Willow Creek Leadership conference Day 2

As I would have expected from anything done by Willow Creek, day 2 of the conference did not disappoint.  All of the speakers were very good. John Ortberg was so inspirational to me.  Are we achieving our mission or are we derailed by our “shadow mission”.  I remember how cool it was when Christine was living in Menlo Park to get to hear him preach on Sundays at her church. I never left without something to work on and think about…something that always helped me grow closer to God. Examining my shadow mission and figuring out how to avoid being seduced by that is my thing from this talk….

 But as good as John was, Colin Powell stood out to me..what a man, what a leader, what an inspiration.  He is the kind of leader that you would walk through walls for if he asked you to.  Just his presence inspires you to be more than you already are.  His insights yesterday are things that I will take back to my job and my ministry and be able to apply in practical ways.   I want to get his book and take a deeper dive into his thoughts.  What troubles me is that we have a political system where a great leader like him can’t become the leader of our great country…or where our system would be so harsh that a man like him wouldn’t want to be the leader…we need great leaders, our kids need great leaders…Colin Powell is a great leader.  He said “All of us have a debt of service, that we will probably not be able to repay”, but we should work every day to try and repay it…folks that is a leader, a man working to make things better for the world and not just for himself…he is working because someone else paid a much higher price for all of us…Jesus….