Organizing Life
Leadership and Human Flourishing
- Church Leadership & Ministry
- Publisher: Fortress Press (Augsburg Fortress)
- Published: 2025
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Publisher's Description
The subject of "leadership" has been exploding in literature--both academic and popular--for decades. This is in part because leadership (both good and poor) has a significant impact on people's lives. The explosion of literature on leadership is also because effective leadership is a complex and difficult task that requires understanding the organization one is seeking to lead, understanding its people, understanding its mission and goals, understanding one's self and others, and understanding the dynamic relationships among all of these as they change over time. Being an effective leader is not easy, and it is easier to fail at it than it is to succeed. No wonder there is such a long list of books designed to help leaders succeed; it makes sense that the challenge to be effective in a role with such significant and important implications for all of us--whether we have a formal leadership position or not--would garner as much attention and sell as many pages as it does. However, though leadership gets a lot of attention, organizations--including religious organizations--continue to fail. A radical shift in how leadership is understood, including its purpose, its contexts, and its practices, is needed.
Endorsements (5)
“Praise for Organizing Life McClure crafts a pastoral vision for religious leadership that is desperately needed in our time. Those who seek to center the flourishing of individuals, organizations, and our world—and that should include all of us who are leaders—would do well to heed the practical wisdom that McClure so generously offers.”
“change based on the deepest values inherent in our faith traditions is an important text for scholars and practitioners alike.”
“McClure’s Organizing Life arrives at a critical moment when both religious institutions and higher education desperately need a leadership paradigm centered on human flourishing. As someone who straddles both worlds—training future Islamic chaplains at Hartford International University while serving in campus engagement leadership at Williams College—I find this work uniquely valuable. McClure transcends the typical leadership manual by offering a deeply theological, yet practical, framework that speaks directly to the complex challenges my chaplaincy students will face in their life and service in diverse settings. At the same time, this book provides invaluable insights for navigating institutional institutional structures in higher-education student experience. Her nuanced exploration of organizational thriving, contextual constraints, and self-leadership offers a paradoxical approach to both roles. This book belongs on the essential reading list for every chaplaincy program and in the hands of every campus leader committed to creating communities where all can genuinely flourish.”
“for success, defined not by the marketplace but by resurrection.”
“Grounded in the convictions that we are bound up in our interconnectedness and that the Divine desires all creation to flourish, McClure summons members of faith communities to engage in truly transformational leadership that has at its core the care and well-being of humanity. She challenges us to resist the destructive goals of rapacious power and wealth, and to cultivate spaces where justice and hope are foundational, because it is only in recognizing the dignity and the image of God in each other that we can survive and thrive.”
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