Making Leaders

Who do leaders turn to when they want to grow their leadership?

On September 29-30 I had attended the Global Leadership Summit, a webcast conference on Christian leadership, hosted by the Willowcreek Community Church, an evangelical mega-church of 24,000 attendees. The conference was attended by 165,000 leaders meeting at sites in 70 countries. I met with the several hundred leaders at a Canadian site at Stoneridge Fellowship.

The conference was about Christian leadership, though not necessarily church leadership; many of the speakers and attendees were from the business world; and not all were Christians. One central idea is that wisdom can be found in many places. Consider the panel of speakers:

Bill Hybels, pastor of Willowcreek Church
Dr. Henry Cloud, psychologist and author
Hon. Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark
Seth Godin, author and marketing blogger
Michelle Rhee, CEO, Studentsfirst.org
Erwin McManus, artist and film maker
Mother Maggie Gobran, founder, Stephen's Children Ministry and Nobel Peace prize nominee
Dr. Wesley Stafford, Pres. Compassion International
Patrick Lencioni, author and founder of Table Group management consultants
John Dickson, Director, Centre for Public Christianity
Steven Furtick, Lead Pastor of Elevation Church.
Tim Schroeder, National Pastor, Leadership Centre, Willowcreek Canada
Dr. Reg Bibby, author and Canadian sociologist.

From the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the garbage heaps of Cairo. Pastors and politicians; academics and bloggers. There was such a wealth of knowledge and experience in just two days, that I will take some time to process it all. I found some leaders impacted me emotionally like Mother Maggie, who lives and serves among the poorest peoples. Seth Godin for instance inspired my imagination.

Let's go back to that earlier premise: wisdom can be found in many places, or "all truth is God's truth." The theological foundation is natural theology: we can discern truths about God and human beings through an understanding of the natural created order. Dating back to Thomas Aquinas, this was a fundamental motivation for medieval western science. So we can enrich ministry through insights from psychology, sociology, business, marketing and the arts. But don't think for a minute that this was happening uncritically. Attenders come with theological filters that will determine what information that will take and integrate into their worldview. Bibby's observation that Canadian evangelicals should be engaging with Canadian Catholics might have had sound sociological support, but ran up against deep theological prejudices (enough so that the session chair first warned us that "we might not all agree with everything the next speaker will share.") McManus' plea for the arts and the revival of storytelling would fall flat for those whose theology rejects such things as frivolous. McManus' film group created one of the winning Doritos superbowl ads, but faced criticism for not using the opportunity for a Christian message (McManus' response: "But it was a Doritos commercial!") Some speakers made conscience attempts to correlate their teaching with the Bible like Dr. Cloud, while others like Seth Godin did not, even though the idea of faith was there.

My personal theology allows me to learn from wise leaders inside the church and outside. The Bible will remain my final authority on what I adopt and integrate into my faith. And whether I engage with my Catholic neighbours. But that's next week's post....

P.S. I bought the DVD if you want to borrow it. :-)