Leadership Summit session 1

on the job, on the side

big takeaway: not power-hungry, but impact-hungry

[added 13-August]

All in all, not a gripping conference. External circumstances for me perhaps blunted the impact of the speakers. Bill Hybels mentioned he was ill the night before, so not surprising, his talk was not up to the Hybels standard (even so, the Hybels standard is out of the park).

Jimmi Meeks (spelling?), the most famous person you’ve never heard of…talked about enemies of a growing church.

Andy Stanley – one of my favorite speakers – had great things to say about prioritizing your family above your work. And in this context, work is building the church (something Jesus promised that He would do, and has done!). In sum, cheat the church, not your family.

In all, a common thread of these speakers was to only present one side of a story/issue. That is, with Jimmi Meeks, he made the point that all are equal in God’s eyes (e.g., gravity affects Billy Graham the same way it affects Rick Warren the same way it affects you), therefore principles of church growth also apply equally to everybody. So there’s no reason why everyone cannot grow a big church. However, God clearly calls individual people to specific roles (e.g., Abraham, Moses, Jonah, John the Baptist, P(S)aul, Peter, etc.). Not everyone is called to grow a big church. To be sure, Meeks made some good points and made them powerful by only looking at one side of the issue. However, a truly powerful message makes the points and shows them to be true from every angle.

Other speakers were “process” speakers – Peg Neuhauser, Jitm Collins, and Patrick Lencioni (pronounced Lenchoni) who offered advice on such things as conflict resolution & management and mission clarification. None of these jumped out at me.

What I liked most about the conference was the talk time with fellow ministry laborers. And the bottled water tasted good, too.

Dave Stone @ August 10, 2006