Here are my final thoughts and observations after sitting through this year’s Leadership Summit.

  • This felt more like a “leadership” conference than it did the previous few years. I’m glad to see the Willow decided to get back to their roots for this conference. Short of the session with Bono, which was very good, every session was more about building leaders rather than moving leaders. Last year, in particular, seemed to be more about moving leaders. I’m glad they’ve shifted back.
  • It was a good move to reduce the amount of worship singing. It’s not that worship shouldn’t be a part of conference experiences, it’s just that this particular conference is about leadership. In that context, I’d much rather hear quality teaching on leadership than experience worship. There are plenty of other opportunities in my life to experience worship. I don’t have plenty of opportunities to learn from this caliber of leaders.
  • I’m glad Willow has made it possible to experience the Summit here on the Granger campus. Because of that, we’re able to provide the best leadership training available to about 300 of our people. We’d be lucky to bring 30 people to Willow’s campus.
  • I’m amazed every year at how God has used Bill Hybels to influence the local church. Truly amazing!
  • This may sound sacreligious, but I still believe that the church needs better leaders more than it needs better teachers and preachers. That’s one of the reasons why the Summit will always be a part of my ministry schedule.
  • I’m going to pray God raises up more high capacity women leaders in our businesses and churches. We need more women who can bring their knowledge and experiences to equip and influence other leaders. And, I’m going to continue to raise up and empower women leaders around me. (Just out of curiosity, who are those women in your churches? Who are the women that are leaders of leaders? What are you doing to expand their leadership influence?)
  • It’ll be interesting to see how Willow incorporates the next generation of leaders into the Summit experience in the coming years. It would be great if the Summit included at least one speaker who wears jeans and uses hair product.
  • I missed the session where Hybels goes into some detail about learnings from the last 12 months. We heard a little about the change in the leadership structure at Willow. I would have liked to hear a little bit, as an example, about the death of the Axis service. I would have liked to hear about the shifts in programming that Willow is incorporating into its weekend services. I would have liked to hear about the launch of the new campus in downtown Chicago. I learn about leadership when I hear about specific instances when leadership is being practiced.

What are your thoughts?

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