70 Leadership Quotes From The Best Christian Conference I Attended In 2017

I attend a number of leadership conferences each year.  What I have discovered is we are in a golden age of Christian leadership content.  Never has there been such breadth of knowledge and the skill to deliver it.

The best conference I attended in 2017 was the ReThink Conference this past April 26th and 28th.  Put on by Carey Nieuwhof and Orange, this conference provides the most the relevant content on the issues facing today’s senior pastors and church leaders.  If you only have enough budget to attend one conference per year, ReThink and Orange is the one.

The Orange and ReThink Leadership team are offering readers of this site a discount for early registration to the 2018 event in Atlanta.  Click HERE or on the image above and save $60 if you register this week.  Trust me – you will not be disappointed.

To give you a preview, the following are 70 Leadership Quotes From ReThink Leadership, The Best Christian Conference I Attended In 2017:

Carey Nieuwhof

1. The vision of the church was handed to us. We can’t come up with our own vision.
2. You don’t have a ministry problem.  You have a strategy problem.
3. The reason vision falls flat is you don’t have a strategy.
4. The last 10% of the change is hardest. Show me blended worship and I’ll show you someone fearing change.
5. It’s easy to change something someone else built. It’s much more difficult to change something you built.
6. The temptation to strategize once is very strong and the direct path to irrelevance.
7. Yesterday’s ideas never attract tomorrow’s leaders.

Reggie Joiner

1. Yesterday’s ideas never attract tomorrow’s leaders.
2. Kids are the engine of growth for reaching your community.
3. You need to put your best talent in front of your best potential.
4. We have amazing leaders who show up to invest in kids and teenagers. But senior pastors set the tone for that.
5. We’re going to get the leaders for family and children’s ministry before we get leaders for anywhere else.
6. Suicides peak at 10^th grade in our country.

Jeff Henderson

1. Insideritis – a malady afflicting the vision of an organization resulting in focusing on insiders over outsiders.
2. As leaders, the main arsenal we have is what comes out of our mouths. But it helps if we can help people see it.
3. “One of the best things you can do as a leader is write three Thank You notes a day.”

Jon Acuff

1. As leaders it’s our job to learn how to criticize the right way.

Frank Bealer

1. We spend too many times operating as if ministry is filled with surprises. We need to stop being surprised and start having a friend.

Nicole Fulgham Baker – founder and president of The Expectations Project

1. You cannot tell me every child God put on this planet can’t achieve and reach their full potential.
2. If your schools are doing great, then drive 25 minutes and you’ll find some who aren’t.

Les McKeown

1. When in a group discussion, put the interest of the enterprise ahead of your own.
2. Why do most early churches fail, they run out of resources before they run out of vision. You’ve got to keep a focus on viability.
3. I’m all for trial and error, but when you get traction, you have to go through it.

Dan Reiland

1. Culture is who you are, what you value, and how do you get things done.
2. Culture determines how you see staff. How you see staff determines how you treat staff.
3. Lead with vision, not job descriptions.
4. Trust is the foundation of empowerment. Micromanagement and control kills trust.
5. If you make the same mistake twice, you’re not learning.
6. When you can’t recruit with vision you have to buy them.
7. You’re not hiring an administrative assistant to make your life easier. You’re hiring an administrative assistant to make you more productive.
8. A great assistant will actually make you work harder.
9. Great teams are not afraid to have high standards.
10. I’m amazed in church how we avoid tough conversations. Most churches are one tough decision away from a breakthrough.
11. Equipping is training people for a specific ministry task. Developing is pouring into an individual so they become bigger, better person.  Equipping is on the church’s agenda.  Developing is on the person’s agenda.

Kara Powell

1. Young people give our church more vitality, innovation, passion, and even more money. They may not have money but their parents do.
2. The enthusiasm of young people is not your church’s problem. It is your church’s solution.

Chris Conlee

1. You have to have a vision caster. But you have to create vision carriers.
2. Nothing influences culture more than storytelling. Once you tell the story the culture recreates itself.
3. I can’t care about everything equally.

Andy Stanley

1. Sex before marriage is a sin.
2. I don’t want to do anything that hurts. I don’t want to do anything that would diminish your future relationship.  I don’t want to be a regret.   – On why not to have premarital sex
3. If you mistreat one of my kids, don’t invite me to lunch.
4. You do something for my children, you’ll be my friend forever.

Clay Scroggins

1. The influence and effectiveness of our team is most determined by our individual emotional health.
2. Great leaders are not necessary made up of people with high IQ. There made up of people with high EQ.
3. Emotional Health – The ability to recognize and manage our emotions as well as control our behavior in response to other people’s actions.
4. The worst form of white noise is the phone. Have you noticed how much prayer we’ve lost to scrolling on the phone?
5. White noise kills curiosity.
6. Identify the emotion. Men only have two emotions.  We’re either angry or happy.

Jud Wilhite

1. I know we’ve built a crowd. Have we built a church?  When you call your people to sacrifice, you know if you’ve built a crowd or a church.
2. Your best leadership in the downturn, not the upturn.
3. Your best leadership in the downturn when no one is watching is what enables you to celebrate when everyone is watching.
4. Define Reality – My job is to define reality. There’s nothing worse than following a leader who says everything’s great when it’s not great.
5. Don’t break faith before you break through. Ministry is hard.  Ministry is crazy.
6. Pastors, you are the keeper of the keys to the funny farm. You are also an anointed, empowered servant of God who is on a mission.

Brad Lomenick

1. Content is a commodity.  So what is the distinctive for our churches – connection, conversation and community.
2. Information and knowledge used to flow from old to young.  Now it flows from young to old.

Carey Nieuwhof

1. You can have a church with well-behaved senior adults or you can have kids.
2. The more you know the more cynical you get.
3. Unchecked, knowledge brings sorrow.
4. The best antidote to cynicism is curiosity. The cynical is never curious.  The curious are never cynical.  Cynics never ask questions.

Bob Goff

1. Make room for the things God has for you by making room in your schedule.
2. We don’t need to be arguing. Jesus doesn’t need a bunch of lawyers.  He needs a bunch of neighbors.
3. Jesus doesn’t need your help. He wants your heart.

Carlos Whitaker

1. It is so easy to confuse leading out of a place of pain rather than a place of promise.
2. Social media is not real. It’s edited.  It’s produced.

Ryan Leak

1. People come to church and leave the church for the exact same reason. They come for the preaching.  They leave for the preaching.  They come for the music.  They leave for the music.

Jon Acuff

1. If you are a high performance leader, you are likely a high anxiety leader.
2. I can’t try to prevent failure that hasn’t happened yet.
3. You don’t get smarter the later you stay up.

Click HERE or on the image to the left and as a free gift for subscribing to this site, you can receive my new Ebook 1269 Leadership Quotes: Timeless Truths From 2016’s Top Christian Leadership Conferences.  Featured are the Johnny Hunt Mens Conference, ReThink Leadership, Orange and Leadercast Conferences among others.  If applied, these insights will make you an exponentially better leader.  Enjoy!!!