Barnabas File

"Leaders, you can have control, or you can have growth, but you can’t have both.”   This statement at the 2021 Global Leadership Summit by Craig Groeschel, senior pastor of Life.Church, was my key takeaway.  If you want to be in complete control of everything, then you are limiting the possibilities for growth in your organization and in your life.   Being in control of anything or anyone is really a myth.  You guide and discipline your children, but ultimately, they go on to live their lives for themselves.  You can employ and coach people in your organization, but you can never motivate or control every action that they take.  You can create and launch an organization, but if you attempt to micromanage it, you limit its growth.   Growth comes from creating a healthy environment and then letting its components thrive.  Perhaps gardening is the best metaphor to use.  You prepare the soil, select and place the pla...

When times get difficult, culture can both affirm our strengths or magnify our weaknesses.       Unfortunately, we often don’t know what we have to work with until crisis comes.     This should encourage us to try to better understand and assess our cultural norms.     In writing about the Purpose Led Organizations, Peter Hawkins identifies three outcomes of purpose related to culture.   First, it attracts and energizes employees.   In Good to Great , Jim Collins wrote:    The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they  first  got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and  then  figured out where to drive it. They said, in essence, “Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the...

I will be very transparent that I attend these meetings more for information than inspiration, but I came away wi th b oth.     Craig Groeschel, pastor of Life.Church, and Albert Tate, pastor of Fellowship Church, were the bookend preachers.     Both were inspiring and competent. Like most large events, the Global Leadership Summit went virtual this year. Although there were still some large group viewings across the country, the event was produced as an online event that could also be viewed by small groups and individuals across the country.     The production was well done, and I only experienced one brief service outage during the conference.  This is unusual for an event this large.  Of course, viewing from home is convenient and it is nice to be able to go back or pause as you wish, but there are a lot more distractions. Groeschel is an effective communicator who is informative and encouraging, but he goes more for the head than th...

As is my annual custom, I attended a satellite presentation of the Global Leadership Summit last week.   My primary reason to attend is to be introduced to new speakers in the field of leadership development and be exposed to some cutting-edge ideas in the field.    About a third of the participants are church leaders, one-third business leaders, and the rest are not-for-profit leaders, educators, and others.  The mix is ministry meets marketplace, and it is done well. The Summit still originates in South Barrington, Illinois, from the facilities of Willow Creek Church, but there is a bit of distance between the church and the Network since accusations arose about former church pastor Bill Hybels who was also a key player in the Willow Creek Association, now rebranded as the Global Leadership Network. Although the Summit was broadcast to hundreds of sites across the United States with about 135,000 participants (and will be re-packaged and translate...

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is.     A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” --Wayne Gretzky At the recent Global Leadership Summit, pastor Craig Groeschel addressed the idea of anticipatory leadership. He said, “Good leaders react. Great leaders anticipate.”  This reflects the Wayne Gretzky quote above.  As leaders, we may be where the action is now, but the action may not be there for long. In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous culture, what works today may not work tomorrow and the church often plays catch-up and misses opportunities.  There is a time for doing due diligence and allowing the process to work, but our present context requires us to exercise creativity and imagination, becoming early innovators in ministry. Groeschel suggested that there are three D's of anticipatory leadership: Develop, Discern, and Disrupt. Here is my take on each. First, develop....

Craig Groeschel, the founder and senior pastor of Life.Church. The Global Leadership Summit which began as a project of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, and its founding pastor, Bill Hybels, over 25 years ago was held this week without Hybels. For several years, the GLS has been now produced by the Willow Creek Association, a spin-off organization and a loose network of churches but Hybels has been its driving force. Attended by thousands at the church facility in South Barrington and broadcast to thousands more at satellite locations, the annual meeting brings together not only evangelical leaders but outstanding speakers from business, charitable organizations, politics, and business.  For the first time, Hybels did not appear due to allegations of sexual impropriety brought against him over the past year by former employees, staff members, and business associates.  He has already left the church and resigned from the board of t...

The best presentation of the first day of the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was the last message of the day by Craig Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv (yes, that is the name of the church) in Edmond, Oklahoma.  He addressed the need for intergenerational cooperation in leadership development.  His comments were both inspiring and practical. Groeschel pointed out that if generations are going to work together and learn from each other, it must be intentional.   He suggested three ways to do this. Create on-going feedback loops so that various generations can talk to and listen to each other.  He uses listening groups made up of older and younger congregants to give him feedback on his messages. Create specific mentoring moments. This is not only older to younger mentoring, but also includes reverse mentoring where an older leader can learn from a young leader. Create opportunities for significant leadership development.  Don’t just delega...