Book excerpt: The Five Phases of Leadership is a book written by a practitioner for practitioners. Organized around five stages of leadership – establishing trust, cultivating leaders, discerning vision, implementing plans and transitioning out – this book offers an overview of the leadership life cycle from a distinctively Christian perspective. Dr. Justyn Terry draws on over twenty years of leadership experience in seminaries and churches, to offer practical insight into a leader’s role. Rather than focusing primarily on leadership styles or skills, this book demonstrates why those skills matter in context. By focusing on a leader’s overall task, Dr. Terry offers a vision of leadership that draws together its disparate elements into a unified whole.