The Maxwell Leadership Bible – Review
The Maxwell Leadership Bible focuses on leadership principles from the Bible. It’s been around for a long time and it’s now available in the 3rd edition with new content and the Comfort Print text. I’m reviewing the bonded leather, burgundy, ISBN:9780785218647. It was made in China.
Thomas Nelson provided this Bible in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to give a positive review, only an honest one. All opinions are my own.
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This book is available at (includes some affiliate links)
and many local Bible bookstores
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Video Review
Cover and Binding
The cover is burgundy bonded leather. This leather looks and feels like Crowmwell Leather’s bonded leather, which means it has 50% more leather fiber than most bonded leather. It has a nice grain. The color has a texture with various shades of burgundy that look elegant. It has perimeter stitching. There’s nothing printed on the front. The spine includes the title and logos printed in gold. The liner is paste-down paper. It’s Smyth sewn and has no trouble laying open on the first page.
It has one burgundy ribbon. It’s satin and feels elegant. The overall size is 6.5 x 9.5 x 1.5″ and it weighs 2lbs, 12.8oz.
Paper
The paper seems to be similar to the 36gsm paper that’s used in the Preaching Bible, but with a slight creme color. This is my favorite color for Bible paper. It feels thicker than most 36gsm and has a rough texture that’s easy to grab and turn. It has no glare under direct light. It’s highly opaque.
Typography
The text is presented in a double-column paragraph format. It includes poetry in stanzas and letters indented. The header has the page numbers in the center and the book names and reference in the outer corner. The header is separated from the text with a blue line. Section headings are in blue and chapter numbers are in gold. Footnotes are placed under the last verse on the page. Notes are placed at the bottom of the page or within the text. They’re in a box so they stand out.
The font is labeled as 10-point. This is the Comfort Print text that was designed by 2K/Denmark. It’s sharp and dark. It doesn’t look slightly smaller than 10-point to my eyes, but the darkness of the font and opacity of the paper make it more readable than fonts that are much larger. It includes italics for supplied words, but not oblique type for OT quotes.
It has an average of 10-12 words per line and was printed with line-matching. Readability is improved by not having to share horizontal space with notes or references. With this word-count, poetry and letters look amazing. I love the blue and gold highlights. This is one of the best double-column layouts that I’ve seen.
Book Introductions
Book introductions take 1-2 pages. They discuss the leadership principles, key events and people, etc. They also provide a sentence to describe the book from a leadership perspective. They include sidebars and tables such as God’s role in the book, leaders in the book, other people of influence, bullet points of lessons in leadership, and leadership highlights in a table with page numbers.
Study Material
The notes are from John C. Maxwell, and they cover the principles of leadership taught in the Bible. They discuss the principles and how to use them. These principles apply to anyone. As John Maxwell shows in these notes. leadership is influence, and we all have influence of some kind. They cover the 21 Laws of Leadership, the 21 Qualities of a Leader, biographical profiles, and lots of notes. The notes are placed within boxes at the bottom of the page or within the text.
21 Laws of Leadership – These are presented in two different ways. The most common is in a small box within the text. They show the name of the law, the title of this lesson, the Scripture reference, and then a paragraph for the lesson. These are short. Another way they’re shown is within a full page. They include the same type of information but they go into a lot more detail.
21 Qualities of a Leader – these take a full page. They identify the quality, provides a description of the example, gives the references, and discusses the quality in detail using the biblical example. They also include questions to help you examine your own qualities and show another article to read to learn more.
Profiles in Leadership – This is over 120 biographical profiles with leadership lessons drawn from times and events. They’re placed within a box at the bottom of the page with blue highlights. It shows the name of the person, the title for the lesson, the Scripture reference, and the lesson.
Articles – It has hundreds of short articles and notes about mentoring and influence. There are also several articles in the front and lots of articles in the back that take several pages each and include a lot of detail.
Index – This is an index to both the 21 Laws of Leadership and the 21 Qualities of a Leader. It’s separated into Leadership Laws, Leadership Qualities, Leadership Issues, and Profiles in Leadership.
Conclusion
The Maxwell Leadership Bible is one of my favorite study Bibles. The 3rd edition has new material and it’s well-made. I especially like the paper, print quality, and blue and gold highlights. The bonded leather is nice. The genuine leather would last longer, so that would be my first choice, but this bonded leather is a good choice for those on a budget.
All of the points in the notes are taken from the events and personality traits in the Scriptures. The notes are easy to read and follow. They include a lot of bullet points that are taken from Scripture and it includes which verse the point is from. This makes it easy to study and easy to develop lessons from.
The Maxwell Leadership Bible has been around for many years, so many people are familiar with the content. It kind of jumps in without introducing what the content is. It assumes you know what is meant by “21 Laws of Leadership”. I’d like to see an introduction in the front that would show the features, such as laws, profiles, and articles. Without it, we just start reading the Bible without the principles being introduced. That’s a very minor complaint though. Once you start using it the notes make sense.
The notes are mostly non-doctrinal and apply to practically everyone in any mainline denomination and anywhere. They apply for families, work, and ministry. It doesn’t take the place of a course (a course would be more structured), but this Bible is great for learning about leadership as you study the Bible. It’s very likely this is the only resource you’d need. I recommend The Maxwell Leadership Bible 3rd edition to anyone interested in leadership principles from God’s Word.
_________________________________________________________
This book is available at (includes some affiliate links)
and many local Bible bookstores
_________________________________________________________
Thomas Nelson provided this Bible in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to give a positive review, only an honest one. All opinions are my own.
Good evening Randy,
Nelson is hitting the high mark and a quality slump from the early 2000’s. One the bonded leather, can you please check and see if it is Cromwell? The grain looks to be Cromwell, but you never know.
As always, thank you Randy for taking the time to inform us of all the great bible choices. We are probably in the best era for bible publishing.
Prentiss Yeates
I like this bible where to buy this one and how much