Every year Willow Creek community Church puts on their Global Leadership Summit an incredible leadership conference that is taped in Chicago and distributed to churches across the globe to inspire, encourage empower and link together leaders in the church, organisations and the community. Every year my church hosts it and as a church leader I get the privilege of attending,
Each year it is such a gift to my leadership, my personal journey with God and my ministry. To have the calibre of leaders and speakers that the GLS attracts available to me in Mackenzie, Brisbane is such a massive blessing.
This years faculty included Bill Hybels (ofcourse), Condoleezza Rice, Jim Collins, Craig Goeschel, Patrick Lencioni and John Ortberg, just to name a few.
I was inspired, motivated, challenged and encouraged and these are my 3 big take aways from this years summit.
1. We need to Honour the generation before us and invest in the up and coming generations
Craig Groeschel the senior pastor of Life Church in the states brought a powerful message on "the strongest link". He encouraged us to think about how we got to where we are and whose shoulders we are standing on. Who gave us a chance, who invested is us to see us get to where we are. As a young leader I asked myself whose shoulders am I standing on? Who has invested, empowered, encouraged and opened doors for me on my leadership journey and how can I honour them. Craig used an Andy Stanley quote that will stay with me for a long time - "Those who are honoured publicly will have influence privately".
He also talked to the older generation about how important it is that they invest in younger leaders, that in fact, the future of the church depends upon they're recognising the gifts and passions of the up and coming generations and not to be threatened by their keenness and powerful abilities. Investment in the next generation is how the church will have a future in a fast changing world.
2. Sow more Seeds
Bill Hybels spoke in his opening talk about the need to sow more seeds into our community. He told a personal story about a willow creek neighbour losing his cat on Church property and not realising that Willow Creek was a church. It really made me think about how arrogant I can be and the church can be about being a church. I think everybody knows who my church is, where my church is and the strength of it. What a ridiculous notion. As a world wide church we need to sow more seeds into our neighbouring communities, transforming lives outside the four walls of our church buildings.
3. The local church is the hope of the world.
We live in a society, a culture and a time where the church is being seen by the secular world more and more as an out of date, primitive attempt at community, judgemental, a prison of rules and dictations. This is not how God intended the church to be. When Jesus ascended into Heaven he said to 11 ordinary people "You are the Plan" you are the plan to bring hope into this broken world, to bring healing into this hurting world. We are the Plan to see God's Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. The church is a movement that has stood the test of time, culture, change, persecution and judgement. The local church is the hope of the world.
Well I could say a lot more about what I took away from this year's GLS. Once again it was a huge gift to me personally and I am ever so grateful to the work of those that made it available to Brisbane. My big 3 take aways I feel are important to begin 2013 with a real outlook on the church and my place in it. I'm so grateful for the wisdom of others bestowed upon me.
