Month: November 2016

Because of the GLS | Broken Communities Experience Jesus in Guatemala

Posted on November 21, 2016 by - Calling, Central America, Culture, Education, Latin America, Stories, Vision

In Guatemala, 60 percent of the country lives below the poverty line, corruption is high and violence and injustice are rampant.

But hope is not dead. There is a solution.

Int-1850Some leaders in Guatemala are embracing the GLS with vigorous vision. Emmy Munoz is one of those leaders. She is the director of a Christian school, a pastor and a GLS champion working to bring the GLS to as many leaders in Guatemala as possible. She sees the value in the GLS as a way to transform the country one leader at a time.

As the director of a school, she is especially passionate about children and their future—a passion that has been fired up at the GLS. With tears in her eyes, Emmy says, “My dream for Guatemala is that every kid would have access to education and a plate of food on the table… I think that is something every kid has to have. I think that was in my heart all the time, but I really think the GLS has helped me fire up that dream.

“One of the things I have learned is not to forget about the disadvantaged, the underdogs and the people who don’t have opportunities like we have. It was right here at the GLS.”

Emmy leads her school with new vigor and passion from the encouragement she’s received through the GLS. Emmy is not the only one.

As a champion for the GLS, she wants to share it with as many leaders as possible. One of those leaders is a pastor in a nearby community.

When he attended the GLS for the first time, he was pastoring in an area of Guatemala described as a “red” community. Emmy describes red areas as very dangerous because of the violence, gangs and robberies.

After attending the GLS, the pastor knew what he had to do to reach his neighbors. He returned to his church and shared his vision. The church community caught it, and they all went into the neighborhood to clean up the homes and streets. They cleaned up garbage and painted houses. They painted the word “Jesus” on the walls of some of the buildings.

The community took notice. People began to see their church differently.

They were not just a church in a building where people met once a week. They were servants. People from the community began to ask questions and wanted to learn more about this Jesus.

There are hundreds of leaders like Emmy and this pastor in Guatemala who are looking for solutions to change their country. “The GLS has helped me remember that we can do something,” Emmy shares. “Sometimes we think the need is so big that there’s nothing we can to do, but it’s not true. It’s one thing at a time. Each little step we take is going to change something and somebody.

“We need to change the way we live as a country. We need to change the mentality of so many people there. We need more people to come to the GLS to see that there is a different way to live — a better way.”

Int-1840Thank you for supporting courageous leaders

“Thank you very much for everything you have given to the GLS and for helping other people grow in leadership,” Emmy shares. “I think that is a way we change a country, a nation, a community.”

Please continue to pray for Guatemala and the impact of the GLS. You’re making a difference!

To support the Willow Creek Association and leaders in Guatemala
go to www.willowcreek.com/give

Let’s Do It Again, Daddy!

Posted on November 21, 2016 by - Articles, Calling, Church & Faith-Based, Leading Organizations, Strategy

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. – Helen Keller

I have been a part of the Global Leadership Summit from the beginning, and it has shaped my leadership journey. As I look back on 20-plus years of the GLS, I realize I have been challenged, equipped and inspired to do the hard things leaders do. And one of the most important lessons I’ve learned at the GLS is that nothing great is ever accomplished in God’s kingdom without learning to navigate the scary unknown.  

Currently, I am in transition. After two decades as lead pastor of Green Valley Church in Placerville, California, and after accomplishing multiple scary unknown visions for the church, the role had become fairly comfortable. I feel called to an entrepreneurial role as executive director at Live58, an amazing organization dedicated to awakening the church to serve the poor based on the timeless scripture of Isaiah 58.

Part of the Green Valley Dream that I wrote over 20 years ago was that we would constantly put ourselves in situations where we can’t do it ourselves. So that we will have to trust God and see Him do amazing things.

This dream has shaped the growth and success of our church.

Jesus said in Luke 19:26: Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and end up holding the bag. (MSG)

When my son was seven, we went to an amusement park with a roller coaster that went upside down and would free fall 100 feet. It was quite a rush. Scary, but fun. My son was intimidated by the whole thing. When I tried to get him to ride it, he told me he was happy not to.

He was happy walking around eating churros, drinking Slurpees and trying to win stuffed animals. Churros, Slurpees and stuffed animals are nice, but they’re not why you go to an amusement park. There is no adventure in them. Eventually, you get full, bloated and you run out of money.

The reason you go to an amusement park is for the thrill of the ride that puts your stomach in your throat, with speeds that knock off your toupee and loops that send the blood rushing to your head. You scream, you laugh, your heart stops, but at the end, you know you are alive!

I finally talked my son onto the ride using manipulation, guilt and bribery. Not a proud fatherly moment.

When he got on the ride, you could see debilitating fear on his face. During the ride, he screamed a lot, laughed a lot and I think his heart actually stopped. But when the ride came to an end, the thought of the mundane life of churros, Slurpees and stuffed animals had left him and all he could say was, “Daddy, let’s do it again!”

God has amazing adventures for us all that will make us scream in terror, laugh with joy and maybe even stop our heart. Adventures where time and time again, we will cry out, “Let’s do it again, Daddy!”

An example of this occurred at our church in the middle of August 2013. We dedicated an entire weekend to learning about the need for safe water in developing countries. The number one reason children die in developing countries is the lack of safe water.

We had filters available for purchase, at $55 each, which could provide families in developing countries with safe water for a lifetime.

I went to my board of directors and asked if we could spend the weekend talking about safe water. I wanted to ask each family to buy one filter. I admitted that this might decrease our normal offerings and August might turn into a tough financial month, but it seemed like we needed to trust God. Without hesitation the board said, “Of course, we have to do it!”

That weekend, Green Valley families bought more than 900 water filters at $55 each. You do the math. Amazingly, our normal offerings were larger than normal! This remains one of my favorite weekends ever at Green Valley. I remember driving home that day saying, “Let’s do it again, Daddy!”

My challenge and encouragement to leaders is never to settle for the safe and the mundane, but continually to say YES to the wild, exhilarating adventures God has called us toward.

God asks us to get on the ride and use our time, talents and treasures to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, relieve the oppressed, rescue the orphan and protect the widow—all in the name of Jesus, who came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free.

And it is true that the ride can be scary, but I will guarantee you that when you get done, your first words will be, “Daddy, let’s do it again!”

I am forever grateful for the GLS where every year, Bill tells us about the next big, scary hill God is calling him to climb.

And now, with my new adventure with Live58, I am sometimes afraid, many times excited and my heart often skips a beat with the wild unknown of how we are going to help awaken the church to serve the poor and to live out the true fast of Isaiah 58. The fast that promises us we will be known as the repairer of broken walls and restorers of cities.

My challenge to every leader is to do the hard, scary thing God is calling you to do. You know what it is. If you do it, miracles will happen, your leadership influence will grow and you will feel fully alive as you shout out the life-changing words, “Daddy, let’s do it again!”

To Overcome the Fear of Failure, Fear This Instead

Posted on November 17, 2016 by - Articles, Change Management, Confidence, Leading Organizations, Strategy

If you do the math, becoming an entrepreneur is insane. The odds of success are tiny; failure is almost guaranteed. To make the leap, you have to be fearless.

Or so I thought.

I spent the past three years working on a book, Originals, about the people who champion new ideas to drive creativity and change in the world. Along the way, I hunted down some of the most original entrepreneurs of our time, sitting down with tech icons ranging from Larry Page and Elon Musk to Jack Dorsey and Mark Cuban. When I asked them to take me back to the early days, they caught me off guard.

They all felt the same fear of failure that the rest of us do. They just responded to it differently.

When most of us fear failure, we walk away from our boldest ideas. Instead of being original, we play it safe, selling conventional products and familiar services. But great entrepreneurs have a different response to the fear of failure. Yes, they’re afraid of failing, but they’re even more afraid of failing to try.

In work and in life, there are two kinds of failure: actions and inactions. You can fail by starting a company that goes out of business or by not starting a company at all. By getting left at the altar or by never proposing marriage. Most people predict that it’s the actions they’ll regret more. We cringe at the anguish of declaring bankruptcy or getting rejected by the love of our life. But we are dead wrong.

When people reflect on their biggest regrets, they wish they could redo the inactions, not the actions. “In the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did,” psychologists Tom Gilovich and Vicky Medvec summarize, “which is why the most popular regrets include not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities and not spending enough time with family and friends.”

Ultimately, what we regret is not failure, but the failure to act. 

Knowing that is what propels people to become original. Leonardo Da Vinci wrote repeatedly in his notebook, “Tell me if anything was ever done.” He might have been afraid to fail, but he was more afraid that he would fail to accomplish anything of significance. That propelled him to keep painting, inventing and designing to become the ultimate Renaissance Man.

Da Vinci didn’t answer my request for an interview. But the entrepreneurs I met consistently told me they weren’t afraid of failing, but of failing to matter. And that meant they had to make an effort, to take a shot at bringing their new ideas into the world.

Originals learn to see failure not as a sign that their ideas are doomed, but as a necessary step toward success. We learn more from failure than success. For example, evidence shows that space shuttles are more likely to make it to orbit after botched launches. A failure signals a gap in knowledge or a poor strategy, and motivates us to go back to the drawing board and get it right. Without failure, complacency can creep in. At NASA, the Challenger disaster happened after 24 successful space flights, which led to overconfidence. “In their own minds,” physicist Richard Feynman reflected, “They could do no wrong.”

With original ideas, failure is inevitable, because it’s impossible to predict how technologies will evolve and tastes will change. Mark Cuban passed on Uber. In the early days of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin tried to sell their search engine for less than $2 million, but their potential buyer turned them down. Publishers rejected Harry Potter because it was too long for a children’s book. Executives passed on Seinfeld for having incomplete plot lines and unlikeable characters. Pay a visit to Jerry Seinfeld’s bathroom, and you might find a memo hanging on the wall that calls the pilot episode of Seinfeld “weak” and says “”No segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again.”

Throughout history, the great originals have been the ones who failed the most, because they were the ones who tried the most. Most of Thomas Edison’s 1,093 patents went nowhere; Picasso had to produce over 20,000

pieces of art to make a few masterpieces. We see the same trend with entrepreneurs. Before Uber, Travis Kalanick’s first startup declared bankruptcy. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a reporter. Steve Jobs flopped with the Apple Lisa and got forced out of his own company before making his triumphant return — and even after the iPod succeeded, he made a bad bet on the Segway personal transporter. And with all of Richard Branson’s success in airlines, trains, music and mobile, he has also presided over the failure of Virgin cola, cars and wedding dresses.

So take it from this group of elite failures. If at first you don’t succeed, you’ll know you’re aiming high enough.