Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Follow the GLS

We invite you to Follow the GLS on the Willow Creek Association blog: http://www.wcablog.com/category/follow-the-gls

You will find great stories, videos and pictures just in from GLS sites around the world. 

Please pray…cheer…be inspired!  As you read the stories, please spread the word with your friends by sharing on facebook, email & twitter. 

We would be honored to have you add comments to encourage our partners around the world.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Show the World How You See the Summit

 
Summit 2011 Concept
Since 1995, we’ve heard stories and seen creative artwork that depicts your experience with The Global Leadership Summit. So as we celebrate another great season, we’re intentionally inviting you to submit your creativity through our first international t-shirt design contest.

Based on a recommendation from Summit faculty alum, Blake Mycoskie, founder of Toms Shoes, we are hosting a crowd-sourcing design contest with 99designs, Tuesday October 18th – Friday, October 28th

Use your creativity—visuals or words—to help depict what the Summit has meant to you. What image comes to mind when you think of this worldwide movement? Is there one visual or a collage of photos? Is there a word or a phrase that best describes your experience? If you’re not a designer, please comment below and share your story to aid the brainstorming process. 

Then step up to get involved with the design of the 2012 Summit international t-shirt concept:
1. Share. Please help us connect with artists and creative-types by emailing, tweeting, facebooking, and blogging about this opportunity.

2. Design. This is your chance to show the world how you see and experience TGLS. Submit your t-shirt design at 99designs.com. You’ll need to create an account and then search The Global Leadership Summit for contest specifics. To sweeten the deal, prize money will be awarded, including complimentary tickets for 4 to the Summit 2012.

3. Vote. Check back at 99designs each day for updates and to help choose your favorite t-shirt design. Who knows how we might be giving away t-shirts in the coming months?! 

Here are a few of the words that our Summit team lives by (if it helps inspire you!), and be sure to check our Facebook page for stories from leaders around the world:
The Global leadership Summit exists to transform Christian Leaders around the world with an injection of vision, skill development, and inspiration for the sake of the local church.

The Global Leadership Summit has become a unique two-day leadership development event that is unashamedly Christ-centered, intellectually challenging, and results-oriented, with a diverse faculty line-up that will create disequilibrium for the sake of transformation in the Church.

In 2011 over 160,000 people will share this experience in over 400 cities around the world. 

Lead Where You Are has become our rally cry to inspire leaders in all sectors to serve others for the sake of the local church.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for helping us spread the word! 

The winning design will be announced on Tuesday, November 1

Beth Dahlenburg (@Bethd5)
Executive Director of Marketing

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

4 Leadership Best Practices for Pastors


I receive several sailing magazines each month pertaining to sailboat racing. Sailing has been a recreational passion of mine for a long time. Recently I read an issue that had six articles on how to how to win races. I counted up all of the recommendations from each article about how to win sailboat races. There were 35 recommendations. Unfortunately, a list that long doesn’t help me because it’s just too overwhelming. I would like someone to say, here are four recommendations that are super important and if you do these, you’ll vastly improve.

Sometimes the same kind of thought process happens to me when I think about leadership. When I read Michael Feiner’s book on the 50 facets of leadership I thought, “50, wow—that’s a little intimidating”. John Maxwell did the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership and sold millions of copies. Thank God he whittled the list from 50 down to 21. Jack Welch wrote Winning, and he boils the list of 21 down to eight basics. But that had to be hard just boiling it down to eight. 

And so, in a bold moment, I’m going to share four leadership points that are on my ‘must do’ list for church leaders. As I interact with pastors around the world, I often am asked questions about the facets of leadership. If I had to say—above all things—do these four recommendations when you get back to your church, I think the points below make the highest impact.

 1. Keep the vision clear. Proverbs 29:18 says—without a vision the people perish. Great leaders attend to every single detail with regard to a vision talk. When a vision lands in the hearts of people in the church, people start soaring in their spirits because there’s a vision in the church worth investing in, praying for, giving toward.

2. Get people engaged. Nehemiah 4:6 says—and all the people worked with all their hearts. Imagine that for a moment, every single person you’re leading working with all his or her heart. What we have to understand here is the difference between someone who passively agrees to an exciting vision and someone who buys in and has an owning stake in that vision.

3. Make your gatherings memorable. Another way of saying it, create great church services. Work so hard to make your gatherings memorable that your people wouldn’t think of missing them. Acts 2:43 says—everyone kept feeling a sense of awe. Awe as in holy transcendent moments where the awareness of the presence of God is palpable. 

4. Pace yourself for the long haul. The key verse here is 1 Corinthians 9:25—Run in such a way as to win the prize. I’d like to finish the race with a family that loves to be together, and with friends that I can belly laugh with, and still stand in front of Jesus who finished His race (and had the toughest assignment of all).

Leaders, we need you. The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leaders. We can’t lose a single one of you from your race. So I plead with you, pace yourself for the long haul. I pray that through our leadership and the leadership of others the church will reach her full potential in this world.

Bill Hybels (@BillHybels)
Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church
Chairman of the Board, Willow Creek Association

Monday, October 3, 2011

Tough Callings

When the question is asked of Christians about treasured verses of Scripture, there are some that come up on a frequent basis.  Jeremiah 29:11 is one of these; “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I wonder sometimes when people quote this verse whether they just grab hold of the sentiment, or whether they truly understand it through the life of Jeremiah the prophet.

At the Global Leadership Summit this year, Bill Hybels spoke about Jeremiah’s tough calling.  For those who are called to leadership, there is probably a desire that lurks under the surface that people will recognize the good job that we do and affirm us and occasionally applaud us, or even reward us for the success that is being achieved.  But this wasn’t Jeremiah’s story. 

Jeremiah came from a land owning family and his early life was probably one of favour and ease.  But that all changed when God called him as his prophet to reveal the sins of the people and explain the reason for the impending disaster that was to by destruction by the Babylonian army, followed by captivity.  His was a tough calling.  God said to him, “Attack you they will, overcome you they can’t.”  He was attacked by his own brothers, beaten and put into the stocks by a priest and false prophet, imprisoned by the king, threatened with death and thrown in a cistern by Judah’s officials.  This isn’t a role description too many of us would put our hands up for.

If we read on in Jeremiah 29, just two verses later, God says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”  The challenge for us as leaders, as it was for Jeremiah, is to look beyond our circumstances, to the promises that God has given us.  The promise that he gave Jeremiah was not one of material gain, or fame or even personal security.  The promise to Jeremiah, and the promise to us, is that we will find God.  Our reward is not something, but someone.

So can I encourage those who are either experiencing a tough calling, or sense God’s leading into a tough ministry, that his promise to Jeremiah is a promise for us as well – we will find God there.

If you will miss out on attending the GLS this year, then you can still be inspired and challenged through the Team Edition DVD.  It will be available for purchase at Willow Creek from early November.

Andrew McCafferty
CEO