Rev. Jacky Connell’s I Believe In You turns a lifetime of shop floors, pulpits, and boardrooms into six disciplines anyone can practice

Fresh out of high school, a young man went straight to work on the working end of a broom. His father had come home from the hospital disabled after a serious illness, the family’s small income from the coat hanger factory had ended, and the job in a fabrication shop paid very little. He swept, ran the grinder, and did the dirty jobs nobody else wanted.

Then one ordinary afternoon, a well-dressed executive named Jim Woods walked past, stopped, looked at the long-haired teenager with the broom, and said four words: “I believe in you.”

That teenager was Jacky Connell. After a career in business and more than four decades as a pastor, he has written the book those four words set in motion. I Believe In You: SIX Disciplines That Build Leaders Worth Following is his answer to a question every leader eventually asks: how do you become the kind of person people trust enough to follow?

A Leader Formed Before the Title

What makes this book so compelling is where its lessons were learned. Connell earned his way up one step at a time, from floor sweeper to grinder to welder, learning to burn, fit, and read blueprints. He brings that same craftsman’s patience to leadership.

One of the book’s most memorable stories comes from those early years. While air arcing in the shop, Connell accidentally sprayed molten metal across a shipment of brand-new welding wire and ruined it. The next morning the foreman asked who had done the work. Connell told the truth. The foreman told him that honesty had just saved his job.

“That branded me,” Connell writes. It became the foundation of everything that followed: integrity will always promote you to a higher place.

The IMPACT Framework

Connell has taught leadership for more than twenty years through his Power Lunches and the IMPACT Leadership Summit, and the book distills that teaching into six disciplines that spell out the word he has built his ministry around.

Integrity is the foundation, and Connell breaks it into six qualities: moral, spiritual, association, transparency, service, and value. Mirroring begins with the “mirror test” he gives developing leaders in his own office, an honest look at yourself before you ask anything of anyone else. Promptness treats time as a measure of respect, because people who watch you keep small promises learn to trust you with large ones. Attitude is presented as a daily discipline, chosen again every morning until it becomes part of who you are. Compensation reframes what we earn through a six-level pyramid that rises from personal investment to legacy. Transformation calls readers to lay down their excuses and keep growing for the rest of their lives.

Each chapter closes with reflection questions and space to write, which makes the book as useful for a staff retreat or small group as it is for a quiet morning with a cup of coffee.

Stories That Stay With You

Connell writes the way he preaches, plainly and warmly, with a gift for the story that makes the principle stick.

There is the Wednesday night when a young Jacky, newly called into ministry, showed up to Bible study in jeans and a jersey and was sent home by his pastor to change. He grumbled the whole drive. Years later he understood that his pastor saw a leader in him and wanted him to look like one.

There is the day he stepped out of a bass boat before a fishing tournament because he overheard someone call it a preacher gambling, a small surrender that showed him people were watching.

And there is the story that may be the heart of the whole book. As newlyweds living in a third-hand trailer, Jacky and his wife, Denise, wanted a television they could never afford. The store owner asked one question: “Aren’t you Henry Connell’s boy?” On the strength of his father’s good name alone, the young couple went home with a TV for twenty dollars a month.

That is the legacy Connell wants every reader to build: a name so trustworthy that it opens doors for the people who come after you.

Trusted by Those Who Know Him Best

The endorsements reflect the reach of a life spent investing in others. Congressman Robert B. Aderholt, who has represented Alabama’s Fourth District since 1997, recommends the book to anyone seeking leadership from someone who lives its principles daily. Maxwell Leadership Certified Team Coach Richard E. Mobley writes, “Few people build leaders like Jacky Connell.” Rick Lance, who led the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions for twenty-eight years, Gary Hollingsworth, Pastor Dan Cummins, Dr. Kevin J. Hamm, and evangelist Frank Shelton Jr. add their voices as well.

Connell was honored with the 2018 Troy L. Morrison Award from the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, and under his leadership Eden Westside Baptist Church has become one of the strongest baptizing congregations in its local Southern Baptist associations.

Who This Book Is For

I Believe In You is written for anyone with influence, which, as Connell reminds us, is everyone. It belongs on the desk of the business owner building a team, the pastor raising up the next generation, the manager who wants a healthier culture, the coach, the parent, and the young professional who has never been told someone sees potential in them.

It also makes one of the most meaningful gifts you can give. Connell ends the book by asking readers to carry the belief forward, to look someone in the eye one day and say those same four words and mean them.

“Someone believed in me, and I believe in you.”

Read it for yourself. Then give a copy to the person you believe in.

Order I Believe In You today →

I Believe In You: SIX Disciplines That Build Leaders Worth Following by Rev. Jacky Connell is published by Revival House Publishing. For bulk orders for your church, staff, or leadership team, or to book Pastor Connell for a conference or leadership event, visit jcimpact.org.