I’d never heard of James Emery White before getting this book or the mega church he leads in America so when What they didn’t teach you in seminary: 25 Lessons for successful ministry in your church arrived in the post for review, I had no expectations one way or the other.

After having read it, I have a one big question: what do they teach prospective pastors in seminary in America? Really, if they missed out all this then there’s some room for improvement over there.

So some of the 25 topics that White covers include; emotional survival, raising money, sexual fences, family life, casting vision. And some other fairly basic leadership stuff like, you know don’t employ someone without references and burn out is bad for your soul, stuff like that.

There were also enough stories to make me scratch my head about American Christianity and the industry that we call the church. I know that the church can often have the meanest and stupidest people on earth in them but no one seems to do that better than America if the stories you read in leadership books are even half-true.

Each chapter is short and eminently readable and it really does contain some useful leadership lessons. It’s a book I’ll keep and pass along. Others have covered in greater detail some of the material so for example the chapter on the five C’s is straight out of Bill Hybel’s Courageous Leadership and the chapter on emotional resources received a book by Wayne Cordeiro and so on. It sounds like to me that White and his church would be pretty similar to say Willow Creek, that’s where I’d pitch it, if that helps at all. In fact it’s a lot like Hybels’ Axiom book.

The book is down to earth, conversational and generally straight talking about the realities of church leadership and most of the advice offered was good, sound and solid stuff. One of the little positive that stood out for me and enjoyed as I read the book were the last sentences of each chapter, each was pithy, witty and drove home the point of the chapter. I thought most of them were really good examples of punchy writing.

There were a few areas which made me pause, some of which are no doubt shaped by White’s context (American mega-church) and which don’t travel all that well.

White had an annoying habit of talking anonymously about all the well-known pastors he’d met with here or there. Now you can mention it once and it’s clear that you’re avoiding just naming names, do that five or six times and it sounds like you want people to know that really you could name names and that you’re in the know. It was name dropping without saying the name, so it just came across as a little boastful.

There were some more real areas of disagreement such as the value of excellence and the general assumption that big seeker sensitive church is the way to go, and possibly the only way to go that makes any sense. So there were some things there that I just couldn’t get excited about and there is very little teaching here. So it’s life lessons from an experienced pastor and not insights from the Bible into leadership.

So recommended and a book I may well pass on but it needs reading with some sense of context to filter out the stuff that just doesn’t work if you’re not in an American mega-church or even want to be in one!