Leadership Summit Session 9

Bill Hybels – Relentless
Lead Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church

2 Chronicles 16:9

Mother Teresa

- In April 1942 as a school teacher made a vow to refuse God nothing.  Not to withhold anything from him no matter the price
- Vowed to throw herself fully into what he tells her to do
- Vowed to do his bidding without delay.
- Vowed to God she would be faithful in the little practices.
- Little sacrifices – go to the back of the line, volunteer for the cleanup.
- Guard her words carefully -and loving no matter who it was.
- God’s radar spotted her carte blanch yielded-ness
- That’s the person I would pick if I was God.
- Question: Are you the kind of person who is lighting up the radar screens of heaven by your willingness to refuse him nothing.
- More often that not they want to lead a bigger deal, more than they want God in their life – on people who are wondering why they don’t lead more
- If you were God for a day would you pick you for additional responsibilities and entrustment.
- At 36 – after 12 years of obscurity and carte blanch yielded-ness – she goes on a train ride to a spiritual retreat
- God touches her to help the poorest of the poor in Calcutta
- Mother Teresa was elated that God would notice her.
- The minute she got the prompting she said yes without delay.
- No problem God has spoken – I will refuse him nothing.
- I believe in a God that taps on your shoulder – of average people and speaks.
- Question: What do you do when God taps you on the shoulder and asks you to step up?
- There is a direct correlation between carte blanch yielded-ness and a fresh assignment from God.
- Some of you need a new touch that what you’re doing is what God has called you to do.
- There are plenty of people who didn’t surrender without delay because of their comfort and ego and security.
- Don’t let that be your story – don’t extinguish something new that God is trying to give life to through you and your leadership.
- Refuse God nothing – you will never regret it.
- You would think when Mother Teresa showed up in Calcutta things would just fall in place for her.
- That’s not what happened – she was told to keep teaching.
- She meets with the father as much as possible to vision cast him and persuade him.
- Some sisters started a rumor that she meet with the father for romantic reasons
- It caused her deep anguish
- She wants to move ahead but can’t because of obstacles beyond their control
- Every leader I know can recount the era where their dream almost died.
- It’s happened throughout biblical and modern history.
- It will happen to you – and thats when God does some of his most penetrating and pure work.
- Is that what God wants or me – how long will I wait – do I have to adjust to his timetable – do I believe God can change the heart of those over me
- Am I willing to pay the price – would I lay down my life
- BE careful when you are in those waiting periods
- God might be refining you, but I cannot advise you to give up and bail.
- She got through to the father and was denied by the arch-bishop
- He said no
- With a kind of relentlessness – she embarks on a letter writing campaign to wear the archbishop down.
- You don’t have to do anything for me – I;m not asking for money – I’m only asking you not to stand in the way.
- Please forgive me for being so tiresome with my continual appeal – but I have to act this way should of the poor are being lost
- Acts 20:24
- It doesn’t matter what happens to me – only that I achieve the mission God gave to me.
- When that happens that leader is ready – and God normally parts the waters.
- It was a year and a half for mother teresa
- It required a relentlessness of spirit.
- Some of you are wondering how much longer you can hang on to your calling . . . and how long you have to wait
- I recommend as long as it takes.
- Outlast the opposition
- Out pray the problems
- Wear down those who stand in the way
- Who knows what God might do if you hang on to the vision and calling God has put on your life
- Callings are holy and a precious commodity
- Sometimes you only get one in a lifetime and yo must get it right.
- She had to find facilities
- She had to raise money
- She had to build a staff – had to learn these things
- She had to address and resolve organizational problems
- She did it imperfectly
- She made leadership mistakes – grieved them and was embarrassed by them
- She just put them aside and led again the next day
- She made herself into a phenomenal leader – don’t say you can’t
- How bad do you want it?
- There were dry spells for her.
- She often journaled about this quirky thing.
- She was hoping to feel God’s  companionship
- She thought the presence of god would be more palpable tan it was in her experience
- When it didn’t happen month after month and year after year – she started to blame herself
- She would get up the next morning and she would go to work and carry out her call
- Even though I don’t feel his presence I will seek to love him as he has never been loved.
- Those are words that are foreign to my depth of spirituality.
- We withhold our love for dumb and petty reasons
- From stoplights and I stop
- She pressed on year after year after year.
- Sometimes when I walk up to this podium I think God I wish I felt more than I’m feeling
- Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this – there has to be more to it than this
- I don’t why I go through those periods
- And sometimes I need to change my spiritual practices.
- She spent most of her life feeling the presence of god wasn’t as warm as she wished it had been  – but she went on anyway.
- One wonders if history will ever see anyone like her again.
- So often upon reading her words I would pray you got it all God I’ll do your bidding without delay
- God give me that kind of relentlessness.
- Here am I – those are powerful words – God is looking and searching – he just needs someone who says I will refuse you nothing.
- We are always in the position where we are asking people to decide things.
- Leaders never shrink back from putting that decision and challenge out there – the stakes are too high.

Leadership Summit Session 7

Catherine Rohr – Risk taking, Barrier Breaking, Bold Leadership
Founder and CEO, Prison Entrepreneurship Program

This was an interview, compelling – good stuff.  Not a lot of principles coming from this interview . . . .

- I got to where I was by simple obedience.  Saying yes in small situation after small situation.
- 1 out of 15 Americans goes to prison in their lifetime – 50% end up back in prison.
- All they know is their old gang homeboys.  Funny – white girl speaking slang.
- We love forgiveness, but with this group we can’t overlook their sin
- Paul, David, Moses are old school murderers we can forgive, but not todays prisoners.

Leadership Summit Session 6

Chuck Colson – Defending Your Faith.
Chairman and Founder, Prison Fellowship Ministries

-  If you are a shepherd/leader your job is not to pander to your people, but to lead them to the truth.
-  The law of noncontradiction – Aristotle
-  2 truth claims cannot be true – one must be false – even the supreme court can’t overturn it.
-  Stop blaming the culture when everything goes wrong.
-  Bad gay marriage remark goes here.
-  2.3 million people are there due to a lack of moral training during their formative years
-  Don’t blame the culture.
-  Culture is the church incarnate.
-  If the culture is sick it means the church is sick.
-  Are we in babylonian captivity – captive to the culture around us?
-  Essay: The church in babylonian captivity leads to the reformation.

First Question asked in the book

1.  What is christianity?
- conversation, relationship with jesus, religion?
- None of those things, all of those things, and so much more.
- It is a worldview – it is a way of seeing all life through the eyes of God and christians are called to live that way.
- If secular people call out mine – it’s mine – we call out his – it’s all his
- What does it rest on?  Certain truth claims – the foundation of what we believe.
- The first presupposition about reality is that God is.
- Not only is God is – but he has spoken.
- This is a fallen world.
- G.K. Chesterton – what’s the problem with the world today?
His answer: “I am.”
- Get that wrong and you get your theology wrong.

He just said thirdly for the third time – his structure is very hard to follow.

- The birth of Christ – isn’t a baby in a manger, but a creating God becoming flesh and saying you are forgiven – dwelling among us and paying
the price for our sins.
- This is the greatest story ever told.
- A conversion isn’t saying I acept Jesus, but when you go to the cross and the old is crucified, and you become new.
- When we are reconciled to one another we become a community – that’s the church
- That community is where you learn on of the most fundamental truths, you must be holy.
- The christian worldview is the only one that is rationally sustainable
- We don’t live by today’s utopian schemes, but by revealed truth.
- You can’t force a conversion – Luther
- Free Will leads to free government, and markets, etc.
- We don’t impose – we propose
- The first thing people should say about us is my how they love each other and us
- Lead  and equip
- Give your people a big vision

Leadership Summit Session 5

Craig Groeschel – IT: How leaders can get It and keep IT.
Lead Pastor – Lifechurch.tv

Have you ever been somewhere and said – this place just has it.  Buzz . . . .
When we started we didn’t have a lot – overhead projector, most people think you need more – we just had IT.

We had the very spirIT of God in a very special way

What we know about it

God makes it happen
For him by him for his glory
can’t create or reproduce it
It is rare that one person will bring
wrong person can kill it
cant be taught
often caught
not a system or model
Can be found in all types of churches
has an upside
has a downside people shoot at you if you have it
it happens
often is doesn’t
if you have it doesn’t mean you’ll keep it
don’t have it doesn’t mean you cant find it

early church had it

acts 2:42-47 some extreme words – everyone – many – all – everything – anyone – every day – all – daily

4 qualities there when it is present

1.  Have a laser focus
- More ministries are better?!?! – I would say better ministries are better.
- What can you be the very best at in your ministry or organization?
- To reach people no one is reaching, you need to do things no one is doing.
- So you CAN’T do what everyone else is doing.
- If what we’re doing is working – keep doing it – if not can it.
- Planned abandonment – we need some unique things we do, cut everything else.
- We cut everything but 5 things
- weekend, small groups, kids, students, missions
***What are you doing that you need to stop doing?

2.  They see opportunities where others see obstacles.
- You have everything that you need to do everything God wants you to do.
- You have an obstacle, God wants you to see an opportunity.
- God doesn’t guide by what he provides, but by what he doesn’t provide.
***What is God trying to show you through your greatest limitation?

3.  Organizations that have it are willing to fail.
- Failure is a necessity
- Failure is often the first step to seeing God.
- Our first video venue failed, we could have given up.
- There could be a lot of failure before you can learn what HE wants you to learn.
- Shake off the failure and step up.
- Just because you failed at something doesn’t mean you are a failure.
***What has God called you to do that you are afraid to attempt?  When are you going to do it?

4.  Organizations that have it are led by people who have it
- You need to have it for your ministry to get it.
- When you have it inside you get it out of yourself – it draws people
- It can become about what’s external – buildings and production.
- Then you try to acquire the things you think you need to have it – could help you loose it.
- Some of you lost it.
- You become more about your ministry that about his kingdom.
- Stopped reading christian books, and listening to messages
- Traveled and held a baby that wouldn’t live another week
- Read about poverty and starvation
- Time to let God break your heart again.
- I have it again and it makes me miserable and it hurts
***If you don’t have it – what are you going to do to get it?

Franciscan Benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

See it from Craig here.

Leadership Summit Session 4

John Burke – Leading in New Cultural Realities
Lead Pastor – Gateway Church
No Perfect People Allowed
Soul Revolution

1 Corinthians 3:6-9

Flower beds – a lot of work to help the soil – it’s messy and hard.

Does the soil you’re creating allow room for struggles and mess?
We have to be willing to get our hands dirty

Matthew 9:11 – 13

We should be here for messy, broken people.

What does this mean if we our christian leaders and our hands aren’t dirty with the messy soil around us?

Am I leading more like Jesus or am I leading more like the pharisees?

1.  We have to cultivate the soil with grace – giving acceptance.
- Law says you must prove yourself to be morally acceptable, grace says come as you are.
- Many people don’t experience grace – giving acceptance from christians
- When we lead people to see the masterpiece in people first, they will accept and offer grace to them
- We have to cultivate environments that remove barriers between those far from God and grace
- Acts 15:10-11, 19
- Determine – what are those potential barriers to grace?  Gotta get your hands dirty.
- How do we answer peoples questions to remove barriers to grace?

2.  We have to cultivate the soil with authentic confessing community.
- James 5:16
- Stop pretending we are better than we are, be real and don’t hide your true self.
- Our job is not fixing, changing, or growing people.  We can’t, only God can.
- Romans 8:4-5

This is the most difficult thing to do because our self-centeredness often overtakes our desire to be God – centered.

Challenge people – 60 days to stay in constant communication and be in constant responsiveness to his spirit.

A nice pitch for Gateway Church . . .

Efrem Smith
Lead Pastor – Sanctuary Covenant Church

We wanna be a sneak preview of heaven
We live in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, mult-racial, global, technological culture.
The question is are we going to lead in it?  Will we be change agents?
30 years ago – 1 in 100 mixed races
2000 – 1 – 19 born in mixed race – 1 in 10 in some places.
We must lead, be prophetic, and lift up a promise in this world.
1 John 4:7 – We must become a beloved leader.
MLK – the beloved community

You become a beloved leader when you allow a force of God to come on you and flow through you in a multi-cultural world.
To love and be loved at the same time.
When Jesus comes back it’s ultimate justice, but until then – it’s just us.
If you can’t love across race or class you can’t lead today.

You must be an abiding leader – vs. 12
We have to abide in something beyond us.
We don’t lead in multi-culturally because we feel unqualified – but God’s into that – and you have to be leaning into someone who’s bigger.
In order for the church to be socially innovative – race can’t be an issue.
Tribalism is still a deep evil force courageous leaders must take on.
We need to reach the people that the church has forgotten.
This is no time for empires – we need a sacrificial force of the children of God who will go to (abide in) the places where the hurting people are.
We have to start dreaming about buildings and dream about transformation

You must be confessing leaders to lead a diverse polarized world -  vs. 15.
Storms erupt in our world come when the high pressure of what God wants hits the low pressure of what we want to do.
There is no institution in America where you can discriminate – except the church

What if we changed the ethos so we can be racially diverse socially innovative churches?

vs 17. – and a perfecting leader -

we must take an organic approach – pot luck dinners
must take a programmatic approach – helping with child programs

Leadership Summit Session 3

Bill George – Finding Your True North
Professor, Harvard Business School – Former CEO Medtronic
Has the book – True North

Are you using all your gifts to be the leader God called you to be?
Challenge: Think about your own leadership and ask yourself – “Am I doing everything I can to make the world a better place?”

Nelson Mandela – favorite leader.  Always quotes a poem – Mary Ann Williams – Our greatest Fear.

A lot of our leaders have lost their true north.  From pressures, or they were seduced by money, fame, power, and glory.

Leadership is about empowering other people to step up and lead.

*  We have knowledge workers – who know more than their bosses.  They need to lead, and we need to let them.
- You have a right to find meaning and significance in work.

21st Century Leaders
1.  Align people around values.
2.  Empower them to step up and lead.
3.  Serve – serve the people you lead.
4.  Collaborate with other people and organizations.

The company was changing me more than I was changing it.
Make the transition from I to we.

6 ways for a leader to develop.

1.  Understand the purpose of your leadership
- Follow your compass and not your clock – It’s not the time in your life, but the direction.
2.  Gain self-awareness.
- Get feedback
- Go have experiences in the real world.
- Be introspective – pray and meditate.
3.  Have Values – and practice them.
4.  Follow your intrinsic motivation – your motivated capabilities.
5.  Build a support team around you.
6.  Lead an integrated life.
- You won’t be perfectly balanced – be the same person in every environment your in.

At the end of your life – your grandkids are going to ask what did you to make a difference in the world.  Could you answer it?

Each of us can work to change a small series of events – JFK.

Everyone I’ve sen fail as a leader have not failed to lead others, but themselves.  They weren’t grounded.  know who you are, what you want to do and where you are going and you won’t crumple – Impostors and Glory Seekers.

It hurts so many other people when you do fail.

Wendy Kopp – Stand up and Lead
CEO and Founder, Teach for America

This was an interview – she used more Bill George stuff than anything – compelling and insightful.  Butnot much to write down.  Sorry.

Leadership Summit Session 2

Gary Haughen – Just Courage: Charging the Darkness
Founder – International Justice Mission

Are Jesus and I really interested in the same thing?
For 2000 years christians have been trying to make it believable that god is good.
Injustice in the Bible is a particular kind of sin.  It’s an abuse of power where they have things God has given being taken away from them.
Ecclesiastes 4:1

I was a little disappointed in this session . . .

This is more a talk about whether god exists or is good than a talk on leadership.  It’s compelling but has nothing to do with leadership.

Leaders who want to lead in things that matter to God.

The fundamental point of this session – if you want your leadership to matter, lead in the things that matter to God.

Leadership matters when things seem hopeless, scary, and hard.

They have led in these circumstances and he wants to share some of what they learned through three questions.

What have we learned about leading when the task seems hopeless, scary, and hard?

1.  When the task seems hopeless, we lead by re-centering the basis of our hope.
- What do you have?  Give it to me.  Feeding the Five Thousand
- He simply asked for what they had.
- Of God is passionate about getting it done, he is also responsible for getting it done.
- Sometimes god is calling you to lead in a situation that seems hopeless – the required miracles are his job not ours.

2.  When the task seems scary, we lead by reminding people that Jesus didn’t come to make us safe, but brave.
- Jesus didn’t come to make us safe, but to make us brave.
- If I’m not scared by the calling, maybe it’s not God’s calling.
- I went on the trip, but I missed the adventure – vacation story – skipped mountain climbing because he was scared..
- We are on the journey with Jesus, but we are missing the adventure.
- Follow me beyond your control, beyond your strengths and competencies and you will experience me, my power, wisdom, and love.
- Risk the vulnerability to see how strong my father is.
- Don’t dump your strengths, but use them on a more demanding climb.

3.  When the call and task is hard, we must choose not to be safe, choose deep spiritual health, choose to pursue excellence, and choose to
seize the joy.
- First indicator where we are being brave and not safe is our prayer life.
- Do you and I have a work we could imagine doing for 30 minutes without prayer?  Mother Teresa . . .
- Admit it’s fear and not cleverness holding us back, trust God and do it.
- People don’t do hopeless, scary, hard things without God’s help.
- Lead people on a demanding climb that is unsafe without God.
- We spiritualized mediocrity by falsely balancing godliness and excellence.
- We weren’t loving very well.

He is moving to a place I talk about – what are the stakes?  He used two words I hate – excellence and best practices.

The struggle for God’s suffering is hard – don’t add to the burdens on our team with self-seriousness.  Something is wrong if Jesus yoke is light and mine is heavy.

Leaders make a difference with the people of God when they lead through celebration.

I hate it when speakers and leaders ignore the reality of the real world.

Body builders – what’s all that power for? Opening Jam jars?

MxPx may sum this session up best.
Shining the light in the darkest places
You know and I know we have to face this now

Willow Creek Leadership Summit 08′

So I will be attending the Willow Creek Leadership Summit once again this year.  I do like this conference for as much as it bugs me sometimes.  The truth is there will be some speakers I love, some I will edit during – but I digress.  I will once again be bringing you notes and thoughts on what I’m hearing.  It may not be real time, Canyon Ridge Christian Church – the lone host here in Vegas – hasn’t had wi-fi the past two years.  I am hoping that since they added onto their auditorium, that maybe they made the leap.  If not – I will write everything offline and post it all at the end of the day.

Who am I looking forward to?  Craig Groeschel – not that he has revolutionary things to say, but he has great passion.  I am also looking forward to John Burke and Chuck Colson.  I will say when the Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson hits the stage I’m walking.  Best Buy is one of the worst companies in America.  I can’t believe they are letting him speak.  They have some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced.  Eesh.  Anyway – here’s to learning about leading and how not to lead!  Peace out . . .