Mega Thoughts

So this past week I went to Willow Creek to attend the Leadership Summit. There were speakers such as Bono (U2), Jim Collings (Good to Great), Andy Stanley (North Point) and all had insight on what leading todays church entitles. If I were to sum up everything I learned into one statement it would be “In order for a church to grow and to change lives it needs to have strong leadership.”
Unfortunately, I had to miss some of the summit due to personal reasons, but what I did hear was priceless. Below I have included some of the things that strongly impacted me.

Day 1
Billy Hybels spoke of 5 Things To Help Develop Leadership in the Church
1. Build Relationships – make others feel as if they are brothers and sisters in Christ and set a clear vision for people to follow.
2. Build Skill – read books by leaders, go where leaders are, talk to leaders and keep leading.
3. Build Other Leaders – Leaders build leaders, invest in people and lift them up. If you want to surround yourself with good leaders you must find people who have character, competense and you can develop chemistry with them.
4. Build Leaders to Build Leaders – Form a constellation of colleagues and don’t be afraid to surround yourself with leaders. The people you surround yourself with must have Intelligence, Energetic, Relational I.Q. and a Win or Die Spirit.
5. God is the Highest Level Leader – Let God anoint you, let God have His way.

James Meeks – Enemies of A Growing Church
Pastor Meeks talked about how the Enemy of the Church is more from within. Here are 7 enemies of a growing church.
1. Lack of Faith – We need to believe growth can happen.
2. Lack of Knowledge – What you don’t know can kill you, and it can lead others down the wrong path.
3. Failure to Realize God Respects All – God doesn’t favor one person over another, we are all God’s children.
4. Growth is always the goal of a New Testament Church – Christians bring other Christians.
5. Unsure Pastor/Leader – Don’t be PC be Biblical, Get rid of Ambiguity
6. Failure to Build on Small Victories – King David started with a lion, a bear and then defeated Goliath. All for the glory of God.
7. Failure to Preach the Announcements – Don’t just tell the announcements, if you are going to do something make it part of the message.
8. Lack of Corporate Prayer and Fasting – Those that pray together celebrate together.
9. Getting Started – Go with the going crowd, God’s not going to show us everything so get started.
10. Motive – Why do you want a big church? do it for the right reasons.

Andy Stanley – Focused Leadership
Andy told us of his biggest leadership decision, which was to as he put it “Don’t cheat your family” and the reason he told us this is because sometimes we become workaholics and forget where our priorities are. Granted we are to love God first but if you are married and work in the church you are to as St. Paul says, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church” Andy informed us that the Church is being built by Christ and challenged us to not forget that those of us who are married are called to the married life first, our jobs are second. When we love others we love God.
He concluded by saying, “Never violate the principles of God to gain the blessings of God.”

Peg Neuhauser – Tribal Warfare
Peg discussed the importance of Interpersonal Communications in the work place. She said we must develop 4 Skills
1. Learn the Anatomy of a Conversation
– Transaction – What Topic of Conversation “What are you talking about?
– Relationship – How you handle the situation is important so be aware of Tone and Style.

2. Use Language as a Tool Not A Weapon
– Find common language
– Don’t use fighting words
-Be multilingual and use other people’s lingos

3. Discipline of Listening – Tuning out Prevents Bridge Build Up

4. Navigate Your Conversations
– Machine Gun Talkers – Logical/Fast Pace
– Dreamers – Visual/Fast Pace
– Detailed Thinkers – Logical/Slow Pace
– Storytellers – Visual/Slow Pace

5. Who are the Generalists and Specialists Tribes
– Generalists – Broad Range of knowledge about all aspects of church ministry
– Specialists – In depth knowledge of one aspect of church ministry

Day 3
Wayne Cordeiro – Dead Leader Running
Like Andy Wayne spoke of the importance of setting priorities. By doing this we can avoid burning out, crashing and even hurting ourselves. Wayne talked about 5 ways we can avoid becoming a Dead Leader.
1. Ask yourself What Fills You and What Drains You? – Make a list and pray about those things that drain you and fill you.
2. Understand the Principles of Life – Family=Ministry. Follow the lead of the Holy Spirit and you will always find balance in your life.
3.Lead Out Of Rest – Make sure you get the right sleep, don’t sleep in during the morning, get to sleep earlier. We perform best out of our rest.
4. Find a Lightning Rod – Don’t vent to just anyone, find someone who will listen. If you take your negative charges and direct them to the wrong people you will burn them out.
5.Discipline your Daily Devotions – S.cripture O.bservation A.pplication P.ray – By studying your scripture daily you are learning the tools systematically.

Bill Hybels – The Power of Clarity
Bill concluded the summit by encouraging leaders to be clear. Announce Vision over and over again because then your leaders will understand it, if not the vision becomes fuzzy. He then summed up by reminding us that Jesus died for our sins and that by relying on Christ we can be saved of our sin.

The thing I bring out of this is we need to build strong leaders in order to build a strong church.