Embarking

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 5, Chuck Colsen, Breakpoint, Defending The Faith

We have bought into a lie:  we’ve transferred our allegience from truth to therapy.

Leadership lessons from the marines:

• The test of leadership is to serve your troops.
• Then you give them the bigger vision.
• Follow me.

If you are a shepherd, your job is not to pander to your people, it is to lead them.

Don’t be ashamed of truth.  Defend the law of non-contradiction.

Stop blaming the culture for everything that’s going wrong in the world today.

God’s judgement comes first on the people of God.

In our country we are in Babalyonian Captivity.

Defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

What is Christianity? 

• It is a worldview, a system, a way of seeing all of life through Jesus Christ. 
• Abraham Kuyper:  “There is not a square inch on the whole plain of human existence over which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not proclaim: ‘This is mine.’” [Souvereiniteit in Eigen Kring, 1180, p. 32.]
• It rests on basic truth claims.  1)  It starts with a very simple declaration, “God is.”  It is the most rational choice.  Alvin Plantinga: “The first presupposition about reality is that God is.”  2) God speaks.  The bible is authoritative and inerrant.  3) The fall.  When asked the question, “What’s wrong with the world today,” GK Chesterton said, “I am.”  4) The incarnation.  5) Conversion/ transformation is essential.  6) The Trinity. 7) Unity - we are reconciled to one another. Judgement
• The Christian view must propose rather than impose. [axiom}

Comments:  I get what Colsen is doing, and I think defending the faith is important.  However, as you can see in previous posts, introducing people to a system or converting them to a system or a set of propositions as our manner of apologetics or evangelism is not my preferred modus operandi and I don’t think it speaks to a postmodern culture.  He’s not wrong, by any means.  I just think the strong emphasis on this type of apologetics and propositional truth defense isn’t so helpful these days, but rather something that makes us feel pretty good because we’re defending the faith, which is important, but we aren’t necessarily reaching people through it.  He quoted a lot of people I love (Alvin Plantinga, GK Chesterton, Cornelius Van Til), but we take different approaches to these things.  I also am a huge fan of both cultural engagement, of Christians living as a peculiar people in the culture, and of people understanding a Christian world and life view, especially being able to articulate how the Lordship of Christ makes my life different because of the commitments I have.  However, I still think that spending the bulk of our time defending propositions and a system to our current culture creates a barrier of entry for those outside.  Our time should be spent introducing people to the Lord Jesus, allowing the Spirit to work in their hearts, and then helping them to understand what a commitment to Jesus and a transformed life requires.  I would say that we pretty much agree on foundational elements, but we probably disagree on where to place emphasis in our current postmodern culture.  To put is succinctly, I’m less interested in contending for propositions or even for Christianity than I am for Jesus Christ.

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 5, Craig Groeschel, lifechurch.tv, IT: How Leaders Get IT and Keep IT

Intro:  We’ve all been to churches that don’t have “it.”  They’re flat.  We’ve all been to churches that have “IT.”  It is that something special of God that is so real that lives are transformed by the very Spirit of God in a special way so that people meet Jesus Christ, and want to tell their friends about it.

Sometimes you can have the same things (same people, same form), and one group has “IT” and another doesn’t.  Example:  same forms of worship, same kinds of teachers, same types of ministries.  The same can be true of teams within a church or organization.  You can have IT, but lose IT.  So, what is “IT“?  Don’t know.

Theories about IT

• God makes it happen.  It is from him, by Him, and for his glory.
• We can’t created, produce it, or manufacture it.
• It is rare that one person will bring, but it’s common for the wrong person to kill it.
• It can’t be taught, but it can be caught.
• It’s not a system or a model but can be found in all types of churches.
• Whereever you see it, you see transformed lives.
• It attracts critics.  People misunderstand it.
• “It happens!”  But often, it doesn’t.
• If you have it, it doesn’t meant you’re going to keep it.
• If you don’t have it, it doesn’t mean you can’t find it.

Early church had IT.  (Acts 2:42-47)

• Try to kill them, it grows.
• Dude falls out window, you just raise him up from the dead.
• People sell their stuff so other people can eat.

4 Qualities when IT is present

• Organizations that have IT are laser focused.  Jim Collins:  “What can you be the very best at?“  To reach people that no one is reaching, you have to do things that no one is doing.  But in order to do things that no one is doing, you can’t do what everyone else is doing. [axiom]  “Planned abandonment.” Don’t do more.  Do better.  How do we stop entertaining people from other people’s ministries?  lifechurch.tv does only five things well: weekend services, small groups, children’s ministry, student ministries, missions.
• Organizations that have IT see opportunities where others see obstacles.  They see potential when others see problems.  They believe they have everything that they need to do everything that God wants you to do.  You have it.  (Again… a Collinsism modified).  God often guides by what he doesn’t provide. [axiom]  Meaning, he’s trying to show you something through your greatest limitations.  He may have another route you need to go.
• Organzations that have IT are willing to fail.  Failure is a necessity. [axiom]  Failure is often the first step into seeing God.  Example:  Peter failed, was restored, got it, and then preached and 3000 were saved. 
• Organizations that have It are lead by people who have it.  You have to have it for your ministry to get it.  You can have it, and then ministry can sometimes kill it.  When you have it in your heart, you tend to get it around you because it tends to draw people.  If you have it inside, you get it outside.  AFterwhile you begin to think that if you get the outside you’ll get what’s inside - you misunderstand it and lose the very things that are necessary to have IT.  “I had become a full time pastor and a part time follower of Christ.  I lost IT.”  Your ministry will not have it if you don’t have it.  If it’s become more about your ministry than about His Kingdom, you’ve lost it.”

4 Questions:

1. What are you doing that you need to stop doing?
2. What problems or obstacles might actually be potential and opportunity?
3. What has God called you to do that you’re afraid to attempt?
4. If you don’t have IT, what are you going to do to get IT?

Closing Prayer (Franciscan Prayer)

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.

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 4 Part 2, Efrem Smith, Sanctuary Covenant Church, Leading in New Cultural Realities

We live in a divided, multi-racial world.  All of us who are leaders must be willing to lead out in this increasingly multi-ethnic, multicultural world.

We must become loving leaders.

• In order to lead in this every increasing multicultural world, we must become a “beloved leader.”  MLK Jr. used the phrase, “The beloved community” to talk about a life lived across racial lines.  You can’t have a beloved community without beloved leaders.  We become a beloved leaders when we allow God’s love to come in us and flow through us to lead in a multicultural world. 
• “Justice comes when God comes back, but until then, it’s just us.” — a friend from Texas
• Who loves across race like God?

We must become abiding leaders.

• We need to abide in something greater than us.
• Some of us have not stepped out as multiethnic leaders because we don’t feel qualified.  That’s an excuse.  God’s in the business of recruiting unqualified leaders.
• This is no time for empire building.  This is a time to “dwell” or “abide” with the people.
• “Sometimes we have to stop dreaming about church buildings and start thinking about transformation.”

We must become confessing leaders.

• We have to confess where we’ve gotten it wrong.  We have to be willing to say, “My bad.”
• “When high pressure collides with low pressure, it creates a storm.  One of the reasons we have such storms in racial tension in our world is because the high pressure of what God wants to do is hitting the low pressure of what we’d rather do.”
• There is no place in the world anymore where you can segregate but in the church.

We must become perfecting leaders.

How? 

• We must do it organically in real communities.  Organic gatherings.  “If you can have a multi-ethnic potluck in Minnesota, you can certainly do it in Bangaldesh.”
• Youth development and empowerment.
• We have to deal with systemic issues.

We must engage a multicultural, multiethnic, multicultural world.  Almost nowhere in the world would anyone speak against that anymore.  What’s wrong with the church?  What if we actually did something about the system and the ethos that created the system of segregated churches and did something that was socially innovative and gave a little picture of heaven?

My battery is dead… so I have sign off.  Until tomorrow…

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 4 Part 1, John Burke, Gateway Community Church, Leading in New Cultural Realities

The right kind of soil matters.

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. –1 Corinthians 3:6-9

Spiritual leadership is all about creating the right soil, the right environment.

• Spiritual leadership/ church is messy.  Jesus’ ministry was messy.
• Does the soil you’re creating allow room for authentic questions and struggling?
• We have to be willing to get our hands dirty, cultivating the soil as necessary.
• Who should we be ministering to and reaching?  Messy people.
• If we are not seeing messy people around us who are becoming part of the church, then we are not leading like Jesus.

The Messy Leadership That Cultivates Environments

1. Cultivate the soil with grace-giving acceptance.  Come as you are.  God will accept you as is and walk with you to become more and more what he intended for you.  Most people don’t experience this kind of grace-giving acceptance from Christians.  [Note:  this reminds me of the book The UnChristian and many of the findings there.  See my posts on UnChristian.]  U2 - “Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.”  Too many churches are making it difficult for messy people to come to God.  (cf. Acts 15:10-11,19)  What are the barriers to grace in our context (our particular church/ perceptions, etc.) ie. hatred of gays, how we think about other religions.  How do we answer the culture’s questions well without creating barriers to grace?  In every culture, there are cultural barriers to grace.  What are they in yours?  And how do you do that without compromising truth?
2. Cultivate the soil with authentic confessing community.  Jesus couldn’t stand the game-playing, saving face of the Pharisees.  Phariseeism is pretending that we’re better than we really are.  When we really live in authenticity with one another, God shows up and something amazing happens.  And that is something the world is looking for.  “…calling out the masterpiece underneath the mud.”
3. Inspiring constant connection to God’s spirit.  [John 13-17]  This is one of the most difficult things for self-centered Christians to do.  Stay connected; fruit happens.  [axiom] Spiritual fruit is scandalously simple.

I’m impressed with John Burke because he’s connecting a couple of things together that I really like.  He’s authetic.  He’s leading an effective church reaching many who are far from God.  He’s connected to an emerging culture and meeting real people who are really in the real world.  He doesn’t back off from solid scriptural truths about spiritual transformation.  He’s seeing real fruit in the younger generations and doing creative ministry that is both meangingful and impactful. 

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 3 Part 2, Wendy Kopp, Teach for America

Wow.  Wendy was certainly inspiring.  Her conversation with Bill Hybels was wonderful to listen to, but difficult to capture in writing because it was an interview.  So, I’m not even going to try.  Here are just a couple of things:

13 million kids in America live below the poverty line.  Half of those never graduate high school.

“It’s easy to lead something you really believe in.”

Bill:   “You are anabashed about asking people to give up 2 years of their lives, and you see results.  Why are church people afraid to ask people to sacrifice?” [paraphrase]

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 3 Part 1, Bill George, Finding Your True North

George quoted the following wonderful poem called Our Greatest Fear by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.
—Marianne Williamson
[Often said to have been quoted in a speech by Nelson Mandela. The source is Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, Harper Collins, 1992. —Peter McLaughlin]

“Leadership is not money, fame, and power. Leadership is responsibility.” –Peter Drucker

• Give people the opportunity to stand up and lead.
• People are looking for meaning and significance in their work.

4 Characteristics of 20th century leaders

1. Align – people need to be aligned around the vision, not around you.

2. Empower – followership is really about helping others to unleash their power, not follow you

3. Serve – people are not here to serve leaders, but to serve others

4. Collaborators – there are so many large problems in the world today, we need to collaborate with others to bring together the best talent to solve really difficult problems.

Bill really talked alot about being true to who you are, who God has made you, how he has gifted you.  What does it mean to be true to yourself? 

Important things good leaders know:

1. The purpose of your leadership - “follow your compass, not your clock” (another leadership axiom)
2. Gain self-awarness - Why are we afraid to let someone know who we really are?  Get feedback. (from parishioners, from staff)  What are your blindspots?  See yourself as others see you.  Go into a period of self-inspection.
3. Be true to your values.
4. Follow your motivating capabilities - what are your strengths, passions, what fuels you?  What are the intrinsic motivations?  Are you allowing those to come out?
5. Build a support team around you - leadership is very lonely.  Have at least one person with whom you can share all things and be open and honest and get real feedback.
6. Lead an integrated life - Be the same person in every environment.

“Everyone I’ve seen fail as a leader has not failed to lead others, they’ve failed to lead themselves.”

“I learned a lot more working in a soup kitchen than I did working on the board of the United Way.”

When Bill was speaking, a number of times I was thinking about a book that my Children’s Ministries staff read together last year by Henry Cloud called Integrity: the courage to meet the demans of reality.  In that book, Cloud talks about what it’s like “on the other side of me.”  He encouraged his readers to ask friends, colleagues, and others who are in our lives (family, friends, co-workers) what it’s like to be on the other side of us.  How do people experience us?  That is some good feedback, so long as you’re ready to hear it and can accept honest feedback that might hurt. 

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 2, Gary Haugen, International Justice Mission, Just Courage: Charging the Darkness

I can’t remember when I first learned about Gary Haugen and the International Justice Mission.  I heard him at The Urbana Missions Conference back in 2000.  He was inspirational then, and has continued to be in my life.  Haugen wrote a book years ago now called The Good News about Injustice, which has been meaningful and foundation text in my life.  I haven’t seen the most recent version, but when I read it, it was foundational to God’s plan for dealing with justice in the world.  (see Gary’s talk below)  I had the privelege once to meet him in Ann Arbor at small talk he did to law students at the Law Quad at the University of Michigan sponsored by Intervarsity and James Paternoster, I think.

Leadership Matters

Leadership that matters to God deals with issues that matter to God.  So, we need to ask ourselves the question, “Are Jesus and I really interested in the same things?  What is God passionate about?”

Two fundamental, and unfamiliar passions of God

1. God’s passion for the world. (John 3:16)  The whole incarnation was motivated by God’s passion for the world.  What’s the hardest thing for our world to believe?  That God is good in the midst of all the pain.  What is God’s plan for making it believable?  We are the plan, and God doesn’t have another plan.
2. God’s passion for Jusice.  The Scripture is replete with passages about God’s desire for justice.  (cf. Psalm 11; Micah 6)  “What if justice is not my thing?”  Then God says, “You’re not my thing.”

But the work seems hopeless, scary and hard.  How do we lead in times when these are the circumstances?  Here is what IJM has learned in these times:

• What have we learned with the task seems hopeless?  By recentering the basis of our hope.  When we focus our eyes on what we do, it leads to dispair.  Hope is recovered when we remember who God is.  If God is passionate about it, he’s responsible for it, too.  Jesus asks when he feeds the 5000, “What do you have?” and then invites them to give it to him so that he can do the work through what they have.  Sometimes God is asking you to lead in a situation that seems hopeless and give Him what he have, and that the miracles are His job.
• What have we learned with the task seems scary?  Jesus didn’t come to make us safe, he came to make us brave.  If my life isn’t scary, I might check if it’s really Jesus I’m following.  Jesus is asking us to lead out of lives of triviality through his passion for justice in the world.  The church today is too often like spending your day in the visitors center, safe, but missing the vigor and life of the real mountain.  “I sense among many of my Christian friends that we’re on the journey with Jesus but we’re missing the adventure.”  God invites us to follow him beyond what we can control, and we will experience Him and His power, and His wisdom and His love.
• What have we learned with the task seems hard?  God wants to take our strengths on a more demanding climb in which we will actually need Him.  Effective Leadership comes from  four choices:

  +Choosing not to be safe - this will be evidence in our prayer life because our prayerlife will demonstrate that we are out of control and actually need God.  We don’t need God at the visitor’s center.

  +Choosing deep spiritual health - the more demanding climb requires a higher level of spiritual health.  We can’t do hard things without it.  Our devotional lives are boring in the safe, suburban suburb of the safe Christian life.  Our spiritual disciplines, on the demanding climb, have a desperate purpose.  Discipline turns into desperation.  Obedience turns into urgency.  If you want to ignite purpose and passion in the people you lead, lead them to a place that is unsafe in which they need to depend on God.  Real justice in the world is that place.  Nothing will get done unless we take an hour doing nothing but seeking God.

  +Choosing excellence - the church is generally not known for excellence today.  That wasn’t always the case.  In years past, the opposite was true.  As Christianity in the last century has moved into climate controlled cul-de-sacs, something has changed.  Rigourous of thought and excellence in execution matters, and in areas of justice it is often a matter of life or death.  Enough of the Christian adjusted scale of mediocrity.  It is bad for those we serve and for our own souls.

  +Choosing to see the joy - Dallas Willard:  “The first thing to disappear when spiritual health declines is laughter.” [paraphrase]  It is humorous that God deploys such flawed and humorous people as us for His plan and his appeal to the world.  That’s hilarious!!  Jesus came to bring us his joy, to make our joy complete, and to fill us up to overflowing with the joy of the Lord.

If you think about what Hybels said about axioms, here is Haugen’s leadership axiom: If you want your leadership to matter, lead in the things that matter to God.

This all reminds me of a CS Lewis quote that talks about our contentment to make mupdies on the yard in exchange for what we could have - a vacation at the sea.  We are near-sighted, and we exchange the glorious, beautiful, amazing things that God has for us.  So, here’s my own personal question:  why do I settle for comfortable, controlled-environment cul-de-sac Christianity instead of seeking the adventurous battle of hopeful, meaningful, and passionate journeying with Jesus as he ushers in his Kingdom of love, justice, and joy?

“Your courage asks me, ‘What am I afraid of?’
Your courage asks me, ‘What am I made of?’”

from Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008: Session 1, Bill Hybels, The High Drama of Decision Making

Bill Hybels kicked off the Summit again with a talk on leadership.  He shared a formula that many leaders make/ should make when they make difficult decisions.  Here are the steps - what Bill said are really nothing new.  These are steps that leaders go through as they think about a decision:

1. What would/ does the Bible say?
2. What would/ do good advisors say?
3. What does your experience tell you?  (the pains of poor decisions, the gains of good decisions)  He encouraged leaders to chronicle your decision-making process as well as the results of those decisions.
4. Is the Holy Spirit prompting me?  (Romans 8:6) Bill recommended a trial decision-making experience in which you “try on” the decision and see if it leads to more peace and life, or does it lead to fear and anxiety.

Lastly, in this “intro” Bill reminded us to take responsibility for our decision-making, particularly when we’ve made the wrong decisions.  Admit it.

Then, Bill moved into what he calls leadership Axioms.  (see his new book by the same name).  Axioms are really this leadership process formula (above), condensed into axioms or proverbs or “micro-waved wisdom.”  These are ways to make and guide decisions through key axioms that have become truism as we make future decisions.  The first example was from Abraham Lincoln:  “The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.”  A second was Bob Galvin, “Create motion for motion’s sake.”  He also mentioned Colin Powell (Bill interviewed him last year on his leadership principles).  Powell has about 2 dozen of these that guide his decision-making like “Check your ego at the door” and “promote a clash of ideas.”

Then Bill began to share a few of his own axioms (of which he has 76).  Before he did, he asked this question, which I think is poignant and helpful:  “Do you reflect enough on your own leadership to develop your own principles/ proverbs/ axioms on which to make decisions based on your values.” [paraphrase]

• Vision leaks.
• All I have to do is get the right people around the table and we’ll be fine.
• Facts are your friends.
• When something feels funky, engage.
• Take a flyer.  [means take a calculated risk, pony up,
• This is church.

Bill also took some time in the middle to talk about the Reveal study, and the major changes happening at Willow.  He shared openly and honestly about how difficult, and yet exciting these changes have been.  You can read more about it at the Out of Ur blog.

From Willow Creek Leadership Summit 2008:  Opening Worship

Isaiah 40:28-30
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

I thought I was going to blog about leadership stuff, but honestly, the opening worship was moving for me.  My family has been through a lot lately, and last night my wife and I talked on the phone about how we both feel at a limit.  I know we’re not, because many people handle more, and we could, too, but it doesn’t feel like it right now.  So, the second song of the conference was a song I love, I think by Chris Tomlin.  It’s from the Scripture above, and goes like this. 

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

Our God, You reign forever
Our hope, our Strong Deliverer
You are the everlasting God
You do not faint
You won’t grow weary

You’re the defender of the weak
You comfort those in need
You life us up on wings like eagles

I found myself unable to sing, with tears in my eyes, realizing that this is for me.  God spoke to comfort my heart this morning (notice that verse 1 of Isaiah 40 is “Comfort, comfort my people says your God”, that he will carry my wife and I and my kids, that he will lift us right now when we feel weak.  He will carry us on his wings.  I wish my wife had been with me when they led this song.

If you look back on my blog history, I really resurrected my blog and starting writing (somewhat) more consistently at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit last year, August 2007.  Not too long after that, I imported in a few old blog posts from previous blogs I had with random writings.  Anyway, since the blog was resurrected a year ago at this conference - and I’m back again - and going to try to blog the conference a little bit.  We’ll see what’s on the Summit Blog, and I might interact with that as well.  So, stay tuned for a few posts to come.