Holiness Reeducation

Wow, what an amazing day at the Leadership Summit today. Today was hands down the best single lineup of presenters that I have experienced at the Summit. All of the sessions today really blended together well under a heading of leading in the new reality. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but the talks really lined up together. Here are some highlights.

Bill Hybels-

Bill, as usual, really had great things to say in this talk. The most interesting take aways were about how Willow has been expanding and reshaping their worship times to better create spiritual formation and reflections from Bill’s own life on maintaining his ministry effectiveness. Hybels talked about how he has had to come up with a planned negligence strategy. He can’t do all things, or be part of all ministries, or be in all the relationships he wants to. He talked about the process of finding those things that fill us up with peace and love and those things that drain us of our energy for those things. Very insightful.

Gary Hamel -

Gary was a total surprise and the best speaker of the day. I could have listened to him for three hours. The man had complete mastery of his subject matter, numerous self standing nuggets that blew me away, and great insight into the changing culture landscape for ministry. Best quote, “Success is a self correcting phenomenon.” Loved it.

He made a case for the fruits of the Spirit being the best apologetics possible for our faith, instead of trying to come up with and rely on well thought out arguments. Bullseye.

Another great nugget. “The future has already happened it just isn’t equally distributed yet.” Look around at what others are doing, you may just be missing it.

Everything he said was on point. I need to buy the DVD just to listen to him again and again about three or four more times.

Tim Keller -

I had already read Prodigal God by Tim and it is wonderful. His style is so well suited to his context in Manhattan. He is so steady and under spoken that you don’t even realize that he is reaming you for your Pharisaical ways. If you haven’t read Prodigal God pick it up.

Jessica Jackley-

Jessica, the co-founder of Kiva, is unbelievably likable, bright, and engaging. I was blown away as she talked about their dreams of using such a simple idea, Microfinancing, to change the lives of so many. They have already raised over 84 million dollars in 5 years to help those in extreme poverty find a better life. She was awesome.

Harvey Carey -

Harvey is the pastor of an incredible church in the poorest zip code in America in Detroit. He is a ball of fire and really challenged the audience to actually do something. As he said, “Stop showing up to conferences just to add another binder to the shelf. Some of you have been to umpteen Leadership Summits and the only thing you have done about it is register for next year’s Summit.” On the practical side, his personal examples of equipping the saints of his church to embody the gospel and do the ministry of the church were very inspiring. A church of 800 with only one full time staff member?!?! That is awesome. He was a great wrap up for the day.

Tomorrow of course has Bono! So check back for more posts.