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How to Maximize Your Summer Vacation

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It’s the end of summer and you might be wondering why I’m writing a post about summer vacation.

How to maximize your summer vacation next year.

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The reason is simple.

If you want a great summer vacation, a great summer preaching break, you have to plan it. Too many leaders wait until May when they are running on fumes to start thinking about summer vacation and by then, it is really hard to plan a good one.

You have to think through:

  • What will recharge you personally? What will recharge your spouse? Your kids?
  • Who will do your job when you are gone?
  • What will be fun?
  • How will you pay for all that fun?

So, to help you, here are a few common questions I get about a summer break:

5 ways to maximize your summer vacation.

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Why take a summer break?

This has a ton of reasons, in no particular order. Preaching and leading are hard work. If you’re a pastor who preaches regularly, coming up with something to say every week is tiring. Preaching is tiring. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “It is spiritual warfare every week.” It is mentally, spiritually, relationally, physically and emotionally draining. It is healthy for a pastor to recharge physically, mentally and spiritually. It is good for a church to hear other voices than just their pastor. It is helpful for a pastor’s family for him to get out of the weekly grind of preaching. Doing the other work of a pastor is just different.

Why don’t pastors and leaders take a summer break?

I think many pastors and leaders are afraid to do it. They are afraid to not be at their church as if it all revolves around them or is dependent on them. I love hearing that on a night I am not there that not only does everything run smoothly, but also that our attendance is up, we have a ton of first-time guests, etc. Your church can run without you; God doesn’t need you.

As well, many leaders feel like they need to be running, selling all the time. Get your hustle on!

You can take a break and in fact, as the authors of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal points out, regularly resting increases your performance, and work.

What do you do on a summer break?

Now we get to the goal of your summer break and vacation.

Do you want to learn? Grow in something? Rest and recharge? Do you want to work ahead?

My summer break encapsulates much of that. One of the other advantages for a pastor in taking a break from preaching is working ahead on sermons, using that time to work on your church instead of working in your church. Which is crucial for a leader.

One of the other things I seek to do is spend extended time in the Scripture. Because much of my job is thinking about and prepping the next sermon I am preaching it is easy to not spend time letting the word speak into my soul. During this time, I spend time just letting God speak to my life without thinking about how I can fit that into a sermon. I’ve always thought of a spiritual life like a bucket and if it gets too low, there isn’t anything to give out. And pastor’s give out every week from their spiritual lives as they preach and counsel. During this time, I get to fill my bucket up, which is a huge blessing for the rest of the year.

This is also an opportunity to serve your spouse. What would they find helpful and recharging on your break? How can they rest and rejuvenate?

My elders think this is nuts, how do I teach them this is a good thing?

If there is one thing many pastors need to grow in, it is the ability to lead up to their elders. It isn’t that your elders are against this or something else, they just lack an understanding of what it means to do your job.

Over the years, I’ve had elders who are supportive of this and ones that are not.

Most people have no idea how hard prepping a sermon and giving a sermon is. They have no idea what the warfare is like, what it does to your adrenal glands and your body overall. You might need to do some research and teach them this. Teach your church about the value of other communicators besides yourself.

Two books that have helped me in this area are Adrenaline and Stress and Adrenal Fatigue. 

If after all this, they still won’t budge. Just take all your vacation at the same time and be gone from your church for 2-4 weeks and don’t call it a preaching break just take your vacation.

I’ve been blessed that my elders see the value in this for me and our church. I shoot to preach 35 weekends a year at Revolution. Each staff member is given 7 Sundays a year where they can be gone from Revolution.

How do you prep for a break?

This is something often overlooked. It is a lot like prepping for a vacation. We’ve already talked about how to figure out what to do on your break, but you have to prepare mentally and physically for the crash that follows. A pastor’s body is so used to the adrenaline that comes from preaching that when you don’t do it, your body goes through withdraw because it craves the adrenaline it is used to having. You have to be aware of this and realize that in the first week of your break you will be tired, cranky, irritable as your body regulates. Being aware of this is huge and talking with your spouse about it.

You also have to figure out who will do what while you’re gone, who will answer email, texts messages and how you will handle social media. I do my best to shut off all of those while I’m on my vacation.

5 questions to maximize your summer vacation.

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Wednesday Morning Mind Dump…

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  • Holiday weeks are great and terrible at the same time.
  • You still have to get the same amount of stuff done and with one less day.
  • One thing I love about a holiday week is getting to smoke some meat.
  • I did brisket on Monday, and it was delicious.
  • This week, our boys start baseball.
  • This is an exciting step for our family.
  • We are stepping into the realm of youth sports for the first time.
  • Should be fun.
  • We put it off until now because we wanted to be able to control our schedule as a family.
  • A lot of parents have asked me if I feel like they missed something and maybe they did, but I also know what we gained as a family through that choice.
  • Next week, I’m giving a talk to a group of high school and college athletes at the U of A on leadership and influence.
  • I’d appreciate your prayers for that.
  • I can’t wait to do that and interact with them on such a crucial topic.
  • There’s so much at stake in their lives (and ours) if we get that wrong.
  • I’m in the middle of the book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People and it might be one of the best books I’ve read all year.
  • I don’t know about you, but the fact that football is on makes my heart happy.
  • This is the first year in a while that I’m not doing fantasy football.
  • Made a choice this year to take a break and gain back some time.
  • I’m sad but also happy about that.
  • No, I’m not against it.
  • Just felt like my life and kids are in a stage where doing that would get in the way.
  • This week in our staff meeting at Revolution, we’re discussing this podcast Les McKeown on Visionaries, Operators and Processors and How Each Is Necessary In Thriving Organizations. 
  • I can’t wait for the discussion we’re going to have today on it.
  • I love the aspect of our staff meetings where we are learning and growing together.
  • If you know anything about Les’s book The Synergist, which this podcast is about, you now know which one of those I am!
  • Well, time to get back it.
  • Even though summer is over, I’m going to share tomorrow ideas on how to maximize your summer vacation next year.
  • Yes, you need to start planning it now.
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You Are a Vision Caster

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Words matter.

They are powerful.

They can bring about life and encourage people to reach new heights.

They can tear down and keep people stuck and missing out on all that could and should be.

Many times we wonder, what can one person do.

Think for a moment of a person who spoke life into you. It could be a mentor, teacher, coach, pastor or parent. They believed in you, saw something in you before you saw it. They encouraged you, gave you opportunities you didn’t deserve.

It breathed life into you. It made you think; someone thinks I can do this and it pushed you.

Now, think of the opposite.

A person who said, “you can’t, you won’t, it’s not possible.” A teacher, mentor, parent, pastor or coach who shatter your dreams and vision.

We underestimate the power of words.

But they matter.

Words have a way of speaking us into a future.

Words have the power to get us into a future.

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Recently, my wife Katie was at the dentist, and the dentist was talking about his kids. He has twins, a boy, and a girl. His daughter is great at school, but his son doesn’t want to study or read. So they were driving recently, and the dentist saw a homeless person and looked at his son and said, “That’s what happens if you don’t do well in school and love to read.”

No one is shamed into a greater future.

You don’t shame someone to a greater future.

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Shame is an enormous and influential factor in our lives and stories.

As you walk through life today, you can speak life or death into the lives of others.

You can also allow the words of others to spur you on or cut you down.

Don’t underestimate the power of words.

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Going Public with Your Dream

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All of us have hopes and dreams. You and I look at our lives and see things we wish were there, or things we want to be different. It could be for your career, your family, a relationship with a friend, sibling, spouse, parent or child.

This vision, the difference between what is and what could be in many ways keeps us moving forward in life. This dream gets us up in the morning and gives us hope that things will change and get better, even when it seems hopeless.

A vision is a difference between what is and what could be.

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Sadly though, many of our dreams stay like that. Dreams. They don’t get out of our heads and hearts. We don’t tell anyone the world that we see, the hope that we have.

Why don’t we go public with our dreams and goals?

Going public with your dream.

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There are a few reasons:

1. We have a lot of self-doubts. These doubts could come from your family of origin or somewhere else, but we believe all kinds of messages about our dreams that aren’t true. Things like, we aren’t smart enough, we aren’t a good enough parent, boss or leader; we’re too late to get started, we aren’t old enough or have enough experience.

Whatever message we carry around and we all have a tape that plays in our head.

Mine is often centered around not being smart enough or not belonging in a room that I find myself in. I’ll sit with other leaders and think, “I don’t belong here.” This will cause me to clam up and not bring my whole self to a situation. I miss out, and so do others.

With our self-doubts, the moment we go public with a dream and someone tells us why that can’t happen; they confirm our self-doubts. So why put ourselves through that?

So we stay quiet, and our dreams die a slow death in our heart.

2. We like the idea of a dream more than the work of a dream. Many people love the idea of starting a business, church, going back to school, getting out of debt, but not the work it will take. I see this a lot in church planting circles. A potential church planter has gone to some conferences, listened to the podcasts, read the books, can tell you the strategy for his plant, the name and even has a logo, but no people. Why? It is just in his head. Now, a dream has to start there. But if it never moves, it will never move anyone.

And honestly, if you aren’t willing to do the work of your dream, it won’t happen and it wasn’t yours anyway.

We like the idea of a dream more than the work of a dream.

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How do you know if you should go public with your dream?

Andy Stanley says an effective vision shares the problem, the solution, the reason something must be done and the reason something must be done now.

Just because a problem exists, doesn’t mean you need to solve it or that the time is right. There are lots of things you can point out as a problem, but don’t have a solution to.

Does it need to be solved now? The answer to that question is, not always. It might be nice, but it might not be yet.

At the intersection of that statement: a problem, a solution and a reason that something must be done and done now is the answer to whether your dream is right, the timing is right, and it is time to go public with it.

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God’s Will is Right in Front of You

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Many times in Christian circles, we make God’s will into this mysterious thing that we are out looking for, hoping against hope that we’ll find it.

Yet, I don’t think it is a game God is playing with us. His will for our lives and our world is not a game of hide and seek.

It is right in front of us.

God’s Will is Right in Front of You

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Over and over in Scripture, we are told what God calls us to.

It starts in Matthew 28, known as the great commission where he tells his disciples: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.

What has he commanded us?

A simple way to figure out God’s will for your life.

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A few examples are to make Jesus first in our lives, loving our neighbor, if you are married we are given clear instructions in 1 Peter 3 and Ephesians 5. Same goes for parenting.

You see the commands of Jesus in the sermon on the mount where he lays out his vision of the kingdom in Matthew 5 – 7.

But, and here’s where we get off track, I want a specific plan for my life.

Oftentimes, when I’ve had someone tell me that, I’ll ask them if they’ve tried all the things I listed above.

The answer is almost always no.

I’ve done the same thing.

But what if, what if that is how we stumble into God’s will for our lives?

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3 Questions to Ask About Your Critics

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Criticism is a fact of life and leadership.

Thom Rainer said, “If you are not being criticized, you are not leading.”

If you are not being criticized, you are not leading. -Thom Rainer

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While some leaders enjoy criticism, most do not. There is also the question of, should you listen to your critics? I mean, if they are against you, can they show you anything?

The to those questions is, maybe and yes.

The reality is, you can’t not listen to your critics because you hear them. You can’t drown out their voices because they exist.

While there are many questions, you should ask of your critics to discern if you should listen to them. Here are three questions I’ve found helpful:

3 surprising questions to ask of your critics.

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1. What does this person stand to lose if my vision gets fulfilled? The reason criticism happens is you are proposing a change. That’s what leadership, vision, and direction do. They change things. They push the status quo. When you have a goal or dream, you are saying something needs to be different.

It’s interesting in the book of Nehemiah, that as he is rebuilding the wall, his most prominent critics stand to lose the most. For your critics, it could be financial, influence, a change in a relationship, but as a leader, when you experience criticism, you must figure out what that person is losing or stands to lose. Almost always, not always, but almost always they stand to lose something, so they are criticizing to keep things as they are.

Why?

People don’t like to lose what they have. People don’t want to lose the comfort of something. Now, this doesn’t make you as a leader right or make your vision right, but it is an essential piece of information.

2. Does this person care about me and want the best for me? Picture this, someone gives you feedback or criticism and then says, “I’m only telling you this because I love you.” That might be true, but that’s also why there are two parts to this question. Does the person who is criticizing me care/love me and want the best for me? Wanting the best for someone is different than wanting them to succeed.

Asking if they want the best for me questions if they are in my corner and if they have a vested interest in me or the things I care about accomplishing. Many of your critics do not have a vested interest in something. If you’re a pastor, think about the number of critics you have had that have left your church. They didn’t have a vested interest in that; they just wanted to complain. If they had a vested interest, they would stay to work through the difficulty to see something great come about in your church.

Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t’ listen to someone; it just means how much weight you give to it.

3. Is this person projecting any of their fears, failures or story onto me? This last one is important because much of the criticism you get comes from the stories of the person giving the criticism. Whether it is a fear they have, a failure they’ve experienced or the narrative fo their family of origin. You can’t always discern this, but if you can, you can at least have a conversation with the critic about what the issue is. Often, the problem is not what they are criticizing, and often, they are not angry at you.

I remember taking a counseling class and the teacher said, “when people get angry at the church, often there is an authority figure in their life (boss, spouse, parent) that they are angry at, but they can’t do anything about it or feel powerless, so they take their anger and hurt out on the closest authroity figure, which is the church or the pastor.” This has proven correct time and again. Each time I meet with someone who is leaving our church, half the meeting is about a relationship in their life they are angry about or feel powerless to do anything about. The church is just getting the brunt of it. This is an excellent opportunity for you to pastor someone if they are open to it.

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3 Lessons in Church Planting

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I was asked by someone recently about 2-3 things I’ve learned about church planting since we launched our church. I think there’s a lot of lessons to be discovered. In fact, I feel like right now I’m being stretched as a leader and pastor in a way I haven’t been in a while and that’s a good thing.

3 church planting lessons.

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1. Decide what it will take to last. When you start a church, a marriage or a business, you start with the intention of finishing. Again and again, I’ve seen it not last for people.

For church planters, sometimes their churches didn’t last, so they found a different job. Some got caught in failing morally; pride took them down, their church fired them.

Lasting isn’t just a matter of morals or not sinning or getting caught with your pants down. It also means you need to build a church that will last, that has a strong foundation of leaders. It means making a solid team and knowing that who you put around you will determine how far you go.

It also means making a plan with your spouse about what it will take to serve joyfully side by side for decades. It involves determining how to keep your soul fresh and alive with the passion you had when you started as that will wane over the years.

From an energy perspective, this will go down and the way you ran the race as a 27-year-old will be different at 37 and 47 and 57. You must learn this early on and choose to be wise when it comes to food, exercise, and sleep.

Also realize, you will retire as a pastor. This point will help you prioritize relationships and know how best to spend your time.

2. Know that not everyone will finish with you. One of the most painful realities of life is the loss of relationships. It becomes even more pronounced in a church.

I have tried numerous times to explain to someone the pain a pastor feels when someone leaves their church, but there is not a comparison I’ve been able to make.

There is something deeply felt when you spend time with someone in a hospital, weeping at a funeral, walking with them through cancer, parenting or marriage difficulties and then have them meet with you (or not at all) and say, “we’re leaving because this church isn’t meeting our needs.”

This makes what I said in point 1 so important. This is when you will cling to the calling God placed on your life.

It also means that your spouse needs to understand the road ahead. One of the things that have been the hardest for Katie is facing the hurt when someone leaves our church, meets with me but says nothing to Katie.

You will feel discarded.

If you’ve read your New Testament, this shouldn’t surprise you, but it will still hurt.

You will also have elders and staff members you will have to fire or ask to step down. Sometimes that will be for obvious moral or theological sins, and sometimes it will be a judgment call. No matter how blatant or not apparent, you will lay awake at night replaying conversations. Your soul will ache when you tell someone they no longer have a job. You will know the pain of betrayal as people who loved that person leave, as that person goes down the road and starts a new church.

That is why friendships will be so crucial to your health, whether they are other pastors or people inside/outside of your church. They will bring normalcy to your life and a listening ear when you need it.

3. Hold your methods loosely. What you plant your church doing, how you do church, that will change. I know you don’t think it will, but it will. Candles and incense, cover songs, lights and haze, dialogical preaching, small groups, missional communities, long series, short series, all these things will work and excite you for a time.

Never say, “We’ll do this forever.” You probably won’t.

And that’s okay.

Notice, this doesn’t have anything to do with theology or the message you preach, how you do church. Hold that loosely. What works today and reaches people will not in 3 years and that’s okay. Cultures shift and so do people, so churches must adapt how they reach people.

There is a passion and maybe even a naivety when you start a church, and in many ways, that’s a good thing. You don’t know the road ahead, much like when you have your first child. There is so much hope, so many dreams, and passion at the beginning. It is natural the longer you are in church planting to lose this, to forget this, but stay fresh and close to Jesus so that you will finish the race He has given to you.

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One Reason You Don’t Reach Your Goals

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Depending on your personality or how you were brought up, you probably fall into one of two camps when it comes to your life and goals. You either plan everything out, taking away every possible surprise, thinking through every worst case scenario so that you are prepared for whatever life throws at you. Or, you fly by the seat of your pants.

Are You a Planner?

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If you still aren’t sure which one you are (or if you think, I’m both), imagine this scenario: You get in the passenger seat of a friend’s car and have no idea where you are going. How long does it take you to get stressed out? Some of you have hives just from the thought.

One isn’t necessarily right or wrong in all situations.

The reality is, we all have goals. We all have hopes and dreams for our lives and those around us.

I’ve been reading through Proverbs recently, and I’ve been blown away by how many verses talk about planning and thinking ahead or getting advice from others. Here are just a few:

  • Where there is no guidance, the people fall; but in abundance of counselors, there is victory. -Proverbs 11:14
  • A wise man thinks ahead; a fool doesn’t, and even brags about it. -Proverbs 13:16
  • Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counselors, they succeed. -Proverbs 15:22
  • Make plans by seeking advice; if you wage war, obtain guidance. -Proverbs 20:18
  • The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. -Proverbs 21:5
  • A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. -Proverbs 22:3
  • Get the facts at any price, and hold on tightly to all the good sense you can get. -Proverbs 23:23
  • Any enterprise is built by wise planning, becomes strong through common sense, and profits wonderfully by keeping abreast of the facts. -Proverbs 24:3-4

Is it possible to plan God out of your life and future? Yes, and lots of people do it. We can make too many plans, think through every possibility so that we don’t need God’s guidance and power.

It is also possible to miss the work God wants to do because of poor planning.

Opportunities are missed because a budget wasn’t put together or stuck to. We miss out on opportunities or dreams because we didn’t have the money to take advantage of something or say yes to something.

Many marriages and relationships grow stale because we start going through the motions instead of planning the way we used to when we dated.

A wise person goes to God, has a plan, works from a plan, is willing to modify that plan as life unfolds. A wise person never walks into a situation unsure about what to do. They also live with the awareness that they may have to pivot when things don’t go as expected.

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3 Tips for Preaching the Book of Daniel

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I just wrapped up a series on the book of Daniel. You can see the sermons and resources here.

Because I get asked a lot by pastors about sermon prep, putting a series together, making the Bible relevant, I thought I’d share three tips to preaching the book of Daniel.

Why?

The book of Daniel is not one that many pastors preach through. In researching it, I found most people who preach through Daniel stop at chapter 6. I’ll be honest; it’s tempting to do. The first six chapters are filled with narrative, extraordinary faith, prayer, and God doing incredible miracles. The last six chapters are filled with visions, revelations, images that are debated and a lot of head scratching.

1. The book is about God, not Daniel, the end times or your church. Yes, the book of Daniel has a lot about the end of the world (especially if you are a dispensationalist), but spending your time on this does a disservice to the book and your church.

The word king or kingdom is used over 150 times in the book of Daniel. That is the theme, that is the battleground of the book. While it’s tempting to focus on Daniel and his life and faith are an essential part of the book, the book is about God and his power. The book is about the temptation to worship something or someone other than God.

2. Don’t get stuck in the weeds. Daniel, like the book of Revelation, is filled with a lot of images. These images are fascinating, confusing and debated. One of the things we decided at the beginning is that we wouldn’t get into the timeline debate that centers on Daniel. You can see how we handled chapter 9 (which is one of the most hotly debated passages in the Bible).

Are there people in your church who want to debate the end of the world, when Jesus returns, who the anti-Christ is? Yes. What we asked was: What are these passages trying to tell us? For us, they came back to who God is and what His character is, so we focused on that. What do these passages tell us about God, because that is what God was communicating with Daniel?

3. Tell people about God’s character and power. Preaching through Daniel, especially when you talk about the lion’s den and furnace, for those who are skeptical about God, these are passages that make you scratch your head. I had multiple conversations with people wrestling with, “Do you believe that happened?”

These passages, the images in the visions and dreams are about the power of God and his character, who He is.

Your church needs to hear those things, and it is an excellent opportunity to show the relevance of them.

Many sermons today, and I’m all for this, are based on felt needs and speak to what the people in your church are struggling with and walking through in their lives. Focusing on who God is, while not a question they are asking, is the question they need answering and is the hope to what men and women are struggling with when they walk into church.

This power not only catalyzed the faith of Daniel but can do the same thing for your church.

One of the most significant examples of this is how much Daniel prayed in the book. While I was preparing for the series, I missed this, but as I was preaching through it, it stood out boldly in the book.

Several times we’re told, “Daniel prayed as was his habit” (or something similar to that). That’s important. When Daniel came up against struggles and power, he prayed to a God he trusted and had the power to save him.

Daniel is a book every pastor should preach through. It is so relevant to our day and age as we struggle to live out our faith in a culture that is opposed to it. It is a book that reminds us of the God we serve and the power He has.

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232 Leadership Quotes from the 2018 Leadership Summit

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Every year, my team and I attend the leadership summit. To capture what I’m learning and to help you grow as a leader, I always share my notes from each session, so be sure to check back after each session and bookmark them for future use.

Below, you will find all the posts from all the sessions I attended this year. Thanks for reading along!

  1. 32 Leadership Quotes from Craig Groeschel on what it means to be a leader people love to follow.
  2. 16 Leadership Quotes from Angela Ahrendts on how empathy is an essential quality to great leadership.
  3. 14 Leadership Quotes from Juliet Funt on legacy.
  4. 20 Leadership Quotes from Strive Masiyiwa on what it means to be a leader who perseveres to fight for the future of our world.
  5. 11 Leadership Quotes from T.D. Jakes.
  6. 26 Leadership Quotes from Carla Harris on how to achieve your potential and become the leader you were created to be.
  7. 10 Leadership Quotes from Danny Meyer on creating a customer-focused culture, which churches can always grow in.
  8. 23 Leadership Quotes from Danielle Strickland on men and women in the workplace (and church) and looked at the challenges associated with power dynamics in organizational culture.
  9. 21 Leadership Quotes from John Maxwell on how to maximize your impact as a high-character leader in our world today.
  10. 12 Leadership Quotes from Rasmus Ankersen on the mindset cultivated by successful brands to create sustainable success in our organizations.
  11. 8 Leadership Quotes from David Livermore on how leaders can relate effectively to diverse situations.
  12. 16 Leadership Quotes from Sheila Heen on how to navigate difficult conversations on our teams.
  13. 23 Leadership Quotes from Erwin McManus on what it means to lead a life that matters and how great leaders intentionally build the future.
  14. My 5 biggest takeaways from the summit.