"[Carl] is a master storyteller...."
Scott Modrall, OC missionary to Southern Africa

Janet Chimsmar (to Eldredge): "Who is your personal hero?"
John Elredge: "...Wow...a guy named Carl, who lives in Portland...He lost his wife to cancer and he's living with such courage..the kind of courage we want to see men live with. And he's such a good picture that you don't have to be Rambo to be a man. You don't have to be Schwarzenegger...You have to be courageous."
John Eldredge interview, crosswalk.com

“Carl is a man who hears what the Spirit is saying and places the poetry of that message for the reader to hear for himself”
Bettie P. Mitchell, Founder and former International Executive Director, Good Samaritan Ministries

"In this historic moment, we live caught in a worldview that no longer works and a new one that seems too bizarre to contemplate."
Margaret J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World

"When one realizes
one is asleep,
at that moment
one is already half-awake."
P.D. Ouspensk, Russian journalist

"To reveal one's heart and to lead from this in love is the highest form of leadership."
Carl Townsend, adventurer and romantic

"It's the praying Christian who looses heaven's
expression here."
Bill Johnson, pastor

There is no doubt that we see a failure of leadership today. Political leaders are unable to forge a path out of two wars we were led into by lies and greed. Today we see the economic system that has fueled capitalism for years is collapsing from greed and mismanagement. Much of the existing leadership has been unwilling to change, passing the costs of their selfishness and mismanagement to the next generations and the generations after them. Churches are, to a large extent, unable to reach the young Millennial generation. Paradigms of the past remain only as illusions and no longer work. What does real leadership today look like today?

As I struggled personally with the question and my own role as a leader, this book Beyond Illusion… began to evolve. Who were the people who had been leaders in my life? Why did I see them as leaders? Who did I find myself imitating? Why? Who was imitating me? Why?

And who were the leaders in the Bible and why were they leaders? What did they do that was different? There was Moses. In Numbers 14 we see a single man, Moses, praying - and as a result he is able to move the very finger of God and prevents God from destroying a nation. Why would an omnipotent and powerful God put His entire agenda dependent upon the prayers of one man? Or take Nehemiah. Those guys doing the spiritual mapping of Jerusalem were reporting to Nehemiah that there was no vision, no passion, no security, and that those chosen people there were in disgrace. Is that a picture of America today? So here this one man goes in and turns that completely around in 52 days. Really? Remember this “one man” first spent four months in prayer and fasting. For what was Nehemiah praying? There is no wall mentioned in that first chapter of Nehemiah. He wasn’t praying for a wall. For what was he praying?

Who are the real leaders today? Why do you think they are leaders?

Order Beyond Illusion: Leading from Reality today!