All posts tagged Bill Hybels

Craig Groeschel Interviewing Bill Hybels :: Catalyst One Day

by Tim Schraeder on 11/17/2011 in Catalyst One Day with No comments

What would you say to a new leader?

  • Do you really know what it is that you are setting out to build?
  • Is it build out theologically?
  • Is it robust enough to match the New Testament vision of what a church should be?
How would you define what you are trying to build?
  • Who are  you trying to reach?
  • Once someone is reached, what are your intentions with them?
  • The “who we are trying to reach question” has evolved in my mind over the decades.
  • We used to say late 20, early 30s non-churched people.
  • The assumption was middle class, white, college educated… someone like ourselves.
  • Over the decades that has changed.
  • Now they think about the “theology of the footprint.”
  • God planed us in a community, so we acknowledge there is a footprint around us.
  • Willow Creek defines that as a 30 minute footprint… everyone in their 30 minute footprint.
  • They believe they have the responsibility to communicate the Gospel to everyone within a 30 minute footprint.
  • They also try to define what needs they are called to meet.
  • When it comes to the demographics, we don’t want want to neglect anybody because they are different.
  • We don’t write-off certain people groups or people who are different than them.
In 36 years of ministry, Willow Creek has maintained high integrity and been without scandal or accusations. What should we know? What was behind that?
  • “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it…”
  • I have not been temptation free.
  • I have made many mistakes in my ministry.
  • I’ve made decision that have hurt people.
  • I haven’t gotten it all right.
  • We have had a culture of accountability around Willow.
  • When organizations grow larger, accountability seems to wane.
  • Willow has maintained the opposite.
  • As they were taken from a local to a global ministry, they have felt they have something more to protect.
  • They pay more attention to governance, not less.
  • Bill has 81 executive limitations.
How do you develop accountability?
  • In a conventional Elder situation, you will get to moments where there’s a need for a judgment call where it’s not clear if it’s an Elder decision or a leadership decision.
  • Through policy governance, we try to make it blindingly clear who’s responsible for making key decisions.
In the past you’ve said, “the  way I was doing the work of God was destroying the work of God in me.” What advice would you give or what have you learned?
  • Are we merely trying to survive something?
  • Do you want to be someone who is breathless and exhausted most of the time?
  • Or do you want to be someone who takes discipleship holistically…a body, marriage, life, children, finances, friendships, etc that all honor God.
  • Who’s job is it for you to thrive before God?
  • It is YOUR job.
  • If you are exhausted and cranky most of the time, it’s your job to fix it.
  • If you are consistently irritable, over-eating or over-spending… if there are patterns repeated in your life, someone needs to take responsibility.
  • Something is driving something. You’ve got to look under the hood.
  • Christian counseling can help immensely.
  • Ministers need counselors.
  • There’s a reason why you are the way that you are.
  • The Discipline of Replenishment – what is your strategy for replenishment.
  • You need a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly strategy for replenishment.
  • How do you stay replenished most of the time.
  • When you are finally at the place of total depletion that’s when you freshly realize it’s your job to fix it.
  • Put your replenishment strategy together when you are quasi-normal.
What are you most excited about in the next generation? What are you concerned about?
  • It’s innate in them to be missional.
  • We used to have to do whole series to get an average Christian to think about the poor or to become active in some way to overcome some injustice.
  • It used to be hard work to convert people to a conscious of combating injustice.
  • They’ve got mission all over them.
  • They feel it… it’s in them.
  • I celebrate that more than you know.
  • That’s a huge change from the day I was first starting out.
  • What I get a little concerned about is the theology of a lot of young pastors.
  • There’s such odd varieties of theologies out there these days… everyone that has a blog can have one.
  • There’s a piecemeal, call-it-what-you-will, name-it-what-you-want theology that is not coherent and is not consistent with the New Testament.
  • There is a need for theological rigor, inspection and reflection.
  • What’s your message?
  • What 5 words get to the core of the Christian message you are trying to communicate?
    • Love – God is recklessly in love with us.
    • Evil – there is evil loose in the world and inside of all of us.
    • Remedy – CHRIST!
    • Choice – we have a choice to make.
    • Restoration
  • I have no use for the cheap theology that says we are here just to save people.
  • We are restored and are called to join God in His work of restoring the world
  • I’m concerned about the level of clarity that young leaders have with their message.
  • We need to get words on the table to decide what language we are going to use.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit :: Mama Maggie Gorban, Wess Stafford and Bill Hybels

by Tim Schraeder on 08/12/2011 in Global Leadership Summit 2011 with 6 Comments

Mama Maggie Gobran led a comfortable life in Cairo. A Coptic Christian from a prominent Egyptian family, she taught computer science and lectured at Cairo University. But following a conviction from God, she started a ministry to serve the poor in her city. A Nobel Peace Prize nominee this year, Mama Maggie has spent 20 years serving the poorest of the poor.

Bill Hybels

  • It’s easy to romanticize leadership.
  • We love to talk about the feel-good success stories: Apple, Microsoft, etc.
  • We love rags to riches leadership stories.
  • We need to be careful that we don’t get trapped into the idea that more success in leadership means more money, influence, etc.
  • What if God was calling us to important work that was going to unlikely be a success?
  • What if God was calling us to lead an organization that would require drastic self-sacrifice and no guarantee of success?
  • Would you sign up for that?
  • If we aren’t careful we can become addicted to the narcotic of success and growth.
  • Beneath the veneer of all of us, most of want to step into leadership that brings success, influence, growth, etc.
  • We love being leaders because we get to lead things that are successful and glamorous.
  • We can get hooked on the narcotic of success and growth.

Wes Stafford, Compassion International

  • This world is not our home, it’s just a campsite.
  • We follow a different drummer.
  • We belong to a different Kingdom.
  • Our world is upside-down.
  • Leaders serve, the greatest are the least, etc.
  • It’s possible for a follower of Christ and not pray all day long in the USA.
  • Christians in Ethiopia risk their lives to meet together.
  • It’s worth the risk because they need each other.
  • During their oppression, the church had grown 5x.
  • Churches are the channel into the Middle East today.
  • Revelation 7: all nations, tribes, and tongues.
  • May God grant that we are worthy to stand beside them.

Mama Maggie Gorban

  • Mama Maggie’s Ministry in Egypt is named Stephen’s Children after the first martyr of the church.
  • Stephen’s Children employs 1,400 staff serving 7,000 families providing holistic care for children in Egypt’s garbage dumps.
  • Mama Maggie is referred to as the “Mother Theresa” of Egypt and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.
  • Mama Maggie attributes all of her success to God.
  • We don’t choose where to be born but we choose to be sinners or saints.
  • We choose whether to be a nobody or a hero.
  • If you want to be a hero do what God wants you to do.
  • 25 years ago I heard my “tough call.”
  • When God wanted to promote me, He sent me to the poorest of the poor.
  • Everyone who carries the fragrance of eternity has to experience the dark valley of death.
  • To be elegant comes from the inside.
  • True love is to give and forgive.
  • To give until it hurts.
  • Forgiveness is not between you and another, forgiveness is between you and God.
  • God holds our accounts.
  • People laugh when they hurt.
  • We are forgiven much but live so little.
  • With God’s grace I left everything and found Him waiting for me with a crown of love.
  • When you die to yourself you discover the beauty and power in yourself.
  • Who are the poorest of the poor? The children.
  • Children are hungry and starving… for love and affection.
  • They are naked… lacking dignity
  • When one has nothing God becomes everything
  • When I touch a poor child, I touch Jesus Christ.
  • When I listen to a poor child, I’m listening to God’s heart beating for all humanity.
  • We build a church in the heart of every child we reach in a country where it’s not always possible to build a church.
  • Silence is the secret
  • To be in silence is to be fully inside your own self.
  • It’s not easy, but there you discover the taste of eternity.
  • The Kingdom is within you.
  • The silence is the secret – the first step – to finding treasure.
  • There are secrets in silence.
  • Silence your body to listen.
  • Silence your tongue to listen to your thoughts.
  • Silence your thoughts to listen to your heart beating.
  • Silence your heart to listen to your spirit.
  • Silence your spirit to listen to His Spirit.
  • In silence you leave many and be with the One.
  • If God has chosen me, believe me when I say I’m the least of any of you here.

Bill Hybels

  • Jeremiah received a tough calling from God: to speak God’s word to God’s people.
  • The words God wanted Jeremiah to speak were words of warning to shake them up and wake them up.
  • Nothing goes well. No one likes what he has to say.
  • God tells him to keep speaking so he does.
  • He gets beaten and put on display for shame.
  • In Jeremiah 20, he tells God how he feels.
  • “You sweet talked me… and I bought it. This isn’t what I had in mind.”
  • He was torn between being faithful to his calling and his ache for success.
  • Give up the ache to be successful in the eyes of the world and go with what God is calling you to do.
  • Jeremiah wrote his lament down… it’s in our Bible.
  • At the end of his lament he had clarity: throughout all of it, God’s mercies were new to him every morning.
  • “I have had very little hardship carrying out what God has called me to do.”
  • If you watch one episode of the evening news, you know our world is broken and it’s getting worse.
  • The fixes that are going to be required for the ills of our society are not going to be easy assignments.
  • They won’t be short-term assignments.
  • God is looking for some strong-shouldered leaders who are available to take on tough callings.
  • “I stand in awe of leader who receive tough assignments.”
  • Do you have the courage to listen?
  • What is your tough calling?
  • This world won’t get fixed unless leaders like us are available for tough assignments.

Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit :: Bill Hybels

by Tim Schraeder on 08/11/2011 in Global Leadership Summit 2011 with 2 Comments

Relentless learner. Driven to action. Deep, personal sacrifice. These characteristics have propelled Bill Hybels through 35 years of ever-shifting challenges as senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church and Chairman of the Board at Willow Creek Association. The author of more than two dozen books including current bestseller The Power of a Whisper, Hybels trains Christian leaders world-wide—and consistently pushes himself to get better as a leader, every year. Single-minded in his passion for the local church, he issues hard-hitting truths that challenge people to take their organizations to the next level. Hybels’ successes—and mistakes—bring high-definition clarity to the things truly worthy of your leadership time and investment.

Bill Hybels Website
Willow Creek Community Church
Bill Hybels Twitter
Bill Hybels Facebook Page
Willow Creek Community Church Blog
Fast Company How Willow Creek Is Leading Evangelicals by Learning from the Business World

5 Critical Questions

1- What is your current leadership challenge level at work?

  • Dangerously Over-Challenged – the to-do list gets longer.
  • Appropriately Challenged – the to-do list is hard but manageable.
  • Under-Challenged  - the to-do list is easy.
  • Where do you think you do your absolute best work as a leader?
  • Where and when are you at your best?
  • Where do you find your innovative thoughts.
  • You do your best work just above the level of being appropriately challenged.
  • For senior leadership in organizations: if you are under-challenged, step it up.
  • Add something into your equation.
  • Demand more of yourself. Take on a new challenge. Start something new.
  • If you don’t challenge yourself, your leadership potential will atrophy.
  • If you are dangerously over-challenged, you’re in trouble.
  • You will breakdown in body, mind and spirit.
  • You will never do your best work when you’re dangerously over-challenged.
  • You set a bad example and are not your best if you stay at that level.
  • There’s a discipline of replenishment.
  • Leaders have to take responsibility for filling their replenishment bucket.
  • You need to do whatever you can do to fill your replenishment bucket.
  • If you stay dangerously over-challenged, your replenishment bucket has holes in the bottom.
  • Get out of the dangerously over-challenged level sooner or later.
  • There will be seasons that you have you have to operate at that level, but get out of them as soon as possible.
  • When you’re stressed, your performance will go up.
  • If you are stressed over time, your performance flattens.
  • When you crash you will really, really crash.
  • If you are under-challenged, you won’t bring your best game.
  • God made us to bring our best game.
  • Under-challenged people leave organizations.
  • Over-challenged people will burn out.
  • Find ways to engage your best people.
  • It’s quite possible to under-challenge an organization.

2 – What is your plan for dealing with challenging people in your organization?

  • The Line Exercise: Line up your people in terms of their value. Who is “over the line” and who is “under the line”? Who would you keep and who would go?
  • The line exercise forces to prioritize & ask good questions. Are people under challenged, on wrong tasks, or is a hard talk needed?
  • Willow’s future is tied to the quality of people they are able to attract and develop.
  • Field and develop a group of fantastic people to build a fantastic future for our fantastic God.
  • The key to our future is unquestionably tied to our ability to attract and retain fantastic people.
  • Our future is also tied to dealing with people who are no longer fantastic.
  • How do you handle people with bad attitudes?
  • Leaders have to have a point-of-view when it comes to team members who have a bad attitude.
  • Begin the conversation about bad attitudes when you see a pattern of it beginning.
  • Ask them what’s up… ask if there is anything you should know… ask about home life…
  • You have to build an infections, optimistic culture in your team. There’s no space for bad attitudes.
  • People with a bad attitude at Willow get 30 days to correct it.
  • How do you handle under-performers?
  • If they are under-delivering they aren’t worth their hire.
  • Under-performers need attention as soon as the pattern is identified.
  • This needs to be resolved in 3 months.
  • More time is allowed because the reasons for a sudden dip in performance are complicated and multi-dimensional.
  • Regardless of the circumstances, performance improvement plans are put in place to resolve the issue in 3 months.
  • How do you handle situations where someone with greater capacity is needed to fill a role?
  • Do people have the talent-elacsticity to stay in the game?
  • Conventional thinking says stealing and moral failures are the hardest issues for churches to deal with… they aren’t.
  • Move at a slower pace in this situation… at least 6 months.
  • Try to re-deploy them in another role.
  • If that’s no possible, break your back and your piggy bank to honor them and the role they’ve filled.
  • If you don’t deal with challenging people in your organization, you discourage and de-motivate your best people.
  • Fantastic staff do not want to be dragged down by whiners and under-performers.
  • Fantastic people feed off the energy, attitudes and positive results from other fantastic people.
  • Challenging people are not happy people deep-down.
  • When you have those hard conversations, most people will eventually come back and thank you for doing the hard, but right thing.
  • Best Christian Workplace is a great resource.

3 – Are you naming, facing, and resolving the problems that exist in your church or organization?

  • By not naming your problems you will never address or resolve them.
  • Why can’t you call problems problems and turn over heaven and earth to solve them?
  • Where is the leader?
  • In Acts 2-4, the first church a problem arose.
  • There were inequities in the food distribution program.
  • The early church was at risk.
  • In Acts 6, the leaders in the church called a time-out.
  • They called it a problem.
  • They sprung to action, built a team around it, and solve the problem.
  • In Acts 6:7, “and after that, the church grew rapidly and even the most unlikely came to faith…”
  • We, as church leaders, come from a legacy of church leaders who called problems problems and courageously tried to solve them.
  • We must do the same.
  • All of our ideas and initiatives have a life cycle.
  • The Life Cycle Exercise: Accelerating, Booming, Decelerating, Taking.
  • Nothing rocks forever.
  • Ideas get tired.
  • Willow mobilized a team to reimagine how they approach their problems and id
  • Part of your job as a a leader is to look problems straight in the eye and call them what they are.
  • Don’t be intimidated by them, no matter how big they are.
  • Inject your organization with the self-esteem to know problems can be solvable.

4 – When was the last time you re-examined the core of what your organization is all about?

  • Best leaders sit down with their best people periodically and ask, “What business are we in? What’s our main thing? Can we explain what we do on a t-shirt? Are we clear about our core?”
  • Bill wrestled with the core about what
  • It’s easy for churches to lose the plot about what’s most central to their mission.
  • The Church is in the life-transformation business.
  • Church leaders learn early on that there is only one power on this planet explosive enough to catalyze human transformation: the power of the Gospel.
  • It’s easy for us to get fuzzy on the basics.
  • Get back to your core in 5 words.
  • What 5 words describe the product/service you bring?
  • What 5 words best describe the Good News of Jesus Christ?
    • Love
    • Evil
    • Rescue
    • Choice
    • Restoration
  • When you understand your core you get prouder of your message and more confident of your declaration of it.
  • There’s no end to what God can do when you are clear about your core.

5 – Have you had your leadership bell rung recently?

  • Has a book, talk, experience with God, circumstance or crisis rocked your leadership world recently?
  • Leaders rarely learn anything new without having their world rocked and their bell rung.
  • Don’t make excuses. Creating new, bold solutions.
  • Your God-given job as a leader isn’t to preside, pontificate, or preserve… your job is to move an organization from “here” to “there.”
  • You have to believe God is willing to help you move things forward.
  • There’s too much at stake for leaders to walk around with a defeated attitude or outlook.
  • Don’t end with a whimper.
  • How you finish is how you’ll be remembered.

My Thoughts…

  • Sometimes we need to stop talking and listen to what God’s voice is speaking to us.
  • Sometimes we need to be still and let God lead us.
  • What we do matters and it matters enough to ask hard questions… of ourselves, our team, and of the core of what we are doing.
  • Which of these questions do you need to answer immediately?

Ascending the Summit

by Tim Schraeder on 08/10/2011 in Personal with 4 Comments

This time tomorrow Willow Creek’s Global Leadership Summit will be happening in full force and I’ll be there on the ground along with a great team of bloggers and tweeters to share the content with you. Follow the madness here, on Facebook, on the WCA blog, on Twitter, or with the hashtag #wcagls. Also,be sure to check out The Summit Backstage for some exclusive content and conversations.

Aside from blogging like crazy, I’m personally really looking forward to the Global Leadership Summit this year. Every year I’ve attended I’ve been challenged, stretched, and encouraged by the content shared at the Summit. The lineup of speakers this year is dynamic and I can’t wait to hear what they have to share. I’m going with an open heart and praying for God to prepare my own heart for what He has in store.

I think “Summit” is an appropriate name for this event. If you look through the Bible, God did some significant things on mountain tops. He revealed Himself and transformed people on the summit. It’s a sacred meeting place.

The journey uphill, the ascension, is filled different obstacles, barriers and challenges. I’m sure many people attending the Global Leadership Summit this year are coming on the heels of a difficult journey or in the midst of trials or challenges. I’m trusting that there’s something significant in store for all of us at Summit. The journey will be worth it.

Join with me in praying for all of the speakers and team at the Willow Creek Association, and for the hearts of all of those who are attending the event. This is a catalytic moment in history and an enormous gathering of church leaders… who knows what God has in store and what could happen as a result of these next few days? What impact could happen around the globe with church leaders who are ignited with passion for God and for the local church? What is God going to do at the Summit?

I have no idea what’s ahead … but I’m excited to go on the journey and see what God will do.

Psalm 24

The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.

Who may ascend the hill of the LORD?
Who may stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.
He will receive blessing from the LORD
and vindication from God his Savior.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek your face, O God of Jacob. Selah

Lift up your heads, O you gates;
be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD strong and mighty,
the LORD mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O you gates;
lift them up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is he, this King of glory?
The LORD Almighty—
he is the King of glory.       Selah

What about you? Are you headed to the Global Leadership Summit? What are you looking forward to most?

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