Bill Hybels is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and the chairman of the board for Willow Creek Association. He convened The Global Leadership Summit in 1995, following a God-given prompting to help raise and develop the spiritual gift of leadership for the local church. Both visionary and passionate about seeing every local church reach its full God-given potential, he speaks around the world on strategic issues related to leadership, evangelism, and church growth. An exceptional communicator, he is a best-selling author of more than 20 books, including the upcoming release, The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God and Having the Guts to Respond.
- Leaders can oftentimes find themselves in a leadership slump.
- Leaders move people from here to there.
- Leaders must be able to move people from a current reality (here) to a preferred future (there).
- Some people are oftentimes going to be satisfied with “here.”
- People oftentimes like it “here”… they don’t like the idea of going “there.”
- There’s familiarity and safety “here.”
- What do you do when people say they are staying “here”?
- Crank up the heat and show them what life will look like over “there.”
- The first play is not to make “there” sound wonderful, but to make “here” sound awful.
- You have to convince people why staying “here” is a bad idea.
- Before Martin Luther King Jr gave his “I Have a Dream” speech he gave hundreds of speeches that could have been considered “We Can’t Stay Here” speeches.
- People were ready for the “there” speech because they had heard the “here” speech many times before.
- Your God-given job is not to preside over something, our job is to figure out what God wants to get done, what role you play in it and move something or someone from here to there.
- Our job is convince people that we cannot and will not stay here.
- Staying here breaks the heart of God.
- Your God-given job is not to preserve something from its gradual demise.
- By God’s grace, with His power and for His glory, we are moving people there.
Team Building
- It takes fantastic people to move a church or an organization from here to there.
- You can’t do it alone.
- One of the greatest joys of leadership is assembling and knitting together teams of fantastic people.
- Teams are the catalyst of moving people from here to there.
The 3 “C’s” of Team Building… with a new “C”
- When building teams we typically look for CHARACTER, COMPETENCY and CHEMISTRY.
- We need to add a new “C”: CULTURE.
- We need to ask what kind of person flourishes in our unique culture?
- We’ve started asking, “What do we value? What works for us and what doesn’t?”
- A fundamental goal of leadership is to attract, develop and retain a team of fantastic people that will flourish in your unique culture.
- We want to make a disproportionate investment in your talents and abilities.
- Telling people that they’re valuable to your organization is life-changing.
Challenge
- We have a holy challenge of assembling, developing and inspiring a team of fantastic people without whom we could never get from here to there.
- Do you see this as a leadership fundamental?
- Do you view the assembling of fantastic people a privilege?
- Have you defined your culture?
- Are there sensitive conversations you need to have?
Mile Markers and Celebrations
- How do you encourage people to stay on the journey?
- Where on the journey are people most vulnerable on the journey from “here” to “there”?
- The whole vision gets imperiled in the middle of the journey.
- It’s not the first three or four miles that are a challenge in running a marathon, or the last few [because the end is in sight], it’s the miles in-between that it’s difficult.
- Circumstances can hinder momentum.
- People forget how bad it was “here” and how wonderful it will be when they get “there.”
- Refill people’s vision buckets regularly.
- Vision leaks.
- Celebrate every mile-marker you possibly can on the way to the destination.
- Create mile-markersarbitrarily if you need to.
- What keeps people on the journey is some sense of hope that they are going to get there someday.
- Turn set-backs into celebrations.
- Any headway in the right direction is progress.
- There is a 40% differential between in the productivity of an inspired teammate, church member, office worker, etc … and one who is uninspired.
- Jesus monitored the inspiration level in His followers and breathe life into them when he saw that it was waning
- He knew that inspiration matters.
- When is the last time you threw a party to celebrate not just the destination, but the mile markers along the way of getting there?
Whispers from God
- You can never get from “here” to “there” in a straight line.
- You never amass fantastic people or make much progress on the journey without hearing from God en route.
- The primary way God speaks to us is through the Bible.
- Be a regular relentless reader of the word of God
- God speaks to us directly by His Spirit.
- John 10:17 … “my sheep will hear my voice…”
- We may never hear an audible voice but He puts thoughts in our minds that are not our thoughts.
- Follow those urges and those promptings.
- Do you believe that God still speaks today?
- We can’t live out a script that other people have for our lives.
- God’s whisper is enough.
- God tries to speak to us every single day.
- We need to lower the ambient noise in our lives to receive and hear what God is speaking to us.
- We will never have to do this alone… God with us all the time, everywhere.
- Will you do everything your power to hear God’s voice and heed it?
- We would see incredible changes in leadership all around the world if we’d be willing to listen to the whispers of God.
- The smartest moves we make in leadership don’t come from our own wisdom but from wisdom that is not our own.
- There’s no telling what God might do if you listen to God’s whispers and heed them.
Some Whispers You May Be Hearing
- Don’t Quit,
- Step Up
- Apologize
- Make the Tough Decision
- Get Help
- Stop Running from God,
- Slow Down
- Show your Heart
- Let others Lead
- Feed your Soul
- Bless the Team
- Make the Ask
- Do something more Impactful
- Come Clean
- Embody the Vision
- Celebrate the Victories
- Speak the Truth
- Pay the Price
- Count Your Blessings
- End the Secret
- Check your Motives
- Set the Pace
- Give God your Best
- Get Physically Fit
- Serve Your Spouse
- Pray
Whispers from God help us get from here to there the right way with the right motives.
