Courageous Leadership - Hardcover

Hybels, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031024823X ISBN 13: 9780310248231

Publisher: Zondervan, 2002

Synopsis

The book you hold resonates with this conviction: that leaders such as you have the potential to be the most influential forces on planet Earth. Yours is the staggering responsibility and the matchless privilege of rallying believers and mobilizing their spiritual gifts in order to help people who are far from God become fully devoted followers of Christ. Life transformation and the eternal destinies of real people depend on the redemptive message entrusted to the local church. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to lead your church effectively so God's message of hope can change the world? Then this book is for you. Courageous Leadership is Bill Hybels' magnum opus, a book far too important to be written before its time. Only now, after nearly thirty years leading his own church from a handful of people with a burning vision into a globe-spanning kingdom force---only after almost three decades of victories and setbacks, of praying hard and risking big---is Hybels ready at last to share the lessons he has learned, and continues to learn, about Christian leadership. Too much is at stake for you not to maximize your spiritual gift of leadership, insists Hybels. In this passionate, powerful book, he unpacks the tools, tasks, and challenges of your calling. You'll discover the power of vision and how to turn it into action. You'll gain frontline insights for developing a kingdom dream team, discovering your leadership style, developing other leaders, making decisions, walking with God, embracing change, staying your God-given course, and much, much more. Drawing on his own richly varied life experiences, Hybels fleshes out vital principles with riveting firsthand stories. This is far more than another book on leadership strategies and techniques. You'll find those topics in here, to be sure. But beyond them, you'll find the very essence of one of today's foremost Christian leaders---his fervent commitment to evangelism and discipleship and his zeal to inspire fellow church leaders even as he seeks to keep growing as a leader himself. If unchurched people matter to you . . . if you love seeing believers serve passionately with their spiritual gifts . . . if God's heartbeat for the church is your heartbeat as well . . . then this book is a must. Courageous Leadership will convince you to lead with all your might, all your skill, and all your faith. And it will give you the tools to do just that.

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Hybels is the founding and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., and chairman of the board for the Willow Creek Association. The bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Axiom, Holy Discontent, Just Walk Across the Room, The Volunteer Revolution, and Courageous Leadership, and classics such as Too Busy Not to Pray and Becoming a Contagious Christian, Hybels is known worldwide as an expert in training Christian leaders to transform individuals and their communities through the local church. he and his wife, Lynne, have two adult children and two grandsons, Henry and Mac. SPANISH BIO: Bill Hybels es el fundador y pastor principal de la Iglesia Comunitaria de Willow Creek en South Barrington, Illinois., y presidente de la junta de la Asociacion Willow Creek. Es autor de mas de veinte libros exitosos, entre los que se encuentran Axioma, Divina Insatisfaccion, Simplemente acercate a ellos, La revolucion de los voluntarios, Liderazgo audaz, y clasicos como Muy ocupados para no orar y Como ser un cristiano contagioso. Bill Hybels es reconocido mundialmente por capacitar a lideres cristianos en cursos de entrenamiento que buscan transformar a los individuos y sus comunidades mediante la iglesia local. Tiene un titulo en Estudios Biblicos y un doctorado honorario de Estudios Teologicos de Trinity College de Deerfield, Illinois. el y su esposa, Lynne, tienen dos hijos adultos y un nieto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Stakes of Leadership TEN DAYS AFTER THE ATTACKS ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER Towers, I stood in the rubble at Ground Zero, overwhelmed by the aftermath of one of the most horrific events in history. On that world-changing morning of September 11, 2001, Manhattan, New York, became a war zone. The terrorists took no prisoners, held no hostages. Death was the only option they offered, so three thousand ordinary people died that day, most without an opportunity for a final embrace or even a last good-bye. The New York City officials who invited me to tour Ground Zero led me past the check points and into 'The Pit,' the area immediately surrounding the fallen towers. In the grim shadows of the huge cranes that slowly shifted scraps of twisted metal, rescue workers dug through the rubble, and bucket brigades passed pails of debris from hand to hand. The workers moved silently, listening, I knew, for the sounds---any sounds---of survivors. Those ninety minutes will stay with me for the rest of my life. Words cannot convey, nor television screens capture, the enormity of the devastation I saw for that hour and a half. For the first thirty minutes the only two words I could utter were, 'No way!' And I said them over and over again. In my imagination I had envisioned the two slender towers sinking into a pile of debris that would fit easily within the confines of a large football stadium. My mental picture was big---and tragic---enough, but reality was a hundred times more tragic. A square mile of ruin. Numerous city blocks obliterated. One of the smaller buildings that came down was over forty stories high. Several larger buildings, still standing when I was there, were buckling and would have to be demolished. Some looked like the Oklahoma Federal Building with its front blown off. Others, blocks away, had windows shattered. The sheer enormity of what happened that day took my breath away. I said 'No way!' again when I saw the dedication of the rescue workers, many of whom were still digging after ten days, with bloodied hands and blistered feet, because their firefighting bud-dies were buried under the piles of twisted steel. How can I describe what it was like to be with them, to look into their eyes and see the profound coupling of utter exhaustion and unyielding determination? There were hundreds and hundreds of them. I found myself torn between wanting to grab hold of them and say, 'Please stop. You've got to rest. You've got to go home,' and at the same time wanting to pat them on the back and say, 'Don't give up! If I were under that pile of destruction I'd want someone like you digging for me.' I've never been in war, so I've never seen men and women like that. I've never seen people who were nearly dead on their feet walk back into the carnage because they couldn't do otherwise. I'll never forget it. People like that ennoble the human spirit. They remind us that we can still be heroic. Later in the day, I was driven by cab to a designated place several blocks away from the rescue effort, where family and friends were posting pictures of loved ones on a crudely constructed bulletin board that ran for hundreds of feet along the sidewalk. As I looked at the photographs crammed from top to bottom, side to side, again I said, 'No way!' No way should men, women, and children have to live with this kind of loss and grief. Back and forth walked the people left behind. For twenty-four hours everyday they wandered like zombies along the city streets, hoping against hope that someone could tell them something about their father, their daughter, their friend. There was no way they could move on with their lives. They couldn't eat or sleep. They couldn't go home without some information, some piece of news, some degree of closure. I could understand their tenacity. What else could they do? If my family---Lynne or Shauna or Todd---or my friends were among those missing beneath the rubble, I would do the same. I'd plaster their pictures all over that wall; I'd grab people by the collar if I thought they could offer me one little shred of information or hope. As I hailed a cab to take me back to my hotel, I felt like screaming my next 'No way!' in an attempt to block out the bitterest truth of all, that all this suffering, this holocaust, was caused not by a natural calamity or even some freak accident, but by the deliberate schemes of fellow human beings. No earthquake, no shift in geological plates caused this wreckage. No flood, tornado, or hurricane did this. The death and destruction surrounding me were the direct result of the careful plans of people so caught up in radical political beliefs and so filled with hatred that as they watched the television coverage of Ground Zero they high-fived each other and jumped for joy. 'No way!' I cried again. There's no way evil can run this deep. But it did. No matter how incomprehensible was the scene surrounding me, the enormity of evil behind it could not be denied. But strangely, while the ashes smoldered around me and grief overwhelmed me, even then, a profound hope rose in my heart. Slicing through the anguished 'no ways' reverberating in my mind were the words I had repeated ten thousand times before, but now they cut with the flash of urgency. The local church is the hope of the world. The local church is the hope of the world. I could see it so clearly. I do not intend to minimize the contribution of the many fine organizations performing wonderful, loving, charitable acts in the middle of the misery of Ground Zero. The Red Cross was handing out work gloves and breathing masks, fresh socks and clean boots. Restaurants were setting up barbecue grills on sidewalks and cooking free food for rescue workers. Soft drink manufacturers donated beverages. Humanitarian groups and corporations set up trust funds with hundreds of millions of dollars for the families of victims. Money poured in. For all these actions Americans should be proud. And I certainly am.

About this edition

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 031024823X
• ISBN 13: 9780310248231
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256