45 pages • 1 hour read
John C. MaxwellThe 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
John C. Maxwell
John C. Maxwell is an American speaker, author, and pastor renowned for his expertise in leadership development. He is the author of three best-selling books: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership (1998), Developing the Leader Within You (1993), and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader (1999). Maxwell routinely speaks at leadership conferences for the United Nations, Fortune 500 companies, the US Military Academy, and the National Football League. His most famous work, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, has sold over one million copies to date and has been translated into 50 languages. Maxwell is also the founder of the John Maxwell Company, INJOY Stewardship, Maximum Impact, EQUIP, and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation. In 2014, he received the Mother Teresa Prize for Global Peace and Leadership and was named the world’s most influential leadership expert by Business Insider and Inc. magazine.
Born in Michigan in 1947, Maxwell’s father worked as a pastor. Maxwell initially pursued a career in ministry, earning a doctorate from the Fuller Theological Seminary in his 20s and serving as a pastor for 14 years. In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Maxwell describes his time at the San Diego Skyline Church as formative for his personal development as a leader. He left in 1995 to pursue a career as a leadership expert and author, founding EQUIP, a nonprofit organization dedicated to training leaders internationally, one year later. He describes his personal growth throughout The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership to help readers contextualize his history, evaluate his perspective, and take inspiration from his life story.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa, born as Anjeze Gonxhe Bejaxhiu and canonized by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was a Catholic nun best known for her charitable work in India. She first arrived in India in 1929 and taught at the St. Teresa school in Darjeeling. Over the years, she became deeply concerned with the poverty she saw around her and vowed to serve the poor of the region in the name of Jesus.
In 1950, she founded the Missionaries of Charity, a nonprofit religious congregation dedicated to caring for the poorest of the poor, including but not limited to abandoned children, destitute individuals, people with AIDS, refugees, and individuals with mental illness. The organization operates kitchens, clinics, schools, and counselling clinics for their patients. In popular memory, Mother Theresa sacrificed her own comfort to help people overlooked by society. However, she is also controversial, and has been accused of misusing funds and providing aid with the intention of converting people to Christianity. (Taylor, Adam. “Why Mother Teresa is still no saint to many of her critics.” The Washington Post, 1 September 2016).
In Maxwell’s final chapter, “The Law of Legacy,” Mother Theresa is provided as an example of a successful leader whose lifework is still continued to this day. The Missionaries of Charity is currently run by over 5000 religious sisters who have made vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, and aim to help the poor and destitute.
Skyline Church
Located in suburban San Diego, Skyline Church is an evangelical megachurch founded by Orval Butcher in 1954. It figures prominently in The 21 Laws of Leadership, as it is the first megachurch Maxwell headed as senior pastor. His leadership brought church attendance from around 1,000 members to over 3,000. During his time there, he also oversaw a million-dollar construction project, which he changed from a community center into an auditorium. Skyline Church features in Chapters 6, 9, 11, and 14, and is used by Maxwell to support the arguments therein.
After Maxwell left Skyline Church in 1995 to pursue his career in leadership consulting, Jim Garlow became Skyline Church’s third pastor. In 2008, Garlow led an initiative that mobilized conservative religious groups against the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. Currently, Skyline Church is headed by Jeremy McGarity.
