Leading the way

This past Thursday-Saturday several of our church leaders/members and I attended a Leadership Summit presented by Willow Creek. It was an amazing weekend and what I realized is that I'm doing a lousy job of using my strengths to serve God.

Wade and I have been asked to go several times in the past. Wade has been once, but I've never been able to go because of my school schedule. This year we have a later start date, so I was able to attend.

I believe I have some leadership ability. It's not always something I'm comfortable with, depending on the audience, but I can speak in front of people and organize people without much apprehension or nervousness. This particular conference has a history or making one come back from it with your mind and soul reeling from all the information. We heard some amazing speakers, in and out of the Christian world. We heard Bill Hybels, Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, Carly Fiorini, to name a few. These people are well known leaders with great advice on how to better serve God, as well as others.

The common themes were finding your strengths and then using those to reach others for Christ. Also, making sure that your have goals in mind and then reassessing those goals often to make sure you are headed in the right directions.

Every single day, we left there for the drive home, and after we discussed as a group the topics for the day, I was always left to my own introspection. These are the major points I got from the weekend.

1. I'm not using my strengths well enough to reach others for Christ. Your strength goes beyond your Spiritual gifts. It's something that you are passionate about, something that gets you motivated, something that gives your joy, get the picture? My strength is teaching young children to read. It also just happens to be my job. My goal is to spend time with God in the next weeks and listen to what He says about how I can use that ability to serve Him more.

2. I have to stop using fear as an excuse. I've got so many fears, many I have overcome, but real fears. You can read about some of those here. I need to ask God to give me opportunities to face those fears so that they quit getting in the way of service.

3. One of my favorite speakers was Richard Curtis. He's a movie writer and director. He has written such movies as Knotting Hill, Love Actually and more recently, The Girl in the Cafe. His ideas of leadership and humanitarian efforts were extremely thought provoking. He is very unsure about his own faith, but he understands the concept of what loving your neighbor means more than any Christian I know. He has raised millions and millions of dollars for people in Africa and India. He uses his influence within the entertainment industry to gain help from people with unlimited resources. He also was the force behind the American Idol show this past season that raised something like $70 million for humanitarian efforts. WOW! As Bill Hybels said, here's a man that's not even sure about his faith and he is doing way more than me to make the world a better place. It makes me feel just outright guilty that the Christian world is not doing what this man is doing.

There were so many other high points. I was very impressed with Carly Fiorini. She was the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who was fired several years back. She also was named by Fortune magazine as the most influential woman in business several years ago. Her story is one of fear, discrimination because of gender, success leading several companies, and finally the heartbreak of being fired without apparent probable cause. She took the high road in her leadership and her termination. She lead with integrity and honesty.

How can I use my strengths at church, at home, and at school to do good things, to show others Christ love and to be a better leader? It's a tough question. I have a lot to think about in the coming weeks.

Sandy C