Good to Great is a go-to book on how to create a great company. At almost two decades old, it still charts highly on Amazon. The cover boasts “THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD.”

I can understand why. This isn’t just the work of a guru with an idea. Good to Great is founded on 15,000 hours of methodologically sound research (ix). The insights in these chapters describe how a select handful of companies (eleven, to be precise) were able to transition from very good to outstanding.

Each chapter describes a key research finding. Great companies have high-level leaders who put the right people in place before moving forward. These companies are able to look at disheartening facts without losing hope. They have narrowed their focus to the place where their passion, economics, and ability overlap. They create a culture of discipline from the top-down and use technology not as a short-cut, but as a way to accelerate their growth.

Adding to the value of this book are the chapter summaries which lay out the key findings in bullet-points. Since this book is research-based rather than idea-based, each of these chapter summaries include unexpected findings where the data surprised them.

A Good to Great Church?

I’m no business leader. I pastor a small church in a tourist town in rural Ontario. Could this book help me to refine my skill-set? Could it help my colleagues in other small churches? Yes and no. Let me explain.

Many of the insights are directly transferable to a church context. Pastors should be humble and clear-sighted. Churches need to be a place where the difficult truth is heard while hope is maintained. Churches, especially small churches with limited resources, need to understand what they’re good at and focus in on it.

Other parts of Good to Great are antithetical to church life. This includes one whole metric for analysis: monetary value. If a church makes its economic engine a key focus, something is wrong! Also, the whole results-driven thrust of the book is a seductive danger to pastors. Level five leaders are those who are “fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results” (39). If applied directly to the church, this can motivate the pastor to usurp the role of God who makes things grow (1 Corinthians 3:6). Pastors are called to plant and water—to equip.

The most significant danger I saw when applying Good to Great to church life is chapter two, “First Who . . . Then What” (41–64). The essence of this chapter is captured in the first point of the summary:

The good-to-great leaders began the transformation by first getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. (63)

I understand that this is crucial advice for businesses, but not for shepherds leading churches. You can choose your business associates, but you can’t choose your family. I point this out because I have seen this attitude work its way into the church. I have heard church leaders talk about getting rid of people that detract from the vision of the church—after all, there’s other churches out there, right?

In contrast to this we have the ministry of Jesus who refused to break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick (the words of Isaiah cited in Matthew 12:20). I think God is more concerned with the spiritual growth of “the wrong people” (63) than with the so-called ‘success’ of the church.

In the end, I would recommend Good to Great for church leaders. The research is sound and the insights run deep. But use discernment and remember, the church is not a business. It’s much more like a family.

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t. New York: Harper Business, 2001.