Barnabas File

The Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit brings together not only faith leaders but leaders in all types of organizations.   The slate of speakers intentionally includes not only those from churches and faith-based organizations, but corporate executives, consultants, and researchers who deal with people development. Speakers this year included Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, and author of Lean In and Option B (with Adam Grant); Marcus Lemonis, CEO of Camping World and Good Sam, and host of the TV show, The Profit; Laszlo Bock, Senior Advisor at Google  and author of Work Rules ; Marcus Buckingham, consultant/researcher and author of StandOut 2.0 ; Sam Adeyemi, pastor of Daystar Christian Centre in Nigeria; and Angela Duckworth, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Grit:  The Power of Passion and Perservance. A common theme among these speakers was that people basically want to do good work and...

One of the most remarkable speakers at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was Sam Adeyemi, f ounder and senior pastor of the Daystar Christian Centre in Nigeria.   My expectations were not high.   Of the ten richest pastors in the world , five are Africans and they are all Nigerians .   This seems to be a predominant model for the way they do church in Nigeria! So I was moved by the presentation of Rev. Adeyemi when he started by saying he had built his ministry on this simple truth:   “The focus of Christ’s leadership was not His own success but the success of His followers.” Under Adeyemi’s leadership, Daystar Christian Centre grew from a handful of people in 1995 to more than 25,000 people weekly—with highly recognized community impact projects. Adeyemi founded Daystar Leadership Academy which is dedicated to releasing a new generation of leaders who will serve as catalysts in the transformation of Africa and the world. You can read compre...