May 1st through 3rd are three of my favorite leadership days of the year. Each year, INJOY Stewardship Solutions allows me to live-blog the Orange and ReThink Leadership Conferences. No event stretches my thinking more and make me a smarter and better-equipped leader than this event.
If you are unfamiliar with ReThink and Orange, let me give you an overview. Hosted by Carey Nieuwhof, ReThink is a series of Ted Talk-stlyle lessons from some of the most innovative minds in business and leadership. Orange is simply the nation’s preeminent organization on children’s ministry.
As part of my time here, INJOY Stewardship is offering a FREE Capital Campaign Calculator for your church. If your church needs to raise significant capital in the next two years, this will be a wonderful source of information for you.
Today is Day 3 of the conference. The event’s next speakers were Doug Fields and Kara Powell. Kara is the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI) and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. Named by Christianity Today as one of “50 Women to Watch”, Kara serves as a Youth and Family Strategist for Orange.
The following are 36 leadership lessons and quotes from their brilliant sessions along with comments from several other great leaders:
Kara Powell
- As a parent, deep down we feel like we don’t measure up.
- Guilt is feeling about what we do. Shame is about feeling bad about who we are.
- If I were a teenager today I would be dealing with anxiety and depression also.
- You are enough because Jesus makes you enough. On our own we are not enough.
- This is such good news that parents should be flocking to us at the church.
- Only 20% of the parents show up to your training. Only 20% of the parents read your books. And they are the 20% who need it the least.
- The average parent is behind their middle-schooler in technology.
- Jesus is more than enough.
Karl Vaters
- I didn’t think I was a small church pastor. I thought I was a big church pastor that hadn’t arrived yet.
- You have to find success in ministry without numbers attached to it.
- If I took numbers off the table, would I describe my church as a healthy church?
- Numbers are not inevitable.
- No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- Influence is about leveraging small things.
- In Orange County, more people are attending small church than Mega churches. The #1 reason people give for attending small churches is the pastor knows their name. They want to be pastored by a pastor.
- I’ve never seen a beam of darkness.
Dr. Bernice King
- You have to be intentional about connecting with people and with people whose stories and cultures you don’t know.
- Empathy can make be so emotional drawn in you are paralyzed to do anything. Compassion allows you to have emotion but do something about it.
- The next generation sees humans more than color.
- Light belongs where darkness is.
Doug Fields
- I had a negative perception of parents until I became a parent.
- Parenting will change your leadership.
- When parenting became personal it actually became more important to our ministry.
- Leadership ultimately becomes powerful when your ministry becomes personal.
- Personal is most powerful.
- Discipleship doesn’t happen from a distance.
- When leadership personal, it builds confidence. It restores dignity. It removes suffering.
- What if our greatest ministry is not to more? What if it is not about numbers?
- The is a BIG conference with BIG ideas from BIG personalities who have BIG problems.
- Don’t be seduced by the big. Be seduced by the moments that are personal.
- Someone, somewhere in your world always has some type of pain.
- Pain never stops.
- You can impress crowds from a distance. You influence people up close.
- The only people who really like crowds are speakers, performers, and number counters.
- The best leadership I’ve ever seen doesn’t happen on a stage.
- Why are you in ministry? It’s not to draw a crowd but love people.
This afternoon session will include Clay Scroggins.
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