Today is Jin and Yuna’s baby shower. It’s outside at a park, so I’m hoping it’s not too hot day. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll take a lot of pictures, though.
Today’s a crazy day I’ve got Joe’s bachelor party, church and dinner at Vicky and Evan’s house. Somewhere in there and need to do a Whole Foods run. Craziness…
Today was another great day at the Summit. They had some really great speakers today. Here’s the lineup:
Craig Groeschel-IT:How Leaders Can Get IT and Keep IT
Craig is the senior pastor of Lifechurch.tv, a multi-campus church and internet ministry. He talked about IT, and by IT, I don’t mean I.T. or information technology. I mean It. The fact that some churches, pastors, institutions, etc. have it and others don’t. He emphasized that God makes It happen. We can’t creat It or manufacture It. It can’t be taught, but It can be caught. It transforms lives, It has it’s critics. In short: It happens. He also talked about qualities where It is present: Lazer focus, opportunities are seen when others see obstacles, a willingness to fail, and the fact that organizations that have It are led by leaders who have It. What is It? Neither Craig nor I know.
Chuck Colson-Defending the Faith
Unfortunately, Mr. Colson’s talk was a little esoteric for me, and since I was still exhausted from the day before, I fell asleep for most of it. One memorable quotation: “We have bought therapy over truth.” And another: “If you are a leader, your responsibility is not to pander to the people it’s to lead them to the truth.”
Catherine Rohr- Risk Taking, Barrier Breaking, Bold Leadership
Ms. Rohr is the founder and CEO of the Prisoner Entrepreneurship Program. It was a little hard to follow but she had a conversation with Bill Hybels regarding the ministry she founded. I was challenged, because what she did took such a great leap of faith. She left the $200,000 a year job, spent every last cent of her savings, and moved from New York to Texas with her husband just so she could work in the prisons in Texas. Her story was quite amazing. It caused me to reflect on what I’ve given up for the cause of Christ. Challenging indeed…
John Burke, Efrem Smith and Craig Groeschel- Leadership Unscripted
Again, a conversation between the three of them so a little hard to follow. But here’s a few nuggets: truth without grace is law. For homosexuals, the question is really “Is there a special class of people who are despised by God?” of course the answer is “No!” The gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Craig Groeschel doesn’t believe that the Christian life has to be happy or joyful. He claims that, “Sometimes you follow Christ, you’re miserable, and then you die.”
Brad Anderson-An Uncompromising Focus on People
I was surprised to discover that the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world is a Christian. Frankly, I wavered a bit about whether or not he was a Christian but in the end he did come out and say it. So I heard it from the horses mouth. I thought was really cool that one of his top values is that family comes first. Pretty amazing for the CEO of such a large company.
Bill Hybels- Relentless
Bill’s closing was to challenge us with the life of Mother Teresa. He talked about how she had little vows to God. For example, she vowed, “To refuse him nothing” “To do His bidding without delay” and she gave Him “carte blanche yieldedness.” In contrast, we often want God’s carte blanche for our programs instead of His. The vow I thought was most powerful was this: space “Even though I don’t feel his presence. I will seek to love him as he has never been loved.” What a challenge! What an amazing few days!
Wishing you an awesome birthday on today, 08-08-08. Incidentally today is the first day of the Olympics.
This conference is utterly amazing! It’s not a Christian conference per se, but it is definitely influenced by Christian values. In opening the conference, Willow Creek Senior Pastor Bill Hybels elaborated, “We teach leadership, unapologetically from a Christian perspective. Leadership’s highest usage is not for money or power, but to advance the purposes of God in this world.”
Today’s speaker lineup was pretty incredible. Here was the lineup:
Bill Hybels-The High Drama of Decision Making
He spoke about the process for making decisions as a leader and how leadership requires people to make tough decisions. He also talked about the use of axioms and how they can be nice little phrases that are used to communicate a great truth. Frankly, I’m sure it was part of his plan to promote his new book, Axiom. Fortunately, it wasn’t a hard sell, but he did convince me to buy the book.
Gary Haugen-Just Courage: Charging the Darkness
Gary is the president and CEO of a group called International Justice Mission (IJM). They are a human rights agency that seeks to rescue victims from injustice and oppression. He gave a number of examples from their various cases that included child prostitution, slavery, and abuse by authorities. His encouragement was that “Leadership that matters to God concerns itself with the issues that matter to God.” Namely, it concerns itself with justice (or righting injustice) and God’s passion for the world.
Bill Hybels and Gary Haugen-Leadership Unscripted
This was an informal conversation during the lunch break that covered questions from the audience that had been sent in during their sessions. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch most of it. I was tired and full from lunch, so I took a nap. But one thing I did get from them was that in leadership, we need to strive for excellence, not perfection. The cost of perfection is too high, and likely to make our followers weary. So we ask them to be excellent at what they do, and that is sufficient.
Bill George-Finding Your True North
Dr. George is a professor of Management at Harvard, so I felt that his talk was more theoretical than practical. Basically how to be yourself, and the importance of that. I wasn’t really that impressed with his talk. But I do see the importance of being oneself instead of trying to always be another person. Eh…I dunno.
Wendy Kopp-Stand Up and Lead
This was a conversation between Kopp and Bill Hybels. Kopp is the founder of Teach for America. In terms of good takeaways, the conversation was hard to follow. I will note that I didn’t get the impression that Kopp was a Christian. Bill Hybels made a number of Christian references, and she didn’t really respond to them. A few times, she also made reference to something about “people of faith.” That didn’t sound very Christian to me. I do admire her determination and her desire to make things better for others.
John Burke-Leading in New Cultural Realities
John is the senior pastor of Gateway Community Church. I really liked his talk because he was discussing how when we cultivate the soil to allow people to grow, it can often get messy. But the best soil to grow people in is messy. He talked about how he has a messy church that accepts everyone. They have a slogan: “No perfect people allowed.” He talked about how his church is open and welcoming to all kinds of people who are normally not welcome at church: gays, drug addicts, in short, messy people. It was an inspiring talk about how we are to extend grace much as Jesus did. Very challenging.
Efrem Smith-Leading in New Cultural Realities
Efrem is the senior pastor at The Sanctuary Covenant Church. He was talking about how we need to be multi-culturally and multi-ethnically diverse. He also discussed characteristics of leaders that cause such communities. They are beloved, loving, abiding, confessing, and perfecting. He had quite a rousing conclusion, but frankly, I can’t remember what he was raving about.
And thus concludes Day One. What a whirlwind. So much to process. So much to think about.
I had this last week when I was at Olive Garden with Charlene. It’s basically a Chicken Marsala that’s butterflied and stuffed with sundried tomatoes and cheese.
I used the chicken marsala recipe from my America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, and modified it to include the stuffing. The process isn’t easy, but there are a lot of steps. It includes butterflying the chicken, seasoning it with salt and pepper, dredging it in flower, pan frying it until it’s golden brown and delicious, and adding the cheese and sundried tomatoes. In my case, I used three cheeses that I happened to have in my fridge: havarti, parmesean, and string cheese. Not the most gourmet, but it was what I had.
Of course, the mashed potatoes were extra work. But they weren’t too bad. I just boiled potatoes until they were fork tender, mashed them by hand (in my case I don’t have a potato masher, so I used a wooden spoon–not the easiest, but again, it’s what I had.) added cream and a little salt and pepper. Normally, I’d use milk and butter, but since I had cream, I figured why not? Cream is essentially butter and milk. It actually worked quite well.
Anyways, you can’t have any for your stomach, but feast your eyes on this:
I’m really excited about tomorrow and Friday. Tilden, our Young Adult Pastor at Abundant Life invited a number of people to attend the Willow Creek Leadership Conference. It’s going to be at Church on the Hill in San Jose. Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Church, will be speaking, as will Chuck Colson. Other than on the radio, I’ve never heard either of them speak before. But their reputation precedes them, so it’ll have to be good stuff. I haven’t heard of the other speakers, but apparently, the CEO of Best Buy will be sharing as well. I wonder if he’s a Christian.
It’ll be really neat to see them and hear what all the speakers have to share. I’ll be interested to see how they balance the fact that Willow is a Christian organization with the fact that this is not marketed as a Christian Leadership Conference.
In any case, I’m excited about tomorrow. Gotta wake up and head to church so we can carpool in the morning. I’d best be off to bed.
Charlene and I are going out on a date today…all day. It’ll be fun, and the best part is that she has no idea what we’re doing. But we’re doing stuff that we both enjoy, so we should have a great time. Yay! Fun times.