How would your organization change if courage was the foundation of your culture?

• “To create a courageous culture, you need to collaborate.”
• “I don’t want to work in an organization where I’m only asked to implement someone else’s vision.”
• “No one can put you on a pedestal unless you let them.”
• “You are not the omni-competent leader that you think you are.”
• “Great leaders do not avoid conflict. Great leaders lead toward it.”
• “We have confused spirituality with terminal niceness.”
• “As a consultant, no one ever comes to you and says, ‘I’m the problem on the team. I need your help.’”
• as a consultant: “When people are looking at their feet, you’re on to something.”
• “When we avoid conflict, we say, ‘We don’t want to hurt her feelings.’ What we really mean is, ‘We don’t want to hurt her feeling when she’s in the room.’”
• “Difficult feedback is part of what it means to be a leader.”
• “There’s a fine line between being courageous and being a jerk.”
• “Allow people to doing something poorly in order that they’ll learn how to do it well.”
• “Do you really want courage? Because courage is not about being famous… The only way to courage is through fear and obstacles. It’s through surrender and fear.”
• “Courage is not a trend, and it’s not a hobby. It’s a character crucible.”

Freedom is experienced when you live out your calling.

• “You and I can’t avoid risk if we try.”
• “Living is risky.”
• “The purpose of life isn’t to arrive at death safely.”
• “God is calling us to get out of our predictable, comfortable, safe little life.”
• “What’s the legacy you left?”
• “We allow our big ‘buts’ to stand in the way of God.”
• “It’s not about your limitations. It’s about what He can do.”
• on naysayers: “Who needs the devil when you have well-meaning Christians.”
• “God hasn’t called us to a safe life. He’s called us to a free life.”
• “We’re in this room today because God has been faithful.”
• “If you’re operating out of fear, you’ll say ‘no’ when God says ‘go.’”
• “God is still in the miracle business today.”

From interview with Eugene Peterson:

• on starting a church: “I want to make sure these people know about God and know each other.”
• “I had an adrenaline problem. I loved adrenaline.”
• on faking it as a pastor: “I made motions that I was doing something.”
• “How can I expect them to know what a pastor does when I was trying to figure it out myself?”
• on resigning to become a “pastor”: “I quit because I didn’t want to run the damn church.”
• on the elders running the church: “They made stupid decision sometimes.”
• “I stopped looking at people as problems to fix.”
• “Being a pastor is a pretty modest job. We’re not very important in the economy of the world. But we’re pretty important in the economy of the Kingdom.”
• “Don’t let the culture define our position.”
• on reading about previous pastors: “We need to pay attention to the people who have done it well.”
• on the church: “We’ve never been successful. Yet, all through this, salvation is being worked out.”
• on being a pastor: “It’s not glamorous… It’s hard, but it’s glorious.”

The greatest stories of courage are all around us, waiting to be revealed.

• “Take courage. Things do change.”
• “There is a chance to bring change if we’re working to work for it.”
• “There is nothing worse than saying nothing and doing nothing when your voice is needed.”
• “Success and leadership are not realized until they impact people outside of ourselves.”

Enduring organizations have core principles that guide daily decisions.

• “How would you like to be the speaker that follows Andy Stanley?”
• “You ever get stupid when you get overwhelmed?”
• “Leadership is service. There are no exceptions.”
• “You got the blessings. With it comes the weight.”
• “People are very brave when they aren’t talking to you face-to-face.”
• “Maybe everyone you disagree with doesn’t have to be put to death.”
• “When people are a commodity, the soul of the endeavor dries up.”
• “I don’t do exit interviews.”
• “As leaders, sometimes we need to let people fly and be free in Jesus’s name.”
• “A great team causes you to have courage.”
• “Slow and steady matters.”
• “When you don’t have any debt and a pile of money, you have more courage. Get your financial house in order.”
• “A higher calling matters. A higher calling changes the way you play the game.”

What if we stepped into all God created us to be?

• “Often times a single act of courage, is the tipping point for something extraordinary.”
• “You’re not a king and you never will be.” (sarcasm…one of the reasons Andy Stanley is a hero.)
• “Have the courage to stay, when it would be easier to go.”
• paraphrase: Circumstances may tell you to go. God may be saying to stay.
• Andy told the story of how his dad overcame a horrible ministry situation and decided to stay.
• “It would just be easier to go.”
• “Have the courage to leave, when it would be easier to stay.”
• Andy shared how he left his dad’s church. At the first baptism of North Point Church, Andy’s wife asked, “What if we had not left?”
• “Have the courage to ask for help, when it would be easier to pretend that everything’s okay.”
• “Secrets are dangerous.”
• “Whatever it is you fear, you are compensating for it in your leadership.”
• “What we ought to fear every day, is waking up somewhere and realizing we our outside of God’s will for our lives.”
• “God, am I where you want me to be?”
• “When this is behind you, what story do you want to tell?”

I’m always intrigued by the posts that generate the most traffic in any given month. Based on last month’s traffic, there must be a lot of people out there that feel stuck. For what it’s worth, I’m on a personal mission over the next several months to do something about that. In the mean time, here are the top ten posts based on pageviews for the month of February:

1. Three Reasons Why Your Church is Stuck
2. 7 New Job Openings at Great Churches
3. 9 Twitter Strategies to Engage Your Audience
4. Has Your Church Started to Die?
5. 5 Traits to Look for in a Campus Pastor
6. Need volunteers? Maybe your staff is too big.
7. Free Download: All-Church Survey
8. How I Got My Groove Back
9. Why Start New Churches When Many Fail?
10. When is a Budget Too Big?

That’s my list. How about you? What was the top post on your blog in February? Share the link by adding your comment.