Book Review: Lead Your Family Like Jesus by Blanchard, Hodges and Goyer

About the Book: Does your family need a five-star general at the helm? A psychologist? A referee? Ken Blanchard, best-selling co-author of The One Minute Manager and Lead Like Jesus, points to a better role model: the Son of God. Joined by veteran parents and authors Phil Hodges and Tricia Goyer, renowned business mentor Blanchard shows how every family member benefits when parents take the reins as servant-leaders. Moms and dads will see themselves in a whole new light-as life-changers who get their example, strength, and joy from following Jesus at home. This user-friendly book's practical principles and personal stories mark the path to a truly Christ-centered family, where integrity, love, grace, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness make all the difference.

My Thoughts:  I am thoroughly enjoying reading this book.  I have to admit I'm actually not quite finished reading it yet, because it's definitely not a book you can just read straight through.  Well, you could, you just wouldn't gain as much from it!  This book is filled with thought provoking questions and requires a lot of self-reflection.

This book is not so much about individual behavioural issues or specific parenting advice.  Rather it focuses on the bigger picture - what your vision for your family is and what steps you need to take to make that vision a reality.  It encourages the parents, as the family unit leaders, to first set personal goals for themselves, and then to determine a mission statement and vision for the entire family.  It also focuses on reaching our children's hearts and character, instead of just their behaviour.  It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day mundane tasks of child rearing that it's easy to miss the forest for the trees when it comes to parenting.

The book is written by three authors, and while this is something that I normally don't like as I find it usually interferes with the consistency and flow of the book - in this book, it actually worked really well.  I enjoyed Tricia's chapters the best - but that's likely because she was the only mom writing, and was simply more relatable to me.

Thank you to Litfuse Publicity for organizing this tour and providing me with my complimentary review copy.