Andy Stanley kicked off Catalyst Dallas. I’m a big fan of his stuff on leadership – brilliant thinker on ministry leadership and systems. It’s my first time to hear him speak.
Here’s my abridged notes:
- A single act of courage is often the tipping point for something extraordinary
- A handful of young people in Egypt set off revolutions around the world
- The story you’re going to tell your grandkids is:Â Opportunities came along and you were scared to death but you took a step of faith
- When you tell your story — there will be moments where an extraordinary act of obedience will be a tipping point for an extraordinary thing that God will do in your life
- When you come to these moments there will be fear involved
- Most of us in ministry have plenty to eat, roof over our head, but I think of three things we face
Three faces of courage:
1) The courage to stay, when it would be easier to go
- It would have been a lot easier if God would have told me the future success I would see if I had stayed
- You never know what hangs in the balance, what’s coming when God whispers stay
- If your ministry is hard, it just means you’re in ministry. It’s hard
- It takes courage to stay when everything says go
- You gotta decide — am I going to trust God, am I going to obey? Do I have the courage to stay when everything says go
2) Courage to leave, when it would be easier to stay
- Tale of 3 Kings — “Beginning empty handed and alone, frightens the best of men. It also speaks volumes of just how sure they are that God is with them”
3) Courage to ask for help, when it would be easier to pretend that everything’s okay
- Secrets are dangerous
- Secrets in the life of leaders are extraordinarily dangerous
- Because you haven’t invited others into your life
- Most of the people in your church think they can do your job with one hand tied behind their back
- They think our jobs are easy
- They don’t understand what you live with, the pressure
- Andy to Businessmen (to help them understand how difficult ministry is): Think for a minute about the hardest thing you do in your job. Now imagine doing that on a stage in front of all your friends, all your family, and everyone has your email address
- The pressure we’re under, our accessibility, we just wear down
- We need more help than the average person, but we are less likely to ask for help than the average person
- If we’re afraid of anything, we should be afraid of missing out on what God is doing
- Here’s what I ask myself: what story am I going to tell?
- Every decision we make is going to be a story that we tell
- Do you really want to tell the story that God wanted you to go but I really was afraid and I stayed?
- You want to tell the story: God told me what I was supposed to do and I was scared to death and I decided to say Yes to God and do it
- We step into the unknown even though we don’t know what will happen
- The tipping point for all of us in our life is a single act of courage