Summit Day 2

Well, today was even better than yesterday. Here were some of my key takeaways:

1) Willow Creek's Executive Pastor Greg Hawkins completed a study around the value Willow adds to people who are in various stages of their spiritual journey. What they found was that the value was tremendous for seekers and those early in the journey but decreasing in value with increasing maturity. The conclusion they reached is that they cannot keep adding programs that will "feed" this more mature followers to the point that they need; instead they need to change their paradigm to create "self-feeders". They are looking to put their energy toward training people to feed themselves rather than relying on the church; they are creating resources to help people develop customized personal spiritual growth plans. The idea is to transfer the responsibility for spiritual growth from the church to the individual.

2) Michael Porter, Harvard Professor and viewed by many as one of the top strategic planning mind in the world: There was a ton here, but the key for me was like any other resource allocation, there must be appropriate consideration of the value per dollar of investment (time or money). It challenged us to think about using our personal resources & skills to create the greatest societal contribution. Perhaps instead of starting a ministry, we should instead just write a check to an organization that can do it more effectively. Does it make sense for nurses to spend their weekends building houses? Should they instead be utilizing their skills in medical volunteerism? I have a ton of respect for Mr. Porter, but I need to process a few elements that he left out: What if a nurse is passionate about housing? What if they are sick of nursing all week long & want to do something else? What about creating ownership from our followers by doing a ministry ourselves rather than just funnelling money?

3) Collin Powell (former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff): Again, way too much here to share but two of the things I took away from this were 1) As a leader, prepare to be lonely (I could relate), and 2) Need both passion and dispassion (I'm paraphrasing, but his message around this was very consistent with Carly Fiorina's talk). This videotapes interview was unbelievably great and both challenged me to be all the leader I can be and at the same time affirmed many of the difficult leadership decisions I've needed to make recently.

4) John Ortberg, former teaching pastor at Willow, currently lead pastor of Menlow Park Presbyterian in Silicon Valley area. Mr. Ortberg walked through the story of Esther spending the majority of time talking about how each of us has a self-centered "shadow mission" which on the surface can appear to be our main mission, but really isn't. Most of us walk through life thinking our mission is one thing, but blind to the fact that God has a greater mission for us that we need to see and embrace.

5) Richard Curtis, british filmmaker ("Four Weddings & a Funeral", "Love, Actually", "Bridget Jones' Diary", etc) is tremendously passionate about ending world poverty. He has led and initiated many successful activities that have raised billions of dollars. He challenged the church to move from arguing theory to getting it done; "where is the church."

Bill Hybels wrapped up the day reiterating the challenge from Richard Curtis... "where is the church." His passionate desire for the church to take their place in this battle reignited a stir inside of me from last year to jump in and take a front row position on the global war on poverty. I don't know what this means, but there is a holy discontent stirring around activating the churches in global justice issues such as poverty and HIV/AIDS. Stay tuned...