Gary Haughen – Just Courage: Charging the Darkness
Founder – International Justice Mission
Are Jesus and I really interested in the same thing?
For 2000 years christians have been trying to make it believable that god is good.
Injustice in the Bible is a particular kind of sin. It’s an abuse of power where they have things God has given being taken away from them.
Ecclesiastes 4:1
I was a little disappointed in this session . . .
This is more a talk about whether god exists or is good than a talk on leadership. It’s compelling but has nothing to do with leadership.
Leaders who want to lead in things that matter to God.
The fundamental point of this session – if you want your leadership to matter, lead in the things that matter to God.
Leadership matters when things seem hopeless, scary, and hard.
They have led in these circumstances and he wants to share some of what they learned through three questions.
What have we learned about leading when the task seems hopeless, scary, and hard?
1. When the task seems hopeless, we lead by re-centering the basis of our hope.
- What do you have? Give it to me. Feeding the Five Thousand
- He simply asked for what they had.
- Of God is passionate about getting it done, he is also responsible for getting it done.
- Sometimes god is calling you to lead in a situation that seems hopeless – the required miracles are his job not ours.
2. When the task seems scary, we lead by reminding people that Jesus didn’t come to make us safe, but brave.
- Jesus didn’t come to make us safe, but to make us brave.
- If I’m not scared by the calling, maybe it’s not God’s calling.
- I went on the trip, but I missed the adventure – vacation story – skipped mountain climbing because he was scared..
- We are on the journey with Jesus, but we are missing the adventure.
- Follow me beyond your control, beyond your strengths and competencies and you will experience me, my power, wisdom, and love.
- Risk the vulnerability to see how strong my father is.
- Don’t dump your strengths, but use them on a more demanding climb.
3. When the call and task is hard, we must choose not to be safe, choose deep spiritual health, choose to pursue excellence, and choose to
seize the joy.
- First indicator where we are being brave and not safe is our prayer life.
- Do you and I have a work we could imagine doing for 30 minutes without prayer? Mother Teresa . . .
- Admit it’s fear and not cleverness holding us back, trust God and do it.
- People don’t do hopeless, scary, hard things without God’s help.
- Lead people on a demanding climb that is unsafe without God.
- We spiritualized mediocrity by falsely balancing godliness and excellence.
- We weren’t loving very well.
He is moving to a place I talk about – what are the stakes? He used two words I hate – excellence and best practices.
The struggle for God’s suffering is hard – don’t add to the burdens on our team with self-seriousness. Something is wrong if Jesus yoke is light and mine is heavy.
Leaders make a difference with the people of God when they lead through celebration.
I hate it when speakers and leaders ignore the reality of the real world.
Body builders – what’s all that power for? Opening Jam jars?
MxPx may sum this session up best.
Shining the light in the darkest places
You know and I know we have to face this now