Author of more than 20 books, Bill Hybels is the founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. Axiom is a lively and concise collection of Hybels' 76 God-inspired convictions that have directed his leadership for more than 30 years.

The contents are divided into four categories: Vision and Strategy, Teamwork and Communication, Activity and Assessment and Personal Integrity.  topics such as Values Need Heat, Get the Right People Around the Table, Deliver the Bad News First and Every Soldier Deserves Competent Command. The short chapters are packed with practical leadership insights, many of which are supported by relevant anecdotes.

Discovering a few years ago through an in-depth survey that his church members generally lacked in spiritual depth, particularly in the practice of the spiritual disciplines like Bible reading and daily prayer, Hybels subsequently piloted his church through a massive 18-month strategic planning process. The result? He wants his church to continue to focus on evangelism but much more on discipleship and compassion (i.e. acts of service to the community). I wonder what the results would show for other churches or Salvation Army congregations that surveyed the spiritual depth of their members.

Some of Hybels' assertions are challenging—“The greatest determinant of whether followers will ever own a vision deeply is the extent to which they believe the leader will own it.” Like Hybels, some of us have regrettably learned by our mistakes that “the net effect of hiring people less effective than you is an ever-increasing number of lower-calibre leaders.” I was taken aback by his conviction regarding church growth that “incremental thinking, incremental planning, incremental prayers—it's the kiss of death.” His argument is that because the normal attrition rate in the local church is about 10 percent—deaths, transfers out, career transitions—to plan for an annual increase of 3-4 percent (incrementalism) is tantamount to planning the church's funeral. To grow or even maintain the church's current level of attendance and membership requires bigger, God-inspired goals. There are many reasons for the decrease in church attendance and membership in North America over the past several decades. Could the lack of such goals at least partially account for this widespread decrease?

You won't necessarily agree with all of Hybels' convictions, but reading Axiom reflectively could make you a wiser leader.