Archive - Bill Hybels RSS Feed

The Summit party continues

May 16, 2012 in Bill Hybels, Events, The Global Leadership Summit, Video, Willow Creek Association with 6 Comments

Only 87 days til the 2012 Summit kicks off in full force! But who’s counting? Yes, we’re a little bit excited – and you should be too! The speakers are great and we’ve got amazing musicians! In case you hadn’t heard, we’re having a little party this week – giving away cool Summit stuff. Just our little way of reminding you to register before the price goes up on 5/22 and tell everyone you know how fabulous you think the Summit is!

Today is a big day for another reason – and aren’t you glad you didn’t miss it? Making its blogosphere debut is the 2012 Global Leadership Summit promo video! Let us know what you think & don’t forget to pass it along!

Since it’s such a great day we’re throwing in TWO giveaways today!

First, free to all for a limited time is Bill Hybels’ classic Summit talk from 2002: The Sky-High Stakes of Leadership (mp3). Get it now because it’s only here through 5/22!

Second, our friends over at Zondervan were kind enough to send us a set of Bill’s new releases: Leadership Axioms, Courageous Leadership & The Call to Lead. Give this post a shout on Twitter or Facebook and leave us a comment telling why you’d like these books. We’ll choose one random winner on Thursday at 3:00.

Register now for best rates

3 lessons from great leaders

March 30, 2012 in Bill Hybels, Leadership with 1 Comment

Bret NicholsonThe following post is written by Bret Nicholson, the Lead Pastor at One Life Church, a GLS site in Henderson, KY. One Life is a young church started in October of 2010 and preparing to launch their second site this coming summer. Follow him on twitter and check out his blog, One Life Leaders Blog.

As a part of our hosting The Global Leadership Summit sponsored by the Willow Creek Association, I have the privilege of gathering with other pastors to talk about our leadership challenges. Bill Hybels leads the time and I’m convinced that the leaders in the room are some of the most high impact Christian leaders of our generation.

Here are 3 things that struck me as I spent time with them recently:

1. The Best Leaders: Reflect
Reflection simply means to stop and think about what you’re doing and ask why. If I could characterize Bill Hybels’ leadership style and strength I would call it: the ability to reflect on life, leadership, patterns, principles and behaviors and then boil things down to meaningful ideas he can articulate and act on. My personal nickname for him is, “The Philosopher King”. What that means is he is an observer and student of leadership (including his own) and then a brilliant teacher of those observations.

I come away determined to think and observe more.

2. The Best Leaders: Experiment
One of the most freeing and encouraging observations about people who lead successfully at very high levels is they are willing to try…and fail. I’ve been to a lot of Willow Creek conferences and training sessions and I know they are constantly trying to improve. They tweak, re-org, pursue ideas and take risks almost constantly. It’s part of their DNA. By this I don’t mean they don’t know where they want to go. They are vividly clear about their vision. They just stay fluid on HOW to get there.

I come away determined to take more risks.

3. The Best Leaders — Listen
This is what strikes me most. World-class, highly accomplished and experienced leaders are amazing listeners. I lead a church of a thousand that has been around a year and a half. Hybels has a church that has been around for 36 years with weekend attendance of several thousand. The Global Leadership Summit is a juggernaut impacting nations around the world. And the team behind it all asks me questions and lets me participate in the process of how to improve what they do. Me? Why would they bother? They bother because they are humble and gracious, insatiable learners.

It’s interesting to me that a theme of the book of Proverbs is that wise people are marked by their listening and learning ability. That was true 3000 years ago. It’s true today. Being around some of the best leaders on the planet reinforced that simple but profound lesson.
I come away determined to ask good questions and listen more intently.

Have you ever been around a great leader? What did you learn?

Announcing The Global Leadership Summit

March 16, 2012 in Bill Hybels, Events, Jim Mellado, Leadership, The Global Leadership Summit, Webcast, Willow Creek Association with 0 Comments

Maybe you missed it, or maybe you just can’t get enough – either way, we’re glad you’re here! This webcast marks the launch of our 2012 Global Leadership Summit season and the team behind the event is so excited. Here’s a recap of the webcast, along with a process tool that you can work through on your own or with your team.

GLS Faculty 2012 Announcement

Bill Hybels and Jim Mellado on The Global Leadership Summit

Leaders know they need an annual injection of vision, encouragement, and skill development because the pressures of leadership are relentless. Bill Hybels believes The Summit is that injection – for any leader – “because it’s about the subject of leadership which is transdenominational, transcultural, and transdisciplinary. Everyone who leads anything needs to get better. There’s an adrenaline rush that comes with knowing that you’re getting better and your organization is getting better.”

There is a collection of tensions that makes the Summit unique. It is first and foremost, and unapologetically Christian event. At the same time, Bill and the team behind the Summit pull from the world’s best experts when inviting speakers. The Summit is leader focused but it’s also inclusive of everyone because everyone is a person of influence and must improve. There is a world-class, global perspective to the Summit that is balanced with a high level of local ownership. And the Summit is packed with both tactical, skill based teaching as well as inspiration and motivation. It’s the tension that sets the Summit apart and makes it what it is.

This year the GLS is pleased to announce a powerful faculty including:

  • Bill Hybels: Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church; founder of The Global Leadership Summit – @BillHybels
  • Condoleezza Rice: Former US Secretary Of State; Professor at Stanford Graduate School – @CondoleezzaRice
  • Jim Collins: Nationally acclaimed Business Thinker and author of newest release Great by Choice
  • Marc Kielburger: At age 18 co-founded Free the Children, which has become the largest network of children helping children – @RealMeToWe
  • Sheryl Wudunn: Pulitzer Prize Winner for Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide – @Wudunn
  • Pranitha Timothy: Strategic leader with International Justice Mission who champions restoration and reintegration for thousands of freed slaves in India
  • Craig Groeschel: Founder and Senior Pastor LifeChurch.tv known for leveraging technology to reach a new generation – @CraigGroeschel
  • William Ury: Professor at Harvard with 30 years experience negotiating and mediating corporate, state, and civic conflicts
  • John Ortberg: Senior Pastor, Menlo Presbyterian Church; best-selling author and prominent voice in the spiritual formation movement -@JohnOrtberg
  • Mario Vega: Senior Pastor of a 73,000-attendee church in El Salvador with a successful cell group strategy
  • Geoffrey Canada: Pioneering leader in urban education featured in acclaimed documentary film, Waiting for Superman; CEO/President Harlem Children’s Zone.
  • Patrick Lencioni: Sought-after business speaker teaching from his upcoming book The Advantage about the significance of organizational health – @PatrickLencioni

    • Patrick Lencioni on Meetings

    For most of us working in churches or businesses, meetings occupy a significant portion of time. To admit to not liking meetings is akin to not liking our jobs. Often meetings are equated with corporate penance but the truth is meetings are not inherently bad. Most meetings lack two critical components: drama and context.

    Every good movie must have conflict which is carefully managed by a good director. Likewise, Lencioni argues every meeting must have an issue at stake that people truly care about, “otherwise we are actually asking them to sit around the table and plan their day, or plan dinner, or picture everyone else in the room in their underwear.” We as leaders need to do a better job of being the director; people want tension, anxiety, conflict and a mechanism for resolution.

    Too often we produce “meeting stew” – all topics thrown into one big meeting that nobody is really enjoying. If we focus on the context of a meeting then each topic can be given the attention it requires. Lencioni prescribes four types of meetings: the daily check-in, the weekly staff meeting, the monthly strategic, and the quarterly review. Add each of these up and it comes to about 15% of a leader’s time. That’s not much in the grand scheme of things.

    People don’t hate meetings. They hate bad meetings. Add conflict and context to transform your meetings and the health of your organization. Here is a process tool to help you evaluate your meetings.

    Register now for best rates

    The Language of Leadership

    February 22, 2012 in Bill Hybels, Leadership, Membership with 0 Comments

    “Words matter. And giving people language with which they can express the values of a culture is about 50% of what it takes to build a culture. So, the choice of words that you want to mainstream in your culture is exceedingly important.” – Bill Hybels

    A healthy organization and/or self can dissipate because of the misuse and lack of intention with words. Within an age of constant emails, tweets, media, and—yes—blog posts, leaders must find a way to break through the noise to clarify vision and inspire those we lead. But this takes hard work. In attempting to elevate the value of what pastors lead emerged the phrase “the local church is the hope of the world.” This has become the rallying cry of a movement.

    This month’s Defining Moments focuses on the power of words. Focused primarily on those who preach regularly, Bill also spends time talking about the seemingly insignificant communication moments that we have as leaders such as announcements. I would also extend this to tweets, Facebook statuses, or comments made in meetings throughout our culture.

    Paul urged the church at Ephesus to not just hold back negative words, but to leverage them for the task of inspiration and serving those we lead (4:29). So, as Richard Allen Farmer challenges, how are you doing with the words you use as a leader?

    Defining Moments is available exclusively for WCA Members to watch here.

    We suggest you watch listen to this month’s episode, watch it with your team, and then schedule some time to discuss it together.

    Individual Reflection Questions

  • How much time do you currently spend on sermon preparation versus your other leadership responsibilities?
  • What impacts this balance in any given week?
  • What mix of people currently provide feedback on your talks (solicited or not to which you listen)? (For instance, Bill mentioned having someone who checks his theology, another who gives him feedback on his logic, a business leader who tells him whether its accessible, and people from different genders and cultural backgrounds.)
  • Thinking about your next talk, what do you want people to know and what do you want them to do?
  • Can you tweet the main idea of your next talk?

    • Team Discussion Questions

    We encourage you to get together with all the communicators in your organization (student ministry leaders, teaching team, and even those who do announcements, etc.) and discuss a few questions:

  • Spend some time describing the process you’ve used in developing your best talks.
  • What words or phrases are common in your environment? (repeated often, most memorable, part of your church’s brand, etc.)
  • Thinking about your next sermon, what do you want people to know and what do you want them to do?
  • How does your team provide feedback to each other or filter the feedback you already receive?
  • Write out, word-for-word, a couple sentences you would deliver in an upcoming talk, presentation, or announcement. Then spend some time brainstorming five different ways to say the same thing.

    • By Andy Cook (@WCAAndy),
    Willow Creek Association
    Events and Church Relations

    Coping with December Pressure

    December 5, 2011 in Bill Hybels, Leadership with 6 Comments

    By: Bill Hybels (@Bill Hybels). Sr. Pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, convener of The Global Leadership Summit, passionate about the local church, author, speaker, sailor, and grandfather to Henry & Mac.


    I have a love/hate relationship with the month of December. My birthday falls near the middle of the month and Christmas falls near the end so those occasions should make the month of December a banner month, right? Senior Pastors know better. December is easily the most pressure packed month of the year. Teaching fresh material every December is a herculean challenge. Extra time is always needed for celebrating the staff, honoring the volunteers, raising year-end funds, and being even more available than usual for pastoring the church and community. And then there is your family- your spouse and kids and grandkids and extended family. Neglect them and well, you know… So, each year there are the 2 things that I make sure I do to recharge and stay grounded. The first is prayer.

    Out of desperation I started a new practice decades ago. On the first Monday in December I take my Bible and journal to a place that offers solitude. My prayer is the same each year: “God, please help me get this Christmas right…or at least a little better all around than I did last Christmas.” Then I start journaling about whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I start with making sure I’m learning from mistakes of previous holiday seasons. Other times I begin by reviewing what I got right the year before. But regardless of where I start, God always speaks to me.

    I specifically remember the year that God whispered to me to stop pretending to my wife and children about what my schedule was going to be in December. Ever the optimist, I would joyfully announce that I was going to be around more this December than last year. Then reality would strike. Almost every year I spend December 26 apologizing to my family for not keeping my word about my schedule.

    This all changed with a whisper on a Monday.

    God said, “Why not tell your family the truth? Why not simply explain to them that December is the most intense month of the year for pastors and despite the flurry of activity in the first three weeks of the month you will all get sweet revenge the final week of the month.” Sweet revenge!

    The second strategy I have for staying grounded in December is replenishment (aka: Sweet revenge!). My children, who were young at the time, loved that term. Our family would scheme, plot and plan what we could do as a family that would make the chaos of the first 3 weeks fade. For over 25 years, the Hybels family packs up to go somewhere on Christmas Day and we aren’t seen around Barrington until the first of January.

    These “sweet revenge” travel days have been a lifesaver for our family. We cook meals together, jog together and watch sunsets together. On Old Years Night, we all list the top 10 blessings from the previous year. By the time the ball drops in Times Square we are all good with God, the church and each other. The deeper point in revealing all of this is that the idea came from a humble prayer for help from God on a Monday morning in early December decades ago.

    Other years God has whispered other directions to me that gave me new ways to cope with the intensity of December pressures. Nothing has been more valuable to me than the first Monday of December, alone with God, armed with a Bible, a journal and an earnest prayer to get this Christmas Season a bit more right than last year.

    By: Bill Hybels (@BillHybels)
    Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church
    Chairman of the Board, Willow Creek Association

    Page 1 of 812345»...Last »