1. Relationships

• Highly successful people relate well with people
• People won’t go with you if they don’t get along with you
• You can learn to get along with people (not about charisma, about understanding people/relationships)
• What can I do for others that they can’t do for themselves?
• Everyday, do something that is not your job; don’t draw attention to yourself
• Take 15 minutes, sit down in an office unless insisted, thank the owner for the job, let them know you want to work hard for them, give cell number for weekend needs (more something, whatever)
• If you don’t get along with people, you choose to

2. Equipping

• Highly successful people have learned to train other people
• The way your compound energy, time, effort, money comes from developing other people
• The key to developing people is to pick the key people
• Lesson: don’t send your ducks to eagle school (Leadership Gold) – develop them both but don’t frustrate them by forcing them to be something they are not; focus on making them the best duck or eagle they can be

3. Attitude

• Highly successful have an amazing attitude during adversity
• You have to learn more from failures then successes
• When we fail, we can either 1) learn from our failures or 2) leave our failures (95% of world)
• When you leave you failure, you find your failure again
• When you fall down, clean up the floor (while you’re down there)
• Impress w/ success but impact w/ failures
• Make failure your friend, not a fear
• Attitude will not replace incompetence

4. Leadership

• Highly successful people have learned to lead well
• Not positional, but influence

1. Success is knowing my purpose in life

How? There are 2 Paths to determine your purpose

1) (80% accurate) What is my passion?

• If I could do anything I wanted, I would ________________
• Passion gives energy
• Passion gives creativity
• It is possible to be passionate about something you are not good at (other 20% – imagine the bad singers that think they are good on American Idol)
• Passion can sometimes set us up for failure if it is something we are not good at

2) (100% accurate) Ability/giftedness – What I am good at that sets me apart from others?

• We are wired to do what we do well
• Can take time (took John 6 years to find)
• 90% of America is working on their weakness in the matters of giftedness/ skills – that creates average skills and no success (3–>5 never 3–>10)
• Always work on your weaknesses in matters of choice (always can go 3–>10 w/ choices)
• Find what you do well and do it often
• People don’t pay for average – they drive by .7

2. Success if growing to my maximum potential

• Where to put your energy and focus
• Start to separate from the pack and experiences success
• Must make a personal commitment
• Growth is not an automatic process – has to be intentional (not a lottery)
• The secret of success is determined by your daily agenda
• Every day you are either preparing or repairing (from the last day)
• Most spend half their day finding yesterday’s problems
• “Most people don’t lead their life, they accept their life”
• Successful people make important decisions early in life and manage them for the rest of their life
• The daily agenda is management of those decisions
• Not about the moment of decision (world emphasis) it is the larger decisions made earlier
• It takes an average of 12 days to stop following through on a decision
• Most think the decisions makes you, but it is the decisions that gives you an opportunity to make the decision (From Today Matters)

3. Success is sowing seeds that benefit others

• My job is not to make myself better but to make others better
• 99% people ask when they set up – “what is life gong to be like for me today?” (My tasks, my commute, if what I do is going to be liked)
• The success of my day is not determined by the harvest I reap but by the seeds I sow
• Success –> Significance
• How can I add value to people today?
• Checklist – did I add value? If so, to who?
• John’s 4 ways:
  1. I have to value people (are you or they going to gain as a leader?) Manipulation = personal advantage
  2. • We have to make ourselves more valuable
     • You cannot give what you do not have
     • Most people are travel agents – they send others where they have never gone themselves
     • Tour guide leaders take others w/ them
     • Everyday he reads, files, writes to be a better communicator
  3. • Know and relate to what they value
     • Listen –> Learn –> Lift –> Lead
     • Great leaders do these things to understand what others value
  4. I need to do the things that God does

Question #1 : What are you doing to invest in yourself?

Question #2: What are you doing today to invest yourself in others?

• Build you child’s library and pay them to find value in books
• Today Matters – Freshman and above
• Winning w/ People
• Failing Forward

4. Growth

• Evaluate experience is the best teacher
• What did you love? What did you learn?
• Develop a system for taking notes into action
• His book Thinking for a Change covers this (great book, BTW!)

• Just because Hillsong has a big church and lots of people doesn’t mean it started that way
• It also doesn’t mean you can’t do something powerful in your ministry
• Their size and reach is a result of a healthy church focused on God
• It is just as spiritual to take a youth ministry to play football as to a worship service
• The key is being authenticate in your dealing with them
• Four ideas to consider based on his experience with Hillsong
• Idea #1 – your relationship with your senior pastor is going to dictate the fruit of your ministry
  • you need to serve the passion of your house and the vision of your senior pastor
  • if you are serving a vision you are not connected to or a senior pastor you do not agree with, you will see minimal fruit
  • if you are not fully on board, you should leave – that is the most loyal thing you can do as they need your support 100%
  • be an armor bearer, where you simply serve the needs of the king (it is uncomplicated and unopinionated)
  • however you are to your leader today, you will reap as fruit
  • self-examination: if you had 1000 of you, would you be a happy leader? If not, change your attitude and habits
• Idea #2 – this has to be a calling, not a ministry career
  • they don’t try to hire guns, they raise people that are called
  • looking to the future is great, but if you focus too much on the future you will fall
  • stop looking at the 20 and wishing it was 200, instead look at the 20 and ask God what you should do with the 20
  • God loves the people you lead way too much to let you ignore them
  • the average lifespan of a youth pastor today is 5 months
  • why would a youth minister ever make a long-term decision if they won’t be around?
  • you need to be happy with where you are today and put everything into it as if you will be there for a long time, otherwise you don’t have a calling you have a career
• Idea #3 – you have to embody what you believe as much as humanly possible
  • there is a lot talking in churches
  • it doesn’t matter if you are the worst preacher or have the worst music but you live what you preach before and after, you will bear fruit
  • if you are preaching to bring your friends but aren’t bring some yourself, then others won’t either
  • frequent the same places to get to know people and invite them
• Idea #4 – make sure people leave encouraged
  • the gospel is simple, don’t make it complicated
  • make sure people leave your church with their hands and hearts lifted
  • the heaviness of being a young Christian can be tough, causing youth to go in the opposite direction when they fall

• He never planned on being a worship leader – he was simply asked by his youth pastor
• Today, he is humbled by how God has used him and Hillsong United over the years
• God takes pride in using the weak and humble
• They travel to so many places, but rarely get to experience it (airport-to-airplane-to-airport-to-bus-to-hotel-to-bus-to-venue-to-bus-to-airport…)
• He started to notice the contrast between the amazing worship experiences he led with the streets/people/cultures/life he saw from the bus
• The worship he leads provides an experience with the believers of Christ but does not have an impact through them to the local culture, he considers it a failure

Amos 5:21-24 (The Message) – “I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice – oceans of it. I want fairness – rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

• God loves it when we worship Him, sing to Him, tell Him how great He is
• He wants to be someone who chases the heart of God in everything by reaching those experiencing injustice
• His biggest fear is that people will be distracted by the stage, lights, loud music and miss the point
• Through the heart, the mouth speaks
• God isn’t impressed with the lights, amazing sound, music – He is impressed with our hearts
• If our heart is in right the place, God will move, God will use us

Isa 58:5-7 (The Message) – Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after: a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting, a fast day that I, God, would like? 6 “This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. 7 What I’m interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families.

• If we get caught up in our ways of doing things, it is just religion – it is missing the point
• Jesus didn’t die on the cross for us to have religion – He died on the cross so that we may know love
• We can get so consumed in appearances, on the outside, to ensure things appear to be great from the outside
• Everyone that chase acceptance or seek significance, we often mess up by missing God’s heart and love
• If we can remove all of the “stuff”, enough for others to see us reflect Jesus within, we’ll reach others for Christ
• The universal symbol for love is the heart
• He wants to redefine the true meaning of “I heart” from what others have defined it to true love: Jesus laying down His life for the love of others
• We judge others outwardly all the time
• Human judgement is never going to be completely just
• We can keep trying to chase injustice and right the wrongs, but we can’t do it in our strength
• The only way we can bring justice to this world is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus
• He died to show us more than justice – He died to show us love
• If we demonstrate that our significance, our value was nailed to a cross and that we in turn live our lives that value the unlovable, the least – that is what God wants
• No matter if you are a student, full time ministry leader, or a business person, treat each person you meet with selflessness, love
• We have so much in the church, in our lives – so much abundance
• We need to value each other, focus on others, realize that we are each called to minister to others
• Our life is no less valuable than anyone else’s
• If we can realize the value of each person in God’s eyes as we walk day-to-day, things will start looking better for each person
• Allow your heart to be open, to do it to understand the heart of God rather than being about us
• It isn’t about what we want – we must love without agenda
• We must not get fooled by the illusion of success in the world’s eyes – something that is fleeting and a distraction
• We need to give everything to God for the sake of other’s
• This is what is going to keep you fired up each day to serve your church, go to school, or go to work
• Have you caught this fire?
• God has called us to play a part in His story (”history”) – let’s play our part!

A quote from Archbishop Oscar Romero:

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for GodÂ’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.”

• We are called to do amazing things, all the while walking one step in front of the other
• All we need to do is walk through an open door – God will do the rest
• Keep moving, keep going, keep trusting God – even when you don’t feel up to the task

Powerful!

• God is amazing – He can use technology to spread the love of a song from Australia to the States before it is even played for the first time live!
• Regarding Michael Guglielmucci
  • When has anyone ever asked for proof of a claim of cancer?
  • It is best sometimes just to keep our eyes on Jesus and move on
  • There are sometimes seasons of tough times and disappointments

Message Title: “Does My Donkey Offend You?” or “The Unapologetic Christian”

Luke 19:28-40 (NIV):
After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’” Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

• They gave the shirts off their backs, put them on the donkey, then put Jesus on the donkey
• Jerusulem was the epicenter of the world
• The donkey carried the Messiah toward the promise of God, His death and resurrection so that we could see our lives turned around with a level of impossibility
• There are things in our life that are a bit like the donkey, they seem simple until you put Jesus on top of them
• Are you read to put Jesus on top of everything in your life?
• Work is about more than putting food on the table
• It is hard to go both directions at the time – serving God and doing work/school separately, as if they were 2 (or more) lives
• The best thing you can do is make everything in your life about one thing – Jesus
• What does that donkey represent in your life, where you need to place Jesus on top?
• Joel took his passion and vision and took action by first placing Jesus on top of the project, he then gathered others to help
• It is amazing what God can do when a simple idea has Jesus placed first!

• Bible teaches us to live by more than what the newspaper or our neighbors tell us
• It is a more radical teaching that is based on truth

Ro 12:1-2 (The Message):

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

• We often have a great 2 hours on Sunday, then we live our lives like everyone else
• Don’t just live according to the culture
• Rise up above the culture that would dictate a life to you, that is below God’s very best
• World: Life is all tragedy, all pain, brought by God
• It is time to start living out the life that we are called to
• We are called to be light in the darkness
• We are called to see a little different, speak a little different than those that are hopeless seeing injustice and tragedy
• When things go wrong, the world blames God
• Sometimes things never seem to get better, that we can’t make a difference
• We all face tough times when we think things are all over
• Mary spoke this way to Jesus regarding the death of Lazarus
• Jesus doesn’t rebuke Mary, that she shouldn’t respond that way
• He accepts what has happened, so much so that he wept over the death
• Jesus didn’t ignore those that are hurting
• He comes along side them, as should we
• But He didn’t stop there, like we do sometimes
• We often identify with someone’s pain, then we just stay there
• Jesus says “Take me to the tomb”
• We need to cry, get upset, get emotional, then we need to go where the suffering is, just as Jesus did
• Jesus wanted to go to the place that seems like the most desolate, dead place
• We may not want to go to that place of death – we often avoid it
• We must be prepared to walk towards the place of death, as that is where life will emerge through Jesus

Psalm 40:1-2 (NIV): “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”

• It is ok to cry
• He lifts us out, then asks us to do the same for others
• Phil and his family moved to Capetown, South Africa when most were leaving
• They went to bring hope to the city, not escape the problems
• Don’t just weep, look around for the death and despair bring light to it
• People may have said to Jesus, “No, it stinks in the tomb. Don’t go in there”
• Jesus was prepared to go where the death and despair is, to bring life
• Things may get tougher at times, but it is time to bring life where there is death and despair
• Don’t just live a nice Christian life – look at some tombs where there is darkness and death, walk toward it, and bring life back to it
• Take off the grave clothes and let the dead rise again with a brand new life!

The film is mostly footage from their concerts all over the world, but it also contains some short messages that will inspire you to do whatever you can to remove injustice in the world. It is an amazing video that I hope to have our church show once it becomes available in the States sometime around Oct 2008.

Want to find out more?

First, checkout the trailer below:

Next, go to The I Heart Revolution website to find out more.

Finally, here are my notes from Joel Houston, who spoke prior to the screening:

• The more he got caught up with God, the more he got caught up in where His heart is
• I Heart is the core of what worship is for them
• Felt the responsibility to do something rather than just leading people in worship – wanted to take it a step further
• Jesus was about others in anything He did
• They have no desire other than to present Jesus to people
• Had his ideas from going to church when he was younger
• He came away with a view of Jesus being about us being about others
• I Heart is broken into 3 sections:
• 1) With Hearts As One
  • about the church
  • being part of something bigger than themselves or the whole
  • God is doing work all over the world and is calling others all over the world to take part in His masterpiece
  • confession of our lips, joining together globally across denominations – “we are the church”
  • unite for the common cause of Christ
  • Album of songs sung by the church around the world
  • Film (DVD) – mostly about the songs and the church united around the cause of Christ, with a bit of a story within – “confession of our lips”
• 2) “We’re All In This Together”
  • Feature Film Documentary DVD 2009
  • it was a wake-up call for him and for us, which was his hope
  • Jesus didn’t die to show us religion, He died to show us love
  • unpackage the gospel
• 3) The Movement
  • o Set to launch officially alongside Part Two///.. But it really starts now…
  • o social justice network
  • o anyone can go there to get educated on real issues
  • o connecting the dots to make a difference
  • o want to be a part but not sure where to start? start here!

See Joel’s summary of the entire I Heart Revolution project at http://www.hillsong.com/music/section.php?xSec=721

Click here to view the slideshow using Flickr

1. Advance 2008: Andy Andrews and John C. Maxwell
2. Advance 2008: Bill Taylor and Andy Stanley
3. Advance 2008: Kevin Carroll, Dan Cathy, and Patrick Lencioni

I found that many of the principles discussed during this conference are captured in my ebook, “Handle With Care”. Why not consider buying the Group Edition of this book as a concise way to teach your leaders today and prepare the leaders of tomorrow?

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