Sidenote: I Love my livescribe pen!

with Tim Keller

My Thoughts

I’ll admit. I was engrossed in what Tim was teaching. I was convicted, inspired, and motivated to pursue the Father and be an older brother who is willing to go after the younger brother despite losing my inheritance.

I’ll again post some links to other blogs that have more in depth notes than I do.

The Older Brother

• Believe God owed him
• Responded to criticism with destruction by being demoralized because he is about his image and the way he appears to people
• Get’s angry when things don’t go well or as planned
• Easy for him to look down on others
• Note: You can’t stay angry and bitter without having a superior stance
• Renewal comes from repentance for the reason/motives of your right doings

The Younger Brother

• Alienated from the Father. Actually both are alienated from the Father. Neither love the father. They just love his things and use the Father as a means to the end.

• We need to see what the cost is to bring the younger brother home. We need to count the cost.
• The older brother should have brought back the younger brother
• Christ is the example of the perfect older brother
• The Gospel is neither religion or irreligion or moral/immoral.
• Religion says: Because I obey, I’m accepted.
• The Gospel says: Because I’m accepted, I obey.

Application

1. Work This into Your Heart Yourself.
2. Make Sure Teaching isn’t Moralistic by Gospel Centered
3. Teach and Work it Into Your Leaders
4. Teach and Work it Into Your Congregation
5. Take the Whole Church At Once

Links

• Rob Wegner: Entermission Blog
• Tony Morgan Blog
• Live Intentionally Blog

with Gary Hamel

This session blew me away. Hamel is a thought provoking communicator that delivers nuggets of gold at a machine gun pace. They were coming too fast to capture. While writing one down you would miss what he was saying. This session alone would be worth the purchase of the Leadership Summit DVD’s.

Since my mind was boggled by the things he was saying. I have posted several links to others who were taking notes on this session in hopes that all of them together would give a small representation of what was presented.

• Are you changing as quickly as the world around you?
• Are you in the vanguard or the old guard
• Only 3% of churches are considered healthy based on a 20 to 1 conversion rate
• 90% of people believe in a spiritual being
• 9% of culture says they are non-religious or not spiritual
• Is the Gospel failing us – or are our methods failing?
• Unprecedented events lead to unprecedented opportunities which need unprecedented strategies. Are we prisoners of precedence?
• Leadership is not about vision and management as much as it is about Mobilizing, Connecting, & Supporting others.
• Our problem is inertia ; we just happen to be alive when the pace of change when hyper critical
• Success is a self-correcting phenomenon
• Making strategy is like making a baby, it happens in private & then all the sudden shows up. It should be more like a family affair
• Organizations lose their relevance when internal change lags behind external change.
• The longer you’re down in the trenches, the easier it is to mistake the edge for the horizon
• Organizations go sideways when the mental models of the leadership team depreciate faster than their power
• Every organization is successful until it is not (I laughed at that one)

Keys to Success

1) Overcome Temptation to Take Refuge in Denial.

• Face the facts.
• Listen to the Renegades
• Denial Pattern: 1) Dismissal 2) Rationalization 3) Mitigation 4) Confrontation

2) Generate More Strategic Options

• We clutch at the familiar because we can’t see the alternatives
• Beware of the bird in hand that is losing feathers and dying in your hand
• Innovation follows the power law
• The future has already happened. It’s just unevenly distributed

3) Deconstruct What You Currently Do

• What hasn’t changed in 3-5 years?
• Compare to other churches and see what’s identical
• Be the enemy of entropy.
• We’re not going to get better at changing lives until we get better at changing our churches.
• The early church spiritually powerful and institutionally weak

4) It’s Imperative to Out Run Change

• Change comes from the bottom up

Other Links with Notes from this Session

• Rob Wegner: Entermission
• Tony Morgan
• Via
• Live Intentionally Blog
• Missional Thoughts

Session 2 Panel With Bill Hybels, Patric Lencioni, Carly Fiorina, Henry Cloud, and David Ireland

Hiring

• Use a process
• Take time to find out as much as you can about the person
• Determine if the person fits the culture of the organization
• We idealize people when we are desperate to fill a spot
• First impressions are frequently wrong
• Spend time with them in different environments to see how they respond to them
• Ask them, “What do others say about you?” your boss, team, spouse, ect?
• Ask the same question several times throughout the interview to see how they answer each time
• Talk Less Listen More: The more you ask questions and listen, the more you will learn about that person. Ask questions based on their answers

What you can’t miss in hiring

• Create a strong Culture (“This is what life is like here.” “If you aren’t like this and this, you will hate it”)
• List in advance: ::Needs of the organization ::Job description ::Competencies Desired (personal and professional)
• Take the time to have a strong conversation: Why we are hiring. What is expected. What are the results?
• Define the hiring process

Board Meetings and Meltdowns

• Building trust is hard when you only see each other once a month. Solution could be a retreat to get to know each other or serving opportunities
• Retreats are good for clarifying values and building trust. Vulnerability is crucial on a team so you can focus on issues at hand rather than if you trust a person.
• Board Members should be chosen for their: 1) Influence 2) Affluence 3) Skill
• The skill of a board member should contribute to the goals. Ask: Can they move us forward?
• Term limits are needed. Brings fresh vision and diversity. Allows regeneration and new leadership to rise.
• Manageable board size is around 8 persons
• It’s a good idea to evaluate the meeting during the last 10 min. to see how effective you were
• Do not invite non-board members to the meeting without the permission of the board.

How to Fire

• People have seasons at organizations
• It’s not compassionate to not be honest. It is disrespectful to not be honest
• Candor with Care
• Firing someone should not be a surprise. Give them the opportunity to improve with feedback. Let them know what’s working. What’s not working.
• Give them a process to improve on what isn’t working

Three Steps to Firing

1. Retrain the Person. Maybe they are under performing because you haven’t adequately trained them.
2. Reposition the Person.
3. Retire the Person

• The Kindest form of management is the truth – not avoidance. (Jack Welsh)
• Give certainty and clarity to people
• Grading systems work only with tough conversations
• Systems don’t substitute for conversations

Leading in a New Way

Rogue Waves

• Rogue Waves provide opportunities for success
• Rogue Waves draw something out of us that calm sees never will
• Leaders, lead strong through crisis.
• In a crisis, “Cash is King.” (people are hungry to hear about money management)

Money in a Crisis

• You must manage your money well.
• When reducing staff: 1) Give months of notice 2) Be clear on the cause 3) Be generous
• Hold the powerful accountable and advocate for the powerless
• Church Budget: 50% staff, 10% Give away, 10% buffer money for booming ministries, 15% Ministry budget, 15% Facilities, utilities, & debt

Pace to a new Reality

• Is the pace that I am doing the work of God destroying God’s work in me?
• What am I planning to neglect?
• What am I planning to replenish me?
• Romans 8:6 (life full of life & peace)
• When you listen to God gently, you hear  him fore frequently

Leading Services

• Improve the quality of the weekend service by extending the beginning (pre-service prepares for the service) and blurring the ending (opportunities of continued ministry).
• The actual service then is “All Killer No Filler”

• The crisis point (what the heck?! moments) are the ones that reveal the depth of our relationship with Christ
• 2 Samuel 6
• A Cart is anything that substitutes for our relationship with God

I asked Glen, “How do you lead yourself?” and here was how he responded.

• Prayer
• Bible Reading
• Praying the Psalms
• Journaling

Be There (Leonard Sweet)

• You can’t assume that your future will be like the past, but you can assume that your future will be grounded in the past.
• There is no understanding without standing under.
• We’ve been trained that to be in the “sweet spot” is to live a balanced life. Our sweet spot is when we grab ahold of the power of polar opposites and live in harmony.
• We need to be in tune with Christ and in touch with culture not in tune with culture and in touch with Christ