Making Things New

As we head towards the Christmas season we once again reflect on the significance of God the Father sending his son, our saviour Jesus, into his created world to redeem those whom he created.  This morning I was reading that classic chapter in Romans 8 where Paul expresses that we are made free and alive in Christ through the sacrifice of Jesus.  He came to make us new.  We pray at Willow that through this Christmas season you will experience what it means to be a new creation, saved by the love, grace and mercy of our God.

I also want to share about some new things happenings at Willow.  After some great years sharing space at Gateway Baptist Church, they are looking to expand their ministry and we are moving on to a new location.  We are in the final stages of making these arrangements and will share with you details of our new location and new contact phone numbers in the near future.  You may also experience some new people when you do contact us.  After 6 years of service two of the longest serving members of the Willow team will not be with us from 2013.  A few months ago Chris, our Resource and Membership Manager finished up with Willow and at the end of this year Megan, our Marketing and Communications Manager will be transitioning into a new career as a secondary school teacher.  I want to acknowledge the contribution of Chris and Megan and wish them God’s blessings in their respective futures.  I want to welcome Brad Suosaari, a former colleague of mine from SU Qld, as a new member to the team, and ask you to pray as we seek the services of a new Administrative Assistant.

God’s blessing to you over the Christmas season, and we pray that you will have a relaxing summer to recharge yourself for service to God in 2013.

Andrew McCafferty

CEO Willow Creek Australia

Leading In The Small Organisation

Eighteen months ago I left a leadership position in a large parachurch organisation, following a call from God to come to lead the Willow Creek Association in Australia.  From a leaders perspective it may seem like an odd move and almost a “step back” in leadership. But what I have discovered about leadership and the size of the organisation has been quite surprising.  Let me share some of my experiences and insights.

Larger enterprises don’t necessarily demand better leadership.  In fact in some ways smaller enterprises demand more of a leader than larger ones.  Let me elaborate.  Larger enterprises generally have more “elasticity”.  They can spring back from errors of judgment with less impact.  In a team of 60, a few poor performers are felt less than in a team of 6.  A minor poor financial decision in a budget of millions is very different to one in a budget of less than a million.  The point is this, the value of preciseness in leadership in a small enterprise can be a matter of life or death.  In a larger enterprise, while preciseness is important, the consequence of some “slack” may not mean shutting the doors tomorrow.  

Each decision a leader makes is an important one, and it may seem as though the larger organisations require better decision makers.  But in the context of risk, there may be far greater risks for the decision maker in the small organisation than the large one.  The wrong staff or volunteer appointment, the wrong financial call may lead to a quick demise of the organisation or church.  The perception may be that the pressure on decision makers in larger organisations is greater, but this is not necessarily so.  In a small tight knit group the decision that Greg a lovely guy who has poured his life into music ministry, is not actually particularly gifted in this area and needs to be moved aside, ripples through the small church in a way that would not be the case in a larger one.  And the leader who makes this decision knows that s/he is risking many relationships amongst other things.  

Larger organisations have the capacity to engage specialists, whereas smaller organisations tend to demand a broader range of skills from fewer people.  The youth pastor may also be the part time receptionist and graphic designer for church publications.  And when s/he resigns you can’t just cover the gap by pulling a staff member from a less critical area, because everyone is engaged in a critical area.  

So I want to hail the leader of the small enterprise who faces challenges and pressures in ways that leaders of larger organisations don’t.  Sometimes we feel at Willow Creek that there is a perception that we exist for leaders from larger churches and organisations.  Not true!  God has called each of us to lead where we are, the phrase you will find firmly attached to our Global Leadership Summit. 

Andrew McCafferty

CEO, Willow Creek Australia

Going Deeper to Go Further

There is an emerging trend taking place as a new generation of Christian leaders come to the fore. We have tended to promote people into leadership on the basis of their performance, what they have done and achieved.  As important as this is, and it certainly is important, we are seeing an equal or greater importance being placed on the character of leaders.  

I recently engaged in the LIFT course, "Leading for Results", taught by Dr Henry Cloud. The title of this course may lead you to think it was about what we do to get results.  The focus of this course however was not on what we do, but who we are as leaders, our character.  The effective leader, according to Dr Cloud is the one who can go deeper in order to go further.  We need to be growth orientated, growth meaning Getting Real - Owning Wholeness.  Dr Cloud teaches us to live integrated lives as leaders, bringing the sum of our parts into a healthy wholeness. To become whole we need to go deep, own our current reality, invite others to speak truth in our lives and connect intentionally, often and intimately with God.

As the leader of the WCA in Australia, I recently invited Mindy Caliguire, Director of Transformstion Ministry at WCA to join myself and Dr Keith Farmer a retired seminary principal, psychologist and pastor to lead a series of seminars with church leaders.  Our theme was "Stop Well to Go Well." When leaders hear the call to rest and nurture their inner lives, to build their character, so they can grow and thrive, they innately know this to be true.  Can I encourage you from my vantage point as a leader within the worldwide WCA movement who engages with many leaders who are deeply tired from over activity, to consider the need to re-orientate yourself towards growth, Get Real - Own Wholeness.

Andrew McCafferty

CEO Willow Creek Australia

Slowing Down

I was struck recently by these words of Scripture in Isaiah:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength … The Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion.  For the Lord is a God of justice.  Blessed are all who wait for him.”

(Is 30:15,18)

The whole feel of what God is saying here to Isaiah is about slowing down, resting and being quiet before God. We read that those who wait for God will be blessed. 

How different this is to our culture where we are pumped with the message that we need to have it all now. I’ve been in a number of conversations with people (a bit older than myself) who reflect on their adult children needing to have all the creature comforts now. Somewhere in the conversation is usually the statement that “in my day” we made do, we saved and we were happy. How far has this culture of “we need it now” infiltrated the church? 

We want to see growth – by next Sunday; we want to see God act – now; we need to do the church extension - this year. Of course God can and does act quickly, but more often our experience would tell us, as He told Isaiah, that we need to “wait, rest and trust.”  

In May we will be hosting a number of Spiritual Transformatin Seminars with Mindy Caliguire from the Willow Creek Association in the US, complimented by our own Rev Dr Keith Farmer leader of the Mentoring Network, who will help us explore the health of our souls and how we can engage with God and others in ways that nurture a “peace filled” spirit. We would love you to be part of these days.

Andrew McCafferty

CEO

God Of The New

A new year is upon us and with it comes the anticipation of what lies ahead.  As Christians we live with a future hope.  We look forward to God's redemptive work as he “makes all things new” (Rev 21:5).  What are your hopes and desires as you move into this new year?

At Willow Creek our desire is that we can continue to develop new and creative ways to support, inspire, encourage and equip you in the mission that God has called his Church to.  We are looking forward in the next few months to sharing with you the ways that we will be doing this through 2012.

Along with some new initiatives we are also looking to some new ways of engaging with you.  We will be looking to enhance our online engagement, both in regular communication and in training opportunities.  We also want to offer you more extensive access to affordable resources and training opportunities.   So keep an eye on your email inbox.

Planning for this year's Global Leadership Summit is already underway, and with nearly 1000 people already registered we are looking forward to seeing what God will do through this event.  We are planning on expanding our locations into more regional centres this year, and continuing the development of more Australian input as part of the Summit. 

We serve a God of the new and we look forward in this New Year to hearing the stories of the new things that God is doing through your ministry as we partner with you.

Andrew McCafferty

CEO

Wishing you a Blessed Christmas

When I think of the first Christmas I have this image in my mind of shepherds tending to their flocks (probably because of all the Christmas shows I watched as a child seeing the shepherds arrive in Bethlehem).  We know from the Christmas story in the Gospels that as the Magi were passing through Jerusalem and spoke with Herod about this child who had been born “King of the Jews”, Herod asks the priests and teachers of the law, where the Christ was to be born.  They replied quoting the prophet Micah that he would come from Bethlehem – and out of there would come this ruler who was to be the shepherd of the people of Israel. 

In this short exchange we have Jesus described as King, Christ (or Messiah) and Shepherd.  As leaders who model ourselves off Jesus, do we pay enough attention to the shepherding responsibilities that we carry? 

In many ways we more easily accept the role of “king”, in that we know there needs to be someone in charge and calling the shots.  Even our role as “Messiah”, in the sense that we have the responsibility to lead people from their present situations into a better and more hope filled future is something that leaders are drawn to.  But it is as a shepherd that we have the greatest capacity to make a difference in the lives of those we lead. 

Jesus words that I learnt as a child in Sunday School ring in my ears, “My sheep hear my voice, and they know me and they follow me.”  Do those who you lead hear your voice, your voice of care and concern, your voice of guidance, your voice of protection?  Do they know you, and the desire that you have to look after their best interests?

An often quoted leadership saying is that you can assess how well you are leading when you turn around to see who is following you.  While this may be a little simplistic, the truth that we learn is that if we as leaders shepherd well, people will follow.  Shepherding well means that when we arrive at the destination God has given us, we will be there with a group of people who have shared the journey and been nurtured in ways of love and peace and compassion.

The team at Willow want to wish you and your families and your churches a blessed and hope filled Christmas as we celebrate the birth of our saviour.  We also hope that over the summer months you have the opportunity to rest, relax and refresh as we look forward to serving God in 2012. 

Andrew McCafferty

CEO, Willow Creek Australia

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

Statements You Just Can’t Walk By

We are familiar in the gospels with Jesus performing miracles that we marvel at.  Following one of these miracles when Jesus cast out a demon from a boy, his disciples ask him, “Why couldn’t we drive this demon out?” To this question Jesus replies, “Because you have so little faith.  I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, Move from here to there and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.” 

What do we do with a statement like this from Jesus?  Some people of course try to rationalise Jesus’ words here to say that he is using the extremes of a small seed and a large land mass to exaggerate his point around faith.  But there is really nothing ambiguous about Jesus’ statement that “nothing will be impossible for you (with faith)”.  Do we actually believe that through faith we can do anything?

GLS speaker Steven Furtick is a young man of faith.  In his recently published book “Sun Stand Still” he recalls the story of faith when Joshua, who was faced with the armies of the five kings of the Amorities, receives the promise from God that he would have victory over them.  Yet as the day of battle wears on, Joshua realizes that he will not defeat the army in the daylight that is left, so he calls on God to make the sun stand still so that he can complete the battle.  And Scripture records that “the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.  There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a man.” (Joshua 10:13-14.)

Furtick exhorts us to have the faith of Joshua, the faith to be able to say to a mountain, “move from here to there and it will move.”  Now that’s audacious and bold and some people may say it’s over the top and not letting God be God.  But how many great moves of God that have you heard about, have come through a people who are modest in their appeal to God?  “Lord, if you think it’s a good idea, perhaps you could, if it’s not too much trouble, move this little mound of earth from here to there.”  

Now I’m not suggesting in any way that God is at our beck and call to do our bidding, but he calls us to a place of faith, to call on him to do the humanly impossible.  For you that might be seeing a friend or relative who won’t have anything to do with God, come to a place of saving faith in him.  You may be faced with what seems like an impossible situation.  Then take hold of the words of Jesus, “nothing is impossible for him who believes.” 

Come and be inspired by attending the Global Leadership Summit next month.  Let people like Steven Furtick stir you up to be the leader that God is calling you to be.

Andrew McCafferty

CEO, Willow Creek Australia

The Mathematics of Leadership

We recently hosted a series of seminars with Gordon MacDonald where he focused on the importance of relationships in our leadership journey.  He began the day by showing an illustration with two numbers, 2 and 3. Gordon drew our attention to the fact that the two numbers themselves don’t engage with each other until some sort of connector is placed between them. 

Mathematically when we place a +, x, - or / sign between them it creates a relationship between the numbers which gives them meaning.  Gordon asked us to reflect on what we were contributing to relationships.  Are we adding value to people we engage with?  Perhaps at times we may be subtracting something through our relationship?  We could be multipliers, giving extra value through what we contribute, or we may be divisive.

We all know that it is relationships that give meaning to our lives.  It is here that we experience joy, sorrow, pain and love.  But we don’t just experience these emotions and feelings, as leaders we influence how these are experienced by choosing what we take into a relationship. 

Jesus chose to love in all situations, even when it ran counter to his own well being.  Jesus even goes one step further than unconditional love, he shows counter conditional love, by giving himself over to his enemies to be killed, so that through his death we may have life.  As a leader, what are you bringing into the relationships in your life? 

Did you Know?

Each month I will be sharing information with you about the Willow Creek Association (WCA) in Australia.  As I’ve been moving around the country, people are interested to know what our relationship is with Willow Creek in the United States.

The Willow Creek Church in Chicago, lead by Bill Hybels, recently celebrated its 36^th anniversary.  Nineteen years ago Bill Hybels established the Willow Creek Association as a separate entity to the church as a way to serve the Church across the world by inspiring, equipping and resourcing leaders to build potent and effective churches reaching out to communities around them. 

Through the decade of the 1990s a team of local Australian pastors joined with the WCA to establish the Willow Creek Association of Australia.  WCAA is an Australian company with its own board of directors that governs the movement here.

An affiliation agreement exists with the WCA in the US, and they are very supportive of the Australian work, but Australia stands on its own feet in terms of finances and management.  WCA US does not fund the movement here.  In next month’s edition I will outline more about our local funding arrangements and how we carefully manage these funds to maximize what we can offer the church to inspire, equip and resource leaders, to bring spiritual transformation to our nation.

Andrew McCafferty

CEO | Willow Creek Australia

Learn, Lead and Live

“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4)

It’s been a really confronting time for Christians as we have watched, and for some of us, been embroiled, in the natural disasters that the world has experienced in the first few months of the year.  We watch the suffering, we feel the pain, and see great mourning come from these situations.  We wonder what God is doing in and through these events?

Recently the team at Willow Creek has been spending time each week reflecting on Jesus’ teaching in the beatitudes.  Beatitude is the blending of two words – “beati”, meaning supreme happiness, or extreme joy and “tude”, meaning a state of being. 

It appears on the surface a contradiction when Jesus says, “be in a state of great joy when you mourn”.  When we read these words we naturally link mourning to bereavement around the loss of someone we love.  But this verse doesn’t make sense if we apply that understanding to it.  When Jesus talks of mourning here, he is referring to grief that comes when we understand how sin has broken our relationship with God.  Our sin breaks God’s heart and therefore breaks ours as well when we fully understand how it affects God, our creator. 

As we approach Easter, our prayer at Willow is that people in your church and ministry will be blessed as they mourn over their sin and the sin of others that drove Jesus to the cross, so that through his death our sin could be forgiven, and through his resurrection, we may have life, and a blessed life!

Andrew McCafferty

CEO Willow Creek Australia

Willow Creek Australia has a NEW CEO!

Andrew McCafferty has accepted the Board's invitation to become the CEO of the Willow Creek Association in Australia. Board Chairman, Graham Humphris shares the news below:

Andrew comes to Willow Creek after serving for 16 years on the staff of Scripture Union Queensland.  He has been part of the leadership team at SU for over a decade and has lead and managed the tremendous growth that has taken place in the school chaplaincy program in the state.  Andrew has been part of a team that has planted an active and growing church in the last 4 years in the North West suburbs of Brisbane, and also serves on the Board of Malyon College (formerly Queensland Baptist College of Ministry).

I want to also take the opportunity at this time to thank Arthur Conomos who has served the Willow Creek Association as interim CEO in the period of transition between Tim Hanna and Andrew McCafferty now taking up the role in the New Year.  Arthur has led the team exceptionally well, and will continue in this role through to the end of the year.

Thank you for your support for, and engagement with, Willow Creek and we look forward to our partnership with you growing as Andrew leads our great team in equipping and encouraging you to realise your leadership potential as people are transformed by Jesus through engaging with your churches and ministries.