Bill Hybels – “Leading in a New Reality” (Leadership Summit 09)

My next series of posts are reflections and notes from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit that I’m attending at Elmbrook on Thursday and Friday, August 6-7.

Bill Hybels, senior and founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, provided some fascinating words about the new reality in which we are leading because of the global economic collapse.

Hybels organized his thoughts around the following four areas:

1. Philosophical – challenging the church to be the church to one another and to the community no matter the challenges or the depth of the downturn (Acts 2: church caring for one another and selling things to care for one another).
2. Financial – working with kingdom economics – walking by faith while also thinking well about the need for practical budgetary adjustments and cash reserves.
3. Relational/Staff – God does new things through people, so we need to be thoughtful and intentional about the way we develop and structure our staff in these challenging times.
4. Personal – we need to have great self-leadership; that is, we need to re-invent adequate replenishment strategies for the new reality.

All of this was particularly helpful, but I found these words around the last point ‘personal’ to be very helpful in our current place as a developing church plant. Hybels said:

Whenever we are leading an organization and we’re in ‘rogue wave’ situations [new and challenging realities], the best thing you bring to the table is a filled up bucket and replenishment and freshness with God. Your personal freshness is feeding to colleagues.