So I as well as a few others, have just sat through the first day of the leadership conference, and it's been a very interesting day.


The conference for day 1, featured speakers:

I'll give a little bit of an intro taken from the Summit Website for each:

Copied from Summit Website:

Founder & Senior Pastor
Willow Creek Community Church

Hybels is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL, and the chairman of the board for the Willow Creek Association. He convened The Leadership Summit in 1995, following a God-given prompting to help raise and develop the spiritual gift of leadership for the local church. Both visionary and passionate about seeing every local church reach its full God-given potential, he speaks around the world on strategic issues to Christian leaders and is a best-selling author of more than 20 books, including Courageous Leadership and Axiom: The Language of Leadership.

Bill immediately spoke about sailing, and how sea captains make sure to measure the waves before they take a voyage, mentioning how 3 ft was 1 meter, and so on. He went on to describe what wave lengths were regular, and what wave lengths scared even the most veteran of sea captains out there. He then spoke about "Rogue Waves", in which if a captain sees that on his radar; he no longer would want to take his vessel on the intended voyage. Bill then explained that the economy was hit by a "economic rogue wave", and that in this downturn; churches are having to make economic choices, eg: cutting staff, budget concerns, and so on. He spoke to us about some of the techniques he used in his own community.

Bill gave us four lessons, one philosophical, one financial, one relational, and one personal.


Philosophical: The economic rogue wave, hit in October of 08, and they were in the middle of an 8 week series called Influence, and how, in one week the Stock Market lost 1800 points, almost 20% of it's value, and was the single greatest one week drop since the Great Depression. That week, hundreds of Willow Creek members were notified that they would lose their jobs, and they began to ask for money to help with groceries, car payments, etc.

The tipping point for Bill was when a businessman in the church told Bill he wouldn't be able to make the usual Christmas gift he gave to the church. Somewhere in the realm of 200-300k. Bill assumed the man meant he'd have around 100k for them, seeing as it's only October, maybe they could adjust some of their budget and such; but the man said, "Bill, I will not be able to give anything, in fact, I've not only lost my job and bonus, but I'm caught between two large investments and I think I'm going to lose my house. Can you pray for me?"

Bill prayed for the man, and when he was done with that prayer, Bill then realized they were in a rogue wave situation at Willow Creek, and Bill spoke to his team, and told them that he thought they should head in a different direction with the Sunday sermon. So Bill and his team changed gears and directed the sermon towards a more economic based sermon for the situation.

Bill had wanted to have all of his team and himself try their best to live out the Acts 2 "dream"; and thus they made a commitment to revive the church through the difficulties. Bill mentioned a benevolence team, and that they had a pantry for food needs and so on; and so throughout the year they restocked the pantry and more for 2009, and then were given money donations and so on.

Bill struck me because he was one who didn't mind taking a stop, and doing a u-turn to address the needs of the church. Bill was able to address many of the issues they faced at Willow Creek, that I think Truro ought to address, and concerns as well.

Then Bill took us through some of the issues faced in companies and even in churches.

Those issues being: "Firing" Hiring, and "Board Meltdowns"

Bill called for a Panel Discussion with Henry Cloud, Patrick Lencioni, David Ireland, and Carly Fiorina



Dr. Henry Cloud is a clinical psychologist, best-selling author, and business consultant with unique insights on relational dynamics in organizations. He is the co-founder and co-director of Cloud-Townsend, Inc.


Carly Fiorina is the former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She was the first woman to head a Dow 30 company and was named "The Most Powerful Woman in Business" by Fortune for six years in a row.



Dr. David Ireland is senior pastor of Christ Church in Montclair, NJ, a 6000 member multi-ethnic congregation which he founded in 1986. The author of several books, he holds a PhD in Organizational Leadership.



Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, Inc., a specialized management-consulting firm focused on organizational health. He is the author of six best-selling books, including Death by Meeting.


They showed clips on each topic, and then discussed each for a few moments, before moving on to Gary Hamel's talk.



“Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power, but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those who are led.”

Visiting Professor / Director
London Business School / Management Innovation Lab

Gary Hamel was ranked as the #1 Business Thinker of 2008 by The Wall Street Journal and called "the world's leading expert on business strategy" by Fortune. An author, speaker, professor, and innovative management consultant, he is most widely known for originating concepts such as "strategic intent" and "core competencies." The founder of Strategos, a worldwide strategic consulting company, his vision for the workplace revolves around releasing human potential and creativity. Hamel will address the paradigm shift needed to fully engage the potential of people and explain how tomorrow's most successful companies will be organized. He is the author of Leading the Revolution and The Future of Management.


Then Gary Hamel came on and talked about the church and business, from his perspective. Gary spoke about the church as a company and how it needs to be managed to go forward, and how sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards. He spoke of Gore-tex and how the company has no formal management positions, only that of the "leader" position, and that all it took is for people to want you to be in that position. Gore-tex employees could choose to say no to a project, but they had a informal performance review by all of their peers (employees) after one year.

After Gary Hamel, Tim Keller came on and talked about the Prodigal God, and gave us the example of the story of the Prodigal son.



“The more we look upward, the more we look outward.”

Founder and Senior Pastor
Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Manhattan, NY

Called a "C.S. Lewis for the 21st century" by Newsweek, Dr. Timothy Keller is founder and pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. Over the past 20 years, the church has grown to three sites, with weekly attendance of 6,000. Named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Churches in America, Keller’s ministry is notable not only for winning over New Yorkers who are skeptical to faith, but also for its missional approach, planting more than 100 churches through the Redeemer Church Planting Center. Author of The Reason for God andThe Prodigal God, he will talk about the well-known parable of the Prodigal Son and discuss the ways many people in our churches tend to resist the gospel.

Tim Keller used the story of the prodigal son to explain that Jesus was talking to the church as the elder brother, and how they fail. He spoke of the pharisees and the "sinners", and compared the pharisees to the elder brother, he explained that the sinners were the "prodigal son", and said that in essence the prodigal son was the sinner that came back, and the elder son that stayed behind was the pharisees, comparing them to the church. He said the elder brother whom stayed behind should've shown his love for the prodigal son by going to the foreign country to find him and bring him back to the father at his own expense, but instead resented the father for using the elder brother's assets to bring the prodigal son back into the comfort of the home.

There were a few more things he mentioned, but I'll admit I was getting rather sleepy at this point as we'd just had lunch :P

After Keller, they introduced Jessica Jackley:

“People are by nature generous, and will help others if given the opportunity to do so in a transparent, accountable way.”

Co-founder of Kiva.org, the World's First Peer-to-Peer
Online Micro-lending Web Site

Jessica Jackley is co-founder of Kiva.org, the world's first peer-to-peer online micro-lending website. Kiva.org allows internet users to lend as little as $25 to entrepreneurs in the developing world, providing affordable capital to start or expand a small business. In just three years Kiva has helped raise over $61 million and connected thousands of people across 120 countries. A graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Jackley’s work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and the Today Show. She brings a fresh perspective on the personal nature of giving and how new generation leaders can innovate through technology.



Jackley is the co-founder of Kiva, a microfinance organization, and she took the time to tell her story, and how young she was when she started the program. Kiva basically takes regular people, shows them the profiles of "entreprenuers", basically people in Africa, and then they get loaned increments of 25$ or more by these "regular people", and are able to start life anew with the plans they have. This money eventually gets paid back by the chosen entreprenuer.

Then Harvey Carey came on:


“You need to learn how to just go and do what Jesus said to go and do.”

Founder and Senior Pastor
Citadel of Faith Covenant Church, Detroit, MI

One of the country’s most gifted and inspiring communicators, Harvey Carey is founder and senior pastor of the Citadel of Faith Covenant Church, a congregation of 650 in Detroit, MI. Located in one of the poorest zip codes in America, Carey’s church was identified as one of the top churches in growing people spiritually by the new REVEAL research. A former youth pastor at a large inner-city church in Chicago, Carey has trained and led ministry teams in preaching the gospel in housing projects, shopping malls, and public schools in urban areas across the country. He brings deep insights on how to encourage your people to grow, even in tough circumstances.


Harvey told his story of how he came from a poor family, and how he was offered double his six figure salary to go work, but instead followed a calling to Detroit to go work in the poorest of churches, against insurmountable odds. Harvey would take his parishioners and just "do". He would take them on trips on which they'd hand out bibles, pray door to door; and this would occur on Sundays in the mornings w/o warning. He said that if he can do it in the poorest of situations, and get the poorest of people fired up, then why can't we do it, with our budgets and multiple pastors and so on. (He'd mentioned that he was the only full time person at the church he was working with as the Pastor) He challenged us to instead of continuing to fill binders and shelves, go out and do, because it's because of our budgets and fears, that we don't challenge ourselves, and instead of glorifying God, we glorify the budget donors.

For me, the two people that hit at home were Harvey and Keller.

Harvey because his message was full of truth and wisdom; and that if he can do it, so can any of us.

Keller, because I at times feel like an elder brother, and at times like the prodigal.

There's more thoughts I'll share, but I'm braindead at the moment, so I'll make another post before evening's end.