Courageous Leadership

Bill Hybels uses the experience and gifts God has given him to inspire and instruct church leaders. After reading the first two chapters I was ready to conquer the world. Hybels gave me a vivid picture of how important the work of the church is to God’s plan for the world. The vision he described is compelled me to keep my vision sharp as we for our Church Planting team. There are so many good directions to go, but I know that God has a pinpoint mission for us to be apart of. Before I read Courageous Leadership I knew vision was important, but I now see it as the difference between getting by and prevailing. I realized how much I wanted to be apart of a God sized vision, and why should the church plant team I work with desire anything less. I have made the wrong assumption that I could over share my vision, or that everybody already knows what it is. I was encouraged to find new and passionate ways to share the vision God has for our church. The book also helped me see that setting specific goals could be beneficial and productive. At times I have felt specific number goals to be rather arbitrary and humanistic. Hybels makes an excellent point about, “what gets measured gets done,” and I know as a staff member at a church that I desire clear expectations form my senior pastor. My leadership style is not heavily weighted towards being a strong visionary, but I have seen the great need to sharpen my vision, and make goal setting a priority. I was literally shuffling through people in my mind as I read Hybel’s ten different leadership styles. I found myself predominately in a few different styles, and felt freed from trying to be every type of leader. I believe the recognition of these different types will help me encourage emerging leaders to find their niche. Each chapter I read gave me allot to think about, and it will take me months or years to full realize the value of this book. One concept I have been tossing around for more than a week is “self leadership.” I can see the high value, but I cannot imagine spending 50% of my time in this area, and still being able to say I am being effective. Maybe I just have some growing and understanding to do.