Live Blog From ReThink Conference – 63 Leadership Quotes From Gavin Adams

For the next three days, I will be live blogging from the ReThink Leadership Conference in Atlanta, GA.  ReThink, open exclusively to senior pastors, campus pastors and executive pastors, is a unique gathering of church leaders who are committed to solving the biggest challenges facing your church and the Church.

Injoy Stewardship Solutions has dispatched me to attend this amazing event as a way to invest in your growth.  They also want to invest in your leadership by offering you our latest FREE ebook Breaking The Next Growth Barrier: 10 Things Pastors Can Do To Break Down Growth Barriers by clicking HERE for your complimentary copy.

Today’s first breakout speaker was Gavin Adams, Lead Pastor of Woodstock City Church, a campus of North Point Community Church.  His session was entitled What I Learned From Leading At North Point.  The following are 63 leadership quotes I captured during his incredibly informative session:

1. I would find tooth and nail for decentralization.
2. Andy Stanley is a better leader than communicator.
3. We are an uber-collaborative organization.
4. It is unbelievable how healthy an organization is when you let leadership go.
5. Ministry and theology aren’t the same thing.
6. The church is the most important organization on the planet and we worry about things that don’t affect eternity.
7. We worry about keeping people rather than reaching people.
8. Last Sunday we had 8,000 people. Numbers matter because individuals matter to God.
9. I took everything over the first six months I was at the church.
10. I wasn’t really good at knowing when to let go of all of that.
11. About six months in I wasn’t worrying about how we’re going to grow, but a friend told me I needed to worry how I was going to grow so I didn’t become the limiting factor of the church.
12. I was not capable of doing everything that needed to be done.
13. I no longer even knew all that needed to be done.
14. I realized I didn’t add value everywhere I went. In half the places, I made things worse.
15. God made everyone to add value somewhere. He didn’t make anyone able to add value everywhere.
16. Time goes really fast and if I didn’t figure it now, it was going to be too late. I could be the one person holding us back.
17. Learning to be really good at delegation was going to be the key leadership construct to stop us from growing.
18. Delegation is giving away authority, not tasks. Giving away tasks still means you’re in authority.
19. No one of us want to be guilty of drive-by delegation.
20. Anything systematic is better than anything unsystematic.
21. The one thing I’ve watched Andy do more than anything is give away leadership.
22. We give away leadership before people are ready to take it. Giving away leadership is part of our secret to success as to why we’re so successful.
23. Andy came to the building (only) once during the whole building process. He let me and a guy on our staff run the whole process.
24. Andy preaches 35 times per year. The other weeks is the campus pastors because Andy wants us to get reps.
25. We are way better at “Let go and let God” than “Let go and let others.”
26. Our leadership strategy is we give people leadership.
27. Letting go helps us go.
28. The worst thing is delegation without expectation.
29. My first year transitioning to a campus was the worst year of my life because every campus has a culture.
30. The steepest tension for me (becoming a North Point campus) was losing autonomy in a multi-campus setting.
31. Everything has a multi-campus implication.
32. You have to have an incredible high EQ to work in a matrix organization.
33. I give away leadership to every single person I can.
34. I do less now than I’ve ever done.
35. When only had four staff members is when I learned to give things away.
36. In successful, thriving organizations everybody has fun.
37. We had 1,350 sign up to volunteer two weeks ago.
38. Everyone wants to have a significant influence in the life of their church.
39. You don’t need more staff people to make things happen. You just need to ask people.
40. Paint a picture and paint them into it and everyone will say, “Yes.”
41. We want to centralize everything where there are economies of scale. We decentralize everything else.
42. We do not want managers on our campus. We want leaders.
43. Most campus pastors are asked to be lead managers.
44. You got to weigh in to buy in.
45. We are developing leaders in a much more powerful way with decentralization.
46. We are now creating churches in dozens of communities in cities where churches were built on personality.
47. There is a healthy competition (among the campus pastors) built around making it (the church) better, not making you better.
48. Competition can be healthy if it is leveraged to make everyone better.
49. The things God uniquely gifted you to do you should not give away.
50. I’m the primary vision carrier.
51. I’m the primary thinker.
52. Every leader is unique. Every delegation is unique.
53. Level 1 Delegation is investigation. Just research.
54. Level 2 is Informed Progress. Here’s the project but I want to touch base periodically.
55. Level 3 is Informed Results. I’m available but let me know when it’s done and the results.
56. Level 4. Just make it go away. You can own this.
57. Information creates responsibility.
58. I’m reading “Hug Your Customers.” It’s OK.
59. In our church, I only meet with people who are super anti-God or super onf fire for God. Anyone else I don’t have time for.
60. I can only critique the people who work directly for me. But I should be encouraging everyone in our organization.
61. My favorite question is, “If you were me, what would you do differently?”
62. What they (staff) think they know is what they know. And what they think they know is all they think they need to know.
63. I have tried to make everyone on our staff knows they are the best in the world. And if they mess up, it’s not the end of the world…It’s the cost of doing business.

It has been an amazing morning.  I look forward to the afternoon sessions.

As previously mentioned, INJOY Stewardship Solutions would like to offer you the FREE resource Breaking The Next Growth Barrier: 10 Things Pastors Can Do To Break Down Growth Barriers.  Click HERE or on the image to the left for your complimentary copy.