Building Resilient Leaders: Manna U Faculty Member Publishes New Book on Leadership
By Frank Brazell
As a teenager Carlo Serrano sensed a call from God into ministry to study the Bible and teach people about Jesus. His practical plan was to go to a Bible College and study pastoral ministry and theology: “There’s a deep connection between higher learning and doing ministry.” After serving in the U. S. Army, he started in his first position at a local church and felt completely alone.
From this experience, a passion for developing leaders was born. He didn’t want any other church leader to go through the process of growth and training alone, and just as importantly, to recognize the need for a safe space for leaders to growth through tribulations.
“The reason we see leaders flaming-out so much is because leadership is hard and traumatic, and too often we react to a leadership failure rather than being proactive to make sure leaders are healthy, trained, equipped, and have a safe space to not be perfect.”
Dr. Serrano’s first book, Leadership Fatigue, was about this struggle through the lens of King David. A misunderstanding of leaders is that they don’t think they can fail, and so they crack under pressure. Those in church leadership can be afraid of accountability as a result of this fear, so they hide small shortcomings which can spiral into ministry-ending failures. Dr. Serrano argues that if church leaders build their resiliency, they can maintain their Kingdom effectiveness.
His recent book, Biblical Principles for Resilience in Leadership: Theory and Cases, continues to answer the rigidity in some church structures that cannot hold up under uncertain conditions. Since organizations are made up of both systems and people, it is important for individuals within an organization to grow in resiliency.
“If fifty individuals are able to stand up and to bounce back, the organization will be able to do the same.”
This new book isn’t just for churches, however. It is by design pointing organizations that are not ministry-focused or explicitly Christian organizations towards integrity and strength. This book examines a variety of leaders from different contexts and shows us that “… our heroes had our same struggles.”
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