The Context

Photo credit: Unsplash

As you are well aware, I have written a book entitled “The Leader You Want to Be: A Guide for Lay Leaders in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.” I do not expect people who are not Anglicans to purchase and read the book although there are important lessons that apply to leadership in other spheres of life. The reason I wrote this book for a niche market is a legacy thing. I have reared, developed, and nurtured as an Anglican with parents who were involved in the lay people business of the Anglican Church. My father was a Churchwarden and Parish Council member for most of his adult life. So, has been my mother. I have served with both of them in chapelry and parish councils of the then Sibasa Anglican Parish. What I came to be in my own right as a lay leader at St. Michael and All Angels, Sunnyside in Pretoria is the result of having understudied my parents as they played a significant role in the Anglican Church in Limpopo. It is for this reason that I state that the book in its current form, is about the legacy of my father and mother’s work in the Anglican Church. I am therefore grateful for what they taught me, directly and indirectly about leadership in the context of the church, but which also influenced how I have led at my professional work and in community organisations.

So, I would like to invite you to be part of my story and experience because leadership is leadership despite the context in which we practice it. In each space and opportunity we are able to exercise good leadership, the principles are the same. There will be a team of leadership working together towards a commonly defined goal. There will be a constitution, rules, regulations, policies and/or guidelines that define how the organisation is to be led, managed and administered in the service of the members. Just as the Anglican Church has the Constitution and Canons, Rules of a Diocese, the Bible and other resources as its guide, so do all other organisations that deliver products and services to the general public and their members.

In other words, what my book teaches about is transferable to other spheres of life for the reader. In its current form, the book is serving a specific purpose in the Anglican Church, and as I grow intellectually and otherwise, the book will be published in a more general form as a second or third edition.

I am extremely grateful to anyone who will pick up my book, and learn about good leadership from it. It is one of many leadership books in the world, and could just make a difference in someone’s life in its current form.

Thank you for joining me as I embark on this journey in which I will share my perspective on leadership in and outside the church.