2008 Willow Creek Summit, Day 2

Personal highlights from today …

Craig Groeschel:

  • “What is ‘it’? Don’t know.”
  • “‘It’ happens. But often ‘it’ doesn’t.”
  • “The early church – those dudes had ‘it’.”
  • “To reach people no one else is reaching, we will have to do things no one else is doing.” And the corollary: “To do things that no one else is doing, we can’t do the things that everyone else is doing.”
  • After a few years, they cut everything except five core areas: weekend worship, small groups, kids, students, missions. This freed up resources. They stopped doing things everyone else was doing in order to do things no one else was doing such as Internet Campus, YouVersion, etc.
  • “You have everything you need to do what God has called you to do.”
  • “What is God trying to show you through your limitations?”
  • “Organizations that have ‘it’ are willing to fail.”
  • “You try, it doesn’t work out, then shake it off and step up.”
  • “You need to have ‘it’ in order for your church to get ‘it’.”
  • Craig had “it”, then he started doing ministry and ministry started killing “it”. “I had become a full-time pastor and a part-time follower of Christ. I lost ‘it’.”

Catherine Rohr:

  • “I hope I’m a 75 year-old lady going around prison beating up gangsters with a cane.”
  • “46% of all closing situations end without [the salesperson] asking for anything.”
  • Jim Mellado: “The process you (Rohr) are using for character development is like a Wesleyan small group.”

Pastor Howitzer: “When I think, I have thoughts.”

Brad Anderson: “People are drawn to leadership because they’re looking for an affirmation of themselves.”

Bill Hybels quoting Mother Theresa’s vows to God:

  • “I will refuse you nothing. I will do your bidding without delay.”
  • “Even if I don’t feel Your presence, I will seek to love You as You’ve ever been loved before.”
  • Video: “Here am I, send me.”

2008 Willow Creek Summit, Day 1

Personal highlights from today …

Gary Haugen:

  • “If God is passionate about it, He is responsible for it.”

Bill George:

  • “Understand the purpose of your leadership.”
  • “Follow your compass, not your clock.”
  • “Leadership isn’t about having power over others, but about empowering others.”

Bill Hybels: “I never advocate insane living. I’ve done it, but I would never advocate it!”

Wendy Kopp:

  • “It’s easy to lead when you are pursuing something you deeply, deeply believe in.”
  • “People want to live a life of meaning. We give them that opportunity.”

Unplanned blogging hiatus

Why did I launch clifguy.com and then not blog for 6 weeks?

  1. trip to Florida to meet with Christ Fellowship and Flamingo Road
  2. personal briefcase/laptop bag stolen
  3. lost my assistant Amy (promoted to the executive suite – good for her, bad for me!)
  4. interviewed for and hired Amy’s replacement
  5. several staff teams moving from one office to another requiring changes to the cable plant
  6. new private office for me (yea! but a took time to move)
  7. IT staff vacations, leaving me to cover
  8. end of fiscal year for my wife’s church for which I am the unofficial CFO
  9. obtained a new vehicle for my wife (yea! but a pain to research, test drive, etc.)
  10. replacement laptop arrived so I had to move onto it
  11. Glenn Kelley of Vine Hosting in for a 4-day visit
  12. my daughter returned home from 6 weeks study abroad in Europe
  13. major rain storm that flooded the basement of my wife’s church, the cleanup was left to me and Glenn due to many people from her church going on a mission trip
  14. trip to Colorado to take my 16 year-old son backpacking

In his blog roll Brian has me as “Clif Guy Some of the Time”. In truth, for 6 weeks it was “Clif Guy None of the Time”. Now you know why.

iTunes/QuickTime isn’t optional

Three months ago I posted about how I was fed up with iTunes and was uninstalling it. Well … here I am downloading iTunes and QuickTime. I’m NOT happy about it, but too many things just assume you have it. My new digital camera (purchased to replace the one in my stolen laptop bag) records short videos. Alas, I can’t watch them because they’re in QuickTime .MOV format. I’m a podcast fan and too many of them just assume iTunes – they don’t give you the feed URL for other podcatchers such as Juice. Is there any other way?