The first day of Willow Creek's Leadership Summit was awesome! Not that I'm surprised. I've been to four or five previous Summits and all have been outstanding. I make it a practice to bring students who currently serve in youth group or have leadership potential as it is an awesome way to introduce them to leadership principles and help them begin to think in terms of leadership as it applies to the entire church. I'd also highly encourage any church staff to leverage this event for growth and discussion. It has become a "can't miss" event for me that is a permanent fixture on my calendar.Bill Hybels started off Thursday with a great message about vision ownership. Carly Fiorina followed up strong in a wonderful interview with Bill and shared about her leadership principles via her time as CEO of HP. I hadn't heard of her before, but now will definitely get her book, Tough Choices, which sadly (for me, not for her) sold out at the resource tables at Eagle Brook Church (our satellite site).
Rev. Floyd Flake spoke in the difficult 'after lunch' session and did a solid job. Marcus Buckingham hit it out of the park with the last talk of the day on putting your strengths to work. I've read his first two books, First, Break All the Rules, and Now, Discover Your Strengths and look forward to his two most recent book. His talk was lively, packed with content, and hysterical at points. All four students I brought were sitting forward in their seats in rapt attention. I could listen to him all day! Great speaker.
I ran across a blog that has some great summaries of the summit at: Live Intentionally. Now I can supplement my own notes from the conference! (Thanks to Mark Bjorlo at the wonderfully named but unrelated The Journey North Community Church of Brainerd for the link.) Not a substitute for being there, but the blog may give you a bit of the flavor of the conference.
