Bob Briner was a leading figure in professional sports management, an Emmy Award-winning television producer, and president of ProServ Television.
Briner was the first Western sports executive to enter China after the Cultural Revolution and introduced National Basketball Association games to Chinese television. He developed major tennis tournaments in several countries including Israel, Cuba, South Africa and the Soviet Union. Briner earned a bachelor's degree in business and English from Greenville College.
Briner was also a prolific writer, regularly contributing to the New York Times and Sports Illustrated. His books include Roaring Lambs, Lambs Among Wolves, and The Management Methods of Jesus. Briner finished his final book, The Final Roar, shortly before dying of cancer in 1999.
Briner was a devout Christian and in 2003 was posthumously inducted into the Indiana Wesleyan University Society of World Changers as its first member.
His book Roaring Lambs is foundational to the The Briner Institute programs
"Roaring Lambs is one of the most convicting and challenging books I have ever read."
Dave Dravecky, Author of When You Can't Come Back
"There's passion in Bob Briner's narrative that affirms and challenges all of us to practice our faith, protest injustice, and persevere."
Arthur Ashe, Tennis Champion
"If you want to be a player and not a spectator, Roaring Lambs will show you how to get out of the bleachers and into the arena."
Dr. Ray Pritchard, Senior Pastor Calvary Memorial Church, Oak Park, IL
"Too often, the message of Christianity today is promulgated by 'professional' Christians, smugly preaching to the converted. More difficult and more noteworthy - even more Christian - is what Bob Briner advocates: that what matters is to carry the Word and its goodness into the skeptical multicultural real world."
Frank Deford , Contributing Editor, Newsweek
"Cutting edge? No. Bob Briner is on the bleeding edge when it comes to being pertinent in marketplace application and at the same time faithfully poignant with biblical truth. Once again, Bob brings us insightful leadership principles that are not simply theoretical but have been beaten out on the anvil of personal experience in his own daily journey of following the world's greatest Leader. Read it and reap!"
Dr. O. S. Hawkins, President Annuity Board, SBC
"To those of us who were questioning, Bob Briner gave a freedom to pursue those questions. He gave us a context and a language to really consider what it would mean to move outside the closed community of contemporary Christian music and into the whole wide world of music. He helped us to reclaim again the scriptural understanding of what it means to be salt and light, and what it means to be caretakers of all of God's creation including music, both inside and outside of the church. He helped us to see how narrow our vision and our understanding of God's kingdom had become
Charlie Peacock, Grammy-winning Producer (The Civil Wars)
In times past there was an idea that the arts had to have some kind of a measurable, quantifiable result in order to be salt and light. Art was just the means to an end and that end always had to be evangelism or corporate worship. If those ends were not immediately apparent, it seemed the artist had somehow failed. Bob gently and graciously challenged that, without ever putting people on the spot over what they were currently doing. His purpose was never to diminish the role of music created for the edification of fellow believers. He was just saying, 'That part seems to be covered pretty well already, doesn't it? Now what are we going to do about the culture at large? Why aren't we raising up and equipping believers to occupy strategic positions in record companies, management companies, and as artists speaking into the mainstream? Why aren't we earning the right to exert the kind of influence that our culture so desperately needs?'"
Steve Taylor, Artist, Film-maker (Blue Like Jazz)