The 2008 Leadership Summit sponsored by the Willow Creek Association is under way. Today’s speakers included Bill Hybels (pastor of Willow Creek Community Church), Gary Haugen (Founder & President of International Justice Mission), Bill George (former CEO of Medtronics), Wendy Kopp (Founer & CEO of Teach For America), John Burke (pastor of Gateway Community Church in Austin), and Efrem Smith (pastor at Sanctuary Covenant Church).

Bill Hybels in a message last year entitled “Who can leaders learn from?”¹ posed the question, “Is your range narrow or wide?” Many leaders today have a narrowed view: they surround themselves with people who talk like them, vote like them, and pray like them. Bill explains that followers influenced by leaders who have a narrowed view are “cut off from a whole world of information and a world of powerful ideas that God could use to challenge that leader: to stretch them, to grow them up as a Christ follower and to grow them up as a leader.” Bill explains of the Leadership Summit speakers that it is his “fiercest determination to put faculty line-ups together that make a portion of [people] get [their] underwear in a bundle.” Hybels clarifies to church leaders that “We think you’re big boys and girls, we think you’re discerning, we think you can separate wheat from chaff, we think that you can balance stuff out, subject it to the witness of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, take the good and leave the bad.” With that said, it’s only appropriate to see what each leader had to offer with hopes that our leadership “bandwidth” would widen.

From the messages this year, it is my prayer that there is a genuine response from the hearts of church leaders across the nation. In my own heart and among my own local church staff we are already asking ourselves tough questions to examine our current heart conditions.

Today, Gary Haugen challenged us to ask questions like, “What is it going to take to positional ourselves in a place of complete desperation for Jesus? Am I settling for a spiritualized mediocrity? Am I passionate about the same things Jesus is passionate about?” Bill Hybels explicated his axioms spurring us to examine, “Are we as leaders aware of the growing disconnect between growing Christians and Christ-centered community changing Christians in our midst? Do we ignore the ‘funkiness’ when we feel it or do we engage and confront it?” Bill George incited questions about authentic self-leadership and the ramifications of value-centered, servant leaders. The interview with Wendy Kopp revealed an honest question inside me: “Am I willing to do what it takes? Am I willing to go through the trial, frustration and heartache in order to promote Kingdom-valued communities?” John Burke’s message on leading in today’s culture begged the question of our staff, “What kind of soil have we cultivated in our midst? Is it filled with grace-giving acceptance? Are we an authentic-confessing community? Are we consistently connecting with the Holy Spirit throughout the day?” To wrap up the day, Efrem Smith challenged me to ask, “Do I truly understand and abide in the transforming love of Christ that transcends racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical biases. Do I have ‘low pressure’ comforts that are painfully pressing against God’s ‘high pressure’ kingdom values?” And lastly, “Am I willing to be an integral part of being the church that provides a ‘sneak preview of heaven’?”

Today’s speakers were thorough, intentional, and full of vision to see transformed communities in our nation. The speakers challenge today resonated with Paul’s plea to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds” (Rom 12:2) in order that we would understand our role as change agents where we are. I believe Efrem Smith summed it up best in a vision piece written for his own community in North Minneapolis: “We believe God is looking for people to be his hands, his feet, his justice, his mercy, his compassion, and his love to this community.”²

SOURCES:

1. Hybels, Bill. “Hear From Bill Hybels.” The Leadership Summit
2. Smith, Efrem. “Our Community.” Sanctuary Covenant Church
   

The CD will be released August 5 in the States. Here is a powerful clip entitled “Desert Song” from the new album:

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…We love because he first loved us. ” 1 John 4:18,19

Langston Hughes once asked himself, “What is poetry?” He replied, “It is the human soul entire, squeezed like a lemon or a lime, drop by drop, into atomic words.” English literary intellectual and poet Richard Le Gallienne said poetry is the “Impassioned arrangement of words, whether in verse or prose, which embodies the exaltation, the beauty, the rhythm and the truth of life.” Poetry, just like other fine arts, can be used to illustrate truths which could not otherwise be expressed using sound arguments or philosophical dialogue. While poetry may involve either of the latter components, it is more an emotion – a display of the poet’s affection on a given subject. Edwin Markham beautifully explains that “poet is a dweller between two worlds, the Seen and the Unseen; he beholds objects and events in their larger outline and deeper mystery. He never rests with the sensual, the apparent. He frees us from the tyranny of the moment. His mission is an eternal quest for the absolute reality and veracity behind the veil of senses.” The poet liberates us from what is transient and mingles words that would otherwise never be conjoined. Though the role of the poet seems ambiguous, he is “forever pressing onward through the superficial, the things that show, to the significant, the permanent, the universal truth behind the facts. He is forever ignoring the mere outward shell, giving us instead the inner spirit” (Cynthia Pearl Maus). Yes, this is the poet; the one who will honor and love Christ with all of his or her mind, heart, and soul (Matt 22:27) by meditatively searching out the depths of His heart to articulate insightful and reflective truths.

Just when the world has begun to settle at the allowance of external aid into Burma, we find out that a small group of the UN peace keepers are abusing children in Northwest Africa’s Ivory Coast. Reports from BBC explain that aid workers “have been sexually abusing boys and girls.” Nick Birnback, a UN spokesman, tried to explain that the organization would try to hold a “zero incidents” policy, but would be too hard to regulate with almost 200,000 workers serving worldwide. Save the Children, an organization devoted to creating opportunities “for the world’s children to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives,” has spoken out on the issue identifying that children “are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence.” Heather Kerr, a Save the Children director in Ivory Coast, explains that sexual exploitation is doubly frustrating because the child victims are often too young to articulate their suffering.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t read this report without everything in me wanting to lash out irrationally. Every emotion crossed my mind at one point or another, largely summing in pure indignation. And at the same time, it all just makes sense.

The fact that it makes sense does not validate its legitimacy—it’s just that situations like these explicate the unmistakable depravity of man. Do not mistake my assessment; I am not a seven-point Calvinist coming to play his fiddle. I simply observe the words of Paul’s examination in Romans 3: “None is righteous, no, not one…no one does good, not even one.” And so I simply comply, the situation does not surprise me.

But the fact that it does not surprise me does not mean I can’t be apart of the solution! On the contrary, God has called men and women from the four corners of the Earth to let their light shine “before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Not so that they would see your good works and think you’re cool. Not so that they would see your good works and think you’re virtuous or morally upright. And not even that they would see your good works and say thank you. The purpose of shedding light into a dark, fallen world is so they might see Jesus and glorify God.

So you’re stuck in the U.S. or U.K. What can you do? Well, I would first ask for a supernatural ability to love the child abusers. In one of his most difficult passages of Scripture, Jesus said, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 6:46). If you feel pain in the process, know that He feels it too. However, allow your groaning to be turned to prayer and thanksgiving. Thank the Lord for the restorative work he is doing through the majority of the volunteers. Thank Him for organizations like Save the Children who have stood up for injustice and caught a vision for what the Lord’s heart beats for. Now, pray that the corrupted volunteers would come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ, who has single-handedly absorbed all sin on our behalf, not because of anything we have done, but simply because of who He is. Lastly, pray for the comfort of the Holy Spirit for the children who have been abused and their families.

Praise God that He alone “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Eph. 3:21).

SOURCES:

1. BBC
2. Save the Children