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 36th 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
