All posts tagged Catalyst

Creating a Culture of Self-Awareness :: Craig Groeschel, Catalyst One Day

by Tim Schraeder on 11/17/2011 in Catalyst One Day with No comments
  • How many of you have a significant problem with self-deception?
  • Those who don’t know don’t know they don’t know.
  • You can go through you entire life only seeing from one perspective.
  • As leaders it’s difficult for us to get an objective view of our leadership.
  • The higher you rise in an organization, the more difficult it is to get objective truth about yourself.
  • The problems you don’t know about are the problems you can’t fix.
  • In the church world, there are problems we don’t know about that unchurched people recognize… whether its in our culture or environments.
  • You have a lot problems that need fixing but you don’t even know about them.
  • You have a lot of problems as a leader and you’ve got to make an effort to find out what you need to fix.
Three Principles of Self-Deception
1 – We as leaders have a limitless capacity for self-deception.
  • Example: King David and Bathsheba.
  • Healthy can mean the absence of problems.
  • When there are no problems at all, healthy can be a way of saying, “we aren’t doing anything right now.”
  • It’s not OK when people outside of our church doors are going to Hell.
2 – The longer we believe lies, the harder it is to hear truth.
  • Psalm 36:2 – For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.
  • There are a lot of us in Christian leadership that are so flattered with our ministry that we fail to recognize significant sin in our own lives.
  • Previous generations did us a disservice by telling us that we are good at everything.
  • When you are teachable, there is greatness in you.
3 – The leader’s lack of self-awareness is the leader’s greatest barrier.
  • It’s our greatest barrier to forward movement in the Kingdom.
  • The self-deceived leader can always find someone or something else to blame.
  • Don’t you ever say that people won’t… take ownership.
  • Own your own limitations.
  • If you delegate tasks, you create followers.
  • If you delegate authority, you create leaders.
  • If you just tell people what to do you won’t attract, build or release leaders.
  • Your self-deception is the barrier to what God wants to do in your church.
  • Know where you need God in every area of your life.
Uncovering the Truth About You
1 – Pray
  • Search me O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. – Psalm 139:23-24
  • We cannot overcome a challenge we cannot identify.
  • If there was something that was limiting your effectiveness, you would want to know about it.
  • PRAY.
2 – Listen
  • He who listens to life-giving rebuke will be at home among the wise. He who ignores discipline despises himself, but whoever heeds correction gains understanding.  - Proverbs 15:31-32
  • Listen to the Spirit of God and listen to people.
  • The more convinced you are that you are right about something, the more likely you are wrong.
  • Whatever you do, build a team that craves and gives helpful feedback.
  • Can you give and receive correction?
  • Implement annual 360 evaluations for every team member.
  • Everyone around you gets the opportunity to critique your leadership anonymously.
  • What has God been trying to show you? Write those things down.
3 – Change
  • Do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. – James 1:12
  • Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. – John 8:32
  • The problems you have in your organization aren’t someone else’s problems, they are your problems. It’s a leadership issue.
  • Some of you are too proud, deceiving yourselves, and ignoring your sin by ignoring your problems.
  • Are you having an affair with your phone?
  • Are you a workaholic?
  • Is your body in trouble?
  • Is your marriage or family suffering?
  • God wants you to do more than survive.
  • You can’t lead people to life and life more abundantly if you aren’t experiencing abundant life yourself.
  • Pornography is a big deal.
  • It’s time to get help.
  • It’s time to get honest.
  • It’s time to come clean.
  • Confess to God for forgiveness.
  • Confess to people for healing.
  • There is a world that needs Jesus.
  • So do you.
  • The more we rely on God for His forgiveness and power the more we can lead other people to experience it for themselves.

Andy Stanley, Round 2 :: Catalyst 2010

by Tim Schraeder on 10/08/2010 in Catalyst 10 with 1 Comment

Andy Stanley is a pastor, communicator, author, and founder of North Point Ministries, Inc. (NPM). Since its inception in 1995, North Point Ministries has grown to from one campus to three in the Atlanta area and has helped plant over twenty strategic partner churches throughout the U.S. Each Sunday, more than 20,000 adults attend worship services at one of NPM’s campuses: North Point Community Church, Browns Bridge Community Church, and Buckhead Church. Andy’s books include the newly released The Grace of God, as well as Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication, Making Vision Stick, Next Generation Leader: 5 Essentials for Those Who Will Shape the Future, The Principle of the Path: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, and How Good Is Good Enough? Andy lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, with his wife, Sandra and their three children.

  • The local church should be the best run organization in your city.
  • The people in the marketplace should be asking how we get such great people to do such extraordinary things with such extraordinary passion.
  • The organizational side of our church should be extraordinary.
  • All truth is God’s truth.
  • It takes us time to find chapter and verse, but it’s all God’s truth.
  • We all have opposable thumbs… it enables us to do things that no other thing in creation can do.
  • With our thumb and four fingers we can exert pressure to lift things.
  • What allows us to make progress is that we are able to exert the right amount of pressure for the right amount of time.
  • Pressure and tension happen every single day in our organizations.
  • Tension is a necessity for any organization that wants to make progress.
  • Unresolved tension is a part of any organization that is making progress.
  • Great leaders don’t solve all of the problems and don’t resolve all of the tensions… they learn to use the necessary tension of organizations life for the sake of progress.
  • If you try to solve all of the problems and all of the tension, you lose the ability to make progress.

Every organization has problems that shouldn’t be solved and tensions that shouldn’t be resolved.

  • There are many tensions and problems inside of our organizations.
    • The tension between excellence and careful stewardship.
    • The tension between research/development and sales.
    • Tension between management and leadership.
    • Tension between local and global outreach.
    • Leading people versus developing people.
  • We have a temptation to try to come up with a system or solution for our tensions.

If you resolve any of those tensions you will create new tension.

  • You create a harsher climate for getting things done.
  • If you try to solve tensions you end up wasting a lot of time and energy and impede progress.
  • If you cut off your thumb you feel the effects immediately.

If you resolve any of those tensions you put a barrier on progress.

Progress depends on the successful management of tensions.

To distinguish between problems to solve and tensions that need to be managed, ask these questions:

1 – Does this problem or tension keep resurfacing?

  • Do people keep asking the same questions?
  • Do the same issues keep coming up?

2 – Are there mature advocates on both sides?

3 – Are the two sides of the tension really interdependent?

  • Are they leveraging each other to be a tension in the first place?

The role of leadership is to leverage tension for the benefit of the organization.

  • Tension results in progress when leveraged properly.
  • Identify the key tensions to be managed in your organization.
  • Create terminology.
  • Inform your core.
  • Continually give value to both sides.
  • Our words, as leaders, weigh 1,000 pounds.
  • We must get into the habit of methodically speak value to both sides.
  • Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases.
  • Our goal should be to make sure the important progress-critical tensions never drop out of sight.
  • We can accidentally win the argument, trump opinions and cut off our thumbs.
  • Understand the upside of the opposite side; understand the downside of your side.
  • We have to make sure tension remains and learn to manage the tension.
  • Don’t allow strong personalities to win the day.
  • It’s not a win when somebody wins.
  • You need passionate people who will champion their side but you need mature people who understand this reality.
  • Don’t think in terms of balance; think rhythm.
  • Leadership is more art than science.
  • Don’t be a fair leader, just do the right thing.
  • As a leader one of the most valuable things you can do for your organization is to differentiate between tensions that need to be managed and problems that need to be solved.
  • Learn to leverage your tensions… they can be key to the growth and progress of your organization.

TD Jakes :: Catalyst 10

by Tim Schraeder on 10/08/2010 in Catalyst 10 with No comments

Bishop T. D. Jakes is founder and senior pastor of the legendary 30,000-member Dallas-based church, The Potter’s House. In a short number of years, his motivating messages have reached the world through best-selling books, award-winning music, critically acclaimed plays and record-breaking events. Named by Time magazine as “America’s Best Preacher,” Bishop Jakes’ message of healing and restoration is unparalleled, transcending cultural and denominational barriers within the church and beyond. His weekly television outreach, The Potter’s Touch, is a favorite throughout America, Africa, Australia, Europe and the Caribbean.

  • As a leader you want to lead people as God leads you.
  • As He takes you further you take them further.
  • Our country is changing, our world is changing.
  • As the world changes we have to change.
  • The business world is changing.
  • The understand you can’t cater to one people group, you have to cater to everybody.
  • Being a leader means keeping up with the trends.
  • Leadership is having the foresight to see where you are going.
  • God has given us the challenge of reaching the world.
  • God said, “Go into all the world…” but we act like He said, “Go into your community…”
  • Our responsibility is to speak to all people and share what we have in an incredible way.
  • We have the answer to the world; the solution to every problem… so why do we only share it with our community?
  • As you contemplate great leadership, you may have to be prepared to take the risk of getting out front.
  • If you get out front you’ll get shot at.
  • They’ll pick you out if you are out front, not if you are in the crowd.
  • We need to take the risk of being shot out because God has called us to be forward-thinking people.
  • We can’t hold our treasure to ourselves.
  • People who hang on the corner have a limited world view.
  • We have to learn to lead outside of our comfort zone.
  • Stay off the corner.
  • What God has for us is not in the separate nuances of our comfort zone surrounded by everything we understand.
  • What a tragedy to hide what we have!
  • We need to get out into the thrust of things where the grass is green and where the harvest is plentiful.
  • Our churches will become obsolete if we stick to our corners.
  • Jesus told us to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.
  • As leaders God is going to do a new thing in your life.
  • Our world has changed dramatically.
  • The death of civility is present everywhere.
  • It’s easy because we can hide behind a computer
  • Our job as Christian leaders is not to allow anything that happens around us to force us back into our corners.
  • If Ruth would have gone back to her corner she would have missed Boaz.
  • You can’t change the world from the corner.
  • God put His tabernacle, His glory, in the center of the tribe.
  • The Tabernacle of God in 2010 will not be hidden from people that need it, we are going to put it down in the center of the camp.
  • When people retreat because they can’t get jobs, etc… they retreat back into what’s safe.
  • People who play it safe are not leaders.
  • You can’t play it safe and be a leader.
  • You have to get out front.
  • You will be shot at.
  • The angels of the Lord encamp around those who fear them.
  • Greater is He that is in you than he who is after you.
  • We have a broad reach today but are we armed with the language that reaches the masses… or does our language alienate the world?
  • Does our language reach people or alienate them?
  • The disciples had the challenge of taking what happened on the cross and translate it to the culture of the world around them.
  • You can’t reach the world if you aren’t a multi-cultural person.
  • You have to take the risk of bringing people into your life who are not like you.
  • Leaders are forward thinking people that are stretched.
  • You can’t be stretched and but insulated privately.
  • Tension is good.
  • Run the risk of saying something stupid.
  • The only way to learn to not say something stupid is to say something stupid.
  • We need to know the language of the masses to reach the masses.
  • God can speak to anything or anyone.
  • Who can you speak to?
  • You can tell who you speak to by who you draw.
  • If you want to know who you draw, do the cell phone test… see who’s in it. If every name in your cell phone is pretty much like you, this is the year to break the rule.
  • Every culture has a language.
  • Businesses and organizations spend time and energy researching and learning to relate to different cultures.
  • Only the church doesn’t take the time to learn the language of the masses… we expect them to understand us.
  • If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always be where you’ve always been.
  • Fish grow to the size of the tank you put them in… why are so many of our churches like small aquariums?
  • God wants to release us into the ocean.
  • Until we are willing to be uncomfortable we can’t grow.
  • If people are always looking to you for answers, get out of the room.
  • Get out of your element.
  • God wants us to sail out into the deep… not drop us over a 10 gallon fish tank.
  • ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, GO!
  • GO needs to get so down in our spirit that we go to places we look at on TV that make us uneasy.
  • We need to GO not just to teach but to learn.
  • Every great speaker is a great listener; every great teacher is a great learner.
  • If you cannot hear in the Spirit it affects how you speak.
  • We need to listen and learn.
  • It’s growing time.
  • Our world is changing and Jesus knew it would change when he told us to go into it.
  • Go nervous. Go praying. Go scared. Go uncertain.
  • For God’s sake, just GO!
  • What you will find is that people are hungry to know you.
  • People are starving to be known.
  • People want to be understood and loved for we are sharing the same air… dealing with the same stresses, fighting the same battles.
  • God does not dwell in the corners… His House is in the center… all of the tongues, tribes, and nations gather around Him.
  • When they all get together we will see we were created in His image and His likeness.
  • No one people group represents the totality of who God is.
  • When we all gather together, we reflect who God is.
  • God does not allow sameness to procreate.
  • Fruit is born when differences come together.
  • Fight the fight of your differences.
  • The differences bring truth.
  • Diversity brings the blessing.
  • This is the time for us to be more fruitful than we have ever been before.
  • The only thing you must avoid is chicken.
  • The reason the Bible talks about eagles the most is because the have the propensity to soar above the storms.
  • Chickens can’t fly… everything they do is in one dimension.
  • As you begin to grow and come out of the corner you have one decision to make: will you be an eagle and soar above the storms or will you be on the ground trying to get high?
  • We need to spread our wings as far as they can reach to overcome the storms, hostility and lack of civility of our times.
  • Let it push us up, not down.
  • People need to irrigate our thinking with fresh perceptions of what is happening in the world around us.
  • They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength and rise up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint.
  • Stretch beyond comfort, familiarity, and the mundane.
  • You have to prepare the people around you for the changes you are about to make.

Randall Wallace :: Catalyst 10

by Tim Schraeder on 10/08/2010 in Catalyst 10 with No comments
  • Randall Wallace is the writer of Braveheart and producer of Pearl Harbor and We Were Soldiers. [IMDb]
  • One of the things he learned early on was the power of story.
  • We have to be committed to something.
  • He has been criticized for hanging out with Christians.
  • William Wallace learned to be a warrior first.
  • He paid in blood, tears and lost everything that was life to him, first.
  • Then he stood out on the battlefield and said, “Everyone else can I run and I won’t…” and that’s what kept people with him.
  • In The Secretariat, he opens the movie with a passage from Job and ends it with the song “O Happy Day.”
  • It’s the first movie he’s produced where the hero doesn’t die.
  • It’s a movie that has all of the qualities of his previous movies.
  • You will come out of the movie with a sense of joy and purpose.
  • When his last film opened he called his mother and said he was worried because he knew people would be critical of it.
  • His mother said, “if they crucified Jesus Christ, there will be some people who don’t like you.”
  • The Secretariat is about a woman who said, “”It would be great if you all liked me. But, I’m not here for you to like me. I’m here to be who I am.”
  • One of Hollywood’s greatest flaws is contempt for the audience.
  • We have to face our fear.
  • We can’t write a story we don’t believe ourselves.
  • We can’t be an inspirer to others unless it’s a story we believe.
  • It’s fashionable in our world to say you should believe in nothing, hope for nothing, believe there is no such thing as love… but this movie is an affirmation that courage matters, hope prevails and love wins.
  • The great thing about movies is that we don’t experience them alone, we experience them together.

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