Spoiled

If you are one who likes to hear teaching about God, the Bible, and life, then you'll agree after seeing the below list that recently I have been incredibly spoiled.  I've been at three different conferences in the last 8 days.  As the phrase goes, it's been like drinking from a fire hose.

Looking back over my notes (and also those of Tim Schraeder. I've copy/pasted some of his notes below), here are the people I've been fortunate to sit under and some of the things that have really hit me:

• Francis Chan
• Spoke from Phil 3 and Rev 3 - is Jesus most important or is something else?
• If I tell my daughter to go clean her room and she comes back later with, "Dad, I memorized what you said - you said, 'go clean your room'"  She didn't obey at all.  How many of us are doing something other than obeying Jesus and His word?
• Are you at peace with Jesus? What is keeping you from that peace?  You have to confess it!  Get it out and into the light.  Nothing else is more important.
• I have no idea what's next - and I'm OK with that. Other people are more stressed about my future than I am.  It's only because I'm at peace with Jesus and I'm enjoying His grace & presence everyday. What happens next is in His hands.

• Bill Hybels
• It’s not the first three or four miles that are a challenge in running a marathon, or the last few - because the end is in sight - it’s the miles in-between that it’s difficult.  What keeps people on the journey is some sense of hope that they are going to get there someday.
• You can never get from “here” to “there” in a straight line. We need to lower the ambient noise in our lives to receive and hear what God is speaking to us.  Will you do everything your power to hear God’s voice and heed it? There’s no telling what God might do if you listen to God’s whispers and heed them.

• Jim Collins
• Greatness is not entirely a matter of circumstance, it’s largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
• The undisciplined pursuit of more is how the mighty fall.  The signature of what separates the good leaders from great leaders is humility.
• Greatness is never a single event, silver bullet or breakthrough… it’s a cumulative process.
• The truly great enterprises have values that are not open for compromise or change, they hold things together.  If you lose our values we lose our soul, if we lose our soul we lose everything

• Christine Caine
• From trafficked girl: "If your God is real and loving, why wouldn’t your God come sooner?"  Why has it taken so long for the church to come to the rescue?
• The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is living inside of us. Passion fuels your hope. Without passion we cannot do anything. Most of us are leading because God has done a great work in us and we want to see that translated into other people’s lives. We do what we want from passion. When our leadership steps from passion to obligation we’ve lost hope.

• Tony Dungy
• Leadership is all about helping those that you lead.
• Typically, the coach is the authoritative figure who uses fear as a motivator.  He tried to develop relationships and help his players understand that he was there for them. He was initially criticized for being too soft. He believed that if the players would believe he was really there for them that a bond would form that would lead to them succeeding and their team leading.

• Andy Stanley
•  The right amount of tension and pressure at the right moment can lead to extraordinary results. Tension and pressure can lead to progress and can allow us to go farther and faster.
• Don’t weigh in too heavily based on your personal biases. We have an opinion. We all have personal values. As a leader, if we aren’t careful, we are by personality and the weight of our words, will accidentally take things off the table because we don’t want to talk about them anymore. We can’t afford to weigh in too heavily as leaders. Understand the upside of the opposite side; understand the downside of your side. “Our churches are characterized by something that is a weaknesses for me.”

• Jeff Manion
• By far my favorite hour of the last 8 days.  Buying his book ASAP!
• “For now” is the language of the Land Between. Many of us find ourselves in the Land Between today. Discouragement, depression… we don’t know how we got there and don’t know how to get out of it.
• The Land Between is fertile ground for complaints & emotional breakdown.  Have you ever been at a place where you’ve said, “God I can’t carry this anymore!” Anyone in a leadership capacity will get to this point. When you throw yourself into any form of spiritual leadership, you will have moments where you come to the end of yourself. Who’s voice will you listen to in those moments?
• The Land Between is fertile ground for God's provision & God's discipline. 
• God loves to provide; it’s what He does. What if, instead of holding on, we open our hands to release and leave them open to receive whatever God would provide for us? His provision could come in many different shapes or forms.
• Discipline is inflicting pain for a redemptive purpose. Discipline is pain inflicted to provide rescue. We are naive to think we are immune to God’s corrective hand. When we embrace a spirit of complaint it’s fertile ground for God’s discipline.
• The Land Between is fertile ground for transformational growth. The Land Between was intended to transform them from being slaves to being the people of God. It is in this space that we learn to pray. Growth will not happen automatically. We say “time heals all wounds” but this is not true. Some people get bitter, angry, and toxic over time. Our heart is in danger in the Land Between. Choices of the heart have to be made that will determine who we are in the future. The wilderness is the best greenhouse for transformational growth or the place where our faith can die. Complaint arrives as an uninvited guest. Good movement pushes out bad movement; bad movement pushes out good movement.
• Trust expels complaint. Trust evicts complaint… they are incompatible roommates. The space in your life that you most resent is the very soil where God wants to produce the crop we so desperately desire. The land between, the space we hate, is where God does His richest and deepest work

• Jack Welch
• Authenticity: You have to be yourself. You have to be comfortable in your own shoes. Don’t portray yourself as being something other than you are. People can see right through phoniness. People want to be able to count on you.
• If you are always jumping around it doesn’t help people.
• Candor: Fight desperately to get how people really feel about things on the table. Say what you believe, not what people expect to hear. Candor creates less meetings. Establish a culture of differentiating people. The teams that win are the ones where the players know their individual roles. Candor has to be the foundation of an organization. Use candor to develop an appraisal system. No leader can go to work without people who work for them knowing where they stand.

• T.D. Jakes
• God can’t use people who don’t have a real connection with Him. Our lamp cannot go out. We can be so busy with what we are doing that we can’t see the light has gone out in our people.
• People are passionate when you ask them to do something within their reach. When you overwhelm them they will feel defeated. Passion and defeat cannot coexist.
• Most leaders find it difficult to be transparent enough for people to know what they think. If you are going to lead people like Jesus you have to be willing to show them your wounds and see who you are. When Jesus rises from the dead he doesn’t show himself alive to sinners, he shows His disciples His wounds. He showed them who He was so they could learn as much from His struggle as they did from His strength.
•  We aren’t going out to get the victory we have the victory right now.

• Ed Stetzer
• Our commitment to Biblical fidelity will lead to missional activity
• When we do for people what they were called to do everyone gets hurt and the mission of God is hindered
• If about 10% of your church isn't mad at you then you're probably not doing much. If 60% is mad at you, tone is down.
• Many times, a point of desperation can lead to a point of inspiration   
• If people are proud of who they are then they won't become who they need to be
• People never change until the pain of staying the same is greater then the pain of changing