grossly pagan and heretical in her sorcerous teaching.

Highly recommend staying away from this book.